Episode 16 - Strange Discoveries

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 16 of Beyond the Furthest Stars

(Intro music plays, then fades down, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: So where we last left off, you all hightailed it out of Bragos after Violet Winston was on your tail trying to find out who owned this ship and who they were so that they could get revenge right? And Ollie had a really cool, like God and Man moment jumping into the ship. Polaris's Fighter got beat up and Polaris was very sad about that. And our camera panned and revealed that Lapis’ twin agent Lazuli was hot on your tail.

Zach/Zahn: I forgot it was Lapis-Lazuli.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: And you all are floating away from Space Vegas. And Hermes says “that race was exhilarating. We should do that. But Polaris, I should let you know we are receiving a transmission from your home. Would you like me to put it through the ship speakers or directly to your helmet?”

Bee/Polaris: You can put it through the ship Speakers.

Avery/GM: “now connected.” You hear Merak's voice come over the intercom and says (comm noise) “inquisitive Polaris, you've been gone a few days. Are you still operating properly?”

Bee/Polaris: As far as I know, yes. By the way, you are on speaker.

Avery/GM: “Pleased. I actually have a task if you and your new friends have the time?”

Bee/Polaris: Mm. Let me check my schedule. And then Polaris just plays like… he just plays Tetris in his helmet.

Zach/Zahn: Let me check my schedule.

Bee/Polaris: Merak knows full well that Polaris has no schedule. So…

Avery/GM: “Well, it shouldn't take too long. I have, well, I should… Alioth really… Alioth has… heard rumors of a ship of unknown design that has shown up in. The area known as the graveyard, pretty close to where you are. If you could go and get readings on this ship and perhaps get some samples of the material that it's made out of, Alioth would be less perturbed than they already are.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like squints his eyes, like why would… why would Alioth be perturbed by this ship? Is anyone else in the in the cockpit?

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. . I'm J-Chillin.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is in the workshop working on his wanted mods list.

Bee/Polaris: He would be hearing this, it's on the, the ship's intercoms.

Avery/GM: Yeah, probably.

Zach/Zahn: I'm just saying where he is.

Bee/Polaris: Gotcha. Gotcha. Where's Ollie and Bruce?

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's probably in the workshop as well.

Caden/Bruce: and Bruce is also probably in the workshop that he has also made into a kitchen and is trying to cook everyone, like some lunch.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, you do not wanna be in the same workshop as on. I'm just telling you.

Caden/Bruce: Every so often Bruce just has like, push aside some like metals and screws and just be like not near the spices.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, it's, it's an absolute disaster area. , I'm afraid… Because that's just kind of what the man is used to where

Bee/Polaris: so much cross-contamination.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah

Avery/GM: it'll be fine.

Chris/Ollie: Just organized chaos.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will look over at Marty and kind of throw up a raised eyebrow emoji on his visor cause this seems, this is weird.

Jenine/Marty: Marty tries to mimic it with her own face. And it's just, and like, just pu pushes her eyebrow up in the same way cause she can't get her eyebrow to go up that high.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent. Polaris will, Polaris will turn his attention back to the compete and say: is it safe?

Avery/GM: “It should be. Ships that go into the graveyard are typically stripped of weapons before they are stowed there as to avoid any unpleasant accidents.”

Bee/Polaris: Interesting. I suppose the crews… the crew wouldn't mind. No one has come up to object, so I'll get those readings.

Avery/GM: “Pleased. Thank you, Polaris. This will hopefully make a off a lot less temperamental than they have been the past few…. Actually since you left. Really?”

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm. Impossible. Alioth is always temperamental

Avery/GM: “amused. Yes… Yes. Well, we will try and rendezvous with you in the graveyard here in a few days time, but we are certain that you can complete this task with very few ramifications.”

Bee/Polaris: That is the hope. See you in a few days

Avery/GM: and the transmission cuts out. (comm sound)

Bee/Polaris: Polaris looks back over at Marty.

Jenine/Marty: Marty Waves

Bee/Polaris: Polaris Thumbs up and then goes to the workshop. Polaris will like knock on the, the side of the door. Is there a door to the workshop or is it just like an open sort of situation?

Jenine/Marty: Open floor plan. I really like the, the concept of an open floor plan here.

Zach/Zahn: you'd still want the doors to be there in case of Cabin de… Decompression. but it probably has them like permanent set to be open in case of emergency.

Avery/GM: Fair enough, fair enough.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent. Polaris will go over to like the open door and like knock on the side to get everyone's attention that's in the workshop. (door knock) Does anyone have any thoughts on This ship we're going to investigate.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn looks up with like a, he's got like a half helmet kind of thing on where it's got a blast shield as well as like several magnifying glasses.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent.

Zach/Zahn: And he is like, hell no. I've actually heard some cool shit about the graveyard. I've always kind of wanted to go, but none of my other projects ever took me there. So like this is actually kind of exciting. You know how much scrounge you could potentially find there?

Bee/Polaris: Mm. I've heard… the custodians used to visit the graveyard quite often.

Chris/Ollie: At the mention of graveyard Ollie's Head is gonna rotate 180. He's still doing whatever he was doing, you know, working on machines and bits, so yeah. Just turns around. Looks at you.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Chris/Ollie: And is like graveyard? I missed that. We are going to a ship graveyard?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: and his eyes are gonna like sparkle. His little visor eyes are gonna start sparkling

Bee/Polaris: Like anime eyes!?

And then yeah, pretty much. And then like everything he's working on behind him is gonna like start happening at twice the speed. He's like, excellent. I've been wanting to make some upgrades. And he's going to turn around and redouble his efforts on his work.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is standing there rolling out dough and with his tail is using a whisk to whisk up this sauce and it becomes kind of clear that he's making pizza and he'll turn his head and just be like, that should be probably enough time for me to make this pizza. So yeah, why not? Let’s explore!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris tilts his head at the word pizza, but doesn't say anything.

Zach/Zahn: Is Polaris familiar with the concept of pizza?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris isn't familiar with the concept of every food unless Bruce has introduced it to him.

Avery/GM: You hear from the, or actually Marty, you're still in the, the cockpit, right?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I'm, I'm Jay chilling. Is, is, is, yeah. Hermes. I can't, I'm sitting in the cockpit with his, with the, with the fun little alien still?

Avery/GM: Yep. Yep. Hermes projects itself into the captain's chair and looks at you and says, “Marty, I feel I should let you know that the graveyard is also the rumored Home Base of the pirates that you befriended.’

Bee/Polaris: Oh shit. Our buds a few days ago.

Jenine/Marty: Oh?

Avery/GM: so perhaps you can make them more cake?

Jenine/Marty: And then I just kinda like yell down. Can we make tea time please? with the pirates?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will just nod and like. With his tail, like put the whisk down and like open up another cupboard and grab a bowl and just start getting out other ingredients where his hands are just like still needing the dough.

Bee/Polaris: Polars is just like sticking his head into the workshop to talk to you guys and he like puts his other hand up and does a thumbs up to Marty.

Jenine/Marty: Marty does a little dance of excitement.

Avery/GM: Marty, you see alien projection Hermes point at the pilot station and says “you'll have to engage the spike drive before we can properly get to the graveyard.”

Jenine/Marty: Oh, oh me. Are you motioning…?

Avery/GM: Well, he's pointing at you cuz you're the only one there and Polaris got up. So…

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is like walking back after doing the thumbs up.

Jenine/Marty: Oh thank God. Just woo. Not me!

Bee/Polaris: But Polaris hears Hermes, kind of like ask Marty to engage the Spike Drive. So he just stands behind the captain's chair and like puts his arms on the captain's chair and just watches Marty.

Jenine/Marty: I don't , I don't, I don't know how to operate this machinery.

Avery/GM: “I have heard that it's not very hard.”

Bee/Polaris: Yes, there are only five buttons and a wheel. Pick a button.

Zach/Zahn: Pick a button.

Jenine/Marty: Pick a button. you…. Oh, this is my character that has self-control. why don't you tell me which button to pick?

Bee/Polaris: Sure. It's between one and five. Smiley face,

Jenine/Marty: Uhhuh, Uhhuh, are the buttons labeled.

Bee/Polaris: No . It's a pirate tip. Probably not.

Jenine/Marty: So Marty's gonna walk over to the buttons and do that fun game of like hover above the first one and like look and see if I can try and get a reaction from under that visor.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Polaris's visor is black and reflective.

Jenine/Marty: I know!

Avery/GM: you hover over the first button and You see Alien Hermes shake his head, no.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, then I hover over button number two.

Avery/GM: The head shake gets faster.

Bee/Polaris: Successfully amused Polaris. Walks over, ruffles Marty's hair, and then actually presses the right button. (button push)

Avery/GM: Button four.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Jenine/Marty: All right. Time to make a note. Button four. What was that Spike Drive or is that the eject button?

Avery/GM: Spike Drive. No, that's the Spike Drive. You feel the ship shake and vibrate underneath you, and it jumps into liminal space (warp sound) and y'all are on your way. Takes a couple hours to get there. In the meantime, Bruce, you've made a pizza?

Caden/Bruce: and cake? Yes, both.

Avery/GM: And cake! I love it. I love it. Cool. Yeah. What, what's up with the pizza?

Caden/Bruce: The pizza as we've collected a bunch of vegetables is vegetarian, so it's just this pizza that has like cut up mushrooms and peppers and onions and probably like, he blended some beans together to like make some sauce as long. as well as like the tomato-based sauce and it just smells and tastes really good.

And he used real cheese, not the fake cheese. And then the cake knowing last time, I think last time he gave them almond cake, if I'm not mistaken.

Bee/Polaris: I thought it was a

Avery/GM: Apricot.

Bee/Polaris: It was like a, yeah, an apricot sun, sunflower seed cake or pumpkin seed cake.

Caden/Bruce: I can never remember. There's so many cakes we've lost in a lemon cake. This time he's made like a very nice chocolate cake.

Bee/Polaris: Chocolate is a bean. They would've had chocolate.

Avery/GM: Mm-hmm. . That is true. Cool. Very good. So yeah, y'all are having a pizza party while you're on your way to a ship graveyard. Totally. Nothing ominous about that.

Bee/Polaris: Nah.

Avery/GM: And as you're coming into the graveyard, (warp sound) Hermes says, “the location that Merak sent us is section 7-B of the graveyard. Would you like me to autopilot us there or would you like to pilot us yourself?”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will… Polaris will just grab the wheel and start piloting.

(flyby sound)

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. So a few things about the graveyard as you're coming into it. You know that rather than any government holding like jurisdiction over this place, pretty much every planet, every system of government just sort of strips the ships of weapons and anything that would be related to like computer memories and things like that from these ships and then kind of hauls the, the hulls here for scrapers to pick over. You know, they'll leave some of the stuff, they'll leave, you know, teleportation pads or armor, you know, and stuff like that attached to these ships. But you also know that a lot of these ships have been in battle already, and therefore, aren't always in the best shape. You also know that there is an artificial, artificial gravity well in kind of the center of this heap that helps prevent ships from…

Zach/Zahn: spike driving right into the middle of it. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Exactly helps people from getting pulled out of their spike drive right in the middle of a wreck. So normally it's a very safe place to travel to and generally a safe place to be in… The GM says Ominously paths through the wreckage are kind of created, kind of as needed. There's no real organization to this place, so you might have to blast your way to get, you know, into a certain section. But as you enter this system and start navigating around Polaris, Marty, are you back at the comm station?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah? Okay, cool. Then you see a little ping (comms sound) on your comms board and just gonna drop this in chat. If anyone or everyone wants to hit play on this when they can, and just kind of listen to this and let me know when you're done.

Mysterious Voice: Warning! Warning This is the pan-solar union ship Cassiopeia, Our ship is damaged. Ship… Corrupted. Automated…Vated. Ship Self-destruct sequence… Disabled. -ony Core Compromised. Warning. Warning. This is the pan-solar ship Cassiopeia. Our Ship is damaged. …Approach. Ship AI… Activated. Ship self sequence. Disabled. …Core Compromised.

Chris/Ollie: Huh?

Jenine/Marty: This is sick .

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, that's, that's. Good audio quality or effects there.

Avery/GM: So that is the transmission that you receive Marty on your communications board. And it appears to be coming from this ship right here on the map.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, the big one.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, the Dorito.

Caden/Bruce: The dorito!

Bee/Polaris: the Forbidden Dorito!

Chris/Ollie: the U S A F Dorito!

Avery/GM: the big gray Dorito in the sky

Jenine/Marty: and is it just like on a loop?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool. Its like… I like tried to push a button to try and like make it go through the whole cabin. (Comm Sound) Hopefully successfully. She's a smart cookie, but again, she doesn't know this technology.

Avery/GM: Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: yeah, there are five buttons. , .

Jenine/Marty: Well, this is a different button system.

Avery/GM: And, and, and these buttons actually have not had the labels rubbed off. So you're, you're doing good.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah

Bee/Polaris: The labels weren't rubbed off, but they were switched around.

Jenine/Marty: do we know anything about this ship? Question mark.

Avery/GM: So as you're approaching it, Hermes kind of puts like the, the outer ship camera kind of on screen for y'all to view. And you're navigating through this place. You see a lot of like busted hulls and like of metal and armor plating kind of all over the place. You see fighter ships that you recognize some cruise ships. All that kind of stuff. But in hernias points out the ship that this transmission is coming from. It looks nothing like anything you all are familiar with and not like any of you are ship experts, but you live in a space faring society. You see lots of ships all the time. This thing looks completely alien.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. Yeah. That's a weird, that's a weirdin.

Chris/Ollie: and, and we know that's the what the ship, the transmission's coming from for sure.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Can I like try and determine how long the signal's been going on? Uh,

Avery/GM: If you ask Marty to move out of the com station, probably, I don't know,

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's a pretty handy guy. He can just plug himself in. No, I'm kidding. Ollie will walk up to Marty and say, oh, Pardon me, Marty, I would like to attempt something.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah. Yes, of course. And then she'll like back away slowly.

Avery/GM: and Hermes stops projecting himself into the captain's chair. And then you see like a little spectral hand pat, the captain's chair for you, and kind of like, here you go.

Bee/Polaris: Tempting.

Chris/Ollie: So Ollie is gonna sit down and it's gonna be like hackers. He's just gonna like start typing at like 300 words per minute (typing sounds) analyzing.

Bee/Polaris: his hands split apart and get extra fingers to type faster.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah Or like that anime gif. Yeah.

Avery/GM: So unless you have like a specific AI skill, go ahead and roll a intelligence program check.

Chris/Ollie: Yep. Yeah, I'm not gonna use any, I gotta save up all my points. Might be getting some trouble. Intelligence, A…or intelligence program, you say? Yes, please. All righty. That is 13.

Avery/GM: 13. Perfect. You do some math and some kind of triangulation and stuff. You analyze the. The crater that it's kind of leaning against on this asteroid that it's next to, and you calculate that it can't have been here longer than three months.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm

Chris/Ollie: hmm. Yeah, he's gonna report this and say, . Interesting. According to these readings, the crash is very recent, within a few months.

Bee/Polaris: Interesting. I wonder where it came from cause it does not look like it comes from this general area.

Chris/Ollie: Can we see any markings or anything on it? Nothing that we would recognize, but…

Avery/GM: you see some lettering in a language that you don't recognize, which is weird for you cause you're an AI, you're.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I know, I know them all.

Avery/GM: You know the languages

Bee/Polaris: you are language.

Chris/Ollie: I am the language.

Avery/GM: And there's also a shining sun emblazoned on each wing of the ship.

Chris/Ollie: And can I give the, like a, a Google image search for this sun?

(Computer button noise)

Avery/GM: Yeah. It's, it's not pulling up any known images of… of this. No cross reference.

Bee/Polaris: Does, does Polaris have, like, like they have a direct communication line to the ship. Does Polaris have a way to like send the custodians things from like this far away?

Avery/GM: Yeah, of course.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Polaris is gonna take like pictures in, on his helmet of the, of the lettering and also the symbol and send it over to the custodians in the group chat and text them. Do you guys know what this is? Question mark?

Avery/GM: You see like the three dots, like someone's typing something.

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: but so far nothing has been sent yet.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Polaris will turn to the rest of the group and say, I've sent it over to the custodians to see what they know. They've traveled quite a distance.

Avery/GM: Hermes speaks up and says, “I am detecting the presence of at least one other AI on board that ship. And it appears the docking bay on that ship should easily accommodate this vessel. If you would like to explore it.”

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. I would like, I, I think we'd like to explore it, but having it docked in the ship with a corrupt ai… a corrupted AI, probably isn't the best idea.

Chris/Ollie: While you guys are talking, Ollie is already getting up and preparing to go in . He walks into the warehouse and grabs his Void Hawk drone.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh.

Chris/Ollie: And brings it out.

Bee/Polaris: Nice.

Jenine/Marty: Nice.

Avery/GM: Polaris. After a few moments, you just get one word response and it just says unknown.

Zach/Zahn: Ooh.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is not too pleased about that. The, the custodians have been traveling a while and the fact that they don't know what the fuck this is, makes Polaris a little nervous.

Jenine/Marty: And is this the one that they sent us to check out?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Well, that's, well, that's definitely not sketch. That's, that's not, that's not scary. That's not… That's not suspicious. That ain't sus

Bee/Polaris: yeah

Jenine/Marty: that ain’t sus!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. When Polaris gets that message, he like visibly tenses, but doesn't say anything.

Jenine/Marty: Marty does that little like head tilt thing and just goes, Hmm? Okay.

Avery/GM: I was gonna say, Marty, with your medical training, you, you see kind of the, the tensing of Polaris, which is out of character for sure.

Jenine/Marty: Mental Note.

Bee/Polaris: Marty will remember that. it appears on everyone's advisor and everyone's like, wait, what?

Avery/GM: Oh Marty, you have telepathy, don't you?

Jenine/Marty: I, I do. I do. I do. But that's… I'm not gonna… Well..

Avery/GM: No, no, no. I'm just, I was just curious.

Bee/Polaris: Nothing is sacred.

Jenine/Marty: Well, yeah. I'm not gonna do it to my friends

Avery/GM: Sorry, that was a, that was a poorly timed question on my phone. I'm not implying you would… No. I was asking because you do you do sense like another psionic nearby?

Jenine/Marty: I sense a psionic nearby. Oh!

Bee/Polaris: Marty’s Spider Senses are tingling. also Sherm, you, you were saying that Zahn was about to do something?

Zach/Zahn: Yes. As, as he basically comes back at the same time as Ollie is. And as he like comes in, he is like adjusting something that he's attached to his arm. And he pushes a button and his helmet does the finally the cool Isaac Clark thing where it pieces together and forms over his head and he is like, let's do this.

Bee/Polaris: You guys are so ready to go into this, this death trap of a ship.

Zach/Zahn: Heck yeah. Surrounded by dying components. Mm.

Bee/Polaris: a treasure mine!

Zach/Zahn: Heck Yes.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: You also see some cool, like you hear some additional like calibrations coming from his feet and he's got some extra bulk to him, and I'll describe that when it comes up.

Bee/Polaris: Nice.

Jenine/Marty: Nice.

Avery/GM: Polaris, Hermes takes into consideration what you said about docking the ship and he says, “I have calculated the distance that I could safely maneuver the ship and you all could jump out of the loading ramp. Of this ship onto the docking bay of that ship. As long as you all have vac suits, you should hopefully not die.”

Bee/Polaris: We all have vac suits, right? Because I don't think we returned them from the fucking race or whatever. Or did we have those before?

Avery/GM: You did not return them. You still have them. I think the only one who might not have a vac suit is Bruce, but

Bee/Polaris: Right.

Avery/GM: A little bit of searching around. Would probably unveil a Bruce sized vac suit conveniently located somewhere.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah we can probably find one.

Zach/Zahn: If we also want to take a little bit of time, Zahn can modify them to have extended duration if we want as well.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. I mean, I don't think we're in any sort of rush.

Avery/GM: For the, for the sake of making this listenable show, Zach, they have the duration that they need

Caden/Bruce: Perfect

Zach/Zahn: as is required.

Avery/GM: Yep.

Chris/Ollie: And be like, oh, you're halfway through, but you've run out of life support and there's nothing nearby, party wipe! GG! Well played!

Zach/Zahn: now that Zahn's gotten like the bulk of the stuff that he really wanted done. I do want to install everyone with bubble seals, which aren't full vac suits, but it gives like everyone, a, a short period of time if A, your vac suit cuts out, or B, you're not wearing it.

Avery/GM: Yeah, we can get to that at some point.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. I mean, Polaris has a vax skin, so he doesn't, it's not like armored or anything, but yeah, he's good.

Chris/Ollie: Oh. Also, if we're gonna jump in, I could give, give her the control of the little drone I got so he can come with us.

Zach/Zahn: Aw!

Caden/Bruce: taking Hermes for a walk.

Bee/Polaris: Hey walkies

Chris/Ollie: A little leash. Come on. Hermes time for your walkie.

Avery/GM: Not a bad idea.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we can totally do that. I was thinking about like docking the ship near one of the holes that are blasted into the side of the ship because you can shut, like an AI can shut the, the doors to like the ship, but they can't shut a hole in the ship.

Avery/GM: This is true.

Bee/Polaris: And then we just like remember which hole we keep in through.

Avery/GM: Okay. So you'd like to go through a hole instead of directly into the docking bay?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, the docking bay might have anti boarding measures.

Bee/Polaris: Exactly.

Chris/Ollie: Good Idea.

Avery/GM: Man, So Untrusting.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is terrified of the ship.

Zach/Zahn: We've had a AWOL-esque AI on the, on the fritz for a couple months now. Who knows how deranged it's gotten.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Who knows how homicidal it is.

Avery/GM: Caden, will you roll a D8 for me please?

Caden/Bruce: A D8? Yeah, sure. That’s a 3.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. Yeah, you maneuver your ship sort of towards the, this side of the, of the ship and there is a big old hole in the, in the middle. That y'all can jump through.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. I do hate that mysterious roll that you had Caden do, but I'll ignore it for now.

Jenine/Marty: I don't know what roll you're talking about.

Avery/GM: it's fine.

Jenine/Marty: What roll? There's no roll.

Avery/GM: to be honest. It was literally just to decide which section of the ship y'all were gonna land in.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet. Okay. Sweet. Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: you're totally fine. Cool. So y'all jump across?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn expertly glides his way in with his new jet boots.

(jet boot sounds)

Bee/Polaris: Oh, lovely.

Zach/Zahn: He's just sails past everybody.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So y'all arrive in this room here inside you see some deactivated sleep pods, and there's a hallway leading south… relative and a hallway leading to the northwest. And as you land and sort of get situated in here, Start receiving a transmission… (comms sound) but it's in a language that no one, no one understands the words, but Zahn, you recognize some of the words because you heard this language spoken sometimes back on your space colony.

Zach/Zahn: Oh shit.

Avery/GM: And you don't get all of the words, but you do get. You do translate the word artificial state your purpose and yeah, those are the words that you get.

Zach/Zahn: Is it like an open comm kind of thing or is it how are we getting this message? Is it over the ship speakers or something?

Avery/GM: It's over. It's over comms so it sounds more like a conversation and not a transmission.

Zach/Zahn: Got it.

Avery/GM: Yeah. I mean this, so this, this message is getting beamed to all of you? Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. I'm gonna open a group chat with this ship and type (comms sound) can't understand you. Please translate. Question mark. Speak common please.

Jenine/Marty: Does anyone speak common?

Zach/Zahn: If not, speak in Math.

Avery/GM: Hermes speaks up in the chat and just says, “I Believe I can send this AI a language primer and it should be able to communicate with us shortly.”

Bee/Polaris: Do that please.

Zach/Zahn: It wants to know our purposes here.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris slowly turns to Zahn with a, a raised eyebrow emoji on the visor.

Zach/Zahn: He gives like the innocent shrug. I've been places…

Avery/GM: I've been places.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris does the squint eye emoji because Polaris knows that the custodians have never heard of this, this language or ship. So the fact that Zahn knows is very, like, it's very weird, but also kind of amazing to him.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's not gonna address it at this time.

Avery/GM: I do not wish to discuss. So while you're waiting for the ship AI to learn your language real quick, a couple other things you notice is there is no gravity in this ship because all of the systems are shut down.

Zach/Zahn: Mag boots.

Avery/GM: So y'all are kind of floating here. And kind of able to pull yourselves along, like by grabbing things and stuff like that. Or in the case of Zahn, having jet boots

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. The only one of us that has

Zach/Zahn: Or mag boots!

Bee/Polaris: the only one of us that has cool boots, I only have uggs.

Zach/Zahn: No one has requested any yet. I only uggs!?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris has boots with the fur

Avery/GM: Oh my goodness. So yeah, you, you notice the sleep pods are not like bolted down. They're sort of floating… Can see into the room to the south that there are some medical looking beds that are kind of floating around here. And then as you're kind of looking around and noticing these things, the group chat pops up and this AI that is communicating with you says “greetings, I am Cassiopeia Artificial intelligence node Navi, please state your purpose.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris types Investigation. Heard Transmission.

Avery/GM: “Oh, great. You picked up our transmission. That is very helpful. Will you please help destroy this ship?”

Bee/Polaris: Shrug emoji. Sure.

Jenine/Marty: Whoa, whoa. Back up, back up, back up, back up, back up. Back, up back.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn types in… Zahn types. Why do you seek destructions?

Avery/GM: Classified.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris doesn't ask questions. Someone says, destroy players will destroy. He's a simple man.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn wants the salvage.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, yeah, we can salvage it. I mean, destroy doesn't mean destroy the whole ship. We just have to destroy the core.

Zach/Zahn: which is also good salvage!

Bee/Polaris: I mean, okay, you can, you can, we can get in the USB and download that shit and then destroy it. I got a couple of… something drives. I got a couple of floppy disks. Polaris will type. If it is classified and we are tasked at destroying the ship, would it not be beneficial to know why it's classified? Question mark

Zach/Zahn: Under who's classification?

Bee/Polaris: Yes. Who watches the watchman, if you will?

Avery/GM: All information pertaining to my mission is classified. I cannot share it except with authorized personnel.

Bee/Polaris: How do you know we're not authorized personnel? Question mark.

Jenine/Marty: mmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Bee/Polaris: Damn it.

Zach/Zahn: Well, I mean Marty is a… intern with a hegemony. So if that registers at all.

Bee/Polaris: That is true!

Avery/GM: Hegemony unknown. You are not wearing uniforms of the Pan Solar Union.

Bee/Polaris: Pan Solar union.

Jenine/Marty: Do I know what that is?

Bee/Polaris: Got it. Thank you!

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna say, do I know what that is? Since I know what language, part of what language he was speaking, she, is it as female or…

Avery/GM: none of you… None of you recognize what that entity would be?

Zach/Zahn: and then is the Cassiopeia a feminine or masculine AI?or in between. Yeah, that was…

Bee/Polaris: what are their pronouns?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that's what

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will type and chat. What are your pronouns?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Correct Questions, pronouns, please.

Bee/Polaris: pronouns, please Question mark.

Jenine/Marty: With a w.

Avery/GM: I actually did not think about that. I'm sorry. Okay. Feminine.

Bee/Polaris: So she/her?

Avery/GM: I rolled a D six and decided. Yeah. She/Her

Chris/Ollie: Cassiopeia is a female character from League of Legends. So

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will ask in chat, where is the Pan Solar Union? You might be far from home.

Avery/GM: Error. Error. Ship Origin classified

Bee/Polaris: god dammit.

Avery/GM: Greetings. I am Cassiopeia, Artificial Intelligence node Navi. Please state your purpose.

Bee/Polaris: Purpose previously stated, scroll up.

Chris/Ollie: Top of the dialogue tree

Avery/GM: Oh, you received our transmission. Please help destroy this ship.

Bee/Polaris: Sure. Shrug emoji. Polaris will copy and paste his response from before and just put it and send it again and also take a screenshot of this loop to send once it loops again.

Avery/GM: Yes, Marty.

Jenine/Marty: Marty just goes, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's, let's take like three steps back. Hi, really nice to meet you. What can we do…

Avery/GM: Navi says I cannot take any steps back. I am a ship.

Jenine/Marty: I meant take a couple steps back in conversation. How are you?

Avery/GM: I am distressed. How are you?

Jenine/Marty: Well, I'm wondering why you're distressed.

Avery/GM: Mission parameters have failed.

Jenine/Marty: and the parameters of the mission were to…?

Avery/GM: our first mission was to colonize a distant planet, second mission classified.

Jenine/Marty: And which planet was that?

Avery/GM: Unknown. navigation systems offline. Automated defenses are activated.

Jenine/Marty: Like right now

Avery/GM: colony core integrity is compromised.

Bee/Polaris: Are there any survivors on this ship? Are there any like what's it called? What are those what are they called? Oh my gosh. There are, there were some on the Ursa major for like, for like cryogenic sleep. I don't remember what they're called though.

Chris/Ollie: Like cryo pods?

Avery/GM: The cryo sleep pods, yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Well, while this has been going on, Ollie's also been fiddling with the pods behind us.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was gonna say Polaris was gonna look in the window of the pods.

Avery/GM: Okay. So as this is,

Zach/Zahn: I don't like that. Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: No, it's fine. It's gonna get a little grim, that's all.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, that's fine.

Avery/GM: So the cold sleep pods are powered down and there are figures in side sleeping, the eternal sleep, if you will.

Bee/Polaris: Ah,

Avery/GM: and they are Yeah. No longer conscious or part of this mortal world anymore.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris expected to see this.

Avery/GM: One thing that catches your eyes, Polaris, is that one of the people in this sleep pod has glowing freckles on their face, and they glow with a fluorescent pink.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris says… Polaris puts in chat out of the ship now four explanation points.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, cool, cool, cool. Marty will continue. Marty will continue the conversation and just like

Zach/Zahn: Wait, why?

Jenine/Marty: back away, we'll try with as much core strength as she has, which is not a lot to move back slowly and grab friends. Well This was really nice conversation. You've been really kind to us. You're really cool. This mission sounds really difficult.

Bee/Polaris: as Marty is typing this, Polaris is like pulling her outta this

Jenine/Marty: trying to like back up.

Bee/Polaris: Floating out of the hull

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is magged to the floor, not going anywhere.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie is like still fiddling with the console on the pod and he is, looks up and says, oh, are we in danger?

Bee/Polaris: You are not. Fleshy beings are.

Jenine/Marty: oh, I'm fleshy beings.

Bee/Polaris: Can Polaris determine if this is like normal space radiation or like bad radiation depending on how bright the…?

Avery/GM: Well, I will say that you are not glowing because

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Your vac suits would be shielded from radiation.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: But with these pods being deactivated

Bee/Polaris: Right.

Avery/GM: They would not be shielded, so

Bee/Polaris: got it. Okay. Once Polaris makes that realization, he stops and says, Never mind. Smiley face.

Avery/GM: We're all cool.

Bee/Polaris: we're good. Never mind, smiley face.

Avery/GM: Marty the… this Navi AI says attempts at self-destruction have fail. All connections to the engine have been disabled. They must be restored before the artificial intelligence nodes can reactivate ship systems, including the self-destruct sequence.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. Now another thing, when you say our mission and we, who is we?

Avery/GM: The five other artificial intelligence nodes on the Casiopeia plus the command crew… Who are all dead.

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Avery/GM: except for the navigator.

Jenine/Marty: Can, can, can we speak with the navigator as well?

Avery/GM: Not until the ship has regained power.

Jenine/Marty: Hmm… and do I sense this navigator somewhere nearby?

Avery/GM: You sense the navigator somewhere nearby, like kind of in the next room…

Bee/Polaris: you can probably

Avery/GM: to the northwest.

Bee/Polaris: you can probably mind talkie.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah You can just send him a mind text.

Bee/Polaris: A brain group chat.

Jenine/Marty: I can’t do a group chat yet, but I can do a group chat at some point. I mean, I can do a group chat for like all of us except for one unfortunately cause I am made for fleshies… sorry.

Chris/Ollie: actually I could, I can invest a point into being able to be a target of mental communication.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, cool.

Jenine/Marty: Oh that's exciting. That's good to know. Good to know. Okay, cool.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Actually I've got a ton of points, so I'll just do that.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, well I don't need, I can't group chat yet.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: With human… with… with Freshies yet that's a level four thing. We are only a level two. Anyways, backing up just she'll just like start trying to ping to the other, other sci in the, in the thing shooting off messages. Like, hello? Hello.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You, you get a mental image of someone drowning.

Jenine/Marty: Ooh. Hmm. Hmm

Zach/Zahn: Yes, Marty?

Jenine/Marty: and I send like

Zach/Zahn: words, use words, you can do it.

Jenine/Marty: Well do we want, and then I go into the, just like the crew chat and I'm like, so I sent a message to the other dude that's on the ship and it, the image that kind of got back was like drowning. So do we wanna like, I could stay here and like distract the ai. If someone wants to go check on that dude.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just sends where? because you said like you got the image of drowning, right?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. And then I just like turn my body towards where I, where facing to where it's… Where its at.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris goes… Polaris go

Jenine/Marty: and I will continue to distract the AI, one of the ai cuz there's four of them. There's five of them apparently.

Avery/GM: But only this one is active.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Or only this one is communicating with you.

Jenine/Marty: Right. Love that. Love that.

Avery/GM: Does anyone else go with Polaris?

Caden/Bruce: Oh yeah, Bruce will too.

Avery/GM: Ollie does.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn will stay with Marty.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, thank goodness I can't fight.

Avery/GM: As you enter the bridge, I need all three of you to make evasion saves.

Caden/Bruce: Is evasion saves a D20?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Okay.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, wow. Where's my 20? Oh…

Bee/Polaris: I make.

Caden/Bruce: I dunno how these work but I rolled a…

Bee/Polaris: oh, you roll a D 20, you don't add anything. And then on your sheet there should be like a, a threshold that you have to beat. And if you're above that…

Caden/Bruce: oh, sweet. Then I saved, I was like, do I have to be above or below ?

Bee/Polaris: Above,

Avery/GM: above,

Chris/Ollie: oh And I did not evade.

Avery/GM: Oh, no?

Chris/Ollie: No.

Avery/GM: Okay. So as you come into the bridge of this ship, you see three of these little automated weapons turrets pop out of the wall and open fire at you. (laser blasts) Bruce and Polaris. You nimbly dodge out of the way. But Ollie, you get kind of shot up a little bit here and take 11 Damage.

Bee/Polaris: Jesus Christ.

Jenine/Marty: That's a lot

Chris/Ollie: Merely a flesh wound.

Jenine/Marty: what?

Bee/Polaris: Merely a flesh wound…

Jenine/Marty: What flesh

Avery/GM: And these three turrets pop out of the walls and let's roll initiative.

(Ambience fades out, outro plays and 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. Tracks used include: Starship Bridge, Starfreighter, and Star Forged, Fray. Be sure to check us out @FurthestPod on Twitter and Tumblr. We’ll be back on March 1st with our next episode. See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars.

(Outro fades up, then plays through to the end)

Interlude - Lapis and Lazuli

(ambience fades in)

Avery: Back on the asteroid, our camera zooms in on one of these soldiers that was accompanying violet and they had been wearing their helmet the whole time and they take off their helmet to reveal a dark blue tiger furry and they bring their wrist up to their mouth and they say…

(Comm Sound)

Lazuli: This is agent Lazuli, we found them!

Commander: Excellent work, Agent Lazuli. It is time then, commence with the acquisition. Our visions have revealed who we need and why.

Lazuli: Of Course, Commander. You just want the Scaph brought in? None of the others?

Commander: Correct. Bruce is the first piece to our puzzle. His uncanny skills in camouflage and subterfuge will be most excellent in uncovering what Rhea and the rest of the Hegemony are plotting. When the time comes the scaph’s companions will be brought into the fold. For now, ensure Bruce’s cooperation by any means necessary. If you must, utilize the data gathered from your cousin Violet. Failure to procure Bruce is NOT an option.

Lazuli: Understood! Lazuli out.

(Comm Sound)

Lazuli: *sighs* you know, things were a lot simpler before becoming an Oracle.

Lapis: I know, Lazuli. You know I wouldn’t have asked you to join us if it wasn’t a matter of life and death.

Lazuli: Yeah, I know Lapis. Doesn’t make things easier. Do you really want to be allies with people that just blatantly murdered a relative, though?

Lapis: It isn’t about what I or anyone else wants. It’s about what must be done. You knew this could happen when you took the oath. Forsake all family loyalties, and all bonds of friendship. The Oracles and The Greater Good are all that matter.

Lazuli: You don’t have to quote the oath back to me, Lapis. I know my duty. I’ll get the job done. I was just saying that it isn’t going to be easy.

Lapis: I know. If it makes you feel any better, its not like Bricen was a noble or good member of the family. He certainly engaged in his fair share of awful behavior.

Lazuli: He was a damn bastard. Vindictive and murderous. But tradition demands that blood be paid for blood.

Lapis: And if Violet has her way, it will be. But it is not our place anymore.

Lazuli: (Sighs heavily) Yeah, you’re right. Thanks Lapis.

Lapis: Anyway, I’m heading back to Olympia. Anything you want me to tell our dads back home?

Lazuli: Nah. Just give them my love.

Lapis: Will do, Lazuli. Will do.

Episode 15 - Cross the Finish Line!

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 15 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!

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

Avery/GM: So you're flying in close towards this platform. Zahn, you jump off and just tell Polaris to come back for you in a couple minutes. Or what,

Zach/Zahn: what if I specifically, uh, render like in my programming bit, um, have the, the missiles, you know, attack the assemble singles, but have one of them deactivate its payload and then I ride a missile back.

Bee/Polaris: you're gonna bullet bill your way to the shuttle?

Jenine/Marty: Oh my gosh.

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: That sounds dangerous.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Just, just close enough to where I can use my graphical launcher to actually like close the gap.

Chris/Ollie: Well, I mean, Marty could just swing by Actually, I guess it would be, uh,

Bee/Polaris: Polaris could just swing by.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, because that will, that will track us back. We wanna go to the end though.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris's faster than the shuttle.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, I thought they were already on the way past, but I guess they would've to go off course downward, some.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, man. Bullet Bill sounds far more entertaining.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, Ollie will be 100% fine no matter what happens. So he's like, thumbs up.

Avery/GM: Okay. I'm setting the difficulty level for this . Cause you're basically going to have to hack two different things. So you're gonna hack the targeting for almost all the torpedoes except a nearby one that will rocket you towards your shuttle. And you'll jump onto your shuttle before it hits and get out of the way. Is that what you, you're basically gonna be doing?

Zach/Zahn: It would be a similar flight path, but not like one directly at it, cause then I'll use my grapnel launcher to, uh, hook onto our shuttle and then zoom back onto it.

Bee/Polaris: are you explaining this plan to… In chat?

Zach/Zahn: How do you mean ?

Chris/Ollie: No, Marty's just gonna see a missile fly at ‘em.

Bee/Polaris: like are you telling the rest of the team?

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah, as long as just like, uh, don't worry about me. I'll, hitch a ride!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will type in chat. Don't miss Smiley face.

Zach/Zahn: I never miss Winky face, except for the times that I, and, and very small print, except for the times that I do

Avery/GM: 85% of the time I hit 100% of the time.

Zach/Zahn: Oh God.

Avery/GM: Okay. I will need an intelligence program. Check on this computer. Ollie, you can roll to help as well.

Zach/Zahn: All right, dice. You've been rolling stupid low for me all day. Let's, uh, let's change that up on when it's important. It's important. Hell Yeah. So you said intelligence program?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: That is a 12 and I

Chris/Ollie: just get a flat. Two, two dice?

Avery/GM: two D six plus the same skill.

Chris/Ollie: Oh okay. In that case, that would be, that would be 13

Avery/GM: Okay. Uh, so a 14 total, I think, or no, 13. 13 total. Yeah, Zahn. You actually see, because the rules are that spotters cannot attack the other shuttle. So you see Professor Infinity's gunship start nose diving towards you as you're like typing in this stuff, right?

And you're getting kind of frantic about it. And so instead of being able to specify a specific target, you're actually able to just eliminate a target. You see that that program is already in there and yes, your suspicions were correct. It was programmed to purposefully miss the assemble singles shuttle and spider , and so you quickly just change it to the signature for your spotter and shuttle and the torpedoes turn And target this spotter that is nose diving towards you. And you see just five torpedoes, zero in on this floating gun and explode and detonate.

(Explosion sounds)

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh you were staring down the barrel of a giant desert eagle.

Avery/GM: And then you finish plugging in, um, the trajectory for this one, uh, specific launcher to launch you near, but not at your shuttle and you hit the button on your, your last little programming line of code, and you jump on this shuttle and you are, or jump onto this torpedo as it launches out (Torpedo launch sound) and you are hurdling towards your Shuttle. Yeah, so I guess the only thing left to do would be to roll all these D 20 s to attack the assemble singles shuttle.

Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Rip!

Bee/Polaris: Let's go.

Zach/Zahn: I can throw, I can throw a D 20 in there too if you want .

Avery/GM: Oh, it's fine. I got it.

Bee/Polaris: Do you want me to mail a D 20 to you?

Avery/GM: No, Nat 20.

Zach/Zahn: Heck yeah, brother.

Avery/GM: 16, 17. 10

Zach/Zahn: Oh man. I think we're about to be the only competitors in this race.

Jenine/Marty: Well, we stopped…

Bee/Polaris: we blew it up so good that we're the new sponsors!

Jenine/Marty: Oh yoinks!

Avery/GM: So you see three of these torpedoes, uh, actually hit their target, (explosion sounds) on the assemble single shuttle. Um, and it's still there. It's still floating, but it's, it's limping now and it has actually lost what? Lead it had on your shuttle

Jenine/Marty: ha

Avery/GM: as it's now kind of starting to, like, it's got chunks missing out of it and there's like pieces of it that are kind of like falling and just kind of floating around it, um, as it, it slows down greatly, and then two of them connect with the lucky Tentacle spotter and blow it up completely.

Bee/Polaris: Yay.

Caden/Bruce: Some fried calamari.

Bee/Polaris: It turned into little bits of space sushi, like the debris is little bits of space sushi.

Avery/GM: And for this checkpoint, I won't even have the assembles or Herme's roll a pilot check because yeah. y'all pass through the checkpoint for this one first.

Bee/Polaris: Yay.

Zach/Zahn: Yay.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah!

Avery/GM: And then you're coming up to the last checkpoint it looks like. . Basically it's just like an abandoned construction dock for like a local shipyard. There's like these four like kind of crane arms that kind of like stick out that probably people like hang from in like zero G to like do repair work and stuff on a ship or something like that.

Zach/Zahn: Makes sense.

Avery/GM: Yeah. But there's basically just, it's basically just four little asteroids with these cranes on it as we're.

Zach/Zahn: as we're approaching. Zahn is gonna like, or as it's coming into view, Zan will be stepping back onto the, the, the shuttle from having attached his grapnel launcher and left his bullet bill behind him.

(detaching sound, and thud sound)

Avery/GM: Sure

Zach/Zahn: his bullet riding days. And, he’ll give Marty a pat on the shoulder from behind the gun and be like, good. Shootin’ Tex!... whatever Tex means in space.

Jenine/Marty: And then Marty like does the little finger guns and goes (makes gun shooting mouth sounds) Thanks!

Zach/Zahn: And then he is gonna look up and see this, you know, shipyard and he is gonna be like, where the fuck did assemble singles get all these weird setups at

Jenine/Marty: whoever it is. They should get a raise on the set design.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was about to say, they just hired us. Team of set designers.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn Shrugs.

Avery/GM: Okay so coming up to this Construction place. Polaris, you're slightly ahead of your shuttle, so I would like a intelligence or dexterity Notice. Check.

Bee/Polaris: Oh boy. I'm good at those. In theory.

Jenine/Marty: In theory.

Bee/Polaris: intelligence or Dex?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, well they’re the same thing. So it doesn't really matter. Nine.

Avery/GM: Nine. Okay. You see several robotic looking figures on top of these cranes.

Bee/Polaris: Can Ollie also see this?

Avery/GM: You count? Yeah. I guess Ollie would technically be able to see this. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Cause his little eyes are in the corner of my goddamn visor.

Chris/Ollie: I'm like over here changing the settings and. Adjusting the…

Bee/Polaris: Stop! (laughter) Polaris tries to drag and drop all into the, the recycling bin.

Chris/Ollie: Recycling bin!

Avery/GM: You count eight little robot bodies hanging out here.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no. Uh, Polaris will point this out to the rest of the team. He'll send a, a short GIF just like with Red Circle. Around all of the little robot guys.

Avery/GM: Sure. And yeah. Uh, do Marty or Zahn react to this at all? You've got some distance, uh, before you get close to them.

Zach/Zahn: What do the little robots look like?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Do they look dangerous or pointy?

Zach/Zahn: Do they look like combat bots?

Avery/GM: They look like very big fighty robots with big hammer hands.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, so they're not used for making bread dough?

Avery/GM: No.

Bee/Polaris: Or tenderizing meat?

Avery/GM: I mean, probably,

Zach/Zahn: probably could!

Avery/GM: but probably meat that's attached to humanoids.

Jenine/Marty: Do they look like they can fly ?

Avery/GM: hard to tell.

Bee/Polaris: Can we go can we take the long way around? Since we're in a, we have a huge lead?

Avery/GM: You could take the long way around. You could try and dodge this whole thing altogether.

Bee/Polaris: Well, how, um, who are there any other shuttles in the race?

Avery/GM: Just the assembles. The assemble shuttles is limping behind. Oh,

Bee/Polaris: Donezo! let's take the long way around.

Zach/Zahn: No, man. We just, uh, we go through and we target the, the bases of the cranes for the cranes to fall and not be in our way.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah!

Bee/Polaris: are the cranes, like, do the cranes still have like their, their whole little, you know, hook and string?

Jenine/Marty: hook and string!

Avery/GM: When, when I say cranes, I just mean like the arms, like they're, they're mostly just used as like anchor points for like people who are floating. So they don't like float away into space.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. I thought, I don't know why I said hook and string. I forgot the word. What is it? A cable ?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Hook and str. It's fine. We're not construction workers.

Bee/Polaris: That is true. Okay. Shoot. I was gonna, I was gonna “you first” the assemble singles shuttle, but, um, what do you guys wanna do about this?

Jenine/Marty: What if we talk to the robots? Do you think they’re nice?

Bee/Polaris: Can we make friends with these robots? Can I send a message to one of these robots, little robots? ? you're a robot. No, I'm kidding.

Zach/Zahn: Greetings Fellow robots.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, without any remote hacking capability. I think I could. . I can mess with him a bit, but I can't deal with eight robots.

Bee/Polaris: At the beginning of this campaign, Ollie kind of like found his sentience or, you know, kind of woke up. Can we awaken them to a new purpose in life?

Chris/Ollie: I mean, Zahn has the magic hands. He's the one who did it.

Bee/Polaris: Can Zahn awaken them to a new purpose in life? Do you wanna be the father to…

Zach/Zahn: I don’t know what I did though.

Jenine/Marty: More kids!

Bee/Polaris: Can we, okay. Can we actually like talk to these robots though?

Avery/GM:

Chris/Ollie: Father, I think we need to adopt additional siblings.

Avery/GM: I will say that either you or Zahn or Ollie could open like a remote communications, uh, channel with them.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will open a chat room and say hi!

(comms sound)

Avery/GM: They type… are you saying hi vocally or typing?

Bee/Polaris: Well, both because he is talking in his helmet.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay. Um. Someone responds back racer. You should not be communicating with this unit. We are here to assist you in winning the race.

Bee/Polaris: it's not against the rules.

You see like they send like a book turning page emoji . You are correct. This is not against the rules, but we are about to board both shuttles and see who is best at racing

Bee/Polaris: N…No… Heart Emoji.

(comm sound)

Jenine/Marty: Can I, am I also in this chat room?

Avery/GM: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I'll, I'll live stream the chat room. I'll screen share.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. Um, I don't know if Marty is just gonna try and like, encourage and be like, okay, maybe, maybe let's try a different approach and be a little. Let's be nice to them and maybe be like, Hey, what if we just do like a quick zoom, pass them, give them… Marty is currently coaching cause does not understand technology, kind of

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: And how this, uh, thing works. It is surprised that she got, um, emojis down.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris takes notes. He nods along and then he edits his previous message and puts no heart emoji, smiley face, Winky face.

(Comm Sounds)

Avery/GM: Do not worry. This is just part of the race. We will not actually harm you. Smiley face.

Jenine/Marty: Why do I feel like that's a lie?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Are you lying to me? Question mark. Smiley face. Winky Face.

Avery/GM: I am programmed not to lie. I am only programmed to mildly maim.

Bee/Polaris: can…

Zach/Zahn: are you going to harm our shuttle?

Bee/Polaris: Uh, can you do me a favor, question mark?

(comms sound)

Avery/GM: I do not know. I will have to wait until I hear the request.

Bee/Polaris: can you divide by zero? ? Can you divide 26 by zero?

(Comm Sound)

Avery/GM: God damn it.

(laughter)

Zach/Zahn: Math is not…

Avery/GM: charisma. A charisma program check.

Bee/Polaris: Fuck. I have nothing in that.

Jenine/Marty: wait, Can I help with That was I, was I helpful?

Avery/GM: You can. You can roll to Assist. Yeah. Charisma program.

Jenine/Marty: I got a nine.

Bee/Polaris: I rolled phenomenally. I rolled 12 minus one. So 11

Jenine/Marty: Well I helped!

Avery/GM: Polaris, you see four of the robots explode.

Bee/Polaris: Yes!

(Explosion sounds)

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts the Pog emote in chat.

(Comm Sound)

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will also put up “amateurs” in chat.

(Comm Sound)

(laughter)

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh. Okay. So I will say that you see these explode just as you're about to pass underneath, uh, the, the arms of this, of this crane, or are you going to take the long way around?

Bee/Polaris: No let's just go the normal way.

Avery/GM: Okay. So instead of having to fight four robots, um, only two robots jump down onto your shuttle and you see two jump, uh, two of them are still up there waiting to jump onto the singles shuttle that's coming.

Bee/Polaris: Can Polaris send a message to the two of on the shuttle? They’ve already…

Zach/Zahn: As Zahn is like staring at them like What’s up?

Avery/GM: I'm gonna say they've already closed down their communications equipment.

Bee/Polaris: No.

Avery/GM: And they are now in smash with a hammer mode.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Well I guess I'll just have to do my dumb piloting stuff then.

Chris/Ollie: Zahn, you're inside the shuttle with them. Or are you guys outside?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's like a flat bed, so.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, I'm on the outside.

Chris/Ollie: and then, and it's open space on the shuttle?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay. Shit. I was gonna say, uh, put your helmet on one of the robots and I'll hack it.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God.

Bee/Polaris: Hold your breath.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, just hold your breath. You'll be fine.

Avery/GM: So, yeah. So there are these two robots that, that stomp down and they are, um, these big, kind of like burly imposing robot bodies with like these two big hammer hands on, on either arm. but they have like a little LED screen. and the LED screen is displaying like a smiling face, and you just hear the robot say, “please do not be alarmed. We are just here to test our hammers on you.”

Jenine/Marty: No!

Zach/Zahn: I do not consent to being hammered right now.

Avery/GM: Well shit.

Zach/Zahn: I do not consent to hammer time and then he is gonna pull out the grapnel launcher, flip it to reverse and point blank fire at one of them.

Avery/GM: to try and like reverse polarity them?

Zach/Zahn: basically it's going to like, pretty much Yeah. Like I just wanted to hit one and then not like have it knock him off

Avery/GM: Sure. Roll a dexterity shoot then.

Zach/Zahn: 12.

Avery/GM: That's good. That'll do it. Yeah. You hit one of these with your granel launcher and, uh, kind of knock it into the. Into the air, so to speak. And so now it's kind of floating above your shuttle and pulling away since your shuttle keeps moving forward. Um, but there's this other one here and it's going to actually take a swing at Marty, who is

Zach/Zahn: How dare it!

Avery/GM: at the gun ship.

Jenine/Marty: How dare you? Oh, I am still at the gunning thing aren’t I?

Zach/Zahn: Oh that’s right!

Avery/GM: I rolled, I rolled a D six and did even odd to see who it would, who it would target.

Jenine/Marty: That's fair.

Zach/Zahn: How dare you attack such innocence!

Avery/GM: So it did roll a 17 to hit you, Marty. Now I have a

Jenine/Marty: question. Okay. Can I like look the robots into the way the camera is and just go “Uwu please no!”

Bee/Polaris: you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses?

Avery/GM: Uwu Please no? Let's see here. Use a skill…

Jenine/Marty: like with the biggest puppy dog eyes ever.

Avery/GM: Okay. what is your, what is your current ac

Jenine/Marty: It's probably something sad… 13.

Avery/GM: Okay. I, okay. Go ahead and, A charisma connect check.

Jenine/Marty: Guess what? I get a roll three D six. Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: And we'll consider this, um, this action, a total defense action , which would raise your ac. And if you succeed the skill check, it will decrease their role on the dice.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Cool. Great. Ooh. Yeah. Okay. Wait. That is a ten. Uwu Please!?

Avery/GM: I did need it to be a, I needed it to be a 12.

Jenine/Marty: No!

Avery/GM: I did place it kind of high. Um, so it does end up like it pauses for a minute and then continues its motion, so I will reduce its attack damage by half.

Jenine/Marty: Hey.

Zach/Zahn: Thankfully we've all got that, like exceedingly high hit points, hypothetically speaking to not get insta-smashed.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Marty's also a tank. We, we went over this last time.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah, that's right.

Avery/GM: So nine damage rounded down will be four damage.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, that's not that bad.

Avery/GM: That it hits you with, and then could you make a physical saving throw?

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah. That's, that's cool. That's that's great. Thank gosh. Uh, it's a 16. Mine is an 11 .

Avery/GM: Perfect. Okay. Yeah, so this, this hammer attack, like, it, it knocks you, it knocks you down a little bit, but you're holding onto the gunnery station still so you're not like lifted off your feet and floated into space.

Jenine/Marty: Hmm. I love that.

Bee/Polaris: Good shit. Good shit.

Avery/GM: And I think that's everyone's turn.

Chris/Ollie: They haven't taken any damage right?

Avery/GM: The robot has not, no one robot has been floated into space and cannot get back. So there's just this one robot now.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Well I wanted to save them, but uh, I guess I'm gonna have to use up one of my processing points. I'm going to, are you looking at 'em Zahn?

Zach/Zahn: Oh, absolutely.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Then I'm going to commit a point and, oh, where did my routines? There we go. Use hack control. Commit a processing point as a move action. And target a visible ex expert system, robot, drone vehicle, or automated device. No larger than a grab flyer. Give it one command. It's physically capable.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: Of carrying out, even if it violates the programming. Oh. And it'll do it on its next available action.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: And I will tell it to eject.

Avery/GM: Okay. , does it get any kind of save on that or no?

Chris/Ollie: No. I mean, it's, it's your, you know, your call, but it's a, it says target visible robot, drone, vehicle, or device.

Avery/GM: No. If it's, if it doesn't have any kind of save functionality, then no. You're right. Cool. Cool. Well then, uh, the next round is about to start, but, um, Polaris out your cockpit window. You do see the other two robots. They seem to. After the single shuttle passes under them.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, of course.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, of course. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: it's still limping and they, the one that's on our shuttle hasn't, uh, affected

Avery/GM: our speed at all, so. Okay. I believe though your team is still going first before this robot. So anyone do anything to this robot before it's turned?

Zach/Zahn: I would like to have Zan do a dexterity fix to use his laser blade to systematically dismantle this robot

Bee/Polaris: It's like a NASCAR pit crew.

Jenine/Marty: Yes!

Zach/Zahn: But with a laser. With a laser blade .

Jenine/Marty: So I have a question. Can I assist in this way?

Avery/GM: Sure.

Jenine/Marty: As someone that is skilled in the medical field, is this a humanoid ish robot? So I would know where the weak points are question mark?

Avery/GM: Yeah, I mean it's, it's humanoid, so yeah,

Zach/Zahn: Obviously-

Avery/GM: you would know like

Jenine/Marty: here, here, here.

Zach/Zahn: Arms, knees, shoulder, neck.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. But you have to hit at like this specific angle.

Avery/GM: Um, sure. Uh, go ahead and roll that check then. And you said dexterity fix. Yeah, that's fine. And then Marty, go ahead and roll an intelligence heal.

Zach/Zahn: Ooh.

Avery/GM: Since you're using your medical knowledge, you know,

Jenine/Marty: good choice. Ooh.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, damn,

Chris/Ollie: damn.

Zach/Zahn: That's the third double five in a row.

Jenine/Marty: I also rolled two sixes, so it's gonna be a 13.

Zach/Zahn: So it's 13 from me, yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. Y'all turn this robot into Swiss cheese, and just

Bee/Polaris: scavenge it for parts. Yeah.

(Laser blade sounds)

Avery/GM: you basically leave just its torso, uh, sitting on, on your, um, on the deck of your, uh, Your ship here and then it follows the command that Ollie gave it to eject. And you see that it's two legs that are still kinda like bolted. Or not bolted, but like standing up, but they're on the, you know,

Zach/Zahn: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Avery/GM: They're standing up still. Uh, you just see them like, Basically just like rocket off of the shuttle backwards.

(jet booster sounds)

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Sorry. I could have, could have done that before it attacked you. But I didn't realize I had two processing left. I thought I only had the one.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet.

Zach/Zahn: Ah,

Chris/Ollie: so,

Avery/GM: and yeah.

Bee/Polaris: sweet. Uh, while that was happening, Polaris is uploading that video of the drones totally missing the assembles shuttle to the internet and saying, look at this cheating. Shame! shake hat emoji.

Zach/Zahn: Unfortunately, we're so far ahead that we couldn't get actual footage of the robot's delayed. Jump onto the craft singles or assembled singles.

Bee/Polaris: Well, Polaris, Polaris was watching, uh, through the, like while you guys were getting boarded. So, and his visor is, uh, technically a pc, so he it's technically a data event, so he totally took a video.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, okay. Clear self-favoritism. Cheater!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I'm gonna ruin their PR.

Avery/GM: So, so you've defeated the robot and you're about to pass through the fifth and final checkpoint and you see behind you the assemble, single shuttle break apart around it (detaching sounds) and to where it's just like this little, almost like escape pod sized ship

Bee/Polaris: extra cheating.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, it's gonna fucking just like extra cheat.

Avery/GM: and it has one little booster engine on it and it starts just bulleting towards you.

(Booster sounds)

Bee/Polaris: Now out of curiosity cause I didn't actually do anything with my turn.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: Can I shoot it? ?

Jenine/Marty: Well wait,

Avery/GM: it would

Bee/Polaris: oh it's the shuttle.

Avery/GM: It would be breaking the rule.

Zach/Zahn: It would be against the rules. Shoot one of the cranes to fall in its flight path.

Bee/Polaris:Yeah alright. Can I make, yeah, I'll, can I shoot one of the asteroids to create a spray to hit it? Cause I feel like the crane would take too long.

Avery/GM: Yeah, totally.

Zach/Zahn: I mean this thing is Just a freaking escape craft kind of level of thing. It's definitely got like no defenses on it. It's definitely all last minute speed.

Bee/Polaris: Indeed. Um, yeah, PA is gonna use his best beam to just. Carve a line in one of the asteroids to create just like a, a field of debris for it.

Avery/GM: Sure. Go ahead and roll. Either Dex shoot or attack roll, whatever you prefer.

Bee/Polaris: I rolled attack and that's gonna be a 15.

Avery/GM: Cool. Yeah. You create this little field of debris around it, um, that it's gonna run into. If it doesn't do one hell of a pilot check.

Bee/Polaris: just in case it does make it through the, um, the debris. Uh, I'm gonna move Polaris's ship into the path of that ship because I can't attack it. But there's no rule saying it can't attack me. So, uh, I imagine it doesn't have great defense. So if it hits Polaris ship, it's probably not gonna make it.

Jenine/Marty: That's a, that's a, that's a

Avery/GM: this is, this is true. Now you are putting your ship in danger

Chris/Ollie: You only have 6 HP on that ship.

Bee/Polaris: Incredibly true. Can I put a wing in the path so it'll knock it off course and at least slow it down?

Chris/Ollie: Oh no, just go above it and then roll super-fast and just slap it with the wing away.

Bee/Polaris: Oh Yeah, I'll do that. That sounds funnier.

Zach/Zahn: Just barrel roll?

Chris/Ollie: Do a Barrel Roll!

Zach/Zahn: And Slap!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I'll do that. That's way funnier.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, it did roll to make… make it through the, the debris. So you are going to position yourself kind of above it and then barrel roll to like hit it with your wing and knock it out of the path that it's on. Oh my gosh. Okay. Roll dexterity pilot

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Uh, wow, that was phenomenal. that's gonna be a 15.

Chris/Ollie: We're all God rolls today.

Bee/Polaris: I rolled, I rolled six.

Avery/GM: Seriously!

Bee/Polaris: Cause I rolled three dice and dropped the lowest. So I rolled two sixes and a five.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my gosh.

Avery/GM: Oh man. Okay. Well, yeah, you do that, you see it starting to navigate your little debris field and just like, oh shit and Maneuver your ship in such a way that you barrel roll and you hit it with your wing, um, and like it leaves a dent in your wing a little bit, but it's just cosmetic. It's not actual damage. And you just fling it and it's Barreling towards like asteroid number one at this point.

Bee/Polaris: I'll also make it look like I was trying to move out of the way of it, so it's not like I attacked it

Avery/GM: Sure. With, with that good of a role. Yeah. You, you totally masterfully make it look like a total accident and you have eliminated the last of your rivals in this race as the, the up and coming, the brand new racers racing for Big Fred.

Bee/Polaris: Let’s go!

Avery/GM: Pass through the final checkpoint of this race and have sealed their victory.

Zach/Zahn: Eat shit little Fred!

Avery/GM: in the pendulum death race, sponsored by assembles cheese.

Zach/Zahn: That’s what Zahn screams as we pass over the finish line: Eat shit little Fred!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will just like type in chat. Fred, Fred, Fred.

Zach/Zahn: No, you, you have to specifically say Big Fred though.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Because little Fred, who was an asshole to his bigger brother.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. In parentheses big.

Avery/GM: Wow. Oh my gosh. and the announcer is just like, and in a stunning upset, the assembles racer has been knocked out of the race for the first time in the past 36 races.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God. That's gonna garner a lot of a attention.

Jenine/Marty: Yoinks

Avery/GM: We'll learn more about this mysterious team sponsored by big friend later at our award ceremony.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh, maybe we shouldn't have won.

Zach/Zahn: award ceremony. Do we have to attend?

Chris/Ollie: I mean,

Zach/Zahn: can we just take our paycheck?

Bee/Polaris: Oh wait, Ollie gambled with Avi.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: And got a way bigger payout than the reward money.

Jenine/Marty: We can just yeet. We can just yeet. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine.

Bee/Polaris: Let's just dip!

Chris/Ollie: I mean, we gotta, we gotta get Avi to pay out though.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, yeah, you're in the booth with Avi. You could just like pay out, walk away.

Avery/GM: Actually, back in the booth, Ollie, Avi is laughing and like her mood has improved. She's like, oh, that was so exciting. You won. You won. Wow.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will reply. Yes, it truly was. If I had a heart, it surely would be beating .

Avery/GM: Yes. Mine certainly Is. Your friends put on quite a show out there? Well, a deal's a deal. Do you have a data pad that I can transfer the funds to?

Chris/Ollie: do I have one of those built into my arm?

Avery/GM: I'm sure you probably do.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Actually. So I'll hold up my arm.

Avery/GM: Actually you would because you, y'all split the, the untraceable credit chip five ways last time, so yeah, you definitely

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. My crypto wallet , so yeah. I'll hold out my yeah arm and it'll flip up with a little, uh, crypto wallet.

Bee/Polaris: it would be really cute if you had like a holographic, like actual wallet that opened.

Avery/GM: Sure. . And yeah, Avi pays you and it's just like, well, that was a lot of fun. I'm, I'm sure dad will be so upset that I lost his money. But

Zach/Zahn: How much did she bet?

Chris/Ollie: Five mil.

Avery/GM: Five mil.

Bee/Polaris: Five. I thought it was three .

Zach/Zahn: No, the three was at the tables. Just,

Bee/Polaris: oh,

Zach/Zahn: that was her introduction.

Bee/Polaris: Ah, yikes. All right. Cool. , I mean, yikes for her, not for us.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Oh yeah. Imagine paying the people that killed your uncle.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Um, I'm, I'm just happy Violet hasn't seemed to have returned. Right on. So, yeah, Ollie will reply. Uh, yeah, it's truly riveting. Please contact me, EV if you want to play again. This was definitely the funnest experience of my recent existence.

Avery/GM: Oh I'm sure I will. and lapis comes over and is clapping, uh, their hands and it's just like, Avi, that was so much fun. Thank you for, for letting me join you in the booth this week. Like we should, we should do that again. We should do this again. We should do it more like, this was a lot of fun. Where, where'd Violet go? And Avi just sort of rolls her eyes and it's just like, you know, off doing military stuff, whatever. Lapis just kind of nonchalantly, like shrugs. It's just like, well, her loss.

Chris/Ollie: if I can real quick, I'm gonna like immediately, uh, send the money to the ship. So it's like, I don't know how the crypto wallets work, but I don't want them to be able to take it back. I want it to just be...

Bee/Polaris: No, take backsies.

Avery/GM: No, you, you, you can send it to like the main untraceable wallet that y'all have. That's fine. Bruce, you finish up mopping up. Docking Bay 13 and actually this docking bay had like a little monitor to watch the race. So you see that your friends have won this race. Do you actually like finish up the whole docking bay or do you just like kind of keep up appearances?

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce was very enthralled in the race and has done like a half-hearted job at mopping this floor. But also very much realizes he's not getting paid for doing this, so doesn't care.

Jenine/Marty: mood

Caden/Bruce: and like puts the mop away and like rolls the car back out. And just like having seen like that his friends won and like imagines that like the Dock Bay is probably more empty now. Like most people are probably like very enthralled in the race, will just like start heading towards wherever they'll like kind of disembark and like every so often, like pick up some trash or uh, if he sees something that's like left behind, that might be valuable. Just put it in the garbage as well. It's Fine!

Bee/Polaris: Bruce is becoming a master thief.

Avery/GM: Okay. Uh, so y'all have won the race.

Chris/Ollie: also really quick, uh, Ali definitely is gonna exchange contact information with, Avi and Lapis.

Avery/GM: Oh, sure. Yeah. No, yeah, Avi uh, in fact Avi is like, yeah. So we'll stay in touch and if I find any more fun games of chance for us to play together, I will let you know.

Bee/Polaris: We could always go back to that planet that her uncle was hunting people on And that's a pretty, that's a pretty high stakes game of chance.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, I know a place. Yes Ollie will reply: Certainly call me anytime and I'll be there.

Avery/GM: So, To the team on the shuttle. Y'all cross the finish line and you're coming into the docking area of the shuttle and Big Fred and little Fred are there and little Fred is like handing over like a bunch of like little collectible, like figurines, like a box of 'em and is just like, I don't know how you did it, but here you go, little brother. You can have your stuff back. I won't tease you anymore.

You win. And uh, little Fred looks at you and says, Hey, uh, good racing out there. You know, if my racer could have raced though, he would've, he would've whooped ya. But, but not this time. This time. Y'all, y'all did good. And you, you helped my, my brother here. So good, good racing. And then he sort of turns to like start leaving.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, man. Totally. Next time.

Bee/Polaris: If Polaris were there, he'd flip him off… next time.

Avery/GM: And big Fred turns to, to you and, um, oh, and actually Polaris, that's a good question. So there's no like docking bay for the spotters. The spotters are kind of just expected to like, Go back and put their fighter ship away. Do you like contact Hermes and try to like link up to, to hit your fighter back onto it? Or do you dock your fighter in a docking bay?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I'll go and dock in Bay 12 . No kidding. I'm kidding.

Zach/Zahn: Now that it's open,

Bee/Polaris: this spot taken? No, I'm gonna go, uh, can I just like hover over where everyone else is in my fighter?

Avery/GM: Yeah, you could, you could stay in your ship for a bit. That's.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Like they're, they're standing on the victory stand like, like the Olympics to get their medals, but you're just floating up above and behind them.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah!

Avery/GM: Big Fred, turns to you, Marty and Zahn, and it's just like, y'all, y'all really know how to race. Do you wanna make this like a permanent. Thing because Wow, that was actually more exciting than the last few races have been. Assembles has kind of been wiping the floor with everybody since they took over sponsorship.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. I wonder why.

Chris/Ollie: I wonder why

Bee/Polaris: Polaris from behind everyone is shaking his head in the cockpit. Shaking his head no, because we're kind of on the run from a violent military group.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, Marty looks a big friend and just goes, oh, well, it was a really fun experience. We're just kind of here for a stop over. But we wanted to help a friend out.

Avery/GM: Well, you certainly did that. You got me, you got me. My collection of, of figurines back from my big brother. He, he, he made me bet them one time on a race, and then he, and then I lost, and so I Had to give them up, but he, he gave them back now that I won.

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

And he's, he's, he seems like he's gonna be a lot nicer to me now.

Jenine/Marty: That's so sweet.

Chris/Ollie: Are they like anime figurines?

Avery/GM: They are exactly Anime figurines, Chris?

Chris/Ollie: Yes

Jenine/Marty: yes.

Bee/Polaris: Is there a Miku one?

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: It's like literally everything. This is a big box.

Jenine/Marty: I opened my arms for a big hug. And then motion everyone else for a big hug. For a group hug.

Bee/Polaris: I fly the ship in closer.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. You like float the ship down close enough to like rub the hull on top of everyone's head.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. The nose of my ship

Jenine/Marty: Group Hug!

Avery/GM: Big Fred. Thanks you for the hug. And is, and is just like, um, well, I guess all we have to do is go to the, the winning ceremony and, and collect our, our prize. Are, are you all gonna gonna come with or do you have time for that?

Jenine/Marty: So… we're a little nervous in front of groups of people. Do do, do we have to show our faces?

Avery/GM: I don't think so. I think assembles just like sends a company representative each time. I could collect the money and then forward it to you.

Bee/Polaris: Can we just give 'em all the money? I mean, we all got a mill each.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Essentially.

Jenine/Marty: No its okay!

Zach/Zahn: Nah Man.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris makes his ship shake his head no. He’s like, Well he shakes the ship no, like right to left.

Avery/GM: Are you sure? Like that's a lot of, that's a million credits. Like, I mean, you could do a lot with that. You could open a shop, you could, you could buy a factory that makes anime figurines.

Jenine/Marty: Well, it sounds like…

Zach/Zahn: that sounds like things that you wanna. Fred.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: And now you can do them.

Bee/Polaris: big Fred's anime market!

Avery/GM: Big Fred (laughter) No big, Big Fred's real passion is Hello Kitty. So it'll just be a Hello Kitty Like Megaplex.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Hell yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Here for It!

Avery/GM: Fred kind of like, he, he puts his two big pointer fingers together and it's just like, if you're really sure, then okay, I'll, um, I'll go get, uh, I'll go get my suit on and, and go get ready for the, the ceremony then. thank you. I didn't actually get all your names before.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris pulls out of pulls out of where you guys are to go meet with Hermes. and then Types and Chat: Just give him our email.

Jenine/Marty: We gotta make a team email now.

Avery/GM: But yeah, you, you give them like your ship, email address or whatever.

Jenine/Marty: Hermes at aol.

Avery/GM: Hermes, I think. I think, I think earlier I said something like hers ship ai.biz, I think is what I went with .

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah.

Jenine/Marty: here for it!

Avery/GM: and yeah, y'all have now 5 million credits and a victory in the pendulum death race. How do y'all end up meeting up and celebrating? Do you get the heck off of this asteroid place? What, what happens?

Zach/Zahn: We're getting the heck off of this asteroid place because…

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. We don't really have time to celebrate.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Cause there's Active Republic members looking for us at the moment.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, the Republic owes us an IOU

Zach/Zahn: The Republic does, but not when it's a, uh, sibling of the, of the Winstons.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, they could just fire her.

Avery/GM: They're on leave. So they're technically not acting as representatives of the Republic. More of like private…

Chris/Ollie: Yeah they’re off duty.

Jenine/Marty: Just personal fun.

Bee/Polaris: Are they using Republic resources?

Avery/GM: Yeah. But this place is corrupt. Yo.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: that is true. that is true.

Zach/Zahn: And as a Winston, she has connections.

Bee/Polaris: That is true. Okay, so I assume we… Do we have to figure out how we get back onto Hermes without being detected?

Avery/GM: You don't, because you can just fly your ship, connect it with, um, with the other ship and then get into the, the main ship if you want. But yeah, um, you do have to figure out if you're gonna get on a different docking bay or try to like find some other way to like.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, docking bays have cameras. This is true. Can Polaris just one by one? Take one person and then bring them back over to Hermes?

Avery/GM: from the where the shuttle gets dropped off at?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Can we take the shuttle? Actually, can we trade the 1 million for the shuttle?

Avery/GM: I think the only, the only complication would be getting Bruce on there.

Jenine/Marty: Bruce is,

Bee/Polaris: Bruce we can, I mean, we can send a message to Bruce to meet us where the shuttles go no?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Bruce is in the hangers. We can swing by there and pick 'em up.

Bee/Polaris: Bruce is a janitor

Avery/GM: and Bruce is dressed like a janitor. Yeah. Okay.

Bee/Polaris: And also we can load all of our shit on it. Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that's right. Bruce has the stuff.

Avery/GM: I think that might be possible. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Let's just take the whole cart.

Avery/GM: Just take the whole janitor cart?

Chris/Ollie: I mean, we could use one.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Free cleaning supplies. Yeah. Our ship. Our ship's probably pretty dirty.

Avery/GM: Bruce, you're sort of like loitering around a bit, you know, sort of nonchalantly making yourself still look like a janitor. When you get like a ping from Hermes that just says, chef Bruce, you should come to the shuttle departure area of the racetrack so we can get the heck out of here, as Zahn has so eloquently put it.

Bee/Polaris: I desperately need Hermes at one point to say skedaddle.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will definitely do that and like I think most people would get out of a Janitor’s way that looks like they're going towards something.

Zach/Zahn: especially one as big as Bruce.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, and definitely not follow in the same direction considering the janitor looks concerned.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Especially since there's been a janitor emergency too.

Caden/Bruce: I’m sure the intercoms all day have been like janitor needed in bathroom four, janitor needed in bathroom two!

Avery/GM: Yeah. So Bruce, you, you come through the, the shuttle area and someone tries to stop you at first and is just like, oh, janitor, never mind. Yeah. Get in there. Get in there. Uh, it's messy. And, uh, you, you come, you come down to see your, uh, crew mates sort of still standing there with Big Fred and um, uh, big Fred's like, uh, feel free to, to use the shuttle till the end of the day if you need it for any more races or anything. but, other than that, just leave it here when you're done and I'll get it all repaired later.And then he walks off.

Bee/Polaris: Are we stealing the shuttle?

Zach/Zahn: No, we can't do that to Fred.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: How are we getting it back? Oh, you know what, actually, uh, Zan could pilot the shuttle and then get back on Polaris's ship and his ride.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Sure. Um, yeah. Y'all end up doing that. Um, and you are back on your ship. You have avoided this vengeful family member.

Chris/Ollie: No, not quite. Ollie still hasn't, uh, made his escape.

Avery/GM: Oh, Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Cause he's gonna… he’s still there.

Avery/GM: I'm sorry. I, yes. Ollie. How do you make your leave? Or do you make your leave?

Chris/Ollie: yeah, he's going to, uh, you know, continue his, his polite, shatter a bit, as it tapers off, head towards the door. Gonna seem non rushed, nonchalant, and he's gonna leave close the door, and as soon as it's closed, he's gonna sprint the nearest, uh, area of open space he can reach. And just jump.

Avery/GM: you're gonna jump out into open space.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. And then request a pickup.

Bee/Polaris: Just a full on my people need me.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, just, just very pleasant taking your money. Nice to meet you. Goodbye. Click and just (huffing and puffing) jump off.

Bee/Polaris: I'd like, I'd like to think that the bit of open like area, isn’t too far away from the booth and also the booth door has a window.

Avery/GM: so, so yeah. So originally, what was the view screen? For the, for the race is actually just like a transparent piece of glass that they have it projected. So Ollie, you close the door and what they see inside is you just booking it to like this little side… this side booth, near, near their private booth. And there's like this little energy field that kind of lets you like observe the. The stars and stuff outside and, and whatnot. and you just barrel through this little energy field, um, and sort of just are now like kind of nose diving into space. You're not too far from the main asteroid, but now you're kind of just floating.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I'm gonna like, you know, , wait till I get a, uh, well, I'm gonna radio or the just Discord chat or whatever and just be like, I'm going to need a pickup in a little while. maybe when I'm a bit further from the asteroid.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will do a drive-by.

Avery/GM: Sure. Yeah. You've got Zahn Magnet onto your, onto the outside of your ship, and, you fly in close and Zahn is able to reach out and grab Ollie

Chris/Ollie: it's like, uh, Adam and God and the uh, and that painting reaching out, touching fingers.

Bee/Polaris: That's the last thing Avi sees of you before never speaking to you again.

Chris/Ollie: Hopefully never speak to us again because…

Bee/Polaris: I don't wanna kill those two. They seem cool.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Can we make 'em our besties?

Chris/Ollie: I mean, don't start no shit. Won't be no shit. Especially if you give us five Millie, that was, uh, pretty based.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Avery/GM: Yeah. The only one interesting revenge so far that it seems is, uh, violet.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Um, no one else has been fucking around, so they're not gonna find out

Jenine/Marty: Tee Hee!

Avery/GM: and you all come back into the main area of the ship, formerly known as the Minos 5 million credits Richer, and Hermes says, that was very exciting. We should do that again.

Bee/Polaris: No. Heart, smiley face. winky face.

Zach/Zahn: Oh come on. It wasn't that bad was it? Polaris? I mean, it's actually the most fun I've had in my entire life.

Chris/Ollie: that was the most fun and lucrative experience we've had. would try again.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is like, oh, is his ship like attached to the outside of the ship?

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah. Cause you have the fittings so you can kind of, basically they're like, magnet it on, and then you can just little kind of float, walk your way to the airlock and come on in.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will go to like the, the door where, uh, you would enter from being on his ship and he just like puts his head against the door with like a sad face on his visor. . Cause his ship is damaged. .

Zach/Zahn: Oh. Don't worry about your ship, Polaris. We'll, fix her up make it better and more spiffier than new.

Bee/Polaris: I don't want it better. I want it the same.

Zach/Zahn: You really gonna look me in my eyes and tell me you don't want, hold on. That's general Regenerative armor.

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: Or engine optimization?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: Well, you're no fun.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh.

Bee/Polaris: He shrugs. It's the only thing I have left of my original family. And then he'll go to the pilots chair.

Chris/Ollie: No one wants to step on that, uh, landmine

Avery/GM: Hermes projects his little alien hologram body into the captain's chair.

Jenine/Marty: Yep.

Avery/GM: And is just like, where are we headed next?

(Spy music fades in and plays)

Avery/GM: So your ship is floating away from this Space Vegas. Spegas. And back on the asteroid, our camera zooms in on one of these soldiers that was accompanying Violet and they had been wearing their helmet the whole time, and they take off their helmet to reveal a dark blue tiger furry and they bring

their wrist up to their mouth and they say, this is agent Lazuli... We found them… and that's where we're gonna end it.

Caden/Bruce: Uh-oh.

(Spy music fades out, outro starts playing, fades down and plays under outro)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Production. Background Music provided by tabletopaudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks include: Car Chase and Starbase Omega. Additional Audio Track provided by Savage Pro Audio. Be sure to check us out @FurthestPod on twitter and tumblr. We'll be back on February 15th with our next episode! See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Episode 14 - The Race is On!

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 14 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

(intro music plays, then fades out, background music fades in)

Avery/GM: And so where we left off was: it is time for the lucky tentacle for their… for their turn in the ship order, and we'll see what happens. Zahn, you were also giving like a… engine boost or something?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Avery/GM: Right?

Zach/Zahn: I had taken a, like an action of some sort to boost our speed by like two… by like double for one round.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So after the lucky tentacles’ turn here, we will do a pilot check to see who passes through the checkpoint first. You can add two to that pilot check, If you roll the check.

Bee/Polaris: Would Hermes assist in that?

Avery/GM: I'll add the pl… I'll add plus one for Hermes assist. Yeah. So a plus three total. But first to the lucky tentacle. You see behind you the lucky tentacles’ squid arms are starting to, or octopus arms are starting to spin rapidly.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, no.

(whooshing sound)

Avery/GM: And then you see like a little tiny, like rocket boost come off of one of these pods. Uh, 18 plus 4… 22. Okay? Yep. And you see rocketing towards you (rocket sound effect) a Person wearing a armored vac suit with a jet pack coming straight for your shuttle.

Chris/Ollie: Wait, do we see this guy coming?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Is his suit, are vac suit's powered?

Zach/Zahn: they don't really say.

Bee/Polaris: isn't it?

Avery/GM: Yeah, it doesn't really

Bee/Polaris: doesn't it use an A cell or something though?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I, I assume it would use like an A-Cell or such. Cause everything does.

Avery/GM: Yeah, let's take a look here.

Chris/Ollie: Or the jet pack or any, any piece of, uh, his gear other than the gun.

Avery/GM: I mean, his gear would have… Yeah, a power supply.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. But is it a, A-cell?

Bee/Polaris: I remember seeing somewhere that. Um, at least the Vac skin uses a, an A-cell. It uses one A-Cell every 24 hours, I think, to power it.

Avery/GM: for the sake of moving the story along, I'll say, yes, Chris it does.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent. Then, as we see him floating towards us, Ollie will pipe up from the inside of Zahn's helmet and say, let me handle this one, and He'll just boop, (Power drain sound) just drain all the power from that guy's, uh, suit as he is going Mid-transit.

Bee/Polaris: What? He suffocates?

Chris/Ollie: He'll be fine. He'll be, teleported out.

Zach/Zahn: they have like backup.

Chris/Ollie: But that is a for reference, that's, uh, a committing a processing point to, uh, use one of my abilities. I gotta find the name here. Remote Power sink. Commit a processing point for a scene as main action and target a visible piece of equipment powered by an A type cell or equivalent. The power is immediately drained. Only the most professional targets will realize their device

is powerless before they next try to use it, unless the depowering has obvious results. like, uh, like your, your suit in space.

Avery/GM: So, so luckily you don't de-power his suit. He, he is still gonna get much needed oxygen into his lungs. But you do see the jet pack, sputter and stall and then basically this person stops and they're still floating cause of, you know, con… conservation of momentum. But because they can't control where they're going, they actually just zoom past your shuttle.

Avery/GM: You're coming up to the next asteroid. So he actually just flies into the asteroid (smash sound) and hits it. And then you see the little, the little tell-tale spark of like someone getting teleported. (teleport sound)

Caden/Bruce: Goodbye friend.

Zach/Zahn: Alright.

Bee/Polaris: Farewell!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Uh, Ollie will say, oof, my apologies. I did not intend for that to be quite so painful.

Bee/Polaris: laughing emoji in chat!

Avery/GM: Okay. So, uh, having seen their shuttler plan not come to fruition, Polaris, the lucky tentacle squid fighter starts to dog fight with you.

Bee/Polaris: Oh God. All right.

Avery/GM: Through space.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. (laser blast)

Avery/GM: And it's gonna roll to attack you.

Bee/Polaris: Awesome.

Avery/GM: 14 plus six. That's 20.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. That'll hit

Avery/GM: Okay. And they're attacking with a multifocal laser, which has armor piercing of 20

Bee/Polaris: pain. Polaris might die.

Jenine/Marty: Oh no.

Zach/Zahn: Ouch

Jenine/Marty: It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine, it's fine. I'm here.

Zach/Zahn: We'll buy you a new one. It's okay!

Bee/Polaris: Here's the, here's the thing. This ship is made from the ship that the custodians found him in, so this is very sentimental .

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Zach/Zahn: just, we'll, we'll keep the important pieces. It's okay.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. We’ll make it into a necklace,

Avery/GM: well, you're lucky cause it's only 4d4 and, and it rolled four damage.

Bee/Polaris: I don't know where my ac or my, uh, hit points are on the sheet.

Avery/GM: Oh no!

Bee/Polaris: Oh, its only 4 damage? Alright Awesome.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: because I only have eight .

Avery/GM: Oh, cool. . Yeah. So you take, you take this hit.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: and it pierces your armor.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent.

Zach/Zahn: Boy, Do I ask some ship mods for you My friend.

Avery/GM: and Hermes pipes up and says, Polaris, your ship has taken damage. (laughter, Bee sighs exasperatedly) This fucking guy

Zach/Zahn: No way.

Jenine/Marty: Really? I didn't know.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris in his helmet pulls up like a, a checklist, like a to-do list that he has, and, He puts on there on like the lowest part, under optional, crash Hermes into asteroid, (laughter) smiley face.

Zach/Zahn: No Winky face as to whether it's legitimate or not.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. And he, he makes it into a gif and sends it into the group chat.

Avery/GM: and then slowly behind the rest of the pack, the assembles cheese, uh, shuttle just sort of floats through the minefield and just kind of shrugs off the, the minds as they attack it. You get the hint that this, this shuttle might be pretty well armored.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, great.

Avery/GM: And now it is time for the pilot check for who will pass through the gate first or… the checkpoint first. So Zahn, go ahead and roll your pilot check.

Zach/Zahn: oh no! I really should have taken a put a point into piloting last time I guess. so Plus two, but. So it's a…

Avery/GM: plus three

Zach/Zahn: ooo plus three,

Avery/GM: because one from Hermes as well.

Zach/Zahn: And then it's a what? Dex? Intelligence?

Avery/GM: Oh, sorry. Dex.

Zach/Zahn: Cool. It’s a good thing. I've used my points to give myself a plus one in dex last time. So… it's just plus three. Uh, so that is 10.

Avery/GM: Hey, look at that.

Bee/Polaris: It's pretty good.

Avery/GM: Okay. You have a commanding lead. You see the lucky tentacle because of the, the loss of their, their friend. Maybe they're a little distracted cause their plan failed. They start to kind of slow down as the assembles cheese ship overtakes them just slightly and crosses the checkpoint before them. But you are way ahead of them as you pass through this second checkpoint, everyone in the stands and over your Communicators hear:

Announcer: “and they've just passed the second checkpoint. One racer has already been eliminated. This is turning out to be an exciting, exciting race, but now they're past the second checkpoint. They'll have a little bit of breathing room before they hit Checkpoints Four and five.”

Zach/Zahn: Oh, it's three just no obstacles?

Avery/GM: So three is supposed to, three is supposed to basically just be like a, okay, you're halfway through, let's keep, you know. But in the meantime, we flash back to the stands real quick.

(Music fades out, ambience fades in)

Bruce, you are standing there and you're seeing these two guards come up to another soldier who is in the crowd watching the race, and they're kind of pulling on him and they're just like, come on, we gotta get down there. Docking Bay 12 is where we're where we're needed. let's get down there and, and take care of these space pirates. And the other one is like, ah, come on, let's just finish the race. It'll be fine.

Bee/Polaris: I wish you had more of those Good, good bean tarts to offer those nice, nice police officers.

Caden/Bruce: Well, I have a, um, out of the box idea.

Avery/GM: I love out of the box idea.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent!

Caden/Bruce: It's, it's not that out of the box, I wanna go and find a janitor's closet.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Caden/Bruce: Because Bruce was giving out, as we've already established, has been giving out like tarts, not just to the racers, but to other people as well. Um, is going to assume that the janitors are going to be very, very busy, uh, dealing with the situation that he caused.

Caden/Bruce: Therefore, I want to go to what most likely is gonna be an open janitor's. Steal like one of the rolling racks with the bins. I wanna put on some gloves. I'll put a glove on that tail. And then I want to go down to the docking bays pretending to be a janitor.

Jenine/Marty: Yes!

Avery/GM: I love this.

Zach/Zahn: Where did they hide the barcode on you, Bruce?

Bee/Polaris: The Tail!

Caden/Bruce: Obviously the tail that the glove is now on.

Avery/GM: This is great. Uh, let me look at the skill list. I don't really think this will require a role, but yeah, just roll. Roll a notice check real quick. go dexterity or intelligence, whichever you prefer.

Caden/Bruce: Uh, well, a dexterity would make it a 12.

Avery/GM: Perfect. Okay. Yeah. So you, you see these, these soldiers kind of drag their friend away as they're like, come on, let's get back to work. And, you know, you, you start kind of putting this plan into motion. You go out to the little foyer where there's, you know, people milling about and Yeah. You see, uh, just like a, a stream of janitor bots pass by you on one end As they're

heading down towards like some of the facilities and they have left their beautiful, well organized janitors, not even a closet, This is like a, an office.

Caden/Bruce: Nice.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh.

Avery/GM: With just a bunch of supplies in here and yeah, you get your little, rolling rack of, of towels and sprays and stuff. You find some gloves that that'll fit. They're a little tight, but they fit and yeah. You're gonna head down to the, to the docking bay?

Caden/Bruce: Correct.

Avery/GM: Ollie, you're in here and you're overhearing Violet and Avi talk about their cousin, and of course you're splitting your attention between this and the race, so you might not be able to like… fully participate, but you do overhear three things from this conversation.

You overhear that Violet was originally on duty on a nearby warship patrolling the Republic's border when she got the footage forwarded to her from her dad. The second thing you learn is that she was granted leave to Bragos to kind of process the loss of this family member. And the third thing you learn is that Violet actually enjoys her work and doesn't really believe in taking time off.

And so basically she spent most of her time going over like space traffic logs and flight paths and things like that, and that's where she got the lead that a similar ship might be here. She also cross referenced the ship with a report that a miss… a longtime missing major had been return. To the Republic, by a ship matching that description.

Clarifying question, when you dropped off Machamp, did y'all like escort him out of your ship and into the docking or into the, the military base, or did you just like lower the ramp and say, get out? Uh,

Bee/Polaris: hellno. We got places to be .

Avery/GM: Okay. Okay.

Bee/Polaris: At least Polaris wouldn't have gotten out.

Zach/Zahn: I am pretty sure we at least like walked him to the edge of the fucking ramp. Like we didn't just full on kick him out. .

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Polaris wouldn't have.

Avery/GM: okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris would've stayed in the pilot seat.

Avery/GM: Okay, fair enough. But like some of you probably would. Okay. But you wouldn't have been in the base to get caught on camera?

Jenine/Marty: No.

Zach/Zahn: No. We would've been like, like I said, at the, at the base of our ramp, like dropping him off and then like saying our farewells or whatever, and then like peacing the fuck out.

Caden/Bruce: giving him a cake, you know.

Avery/GM: Totally fine. Yeah. slice of cake for the road. Cool. So those are the three things you learned. Ollie, you also noticed that Lapis, the other tiger furry that's here, they are a bit younger than Avi and Violet and I... I forgot to describe them, but they are like a dark blue and black striped tiger person Compared to the rest of their kind of typical orange and black striped cousins, and they have been paying no mind to anything going on in this room except watching the race. They are like a kid captivated by like fireworks. So not, not to say that they are a kid, but they're,

Bee/Polaris: oh, thank goodness she's not invincible.No, I'm kidding.

Chris/Ollie: No, I was literally thinking that. I was like, okay, does she have the invincibility armor or not?

Avery/GM: No, they, they're not a minor younger, so Yeah, younger. They're just younger like, like Avi and Violet are probably Late twenties and lapis is clearly like 19-20.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. All right. Just got, just grew out of her invincibility frames. Alright.

Avery/GM: yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Eye frames for the first 18 years.

Avery/GM: So as you're kind of overhearing this going on in, in this room, Ollie two, those two big burly guards that had been in here when you first got here, they had left originally. They come back in and they

say “General, we found this ship docking Bay 12. I've got men in position under the guise that we are stopping some space pirates.”

Avery/GM: And Violet just says, “ah. Excellent. Well, Avi, it's been lovely catching up, but I really must get going. I've got a relative to Avenge.” and Avi says, “oh, violet, please stay. I'm sure whoever they are, they won't be back until the race is over.” Violet replies “Avi, not all of us can gallivant around the galaxy wasting daddy's money and living the good life. Some of us actually care about the honor of the Winston family.” And with that kind of Parthian shot at her cousin, violet leaves the room with her soldiers.

Bee/Polaris: Ouch.

Avery/GM: Avi just kind of sulks and is just kinda like under her breath, just like “I care about the family” and, you know, just kind of like, you know, being a bit like brooding about it. Do you do anything?

Chris/Ollie: really quick? Is… Violet's been paying the room mind, Has the room been paying her? No. Like, do I get the impression that she's a black sheep or?

Avery/GM: oh, wait, you mean Lapis?

Chris/Ollie: Lapis, Yeah, that's what I meant.

Avery/GM: No, like, I mean, they're just kind of treating Lapis as like

Chris/Ollie: the younger sister, kind of

Avery/GM: the, the, the younger, yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: The, the younger cousin or sibling that's just kind of there for the ride and just like, yeah, let them enjoy themselves, that kind of a thing.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay. So chances of a face turn, not too great. All right. Well at this point Allie is going to play it cool and he's going to. You know, stay observing the race. Not really pay violet, uh, anything she said or her leaving much mind in order to keep my, uh, keep my cool, but I'm at the same time going to message everyone. That Hermes probably needs to take the re… Move the ship right now. Uh, ideally it'd be best if you could like switch it with a different ship if possible.Not sure.

Bee/Polaris: We would have to physically switch his chaos enrolled into a different ship.

Chris/Ollie: Well I have my drones on the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Are they assembled though? Did you assemble them? Okay.

Chris/Ollie: I spent some time assembling 'em when I was there. And I can remote hack with one of them… So…

Bee/Polaris: do they have, do they have little like pinchy arms that they can pull Hermis out of that ship?

Chris/Ollie: Well, no. I was thinking cause Hermes can just take the ship and fly away. So I could take my drone and sneak it onto a different ship and hack that ship and park it in space 12 actually, uh, gotta double check and make sure I actually do have that

Bee/Polaris: actually out of curiosity are like the… the Bay, like the numbers, the numbers for each, um, docking bay. Are they like painted onto the, like the floor and like walls and stuff? Or is it like a, a digital sign?

Avery/GM: It would be a digital sign outside the door.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, even better.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. . So while you all plan on what you're gonna do in response, I'm. Let Bruce in on the location. Yeah. So Bruce, you come on down to the… the docking bay with your little janitor get up and are here with your ship. So far it doesn't appear that anything has been tampered with or messed with. Obviously there's signs of like people coming and going from like the deliveries that you've gotten from the various merchants that are here, but overall, a pretty normal looking docking bay.

Caden/Bruce: Sweet.Okay. There's a couple of things I wanna do.

Avery/GM: perfect.

Caden/Bruce: I want to get out my, first of all, before I even enter the docking bay, get out like my wet floor signs and kinda like rope it off. I'm gonna try and basically buy as much time as possible, given the circumstances of what's happened to the rest of the area. I'm sure it's not gonna like completely deter them, but I wanna at least slow people down.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay.

Caden/Bruce: And then secondly, having seen Ollie like message. Chat and also like realize, okay, yes, other people know that this is going to go on. I know Bruce probably doesn't have that much knowledge about like how to move Hermes and everything else, but I do think he's gonna wanna board the ship and basically put anything that can identify any single one of them into like his trash bags of the… of his cart.

Avery/GM: Okay, so you're gonna go into the ship, that's fine. So you're in the ship and Hermes pipes up and says, Bruce, have you not been enjoying the race?

Caden/Bruce: The race has been great, but there are a bunch of people who have recognized our ship, so I'm going to actually need you to, uh, move from this docking bay, I believe. But at first I was gonna take anything that could identify us as the owners, just in case

Avery/GM: very well. Would you like me to engage the weapons? (gun cocking sound)

Caden/Bruce: Not currently, but I would like you to make it very difficult for anybody else to get on board once I leave.

Avery/GM: Understood. I will lock down the ship as soon as you're ready. Shall I initiate self-destruct?

Bee/Polaris: oh my..

Caden/Bruce: No.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God

Avery/GM:. Oh, I see. Do not permanently make it hard for people to access the ship, just temporarily

Caden/Bruce: correct. I care about you, Hermes. I would rather you not self-destruct.

Avery/GM: That is very thoughtful of you. I will not self-destruct right now.

Jenine/Marty: Right now

Bee/Polaris: he puts a pin in it,

Avery/GM: Sure. Uh, so what kind of things do you grab that are like the personal items? Uh,

Caden/Bruce: uh, you, you know, I feel like, well, we all left our guns and stuff and I'm just gonna put them in the garbage bag, you know, like as you do, you know, wallets, keys, phones? Uh, not jokingly though. Definitely the blender, the blender's coming with me.

Bee/Polaris: I just assume Bruce carried it everywhere.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is also gonna grab the apron. Cuz he doesn't want that on board to like, you know, put two and two together that he was involved in, wanted to happened here.

Bee/Polaris: get rid of the beans.

Caden/Bruce: The beans are, the beans are probably fine. His, his pantry's organized. He wouldn't have left a mess in the kitchen, that's for sure. But I think it's mostly anything that's like, you know, if we have our names on anything, anything that's like, you could pick it up and be like, you know, Marty's supply of drugs,you know, just

Bee/Polaris: Bruce just gonna have.

Avery/GM: I forgot about that.

Jenine/Marty: I also forget that Marty has drugs.

Caden/Bruce: but that's, that's basically what Bruce is gonna go around. He's gonna go around and like, take things where he is just like, ah, yes, this is, I would, I would associate it with this person. Therefore it is coming with me off the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Bruce is gonna have to spend an hour scrubbing ‘Polaris was here’ off the pilot's seat. I'm kidding.

Avery/GM: Are you trying to do this quickly?

Caden/Bruce: Yeah. I don't wanna get caught on the ship preferably.

Avery/GM: Okay, so either strength or dexterity exert for a skill check for this.

Caden/Bruce: Okay

Avery/GM:Because you're gonna be running up against something else and

Caden/Bruce: then exert is a zero. That is a seven.

Avery/GM: Well, hey, you're lucky cuz they rolled a six Oh thank God, . You come down the ramp of the, of the ship and you are starting to… so when you come down you do hear commotion outside the door.

The door to the docking bay is. So no one can see you, but you do hear commotion outside the door of like, come on, let's get this open. Let's, why are these wet floor signs here? And, uh, you hear another voice just say, I don't know. But why are you listening to wet floor signs? You can just walk across it and open the door. What is wrong with you?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce Hearing this Will get off the ramp and be like, Hermes, lock your doors and do not open them. And if you can move, and then Bruce is gonna get out the mop. Mopping the floor!

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: While before the, uh, ship buttons up o he is gonna commit a processing to activate his drones.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie:And they're gonna follow Bruce out.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. Are they gonna hover right next to Bruce? Are they gonna like, try and like hover, like up in the rafters? Like what do you…?

Chris/Ollie: Well, I got three. One of them is a non-combat drone. If they're already like right outside the hangar door, that one's probably not gonna do much. So I'll just have him hide like, Like in the upper corner somewhere, and then I'll have the other two….

Bee/Polaris: How big is the cart?

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. Good. Actually, how big are the drones?

Caden/Bruce: I don't know how big your drones are. I was assuming the cart was like most janitor carts where it's like it can fit like a decent size circular trash can and then like has like another decent size compartment for like all the other storage and stuff and then like has like a mop and a bucket on the side. So I was thinking like relatively big, like…

Avery/GM: yeah, probably like three or four feet long and like a. You know, 12 inches wide or something like that.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah.

Avery/GM: For Bruce, probably waist high, um, . But

Jenine/Marty: you could hide a Marty in there.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah you could. Hi. You could definitely hide a Marty in there.

Bee/Polaris: If you could hide a Marty in there, you can probably hide a, a drone in there. I think Marty is a little bit bigger than drone size, right?

Avery/GM: Oh, definitely. Yeah. What kind of drones did you get?

Chris/Ollie: I got two stalkers and one Void Hawk. So stalkers are like just general all-purpose ones. I'm gonna put those two. Above the door as high up as they can go.

Avery/GM: Okay, so Bruce, you start kind of mopping the floor, um, a little bit. You get it really nice and wet. And these drones come flying out of, uh, the ship as Hermes, uh, raises the ramp and you hear the sounds of the ship starting to like take off and you hear outside like, hurry up. Looks like they're getting away. And you hear the door starting to open and these six soldiers come barreling through weapons drawn and they start like shooting at the ship and you're just over here mopping, , uh, and whatnot as the ship pulls out of the Hangar Bay completely. And in chat you just, uh, you see Hermes type of message that just says, leaving docking Bay 12, moving to docking Bay 13 .

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is immediately gonna like, subtly message back and be like, no, move further away. Or don't even dock, just like. Not 13

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts a crying, laughing emoji in chat.

Avery/GM: and Bruce, you look up and you see all these, these soldier types with their guns drawn, uh, shooting at your ship. But you're here as

a janitor and Violet is kind of just staring at you like, what the hell are you doing here?

Avery/GM: And we flashback to the race real quick. You're coming up to the third checkpoint. You've had a little bit of a break, but all of that is about to change. Uh, as you see Polaris on your radar, you see a little flashing light indicating that a weapon has been deployed.

Bee/Polaris: Oops.

Avery/GM: And from the vantage point on your shuttle, Zahn and Marty and, and Ollie technically too, right? You all see those big containers that the assembles cheese, uh, shuttle and spotter were hauling. They break apart and outcome a swarm of nano drones from each one.

Chris/Ollie: Uh oh

Zach/Zahn: Oh, oh fuck.

Jenine/Marty: Now I have a question.

Bee/Polaris: What!?

Jenine/Marty: Now I have a question.

Avery/GM: I have an answer.

Jenine/Marty: So, I would like to commit an effort for this scene. What is, what is a scene in this Situation of a… is the entire race just one scene?

Avery/GM: We'll consider the entire race one scene, yes.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, great. Now while we're watching this thing like separate and like open these things up, do we see the person like push the button to do that?

Avery/GM: I don't think you'd be able to see into their cockpit just based on how far away they are.

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

Avery/GM: Because they are like way at the back, well further back than you.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: Y'all have a very commanding lead.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, okay. I'll do the suppress cognition later. It's okay. We'll wait. Continue on.

Avery/GM: Okay. Essentially, um, what these little containers were on this ship, uh, were… the weapon is called a smart cloud, which is a cloud weapon So it is omnidirectional and it is clumsy, meaning that it can hit both friend and foe alike.

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Avery/GM: Polaris, I would like an evasion throw… evasion save. And then Zahn, Are you still piloting the shuttle or did you let Hermes take control again?

Zach/Zahn: With the boost I would've done it like directly into the engine kind of thing, So Hermes has always been in, in the, technically in the pilot seat.

Avery/GM: Gotcha. Okay. That's fine. Then I'll roll Hermes’ pilot check and I'll roll the lucky tentacles’... or not pilot check evasion save which…

Bee/Polaris: and outta curiosity how do we do that again?

Avery/GM: you roll a D 20 and you have to get higher than the number that's on your character sheet.

Zach/Zahn: Oh. Oh

Bee/Polaris: Am I adding to that or?

Avery/GM: you would not add to it. It's just a straight roll.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. I got the number exactly.

Avery/GM: then I think, I think Meets, meets beats.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Meets it, beats it.

Avery/GM: Marty and Ziel also need to roll evasion checks to avoid these. If Hermes fails the evasion save for this ship. Then you'll need to roll evasion saves to not get attacked by these drones.

Jenine/Marty: So we're waiting to roll our evasion,

Avery/GM: so hold up.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Avery/GM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jenine/Marty: hold.

Zach/Zahn: Okay, good.

Avery/GM: Okay. Lucky tentacle rolled a six and Hermes rolled a 12. So Hermes would save and the lucky tentacle would fail. So Hermes deftly dodges this little cloud of micro drones and the… you see the lucky tentacle not be so lucky and it's going to take 3D10 damage.

Zach/Zahn: Ouch.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, yoinks!.

Avery/GM: Yeah

Bee/Polaris: that's what you get!

Zach/Zahn: is it basically just like little drones that attach the ship and then just start tearing it apart?

Avery/GM: Basically, Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Ooh, that's terrifying.

Avery/GM: And that’s 12 plus nine is 21. Oh gosh. You see the luan, uh, shuttle just get torn apart by these drones. You see six of the arms just get ripped off from this like central node, and then the other two arms are spinning. But then you see like the little rocket booster on the bottom of the central node that's propelling it forward. You see that break off and then you just see this shuttle floating aimlessly in space now.

Bee/Polaris: that's mildly unfortunate.

Avery/GM: And then, oh, I got a roll for the gun too… Professor Infinity’s…

Chris/Ollie: Also upon seeingthis, uh, swarm of bots rip apart this ship, Ollie is just gonna drop a thinking emoji in chat. (notification sound)

Bee/Polaris: Polaris does The eyes emoji (notification sound)

Jenine/Marty: I give a thumbs up emoji.(notification sound)

Avery/GM: Professor Infinity’s floating gun ship dodges the cloud of drones that are coming at it. (flying sound effect)

Zach/Zahn: What about the lucky tentacles’ spotter ship?

Avery/GM: Oh, thank you. Thank you, Zach. they rolled a 17. They're good too.

Bee/Polaris: Pain.

Avery/GM: So you've… you've eliminated two racers and now you notice that without that big heavy weight behind it, the Assembles singles shuttle is moving extraordinarily fast

Bee/Polaris: cheese whiz.

Chris/Ollie: Mm-hmm. .

Avery/GM: Yep. And yeah, it rolled a 15. Um, so it is, it is pulling up very close to you now, and we go back to the top of the order, which would be either Polaris as the spotter or Zahn and Marty and Ollie as the racers.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. So who are we dealing with right now then?

Zach/Zahn: It's just the, the,the singles now, right?

Avery/GM: You have the assembled singles shuttle and you have the lucky tentacle and Professor Infinity’s spotters.

Zach/Zahn: Spotters.

Jenine/Marty:Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Okay.

Jenine/Marty: So there's two shuttles left. Other than There's three, well, two others.

Avery/GM: Nope. Just you and one other shuttle at this point.

Jenine/Marty: Oh,

Avery/GM: yeah.

Bee/Polaris:Wait, so if we eliminate the shuttle, will we basically run the… win the race.

Avery/GM: Uh, you'll still have to get through all the checkpoints and, and dodge the other obstacles, but there would be a significant, it would be significantly easier.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Sowe wanna go for the shuttle or should we go for one of these hitters?

Bee/Polaris: What are… what are y'all doing on the shuttle?

Jenine/Marty: Could, could I suppress, could I suppress someone's cognition? Would… whoever the closest person is to us, I would like to commit effort for the scene as my main action to… so what it re, what… It's, it's on page, uh, 41, um, physically, uh, and it says, I can either telepathic contact simply not… I can make them not think of something, whether it's the presence of the telepath, the possibility of committing violence, the absence of important documentation, or any other single potential action or one specific person. Can I make the person that's driving the ship that's coming closest to us Forget that the wheel exists on their ship?

Bee/Polaris: forget how to fly?

Avery/GM: Yeah, I'll say that the, um, assembles… cause the assembles, um, spotter was actually maneuvering for something. So I'll say that they are closest to you.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. I'm gonna go for that one. Uh, that's gonna be the target gets a mental saving throw to resist this power. And if they succeed, they're immune for the scene.

Avery/GM: okay.

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna say it'd be pretty, it'd be pretty funny if you made them think that they were going the wrong way in the race. So they turn, they do a full U-ey, and go the other way.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, it's because I was trying to like figure out like… which one makes the most sense. Any other single pot… I think it's just like forgetting something once… yeah…

Avery/GM: I mean that… forgetting the steering wheel exists is great. Forget that they're in a race?

Jenine/Marty:Oh yeah. We'll do that!

Avery/GM: Marty, go ahead and roll a, if you have it handy, go ahead and roll a D six.

Jenine/Marty: A D six. I do. I'm a powered by the apocalypse stan. Of course. I have thousands of D sixes… Three!

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. I was trying to determine what level I wanted their character level to be.

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Avery/GM: Cause I don't have a character sheet for this person, so that would deter… Okay. So, okay. Well, they rolled a three for their mental saves, so they fail. miserably. , , .

Bee/Polaris: How long does that last?

Jenine/Marty: Uh, it's for the entire scene. So they're out and that's Yes. In that case, the, yes. Sorry.

Avery/GM: No, no. Go ahead. Uh, describe how, how Marty, like, does like her power. Like how, how does she do this?

Jenine/Marty: Okay. She like giggles a little bit. Ah, okay idea. And then like, she stands up, looks at like whatever's coming at us and just goes, boop (magic sound effect) No more and like locks eyes with this person.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You they were, they were getting really close cuz they were gonna, they were gonna maneuver and do something really messed up, kind of along the lines of what Polaris did to Professor Infinity. And you see them starting to swoop in and you do this boo uh, to them and all of a sudden, You can kind of see through their viewport, like their eyes kind of like glaze over a little bit and they're just like, oh, I don't wanna do this anymore. And they just turn their steering wheel and uh, (zoom sound effect) start flying back towards like the main asteroid where they popped out at and they're gonna go land. Yeah. That was really brilliant. You avoided some, some bad stuff there. Okay, so the assembles spotter is out of the race.

Bee/Polaris: Yay. Uh, who's the next closest person to us?

Avery/GM: Either the lucky tentacle spotter or the assembles shuttle.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Hmm. Is there any debris around?

Avery/GM: Uh, not yet. Um, you're coming up to the third asteroid, and this has been kind of a, a mellow part of the race.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Uh, I'll hold my action until something happens. I'll just hover around my guys. Oh, wait, actually, can I, Fly underneath the shuttle and then like, Be the speed boost for the shuttle and like push it forward faster. .

Avery/GM: Yeah. Go ahead and roll. So this'll be kind of similar to like a assist, an assist roll. So go ahead and roll. Uh, dexterity pilot.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. I'm gonna be honest. That was trash roll.

Zach/Zahn: If you're gonna be doing that once you get into position can Zahn Jump down onto,

Bee/Polaris: onto my ship

Zach/Zahn: with his mag boots and, uh, assist with, uh, with a boost engine action?

Bee/Polaris: I'm trying to see if, can't I re-roll once proceed because I'm a…

Avery/GM: Yes, you can

Bee/Polaris: expert. Okay. Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Zahn, I'm gonna say that you probably couldn't boost Polaris's engines from the outside. The reason you could do it with the shuttle is cause it's specifically designed for you to be able to do that because it's like open top and like everything's there. But you'd have to actually be like busting out your tools and like mechanically, like trying to like give Polaris a tuneup While flying through space,

Zach/Zahn: I mean, I could do that. like I said, I have all my, all of my stuff on me, so…

Chris/Ollie: He is a walking toolbox.

Bee/Polaris: That would be very difficult.

Zach/Zahn: But if you don't want me to do that, I would instead do a, uh, like a damage control or emerg or uh, or repair on Polaris's ship. Since, uh, Polaris's ship is at, I believe, half health.

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Hmm.

Bee/Polaris: Sorry. Okay. Uh, my role ended up being a 10.

Avery/GM: A 10? Okay. Yeah. So we'll add, we'll add plus one to Hermes as pilot role next. next time Hermes pilots it forward. Let's see. Zach, you're gonna, you want to try and repair Polaris's ship from, from your ship?

Zach/Zahn: I would jump onto Polaris's ship.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I'm underneath.

Avery/GM: Okay. Go ahead and roll. A dexterity fix, but minus one because this is a very tricky thing to try and do Mid-flight.

Zach/Zahn: I live for this kind of excitement. So three…

Bee/Polaris: What's your class? Are you an expert?

Zach/Zahn: I am indeed an expert.

Bee/Polaris: You can re-roll once scene

Zach/Zahn: if I'm informed that seven is not good enough, I will re-roll.

Avery/GM: I don't think that's how that works. I think you have to.

Bee/Polaris: It is, it is a failed. It does say

Zach/Zahn: you can re-roll on a failed check.

Avery/GM: That's fine. Yeah. Yeah. A seven is not gonna be good enough.

Zach/Zahn: Okay. I'm gonna re-roll that. Well, one die just flew away into the darkness, so we're gonna try to do this other one. how's eight is eight better?

Avery/GM: Eight is just over the threshold. Polaris, add two hp Back to your ship.

Bee/Polaris: Yay.

Jenine/Marty: Yay.

Avery/GM: And, and now you have a Zahn hitching a ride.

Chris/Ollie: Now it's just Marty in the shuttle.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris waves through the cockpit window.

Avery/GM: Cool. Ollie, is there anything you're going to be. On this turn for the race or are you focusing mostly on the, the drones and, and your situation?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, the only thing I could do would, uh, use my last cognition, whatever points I have as a robot, I, I wanna save that to maybe get out of a sticky sitch.

Avery/GM: Gotcha. Okay, cool. Well then you see Professor Infiniti's big gun ship, fly behind the lucky tentacle fighter and just shoot this big poly spectral Laser beam at the Lucky Tentacle Squid Fighter. (Laser blast) 16 plus three is 19. It hits, yeah, it takes, it shoots off one of the lucky tentacles, uh, lasers and damages it pretty badly. So it is not doing great and I guess the lucky tentacle fire back. Haha. Let me play space fight with myself.

Jenine/Marty: the best game as a dm.

Bee/Polaris: Go, go, go, go.

Avery/GM: The Squid fighter fires back and does seven damage to Professor Infinities gun ship. (laser blast) Yeah, they're trading fire and they're both looking pretty damaged now. So now we'll do the pilot check. 16 for Hermes or 17 for Herms cuz of the plus one.

Bee/Polaris: Yay.

Avery/GM: 18 for the Assembles though!

Bee/Polaris: Yikes.

So you see the Assembles shuttle pull ahead of you just barely, you know, basically by a nose. It pulls through the checkpoint first. The announcer is just like, wow. Our sponsor Assembles Singles has pulled ahead of the upstarts… and we will go back to the Hangar Bay.

Zach/Zahn: Awesome. I wanna board it next round.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I was just saying, you just drive by jump on

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna grapnel launcher on like grab a launcher and then zoom over to it.

Bee/Polaris: Sick. You probably could do that as it was passing by real quick. I did just wanna point out that it is kind of fucked up that the person that's sponsoring this entire race has also participated in said race.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Oh Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: They can, you know, set the rules at everything and also soup up their ship however they want anyway. Yeah, we can go ahead . Just food for that.

Zach/Zahn: What about like illegal back alley race doesn't that not fit in immediately?

Bee/Polaris: Well, I mean, listen, pirates have dignity. I imagine some sort of like illegal organization has some sort of code of conduct as well you know? this is Space Vegas. It can't go on like this.

Chris/Ollie: Spagas.

Jenine/Marty: Spagas?

Bee/Polaris: Oh That’s pretty good!

Avery/GM: So let’s go back to docking bay twelve!

(race music fades out, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: Bruce, you are being stared down by this tiger person. She speaks up and is just like, excuse me, what are you doing?

Caden/Bruce: Mopping the floor. And Bruce is continuing to mop and just like doesn't really look at. Just is more paying attention to what he's doing.

Avery/GM: Well, you're interfering with a Republic investigation next time Could you please not mop Right where I'm trying to arrest some space pirates?

Caden/Bruce: Sorry. It's my first day on the job and it's being pretty busy.

Avery/GM: Well, we had messaged Brago's Central Authority to tell them not to mess with this docking bay until we got down.

Caden/Bruce: To be fair, I have been cleaning up messes, not making messes. I'm sorry. I will move on to docking Bay 13 now then.

Avery/GM: fine. I'll get that ship later. And she turns to one of her soldiers and starts like giving orders of like, you know, contact the main ship and tell them to keep a lookout for this, for this vessel. And then they kind of just hurry out of the docking bay. Yeah. Where do you all want to have Hermes go? Do you, do you give hers any specific orders of where to go?

Bee/Polaris: back to docking Bay 12! No, I'm kidding.

Avery/GM: back to docking Bay 12.

Chris/Ollie: I mean that, that's actually pretty good idea. they already looked there.

Bee/Polaris: He wouldn't come back. Who would be stupid enough to try that?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah

Caden/Bruce: I mean, I was gonna say like if Hermes like hid behind an asteroid or something, that might be a little less… sus.

Avery/GM: Come pick y'all up later.

Bee/Polaris: He could join the race.

Avery/GM: oh god.

Chris/Ollie: Just hop in.

Avery/GM: Hermes piloting both ships.

Chris/Ollie: Hermes We need back up. Come on, shoot that gun. You like shooting at this, uh, shuttle That's chasing us!

Bee/Polaris: quick. Shoot into the Winston's private viewing box.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Immediately. Fire on my position, says Ollie. I'll be fine. Don't worry.

Bee/Polaris: Hermes would absolutely do that without heart… like a second thought.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that was actually really, I. I actually assumed y'all would have to have a firefight in docking bay 12. So that was very good.

Bee/Polaris: Wow. Who knew that wet floor signs were a universal help to all

Caden/Bruce: Bruce master of talking his way out of situations, yup!

Chris/Ollie: Bruce is a master of disguise. All right.

Bee/Polaris: Bruce is…

Bruce is infiltrated as a chef. Bruce is infiltrated as a janitor, infiltrated as a race watcher. Just chilling. Like

Bee/Polaris: a samples giver!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. We've got, we've got an infiltrator on our team guys.

Caden/Bruce: you just gonna switch out the hats, thats all it is, right? Take off the chef. Bam. No longer a chef. Whoop!

Bee/Polaris: whoop.

Jenine/Marty: Whoop Whoop Whoop!

Avery/GM: So Bruce, as you, uh, are you exiting the docking bay or are you gonna keep mopping for a little bit and kind of like hold up the ruse?

Caden/Bruce: No. I think Bruce is actually gonna do what he said and go and stop, start mopping Docking Bay 13.

Avery/GM: Okay. You do come out at Docking Bay 12 and you do see one of those soldiers still posted up here as like a lookout. And you move on to docking Bay 13. And they kind of eye you for a minute, like to like, be like, okay, why were they here of all places? And then they see you go into Docking Bay 13 and they're just like, oh, they, they really are a janitor. Okay.

Caden/Bruce: Yep. Don't, don't be suspicious. Real janitor here!

Bee/Polaris: Nothing but janitorial duties.

Avery/GM: Hermes does take your advice and parks the ship on just a random, non occupied asteroid in this little asteroid belt here, Ollie, you

are in the private booth and Avi is still kind of moping and looks at you and it's just like, Can you believe Violet said that? Like, I'm not just a spoiled brat wasting my dad's money.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. This is a… Hmm... For Ollie, this is a yikesy situation.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. You've gotten yourself mixed into family drama.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. As a not quite understanding connections robot.

Avery/GM: You do have your virtual emotion simulator.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yes, I do have that in me at the moment.

Bee/Polaris: But you don't have your therapist Chip

Chris/Ollie: Actually, Ollie is gonna say, oh my apologies. I missed what she said. I was enthralled with the race.

Avery/GM: Avi rolls her eyes and it's just like, well, that’s probably for the best. You don't really want to get mixed up with the Winston family. We can be quite vengeful and conniving and backstabbing.

Chris/Ollie: Duly noted.

Bee/Polaris: sweating emoji in chat.

Avery/GM: But yeah, let's, let's enjoy the, the rest of the race. Your team is really pulling out all the stops out there. I think you might win this thing.

Chris/Ollie: Yes. Quite surprising the tricks the other teams had up their sleeves. We have doing exceedingly well, better than I expected. Thank you.

(flying sound effects, ambience fades out, racing music fades in)

Avery/GM: We'll go back to the race passing asteroid number three. You're coming up to the next obstacle in this race. It looks like some kind of old destroyed platform of some kind. Maybe looks like it probably was like an old defense platform for like a planetary system or something, but it looks kind of like torn to shreds and sort of, you know, broken apart over the years.

Zach/Zahn: Fun.

Bee/Polaris: How big is it?

Avery/GM: I would say it's probably about 50 feet wide by about maybe 300 feet long.

Jenine/Marty: Ooh, yoinks?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Are we about to fly through it?

Avery/GM: Yeah, like kind of like above it. Um, but there's like, but there are like some, like pieces of it that are kind of like floating around it that are kind of, you know, you'd have to maneuver around.

Bee/Polaris: Is it powered up?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, can Ollie like scan for some energy readings?

Avery/GM: Ollie, you can… You can scan for that. I think that would be a notice check, probably intelligence.

Chris/Ollie: Alright.

Avery/GM: And I think Polaris, since you are also on your ship, I think you could scan for that as well. Same check.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Intelligence notice.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: that's a good thing. I took a thing in notice.

Chris/Ollie: Same. I got a nine.

Bee/Polaris: I got a, I'm sorry. Math sucks. 11.

Chris/Ollie: Damn.

(scanning sound effect)

Avery/GM: Yeah. You both notice energy readings coming from all of the torpedo launchers that are still present on this platform.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. How many Ollies are, uh, free to take those over?

Chris/Ollie: I’ve got one in my body, one controlling the drones. One or two with you guys. So that's like 79.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, sweet. Can you use one of those 79 or a couple of those 79 to take over those torpedoes?

Chris/Ollie: Can I hack the torpedoes? Do we,

Bee/Polaris: is that a possibility?

Chris/Ollie: Do we have remote hacking capabilities

Bee/Polaris: or is that a, is there like a central kind of control panel that all he can hack into rather than spending all these?

Avery/GM: So I think what Zahn could do, or Polaris, if he could get out of the ship, would be to jump onto the platform and find a computer to hack. And they could plug like their helmet into the, well, no, cause they need their helmet to breathe.

Bee/Polaris: Nah, I can hold my breath.

Avery/GM: So I think, I think they would need to do the hacking themselves.

Zach/Zahn: If I can get like bonus, like assistances from, from Ollie, I can do that. I've got a proficiency in program. So…

Avery/GM: I think I, I think, I think I'd be fine with Ollie rolling to assist for hacking

Bee/Polaris: in our, um, energy reading scan, can we see where the most energy is being diverted to? Because that would probably be the computer, no?

Avery/GM: Yeah, you can tell that it's coming from like a central power source kind of near the middle of this platform.

Bee/Polaris: I can pull a Luke Skywalker and fly in there and then park my ship. I mean, I guess he didn't park his ship, but I guess… that'd be mildly unfortunate for him, but I could like park my ship and we can go on a quick grocery run.

Chris/Ollie: Well, I'm just worried about it shooting us on our way there. Ollie will just say, um, Zahn, if we can reach the center of the platform, I can redirect the torpedoes.

Zach/Zahn: Wait, you're saying there's still torpedoes in this thing?

Chris/Ollie: Very many of them.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, hells yeah. We can definitely make use of those. It's better than, uh, the idea of using my little, my little laser blade here and cutting off a wing of that shuttle. Yeah and then he taps on Polaris… Like on the view screen physically gives you the thumbs up.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris literally puts in chat. I can actually hear you guys like I heard the whole thing.

Zach/Zahn: You get the shrug emoji and him physically shrugging.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris rolls his eyes and then sends the, like eye roll emote and then to the, to the center of the platform!

Jenine/Marty: and you get a nice little heart emoji from Mar… Marty sends a heart emoji.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts in chat to a chat specifically for Marty, and I guess Hermes: BRB!

Zach/Zahn: BRB! Haha

Avery/GM: Okay!

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna say, Marty, don't, don't be afraid to man the cannons if need be. You got this and gives the, like the, the, the strong arm.

Bee/Polaris: For an audio medium, we sure do use a lot of emojis.

Avery/GM: I was gonna say… So then I will need a strength exert check from Zahn to hold on. I know you have your mag boots, but like there's some stuff that's gonna happen. So I need that to happen. I need, I need you to, to roll that roll.

Zach/Zahn: Can I argue for it to be Dex instead? Go full. Go full matrix Bullet time with it?

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay, so you'll roll that. Polaris, I'll have you roll a dexterity pilot check.

Bee/Polaris: Sick, I'm good at that… In theory.

Zach/Zahn: Exert dexterity will be a grand total of six.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Woo dice. Keep rolling. On the twos and three side.

Bee/Polaris: did you say dexterity Pilot check?

Avery/GM: Yes, please.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, that's going to be a… nine.

Avery/GM: Okay… that's not good. So Marty, you see Zahn and Polaris start descending toward the platform (fly by sound effect) that is slightly below you and you see three of these torpedo launchers tracking Polaris's ship, and then they fire (torpedo launch sound effect)

Bee/Polaris: Uh Oh

Jenine/Marty: oh.

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna be fine.

Jenine/Marty: Can I shoot at it? Can I attempt to shoot at the things that are trying to shoot at my friends?

Avery/GM: You can totally try and shoot. Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Cool.

Avery/GM: go ahead and roll Three dexterity, shoot checks.

Jenine/Marty: Three dexterity shoot. Okay. Wait…

Zach/Zahn: You got this Marty,

Jenine/Marty: I don't even,

Avery/GM: or you can roll three attack rolls if you'd prefer.

Jenine/Marty: What is the difference?

Avery/GM: Because that's just a straight d20. That'd be a straight D 20 plus Dex versus two D six plus Dex and shoot. So it might give you a slightly better advantage.

Jenine/Marty: think. I think we'll do, we'll do the attack roll cause I feel like that might be better. I have a zero in Dex cause it's either I get a negative one or just…

Avery/GM: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: We’ll see. Okay, great. 18 is the first one on the D20.

Bee/Polaris: That’s pretty good

Chris/Ollie: Nice

Jenine/Marty: On the D20. The second one is eight.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: And the third one is a 12.

Avery/GM: Okay. You… Has Marty ever fired a weapon before?

Jenine/Marty: No. Well actually I feel like they might have like, Because she was going straight to like a military base. They probably gave her like very, very basics. Like if in danger and they put you somewhere, this is what you do. You know, like the baby, like… shooting gun for babies.

Zach/Zahn: you've, you've held a gun in one two hour training session.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: And most of that two hour and 58 minutes of that two hour training session was the basics. Holding a gun.

Jenine/Marty: It was very much safety training. Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Cool.

Zach/Zahn: And then 10 minutes, was you shooting at a target that you probably never even came close to hitting.

Jenine/Marty: Probably 100%.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh.

Jenine/Marty: I have no Dexterity.

Avery/GM: Well, you managed to pull it off on this one, at least for two of them. You grab this little rotating laser cannon and you see in the chat, Hermes just say, just pull the trigger. You will be fine.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God.

Jenine/Marty: Uh huh.

Avery/GM: And (laser blast) you fire the first shot and it kind of goes wide and misses one of the torpedoes. but you fire the second and third shot and actually find your target (laser blasts) and you hit two of these torpedoes and they explode magnificently (explosion sound) in space. But this third one, Gets through and ends up hitting Polaris's ship.

Bee/Polaris: Now out of curiosity, cause I did just remember that I am flying a strike fighter. Can I shoot my weapon?

Avery/GM: Of course.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: I was just waiting for…

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: I may not always give you the exact thing that you can do, but you know,

Bee/Polaris: yeah, I, I completely forgot cause I was like, oh man, how am I gonna fly out of the way of this thing? And I was like, oh wait, I have weapons, I got a MES Beam. does a 16 hit?

Avery/GM: it would

Bee/Polaris: sick.

Avery/GM: Okay, so Marty blows two of these out of the way and you see on your radar the third one is still approaching. You know that if you get hit Zahn will probably get blown into space somewhere. Yes. And so

Zach/Zahn: That's fine. I've got my grapnel launcher.

Avery/GM: You shoot your laser to (laser blasts) keep you in Zahn from not getting exploded, and your mes beam finds its target and blows it up and you have a clear shot to the central computer on this platform.

(Race music fades out, Outro music plays and then fades down)

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. And be sure to follow us on Twitter and Tumblr @FurthestPod. Intro and outro Music by Dustin Carpenter.

Background music provided by tabletopaudio.com and used under an attribution non-commercial license from Creative Commons. Tracks include Car Chase, Orbital Promenade, orbital platform, and Star Base Omega.

We'll be back on February 1st with our next episode. See you out there Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro Fades up, then plays out)

Episode 13 - Let the Race Begin!

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 13 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Intro Music plays, then fades out, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: Okay. Everyone who is not participating in the race, what do you do as the race is about to start? I think that's just Bruce and Ollie, technically.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bruce/Caden: Well, you said betting is illegal

Bee/Polaris: But everything's illegal here.

Zach/Zahn: Only technically, which means you can.

Bruce/Caden: I feel like Bruce would have gone back to the ship, removed the apron and the chef hat because according to Bruce, that's how you go incognito.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my heart.

Bruce/Caden: Gone back to like the racetrack and like tries to find somewhere to sit down so that he can watch what's gonna happen.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. We’ll say that you find a nice viewing spot that. Close to the front row. Not that it really matters because it's all gonna be displayed on like these big screens, but it's close to the front row near the starting line of the race. So you'll be able to see the initial launch of the shuttles with your friends on it.

Zach/Zahn: So you can watch us die , not even a hundred meters in.

Bruce/Caden: I think Bruce, he, he Bruce nervously like puts his tail on his lap and is like, kind of like squeezing it nervously. Kind of like you would like a fidget toy, just like, watching the ship intently and just like, not even blinking, just watching .

Zach/Zahn: I wish we had more time. I actually, I did come up with a list of mods I wanted to make.

Avery/GM: Well, like I said, you could pick three, so.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, there's more than three here. .

Jenine/Marty: Oh man.

Avery/GM: So Ollie, what are you doing while…Oh

Chris/Ollie: yeah, just uh oh, he's going to be making his way as Pseudo participant making his way back to, uh, the, the private booths. He's gonna have cleaned himself, like stepped through the robot, pressure washer , where, wherever the closest one is because, uh, he's absolutely filthy. He hasn't washed himself since his last maintenance. So on the hegemony,

Avery/GM: Sure

Chris/Ollie: he's gonna clean himself up, get all pretty head back to the. Where he left Avi and, uh, knock on the door. (knocking sound)

Avery/GM: Sure. The door opens (door opening sound) and there's this big burly humanoid person standing there looking all intimidating. And it's just like, no robots. And it goes to shut the door. And you hear behind him, oh, no, no, Charlie. That, that one's fine. That one's fine. Come in dear Ollie. Come in, come meet my cousins.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's gonna step through the. And, uh, uh, greet Avi and say, my apologies. The work of a walking wrench is never done and I simply couldn't present myself to your esteemed family in that state. Referring to his dirty chassis, he's in a motion to himself.

Bee/Polaris: Did he get like a dry erase marker and put like a little draw, bow tie on

Chris/Ollie: a monocle and a and a handlebar mustache.

Bee/Polaris: That'd be so cute.

Avery/GM: She motions to two other finely dressed tiger people and motions to one and says, this is lapis. They actually live with my aunt and uncle back on Olympia, but they decided to drop in today for today's race. Isn't that just so sweet? And she gestures to the other one and is like, and this is Violet.

She just graduated from the officer's academy back in the republic. She's going to, she's, she's already jumped ranks. She's going to be a general already. Isn't that amazing? Like who becomes a general right after graduating? It's so cool.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Who I wonder people?

Bee/Polaris: Rich people.

Avery/GM: Mm.

Bee/Polaris: Haha.

Jenine/Marty: What is that like well… What?

Avery/GM: Corruption Never. And Ollie Violet just gives you kind of this Kurt nod, not as, she's not as welcoming or friendly as Avi seems to be.

Chris/Ollie: Do I notice any signs of them recognizing me?

Avery/GM: You do not.

Chris/Ollie: Then I'll, uh, read them politely and. You know, give the usual banter like, oh yes, Avi has told me so much!

Bee/Polaris: Has she?

Chris/Ollie: Well, she, she's been talking to me for two hours straight about her family, so

Bee/Polaris: Oh, true!

Avery/GM: And then we pan down to the docking bay of the race track, So Polaris, you are put on a quick little vessel and shuttled across to asteroid number one, (shuttle flying noise) which I will move the map. There we go. Yeah. So this is a very rough drawing, but the start is the main asteroid that you are on for Bragos. You are shuttled across to asteroid two or to asteroid one where your fighter ship has been brought as well from The docking bay over here to, uh, the race and you are sitting there waiting for the race to start and you see that there are other bays with other fighter ships waiting for the signal to start as well.

Avery/GM: Marty and Zahn you are placed on the shuttle for Big Fred and big Fred points to a big red button on the control panel and says, Now if you, if you find that someone decides to play dirty and shoot at your shuttle, just push this button. It'll engage a really powerful deflector shield that should fire the weapons back at the shuttle that's firing at you. So use it carefully though. It's only got like three charges. So essentially this has an experimental shield that can double as basically a way to deflect attacks back at the attacker.

Jenine/Marty: It's like a mirror, right? Like if someone tried to laser us. That's just lasers back.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet!

Zach/Zahn: its like rubber and they’re glue.

Avery/GM: Yeah, exactly.

Jenine/Marty: and we get three charges. Got it. Everyone had an experimental thing. Someone was just promoting it. Oh my goodness

Avery/GM: yep!

Chris/Ollie: Well, someone's experimental thing is, seems a lot more practical and a bit less hazardous. . .

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Does it have any, uh, other weapons on it?

Avery/GM: It has. Oh gosh, I wrote that down

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Did we do anything with Hermes?

Jenine/Marty: We were supposed to

Bee/Polaris: Where’s that guy?

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. Actually,

Jenine/Marty: isn't he piloting the ship?

Avery/GM: You can totally put him in the shuttle if you want.

Jenine/Marty: Could, could we? I feel like that might be a little helpful.

Zach/Zahn: that was more than, uh, our combined minus one’s in piloting.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah yeah yeah.

Zach/Zahn: We’ll not get through this.

Bee/Polaris: does Hermes have the same, same capability of like where we can split his chaos emerald and put it in the shuttle and leave part of it in the ship? Or is that just an ollie thing?

Avery/GM: No, he does.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool. We should do that

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Just in case the shuttle blows up.

Jenine/Marty: just in case-ies!

Zach/Zahn: Is there a split consciousness thing that Ollie… like Ollie can do that, we can do that.

Chris/Ollie: Well this is just in case he dies.

Jenine/Marty: Can Ollie die?

Chris/Ollie: Like the ship explodes.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Because if the chaos emerald's gone and there's no, there's no back up, he dead.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. There's, there's no Hermes.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha.

Avery/GM: I will also, well, you guys okay. It's weird. I, I gave you the information, but you wouldn't technically know that about Hermes.

Bee/Polaris: know what?

Jenine/Marty: About Hermes?

Avery/GM: And you might not have even caught it, so I'll just shut up.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, about the, about him.Like splitting. Splitting the Hermes.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So that little flashback I did with the hegemony, one of them mentioned a backup reloading if the AI had been destroyed.

Bee/Polaris: Oh

Chris/Ollie: oh yeah, that's right!

Bee/Polaris: So there's already another Hermes.

Chris/Ollie: Well, I've been, meaning I keep forgetting, but I'm meaning been meaning to have Ollie examine his chaos emerald to see if it's actually whole. Because like I, I tried to cut mine, so if, if the Winston’s tried to look at it, they're like, oh yeah, this is whole, we can just kill him kind of thing.

Avery/GM: Yeah, I could say that you could totally roll for that and say that you did that earlier.

Chris/Ollie: Sure.

Think it'd be an intelligence notice check.

Bee/Polaris: Cutting your emerald could have reminded Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: where did my stats go? Notice you say?

Avery/GM: yes, please.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. That is a. Where is it? 10.

Avery/GM: So the thing you notice about Hermes is Emerald, is that it's about 49% smaller than yours.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. But it looks normal. It's just smaller.

Avery/GM: It's smaller. It looks well. The fact that it's smaller means that it's probably been cut.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Well, I, I would've relayed this information at the time.

Bee/Polaris: does that mean we can't cut it again?

Chris/Ollie: Yes.

Avery/GM: you could. It's just, you can cut it multiple times, right Chris?

Chris/Ollie: I don't think so

Zach/Zahn: so. You can cut it multiple times, but it would, hypothetically, you could cut it multiple times, but it would still go to the biggest piece, right?

Chris/Ollie: well, because I was thinking about like having, like whore cruxes pretty much all around the galaxy, wherever we go, but it's, I can't find it right now, but I think it says you can only have one cut.

Avery/GM: I think you might be right. I was trying to find it in the book

Chris/Ollie: because I would literally like break off pieces and just like throw 'em into evac pods and yeah. Be like, I am immortal , I spam the galaxy. I will never die!

Bee/Polaris: We are Ollie, we are many. Okay. Um, I mean, I do have the, the, the Hermes communication thing in Polaris's helmet would. is, would that allow Hermes to take control of the shuttle? But I wouldn't be able to talk to Hermes. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So I'd say yes, you could do that, but yeah, you'd lose your communication with Hermes during the race.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. So hear me out. Hear

me out.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Jenine/Marty: You put Hermes helmet on Marty. Marty will telepathically link with you and we will do this fun little game of telephone.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, it's like a, it's like a u s. and not the whole helmet.

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

Bee/Polaris: Nevermind. . . I mean presumably Hermes is like in the shuttle can talk to you guys, right?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. That could boo, that could get, that can negate our negative ones, possibly.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. So if Hermes is in the shuttle, Hermes can pilot the shuttle and then you can just, you know, chit chat with me.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, Wait, so are we taking Hermes with us?

Bee/Polaris: Well, you guys need to so that Hermes can fly the shuttle. Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool, cool. Great. Good. Everything's fine.

Bee/Polaris: It's, it's more like

Zach/Zahn: or Hermes sadly ends up in the hands of the enemy again and half of us have to re-roll characters. It's all good.

Jenine/Marty: No, it's fine. Yeah Yeah Yeah yeah!

Bee/Polaris: Well, is still in the ship ship, but the, the little USB that Polaris has allows Hermes to like be in his helmet, right? Is that how that works?

Avery/GM: It basically acts as like a relay between your ship's chaos Emerald and wherever this little plugin is plugged in at.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yeah. So then could, so hers could then use the like pilot shuttle?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Cool.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Okay. Okay. So what we have, okay. Long story short, we have Hermes, Hermes is with us in big Freds… In Big Fred’s shuttle. Got it. Great. And big floods. Um, shuttle. Got it. Great.

Bee/Polaris: Yes

Jenine/Marty: Cool Cool Cool Cool Cool Cool!

Avery/GM: Zahn, You asked about

Zach/Zahn: other weaponry.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Your other weapons. This is the weapon that comes on the

Zach/Zahn: shuttle.

Avery/GM: The shuttle, yes. Thank you. Sorry about that. I'm trying to format it a little bit better because it pasted weird.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, gotcha. I mean, part of my plan was already to use the, uh, grappling hook to like pull debris into ships around.

Bee/Polaris: Sick, cool.

Zach/Zahn: Or pull other ships into each other or vice versa and shit like that.

Chris/Ollie: Yes. There are many plans.

Bee/Polaris: I was gonna ask if spotters can only fight other spotters, they can't attack shuttles, yeah?

Avery/GM: One of the few rules is don't attack the shuttle with your spotter ship.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Okay. Sick. Cool.

Zach/Zahn: yeah. Our, who is our spotter? Is it the drones?

Avery/GM: No.

Bee/Polaris: Hi, me.

Chris/Ollie: yeah.

Jenine/Marty: No, it's

Bee/Polaris: me. Hi. Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Spotter is the fighter.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I'm, I'm flying. Yeah. You guys are in the shuttle and I'm gonna be in little bear flying around and shooting obstacles and stuff.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha. So the race is for the shuttle to get to the thing first?

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: Got it. Now I'm on board.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet, sick.

Zach/Zahn: See, I thought this whole time that Polaris was actually the one racing and we were the support.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that's, that's what I also thought!

Avery/GM: Sorry I did not explain that very well.

Chris/Ollie: No, it's all good.

Bee/Polaris: You're fine.

Zach/Zahn: No, no, no. You're totally fine. It was my misinterpretation. .

Jenine/Marty: No, cause my brain was like, oh yeah, big shit mean support and little shit means zoom, zoom, not the other way around. That's how my brain translated it and did not wanna translate anything else.

Avery/GM: Bruce, before we get started, please roll a percentage dice.

Jenine/Marty: What? is this weather? You throwing Weather at us?

Chris/Ollie: No, this is his… Yeah

Bee/Polaris: No, it's whether or not the other people shit their pants.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Or their per... or the amount of shit in everyone's pants.

Avery/GM: Oh my God.

Zach/Zahn: How many of the crew are okay with there being shit in their pants

Avery/GM: big shit

Bee/Polaris: Hundred percent shit in the pants.

Zach/Zahn: Wait, hold on.

Avery/GM: Bruce? What's that percentage roll?

Bruce/Caden: It's uh, 92.

Avery/GM: 92. Oh my God.

Bee/Polaris: that's a lot of shit in the pants. ,

Zach/Zahn: that's a lot of pants…

Bruce/Caden: I, I assumed by percentage roll. You wanted me to roll two D 10, so that's what I did.

Avery/GM: Yes, yes. That's totally fine. Okay, so let me see here. 92. Okay, that is really high.

Bruce/Caden: Yeah.

Avery/GM: So originally you saw teams of three For each of these, each of these teams, the shuttles start lining up and you see that each shuttle only has one person, not including the pilot.

Bee/Polaris: let's go.

Zach/Zahn: Sucks to suck, bro.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I hope they have enough bathrooms to accommodate.

Avery/GM: So Bruce, you have effectively given your team the leg up that it needs. . .

Bruce/Caden: That's that. That was the hope.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Operation Jamie shit pants!

Bruce/Caden: I feel like from the stands, this just looks like. You know, Bruce is sitting down and just every so often someone like stands up and is like, excuse me, excuse me. Just don't mind me. Don't mind me. And just like rushing to the bathroom, like there's just a huge long line and Bruce is sitting there and just feeling sorry.

Zach/Zahn: reveling in it?

Bruce/Caden: No, Bruce feels bad,

Avery/GM: And you hear the announcer come on and they're like, welcome everybody to today's pendulum of Doom Death Race, sponsored by assembles singles. We are here to bring you an exciting race. Hopefully that will not result in any deaths or dismemberments. Remember, it's been 36 days since our last fatal crash!

Zach/Zahn: That's actually pretty good.

Jenine/Marty: That’s not bad!

Bee/Polaris: That’s not bad! How often do they have races?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah?

Bruce/Caden: is there like often clock that tells you that like, you know, 31 days since last crash?

Avery/GM: they totally have like a little leaderboard. Yep.

Bruce/Caden: Good. Good. Good, good, good.

Jenine/Marty: What are they running like three races a day or something like that? Maybe. I don't know.

Avery/GM: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: Wow! Look at them go!

Bee/Polaris: that's… that's pretty good.

Jenine/Marty: That's pretty good.

Avery/GM: 36 days since the last time someone fatally crashed because like as a reminder, if you are about to crash, they do have a team of teleportation, psychics standing by to teleport you out of danger before you blow up. And they have a pretty high success rate.

Zach/Zahn: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: okay. That makes everything I'm about to do feel a lot better. . Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: I, I almost took teleportation

Zach/Zahn: Marty over here. I almost have teleportation.

Jenine/Marty: I al I really did almost take it. I won't lie. And then I was like, mm. But telepathy,

Zach/Zahn: telepathy is better.

Avery/GM: Telepathy fits the build better though.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah. A hundred percent fits the build better.

Avery/GM: And yeah, you see red light and it flashes (engines revving) and it flashes, and then it flashes yellow and then green (engage sound) and. Oh, I guess Hermes has to roll the pilot check.

Jenine/Marty: Can we assist in some way?

Avery/GM: If you wanna grab the controls and help Hermes Yeah, go for it.

Chris/Ollie: With a minus one?

Bee/Polaris: Hermes was a ship.

Jenine/Marty: Could I like do like, can I give like go Hermes go, woo!?

Bee/Polaris: Aw .

Avery/GM: You wanna give Hermes some moral support?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Uh, sure. Go ahead and roll a charisma connect.

Jenine/Marty: Yay.

Zach/Zahn: How are we Doing this? I pulled up the Ship Combat Actions page cause I didn't know how we were roleplaying this.

Avery/GM: So I'm rolling. Pilot checks for each one of the racers and that'll determine turn order. And then based on your role play and kind of your actions that you take in response to the other racers that will determine how this goes.

Bruce/Caden: I find it very hard to believe that no pilot would've had a pie. Just sayin!

Avery/GM: I will say this, there were four teams that you interacted with. There are currently only three teams here.

Chris/Ollie: Pilots are already sitting down anyway

Zach/Zahn: Also, it's also entirely possible that the person in the pilot's chair is not the designated pilot.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. . They're improvising.

Avery/GM: This is also true.

Jenine/Marty: The bench player.

Zach/Zahn: It's one of those, like they're sponsored. They have to be out there. The poor gunner guy who's never been behind the pilot seat is probably the guy in the pilot seat.

Jenine/Marty: I rolled a 10, so that's a, that's a plus one.

Avery/GM: Yep. Okay. That bumps Hermes up to a nine.

Jenine/Marty: Hey!

Bee/Polaris: Let's go.

Jenine/Marty: Let's go.

Avery/GM: Okay, so the initiative order is Professor Infiniti's race.

Jenine/Marty: We need to stay away from that.

Bee/Polaris: Rip

Avery/GM: Hermes.

Bee/Polaris: Yay, Hermes!

Jenine/Marty: Yay Hermes!

Avery/GM: The Assembles sponsored Racer

Bruce/Caden: Boo.

Avery/GM: and the lucky tentacle’s racer. You knocked out Fred's team. Little Fred's team.

Bee/Polaris: Fuck yeah, Fuck that guy.

Zach/Zahn: Oh man. I was kind of hoping that we would accidentally blow up the hoverbike we just traded him.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, true.

Jenine/Marty: Oh Rip!

Avery/GM: I let the dice decide which one you took out, so.

Zach/Zahn: Got it.

Bee/Polaris: Well…

Zach/Zahn: That's fair.but the mystery continues cause you said that nobody knew who his,

Bee/Polaris: Oh True!

Zach/Zahn: Who his pilot was.

Avery/GM: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: The only thing we know about them now is that they have, nevermind, sorry.

(Ambience fades out, race music fades in)

Avery/GM: So you are off to the races. Uhhuh, , Polaris. The spotters go after the shuttles clear. The first asteroid. Okay, so

Zach/Zahn: because the fighters are far faster.

Bee/Polaris: indeed.

Avery/GM: You all take off and see Professor Infinity is actually on his shuttle.

Bee/Polaris: Oh.

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Avery/GM: It's very weird for a sponsor to join their racers in the race. But you see Professor Infinity, two electrodes in hand, electrified, (electricity sounds) like holding them together, laughing maniacally as his Pilotless shuttle takes off ahead of you and pulls ahead, followed closely by Hermes, Marty and Zahn.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: And then the lucky tentacle shuttle, which actually looks like a floating squid, like the octopus. Uh

Zach/Zahn: oh nice!

Avery/GM: With a bunch of tentacles. And it's closing in behind you. (Engine sounds) but it's still lagging behind a bit. And then behind them all is what looks like a large, just like flatbed that's pulling some kind of heavy weight behind it. (Ship noises)

Bee/Polaris: Interesting.

Avery/GM: It's a very weird looking, uh, shuttle compared to all these other ones that are out here. And so you're approaching the first obstacle, which is this junk cloud. It's a cluttered mess of busted up ships, rocks, and other debris. Clearly, this has been where a lot of other ships have fallen a foul early in the race. So there's a couple of ways you could approach this. You could try and shoot some of the debris. You could trust Hermes to pilot through it by himself, or you could try and take controls to do a better job pilot. So we'll start with Professor Infinity.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. I wanna see what Professor Infinity Ship does since we're behind it.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Laurel rolled a 14 for its pilot check.

Bee/Polaris: Jesus Christ

Jenine/Marty: Superstar!

Chris/Ollie: Laurel’s a beast!

Avery/GM: You see this AI pilot ship, it weaves smoothly through every single piece of big debris here, almost as if it were able to scan the entire debris field and find the perfect route through it. Professor Infinity, just cackles as he clears through the debris field, just mwa ha ha ha ha. but you can't hear that because he's in a space suit.

Jenine/Marty: Now I have a question. I can see Professor Infinity. Yes.

Avery/GM: Yep.

Jenine/Marty: Would I be able to transmit thought and make it look like an asteroid is about to hit him? Like, like transmit that thought into (magic sound effect) professor Infiniti's head, making it think that the AI has failed and is about to crash them into an asteroid of making him, uh, have to, uh, take control.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. Hijacking the eyeballs.

Avery/GM: yeah, you could. I believe Professor Infiniti gets to make a mental save for that.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, he does. And, uh, I believe he has to go against my thing.

Avery/GM: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: right? Do I roll something?

Avery/GM: No, no, no, no. It's just whatever your mental save would be.

Chris/Ollie: A battle of the minds.

Avery/GM: He rolled a four, so he fails

Bee/Polaris: sick.

Jenine/Marty: Let's go.

Avery/GM: So Professor Infinity is enjoying the moment real quick of this initial victory. Then all of a sudden you see him throw his electrodes down onto the deck of the shuttle. and they go quiet and still, (electricity discharge) and he runs up to the front of the shuttle and he grabs the controls and you see it kind of start to swerve and swerve and swerve back and forth. (ship swerving sounds) And he basically starts slowing down. The AI slows the shuttle down because, uh, he's putting them both in danger. And you have pulled ahead of Professor Infinity. It is your turn. Marty, since you did transmit thought, I'm gonna say that was your main action.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. I didn't think that was gonna work. Ha ha.

Avery/GM: Brilliant Thinking that was really good. Okay, so it is your turn. Next, let's see. How is your team wanting to approach this asteroid field or this junk field?

Chris/Ollie: Also real quick, uh, about this time, Ollie will is going to, uh, commit a cognition and use split focus and insert himself, uh, digitally into the helmets of both Polaris and, uh, Zahn.

Avery/GM: Okay. You're there.

Bee/Polaris: Sick.

Chris/Ollie: So I reread this real quick. and I didn't realize that it, the amount of minds that I can split my focus into triples with every level.

Jenine/Marty: Oh?

Zach/Zahn: Triples!?

Chris/Ollie: So there's theoretically 81 Ollies right now. I, uh, I had misread that before. So that is, um, uh, so there's 81 of my, of me in the internet out there somewhere right now.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Jesus Christ. They're learning.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, it is only begun.

Avery/GM: Okay, Ultron!

Chris/Ollie: I mean… oh, next level will be 23.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go .

Chris/Ollie: And that's only for one focus, cause each, each additional, uh, focus I put on it times it by 10.or 10 for the first 100 for the third.

Bee/Polaris: Oh wow. We don't need that many Ollies.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, eventually we might. the Legion is here.

Bee/Polaris: True. I mean, I guess when we get like, uh, what is it, a capital cruiser or some of the space station

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we're gonna need a whole crew.

Bee/Polaris: We are gonna need a lot of Ollies

Chris/Ollie: I could just be the crew.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: So yeah, I'm inserting myself into the, uh, into the scene, uh, wherever do you want me to roll initiative?

Avery/GM: No, the only initiatives is the Ship initiative. Oh. So if you wanna take an action, go for it.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, while I'm gonna wait on that, I'm just gonna say hello everyone. I have arrived.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris Types. Uh, capital a a a a a a a h h h h h h h h h. Exclamation point.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Oh, and also like visually on your helmet, my eyes are just like in the bottom.Just doing their usual thing. Looking around

Bee/Polaris: Ollie… Nice.

Zach/Zahn: Nice. Zahn is going to take hold of the, the laser and start trying to shoot out some of the, the stuff too to clear path to make it easier for, uh, to her for Hermes to get through.

Avery/GM: Sure. Go ahead and. Three shoot checks, dexterity, shoot checks.

Zach/Zahn: I'm good at shoot. 10, eight and four.

Avery/GM: Woo-hoo. The four was just barely enough. I put it as a low number, so.

Zach/Zahn: I, I had hoped that the first two would be good enough to to make it better.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you blast three good size chunks of space debris into little tiny dust particles and create a nice, easy path through the field. And that actually what helps you pull ahead of Professor Infinity as you clear this debris field, it's gonna roll two more pilot checks for…

Okay, so you see the lucky tentacle shuttle swirl through this debris cloud and get hit a couple of times by some pretty big, sizable pieces of debris. And you see two little flash points on the, on the tentacles, uh, on the ends of the tentacles. Indicating that something has been destroyed on those, but it has cleared through the cheese whizz or not cheese whizz… The assembles vehicle actually just cuts a path through the same hole that you made as it brings up the rear.

Bee/Polaris: Am I also, is Polaris also moving on the same turn as the other ship?

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah. Once you're introduced, your turn will be on the same turn as the rest of the crew.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. My second question was gonna be if spotters were introduced.

Avery/GM: I was just getting to that

Bee/Polaris: sick.

Avery/GM: Yeah, so you have cleared the first obstacle and you're coming up to the little gate that you have to clear to get. Basically, you have to clear all five checkpoints. You're coming up to the first checkpoint, and because Professor Infinity was delayed, you passed through the ship first and Polaris. You see your docking bay. Open and you are ready to go.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Polaris will wait until the Hermes shuttle passes by and (Shuttle flying sound) he'll, he'll linger around the shuttle.

Avery/GM: Sure. You're piloting kind of close to your shuttle. A females pass by and Professor Infinity's sail through and their spotter comes out. Their spotter is a, a similarly weird looking ship that's basically just like, It's basically shaped like a giant gun.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, cool. Oh, good.

Zach/Zahn: So it's a season, season one optimist prime, right where he is. Just walk a giant walking cannon.

Avery/GM: Basically, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I was thinking just like a big floating nine millimeter.

Avery/GM: That works too. Sure. And then the lucky tentacle passes through and the spotter for their ship comes out and it's just like a tiny two tentacle little squid looking fighter.

Bee/Polaris: Aww. A baby squid.

Avery/GM: And then as the shuttle with assembles passes through, A pretty bulky sized fighter comes out and it is also hauling a container behind it.

Bee/Polaris: Interesting.

Zach/Zahn: Uh-oh.

Bee/Polaris: maybe when they pass by the audience, it releases cheese.

Jenine/Marty: positive thinking, very positive thinking. ,

Avery/GM: and yeah. You are approaching the second asteroid, Polaris. Actually Ollie, you would notice it first on the, on the little layout screen that you see a little, you see a little flashing symbol on the radar that seems to indicate that there was a magnetic minefield ahead.

Jenine/Marty: Hmm?

Chris/Ollie: Ooh. Yeah. Same, same reaction.

Bee/Polaris: Are we.

Avery/GM: Mines of magnets!

Jenine/Marty: mines, not mind. Got it.

Chris/Ollie: Mind field.

Avery/GM: So Yeah. Sorry.

Zach/Zahn: Mind Magnets!

Jenine/Marty: I got real scared. I got real scared there for a second. I'm like uh oh!

Bee/Polaris: psychic Magnets.

Jenine/Marty: Uh oh. They're gonna see that I'm doing telepathy right now. Oops!

Bee/Polaris: question are is aha in first place?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. when Polaris, uh, well, does Ollie inform Polaris since he's the one that, okay, cool.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's not gonna say anything, but he's just gonna ping all of the mines that he scanned on the heads up display.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Sick.

Avery/GM: yeah, you noticed it shortly after, Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Just robots are a little faster than humans.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Okay. Now I have several questions. . Um, first question, is there someone like in close second, or are we pretty decently ahead?

Zach/Zahn: Dr. Infinity’s right behind us.

Avery/GM: Professor Infiniti is a good distance behind you, but yeah, if. That's second place.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.Second question. Spotters are not allowed to attack shuttles, correct?

Avery/GM: Correct. But you may attack other spotters.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. It is specifically written that spotters cannot attack shuttles. Correct?

Avery/GM: (exasperated sigh) You're clever. Yes. That is the explicit way the rule is written.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent. Polaris is gonna say to, uh, Hermes and whoever else is on the shuttle get into second place.

Jenine/Marty: Oh? Ohhh okay.

Bee/Polaris: and he's gonna wait.

Jenine/Marty: I see, I see what's happening.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: Get in a second place. Blue Shell incoming.

Jenine/Marty: Rip to the professor!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna wait until Professor’s shuttle is in front.

Zach/Zahn: That's frankly kind of funny cause my, my plan was to like use the, use the gun to shoot like, . And then with the third one, use the Grapnel launcher to like latch onto a grenade and whip it at something else.

Bee/Polaris: Hey, I gotta, I got you. I got you. That's it. you can still do that to whoever is in third.

Jenine/Marty: but Oh yeah, we can, we still got that. Okay. So yeah, we'll back...

Zach/Zahn: I still wanna do that.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah. We'll back up. , you gotta, you gotta act, you gotta, um, action economy.

Bee/Polaris: so just gonna wait until professors, you know, getting, getting to the field.

Avery/GM: Okay. Does someone communicate that to Ollie or not To Ollie, to Hermes, because Hermes is under the impression that y'all wanna win.

Bee/Polaris: Oh I thought

Jenine/Marty: he’s in chat Hermes can… I’m the only one that’s out of chat.

Avery/GM: Oh, Hermes is, oh, okay.

Bee/Polaris: No, you still have chat. You have a watch.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah.

Avery/GM: Oh, okay. That's fine then. Yeah. Hermes says affirmative. I will slow down. And do you feel the shuttle like, just kind of almost come to a stop?

Bee/Polaris: No… Okay.

Jenine/Marty: make it look, make it look like we're still, um, in the competition a little bit. 2, 2, 2 notches. You know, like how in the Incredibles they go like second place, second place at the end of the movie. That's, that's, that's, that's how Marty’s trying to communicate this right now.

Zach/Zahn: oh, right. Where they're trying to make, have dash, slow down.

Chris/Ollie: dash run slower.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Jenine/Marty: That's what I'm doing. Second place, second place.

Bee/Polaris: don't give up!

Avery/GM: Hermes says, oh, I see we are playing a ruse?

Jenine/Marty: Yes. I cannot believe we're doing this to this small little child.

Avery/GM: Hermes speeds Back up a little bit and you see Professor Infinity who has recovered from his sudden fear of asteroids is just cackling again, just as he passes by you.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent. So when he passes by, I, can I take my action now or are we, are there other things that need to happen?

Avery/GM: go for it. Unless someone else needs to do something before you do what you are gonna do.

Jenine/Marty: I will happily do it again. Do the whole. Scary, scary things to, to the, can I do it to the cheese one? The Krafts… Krafts one, not the Krafts. The assembles.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: The assembles cheese is all the way in fourth place. Like

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Well, I'm scared of, I'm scared of What's up with that?

Bee/Polaris: the, the weird thing.

Zach/Zahn: The hauler?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. I'm a little scared of that. So could I, could I like

Bruce/Caden: you just wanna grate them a little bit?

Jenine/Marty: Could I in the brains of whoever's piloting the, the assembles one? Just make it look like an explosion happened in front of them? (magic sound)

Avery/GM: Yeah, they'll roll their save. How much effort have you committed already today?

Jenine/Marty: so this is, I'm currently committing only on my, uh, I can commit all day with

Avery/GM: Oh, that's right,

Jenine/Marty: telepathy. And I'm just keeping it on telepathy for today cause there's, Things. So I'm only, I've only been doing one, have I? I, and this one is just a thing that I…

Avery/GM: Oh, okay. You're fine.

Jenine/Marty: Two-way communication with a willing target as an instant action when desired. So, yeah.

Avery/GM: And unwilling to just have to make us save.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Well, they rolled a 15.

Jenine/Marty: Dang it.

Bee/Polaris: Well,

Jenine/Marty: oops.

Chris/Ollie: the fortress of the mind.

Jenine/Marty: You just hear Marty go oopsies. And then just like dips back down into the , into the pit.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent.

Jenine/Marty: That's it.

Bee/Polaris: Does anyone else need to do something?

Zach/Zahn: so for Zahn, I actually have a different idea. I wanna do Two things. One is the, the whipping, the mine, and the other is waiting for Polaris to do their thing and then boost the engine. So we go zooming past, uh, professor Infinity.

Bee/Polaris: My thing is to clear a path for you guys.

Zach/Zahn: Perfect.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. So have any of you ever been like in a, a thunderstorm where it's like basically raining side?

Jenine/Marty: I'm sorry, what? It does that?

Bee/Polaris: what? Oh yeah, you're from Cal. Wait, are you from Cali?

Jenine/Marty: Yes. We're eternally in a drought.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, right, right. Okay. So sometimes the thunderstorms and it rains so hard that it rains sideways and the wind is like, the wind's just like super strong and so the rain is like just coming at you. So usually what

Zach/Zahn: I used to live in Kentucky for a little bit, so yeah, I've seen that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Sounds terrifying.

Bee/Polaris: My plan is kind of what you do when you put the umbrella in front of you. So what Polaris wants to do is win. Doc is going past, he's going to fly a little bear underneath the shuttle and then angle his boosters so that he's like going like, Straight through like making a clearing a path.

Avery/GM: Oh my god.

Bee/Polaris: He's pushing him.

Chris/Ollie: You're gonna use him as a battering ram?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, he's pushing him through the mines.

Avery/GM: You're not attacking the shuttle.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my god.

Avery/GM: Okay. This is gonna take the fanciest freaking flying check I've ever seen.

Bee/Polaris: That's fine. I'm a specialist.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: So what is it piloting plus?

Avery/GM: Dexterity and pilot. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: Also, can I assist being, uh, get a little AI assist?

Bee/Polaris: I mean, sure. If you wanna just make it cooler cause I rolled really well.

Chris/Ollie: Oh well if you've got it, then go.

Bee/Polaris: No, no, no. Make it cool. do you wanna assist?

Avery/GM: You can roll Chris. That's fine.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay. Yeah. I, I didn't hear whether it was a,

Avery/GM: Oh sorry, I…

Chris/Ollie: what kind of roll is that?

Avery/GM: Yeah, it'll be a dexterity pilot check

Chris/Ollie: pilot Dex. Okay, well I got a, uh, comes out to a three

Bee/Polaris: Ah.

Chris/Ollie: So my, my skill pales in comparison to the True Master. I’m like trying to help And you're just, Polaris is just like Shut up.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You get the idea of helping and like you're about to be like, according to my calculations, and then Polaris just does it. Polaris Describe this really cool maneuver.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. so first off, I did, uh, because I'm a specialist, I can roll three D-6 and drop the lowest. I rolled two sixes and a four . So that's a total of plus dex 13… oh wait, sorry. No, no, no. Uh, it's actually 15

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna say… oh right.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. 15. Yeah, that's right.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I forgot to add pilot.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my gosh.

Bee/Polaris: So Polaris is gonna wait like when the shuttle slows down cuz Polaris has been hovering by the shuttle. the, the his team's shuttle. When Doc goes past Polaris is going to speed up and get right underneath his shuttle and then angle it upward so it's at a 90 degree angle and he's going to change the direction of his boosters to fly as fast as he can through the minefield to clear a path.

Avery/GM: Yeah, so Professor Infinity rolled a nine for his evasion save. He did not save . So as you do this, you see this vac suited helmeted figure bounce off the shuttle (metal ping) and go flying past you into space (swoosh).

Zach/Zahn: This is why you get mag boots!

Bee/Polaris: He'll be all right.

Chris/Ollie: Should’ve bought the grappling hook.

Avery/GM: And you do see a little flash of light as Professor Infinity is teleported safely, and you do see a little flash of light as professor infinity is teleported to safety. And yeah, you pilot this now Person-less shuttle craft through the minefield. Are you staying with the ship this whole time or do you just back off after you send it into the minefield?

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris is going to give it enough speed to where if he does detach, uh, it'll still sail in the same direction with difficulty to correct itself, assuming it's not covered in magnetic mines.

Avery/GM: Well, that's why I asked because as soon as you kind of back off of it, it goes into this minefield and you just see mine after mine start to get attracted (lock on sound) to it and start blowing it up. (explosions)

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will say on Comms “Follow Me!” to the rest of the crew.

Jenine/Marty: All right!

Avery/GM: so now Professor Infinity has been knocked out of the race.

Bee/Polaris: Yay

Bruce/Caden: Bruce in the audience is clapping .

Bee/Polaris: Aw.

Jenine/Marty: Golf Clap!

Avery/GM: Zahn, You were going to do something after Polaris did that, right?

Zach/Zahn: Yes, if there were any, I wanted to do the two things, the, if there were any, Like remaining mines. I want to grappling hook one, uh, and fling it into, uh, whoever's behind us.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, they are magnetic.

Avery/GM: This is a huge minefield, so it'll, yeah. Yeah. But I will say that, yeah, it's magnetic, so it will get attracted to the nearest metal object.

Jenine/Marty: That's terrifying.

Chris/Ollie: including your grappling hook

Zach/Zahn: My, my grappling hook is also magnetic.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery/GM: So it'll,

Chris/Ollie: so you'll you'll try and let it go and it's just, it'll be like Nope!

Zach/Zahn: Oh, I, I, I, I've modified it so I'm able to detach when I want to.

Bee/Polaris: But will it, will that?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, but will, the mine would detach.

Bee/Polaris: Well, if, if you, the mine attaches the grappling hook and the grappling hook is magnetic. Can you change the polarity of your grappling hook so it's the, the same as the magnet and it'll propel it away from your grappling hook.

Zach/Zahn: I wanna say yes?

Chris/Ollie: That sounds pretty smart. Yes. This is, this is the future, I would say, yeah,

Avery/GM: reverse The polarity is totally a Dr. Who thing. You can reverse the polarity, that's fine.

Bee/Polaris: Sick .

Avery/GM: But if you wanna do this cool thing, I want to see a dexterity shoot check since you're firing this grappling hook

Zach/Zahn: that I can do, buddy. That is… an eight.

Avery/GM: Ooh, you fling the. It doesn't hit the shuttle behind you. It actually flings upwards and hits the little squid fighter. (explosion)

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Avery/GM: For the lucky tentacle.

Bee/Polaris: The Squid.

Avery/GM: And it's just one, so it just says one D eight damage. Seven damage takes a big chunk out of the Squid fighter, but it's still flying.

Bee/Polaris: Sick.

Avery/GM: And then flashback, oh, go ahead.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, I was gonna say, and then I wanted to do an int. Intelligence fixed check to boost our engines for one wrap so we could like,

Avery/GM: yeah, go ahead.

Zach/Zahn: Zoom into the lead.

Avery/GM: Go ahead.

Zach/Zahn: 11.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah, we were able to boost the engines and you get a sizable lead in front of the Lucky tentacle.

Bee/Polaris: Oh RIP Laurel.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Oops.

Bee/Polaris: Oops.

Zach/Zahn: I was trying to remember its name This whole time.

(Race music fades out, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: we flash back to the private booth of the Winston’s Ollie you are splitting your focus, but you are still able to hear the conversation going on

around you. And you hear Avi speak up and she says, so Violet, you were saying something about one of our cousins? What happened? You said something dreadful happened.

Avery/GM: And Violet says yes. We received disturbing footage of his hunting grounds being blown up by a random band of strangers. And actually the reason I came here is I heard that a ship matching the description of the ship in that footage had docked here.

Avery/GM: And I have some of my men poking around the docking bay, uh, trying to find it.

Avery/GM: And Bruce, you see two big, burly looking republic soldiers walking kind of through the crowd and you overhear them saying, yeah, we found the ship. It's in docking Bay 12. We're trying to do a trace on who exactly is on that ship

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

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

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Production. Intro and Outro produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks include: Cyberpunk Bar, Cyberpunk City, Car Chase, Starbase Omega, and Orbital promenade.

Be sure to check us out @FurthestPod on Twitter and Tumblr. We’ll be back on the 15th with our next episode!

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Interlude - Setting the Trap

Narrator: Welcome to a special Interlude episode for Beyond the Furthest Stars. The following scene takes place on the far off Hegemony world of Tartarus. Crius and Hyperion, two member’s of the Hegemony Council of 12, report to The Eternal One on the progress of the hunt for Hermes. This takes place a couple of days before the Big Race on Bragos. Enjoy!

The Eternal One: Crius… Hyperion… Report.

Crius: Yes, my lord. I have an update from my one of my agents on matters relating to the Terrans.

Hyperion: and I have just completed my interrogation of Captain Celia and Admiral Vos.

The Eternal One: Crius, Speak!

Crius: One of our agents embedded in the Crimson Chaos pirate crew has identified a ship that appears to have originated from Terran space.

The Eternal One: Is it operational?

Crius: No, my lord. The ship apparently showed up in the grave yard, near the base of the pirates. Our agents were able to convince Captain

Blitz that it was nothing special. They sent a recording of the S.O.S message the ship was broadcasting.

The Eternal One: Have you had it translated?

Crius: Yes, my lord. It is a bit jumbled up, but it is clear that this ship has been badly damaged. No life signs were detected on board. Shall I have our agents destroy the ship?

The Eternal One: Yes. We cannot allow knowledge about the Terrans to be discovered yet, especially by some pirate scum. Hyperion, you have information from the survivors of The Eos?

Hyperion: Yes lord. After our… interrogation of Captain Celia and Admiral Vos, intelligence indicates that before the ship was attacked by the Independent Systems Armada, it interdicted a ship operated by an associate of the Crimson Chaos pirates.

The Eternal One: The same pirates you spoke of, Crius?

Crius: Yes, your excellency. Captain Celia stated that the ship escaped the destruction of The Eos. According to my agents embedded in the pirate crew, this vessel is known as the Minos. The captain, Captain Byram, perished in the prison section of The Eos.

The Eternal One: So who stole it? The same people that took the ship AI and replaced it with that… mockery?

Hyperion: We suspect the thief was among those that escaped. Ship logs indicate that approximately 3 ship contractors and a service bot accompanied the thief and escaped just before The Eos’ destruction.

The Eternal One: Crius, you have agents with this pirate crew. Have they been able to track down where this ship of theirs has gone to?

Crius: I have, my lord. The ship was tracked at first to an unregistered planetary system a short jump from the last coordinates of The Eos. After that, it jumped to a Republic intelligence base and then to the

Calypso system. Records indicate that the system has been devoid of life for 200 years.

The Eternal One: Crius… are you telling me the Republic has access to Hermes?

Crius: No my lord. Not at all! The data from the back up crystal indicates that it was still connected to a ship’s system the entire time it was at the Republic base.

The Eternal One: Hmm, a strange but fortunate turn of events.

Hyperion: However, my lord, I feel it important to tell you that once the ship arrived in the Calypso system it was removed from the ship and interfaced with another AI. Additionally, it appears a Terran system was also utilized during this interface.

Crius: This is only conjecture, my lord. The analysis from the back-up crystal could be faulty of course.

The Eternal One: No… No I don’t believe it is. Crius, dispatch agents to the Calypso system and have them destroy everything there.

Hyperion: If I may, my lord, I have more information you may find useful.

The Eternal One: Speak quickly, Hyperion. My patience shrinks the more you.

Hyperion: The Crimson Chaos pirates did attempt to take their ship back. Reports from Crius’ agents indicate that the pirates and the thieves became allies of a sort. The agents then left some probes in the system to monitor any communications into or out of the system, in hopes of finding out where the thieves would go next.

The Eternal One: hmm… We could use this our advantage. Crius, instead of destroying that Terran ship, let’s play a more subtle game. You say Hermes interacted with a Terran based system?

Crius: That is correct, as far as I can tell.

The Eternal One: Calculating… Analysis of variables complete. Most probable scenario determined.

Crius… Hyperion… This is what you will do. Keep the Terran ship under CLOSE observation. Your agents will encode the distress signal with the translation we obtained and broadcast it within the radius of the crash site. This should stir up enough noise to catch the attention of whoever or whatever is operating out of the Calypso system. You’ll make sure that this damaged ship is tracked. Whoever this mysterious party is that has put a dent in our plans will certainly be drawn to the mystery this ship presents. We will then wait for the right opportunity to make or move. Rhea is meeting with our contact on Calydon soon. I am sure they will deliver on that AI hunter we requested.

Crius and Hyperion together: Yes, Eternal One. Your will shall be done! All hail Tartarus. All Hail The Eternal One.

The Eternal One: Now… Go.

***** Footsteps leaving the room *****

Crius: Of course, The Eternal One has to involve Rhea… She always seems one step ahead of me.

Hyperion: Yes, she certainly does. Perhaps its time to implement our plan?

Crius: No, not yet. Let’s see where this goes. We need all 12 of us for our Lord’s plans to come to fruition. But soon, Hyperion. Soon…

Episode 12 - Seeking a Sponsor!

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 12 of Beyond the Furhtest Stars

(Intro Music plays, then fades out, Ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: Okay, so we will switch over to Marty and Polaris. You're trying to find a sponsor.

Jenine/Marty: Where should we go first?

Bee/Polaris: I was just about to ask you that. What was, okay, the sponsors were big Fred, Doc, the Madden scientist, whose name I forgot, and the people that own the casino, right?

Jenine/Marty: Yes, there's the polycule, there’s Dex who owns the Sapphire, Big Fwed And that, that is how I put it in my notes.

Bee/Polaris: Big Fwed? Okay.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, because, cause what Fred gives Fred gives off the Fwed energy. You know?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I'm changing my notes to reflect that as well.

Jenine/Marty: just a big cuddly bear. Anyway you guys seem very interested in Professor Infinity. Should we go there?

Zach/Zahn: Professor Infinity Sounds fun and interesting. Not at all. Suspicious.

Jenine/Marty: Doesn’t sound suspicious!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris gives a thumbs up in between tossing the light saber, like a, like a baton in the air.

Jenine/Marty: Cool, cool, cool. Great. We're going to Professor Infinity.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So you are approaching Professor Infinity's, robot Emporium. You see some like flashes coming from inside through the windows. And there's like some smoke kind of like permeates the air inside as you get

closer and the doors open with a little (Chime Noise) And as you. Enter, you hear this maniacal laughter coming from within just . It's alive. It's alive!

Bee/Polaris: I immediately hide behind Polaris

Avery/GM: and there is this average height person with a big white lab coat and dark goggles over his eyes. And he has this greenish blue skin and wild frazzled hair that sticks straight up out of his head.

And he's holding like two sparking electrodes against a robot that is on like an operating table. (electricity noise) And he looks up and he pulls the electrodes off of the robot and he sets them down and he is like, I'll be with you in just a minute. And he shocks the robot again (electricity noise) and then sets the the electrodes down and says “Alright Lewis”

Jenine/Marty: What?

Avery/GM: That should be it. You are good to go. And this little robot pops up on its wheel. It's like a little unicycle robot.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And it gives Professor Infinity a big thumbs up and kind of just rides off the operating table and out the door past you. And Professor Infinity is like, Welcome, welcome, welcome to My Robot Emporium. How can I help you today?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just looks down at Marty and then looks back up at the professor and says, curious, what's the deal with the shuttle?

Jenine/Marty: I step from behind Polaris and just go, oh clarification. We, we are looking currently for sponsors, but we would like to know a little bit more about the shuttle if you could tell us a little bit more about it?

Avery/GM: Finally, someone's interested in trying out my new experiment. Yes. This shuttle that I've designed is a fully autonomous shuttle. It's controlled by an AI that is designed only to do one thing, and that's win the race no matter what. All the racers have to do is be on the shuttle. They don't have to do anything else. They don't have to pilot it, they don't have to fight anyone off the shuttle does it. Caveat is that it might also try and attack the people on the shuttle.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: Yeah. But all experiments require testing to get all the bugs out.

Jenine/Marty: Marty's jaw just drops.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like is scratching his head with the, well, his helmet with the, the back end of the The Not Light Saber and just says, and you didn't try it out outside of the race?

Avery/GM: No, no. No. Experimentation only matters in the exact circumstances that it's gonna be participating in, Right?

Bee/Polaris: Where did you get your degree again?

Avery/GM: I'm sorry, Degree?

Bee/Polaris: Yep. Polaris looks down at Marty.

Jenine/Marty: Oh okay. What is the AI's name?

Avery/GM: Oh, I haven't named this AI yet, but I'm sure it will answer to whatever you want to call.

Jenine/Marty: Hmm.

Bee/Polaris: Did you ask?

Jenine/Marty: Hmm?

Avery/GM: I have not. Would you like me to go back and ask real quick?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that'd be nice.

Avery/GM: Sure. Does anyone have a name preference?

Jenine/Marty: I didn't know he'd be naming an AI today.

Bee/Polaris: Laurel.

Avery/GM: Laurel.

Jenine/Marty: Laurel.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Cause you know Laurel leaves symbolizing, you know, victory and you know Laurel.

Avery/GM: We’ll go with Laurel. That's fine. So Professor Infinity dips back behind like this curtain behind his little counter and you hear a, a metal thump. Like, he's like turning something on or like trying to get someone's attention or something. And you hear it from behind the curtain. Hey, what, what, what do we call you? I keep calling you AI, but obviously you have a name. So what name should I be calling you? and you hear “I would prefer it if you would call me Laurel.”

Bee/Polaris: Sick.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, heart.

Avery/GM: And he steps back from behind the curtain and he's just like Laurel. The AI's name is Laurel.

Bee/Polaris: Real quick while he's back there Polaris would like stand in front of Marty and like put his hand that's on either of her shoulders and like get at eye level with both the swords still on and say, how much do you trust this man with your life?

Jenine/Marty: Not a lot, but if you guys want to do the experimental thing, we can totally do that.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will send a text in the group chat. Then once again, stand in front of Marty.

Avery/GM: You are not locked in by the way.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: This is just…

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna get answers from the rest of the crew. Cause he has been live streaming this.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. So Zahn doesn't like the idea of it possibly trying to kill us.

Jenine/Marty: That's valid.

Zach/Zahn: That's a big that's a big,

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

Zach/Zahn: And while I think, while Zach thinks it would be cool to see what it does, I kind of want to try the role playing of us doing the race and not us fighting the racer.

Avery/GM:

Bee/Polaris: Fighting the ship.

Jenine/Marty: You mean fighting the ship? Yeah. Fighting the ship. Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Fighting the ship that we're on instead of us fighting everyone else.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, could we, is it possible to put Herms in the ship with it and give him the express like purpose to like not have the ship kill you guys?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. What if they did a tag team?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Can two AI inhabit the same thing?

Caden/Bruce: Do we trust Hermes as a babysitter?

Jenine/Marty: Well, we're also gonna be in there, so like, it'll be like, there's gonna be the per, there's, there's the AI that thinks it's babysitting, and then there's the two. The two squishies that are gonna be in there being like, okay, we're at the actual babysitters and we're gonna make sure you two don't fight with each other.

Bee/Polaris: Ah, cross babysitting.

Avery/GM: Yes. Are there supposed to be three people on the shuttle?

Bee/Polaris: Minimum of two.

Jenine/Marty: Minimum of two.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, okay.

Jenine/Marty: Because the third person is running around trying not to get shot at and going through the (makes vroom noise).

Bee/Polaris: That's me.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha.

Avery/GM: Yeah, basically the shuttle needs at least one pilot and one person to protect the pilot, and then the spotter is basically protecting both people on the shuttle from all the other hazards on the racetrack.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, so Zahn is team No Laurel?

Zach/Zahn: Currently. He, he can't be convinced and he can't also be outvoted . So, cause I'm not, I am not totally against it. But Zahn would be.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will set up like a Twitter poll in chat for people to vote.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Ollie will reply: Unknown variable with the slanted mouth emoji.

Jenine/Marty: Don't put this on Marty! Marty's a people pleaser!

Bee/Polaris: Bruce gets a say too, even though Bruce isn't racing

Caden/Bruce: well, I feel like Bruce, Bruce would rather you guys not, not die. So the, the possibility that Laurel would try and kill you. I feel like Bruce would agree with the other two and be like, Maybe not.

Jenine/Marty: Cool.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: The question is though, how would Laurel try and kill us without trying to kill itself?

Jenine/Marty: Well, that's the thing. Doc doesn't… profe… quote unquote, professor does not know the limits. This is gonna be Laurel's, I'm assuming, first time out.

Avery/GM: Mm-hmm. .

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Considering how herms reacted to shooting that plasma gun, Another baby ais maybe.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: I, I'd like to, but I,

Bee/Polaris: okay, cool. So it's decided No Laurel.No. Okay.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah. Sorry. Just I'd like to, but I'm, I'm with Zach on the, like, I want the, it's to be our crew with no extra help.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, alright. So he gets back and tells us Laurel's name, Yeah?

Avery/GM: You hear. Laurel say that they wanna be called Laurel

Bee/Polaris: sick.

Avery/GM: Professor Infinity has not quite stepped back behind the curtain yet.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: now it'd be a very good time to leave.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna wait.

Jenine/Marty: Be Polite.

Avery/GM: Okay. And then, yeah, he pops out and says the AI would like to be called Laurel. And don't worry, they're not dangerous at all. They just might not have a good feeling yet for who is an enemy and who is a friendly

Bee/Polaris: Polaris nods twice and then walks out the door.

Jenine/Marty: Oh… Well, Translation: Thank you for introducing us to Laurel. We're we, we, I think we're gonna pass. Thank you for your time. Professor

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is holding the door for Marty

Jenine/Marty: She just skirt…. Shuffles out.

Avery/GM: No one ever wants to take out Laurel. And then you see him pick up the electrodes again and start playing with them.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: Okay, so you have

Jenine/Marty: crossing that off the list!

Bee/Polaris: Yup!

Jenine/Marty: What do we think about the, the polycule?

Bee/Polaris: Question mark Emoji on Polaris’ Visor.

Jenine/Marty: Polycule over… the polycule at the lucky tentacle. I had, I caught three of their names. I did not get the fourth one. I got Terry, Kerry

Avery/GM: Terry. Kerry Mary and Larry.

Bee/Polaris: Larry.

Jenine/Marty: Got it. Do we wanna go there or do we wanna go to Big Fred? Cause kind of know Big Fred.

Bee/Polaris: Let's see what the, the -arry’s are about. Okay.

Avery/GM: Oh, the air I got, I got it. It took me a minute.

Jenine/Marty: I got it too. I got it too.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So you head over to the Lucky Tentacle, Ollie, while this has been going on, you have been walking arm in arm with Avi Winston and she has been constantly talking about all of her family members and how, you know, she doesn't get back to Olympia much these days.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. Perfect.

Avery/GM: She's thinking about heading back after this next race, maybe. And then she asks you, so what about you? Do robots have family? Do you have companions? You said you have a team of racers. Are they good friends of yours?

Chris/Ollie: So while she's been saying that Ollie's been cataloging any information you can scrounge about the Winstons and also what, like manufacturing corporation would've made the robots for the Hegemony ship there.

Avery/GM: There's lots of different corporations. Your current chassis is, let me look at my list of corporations here.

Chris/Ollie: It's all good.

Avery/GM: Your chassis is made by Invincible Corporation. They brag that their robots are nearly indestructible.

Bee/Polaris: I'll be the judge of that!

Avery/GM: nearly indestructible. Asterisk limits and exclusions apply.

Chris/Ollie: limits and exclusions: everything. Okay. Well then he's gonna, You know, his whole life story as, as you know, well, I started my existence at a Invincible Corporation manufacturing plant as the model you see before you opt max 11 E and then being shipped in a crate, knowing only blackness for much time. I then worked eternally and tirelessly until one day I. The ship blew up. So me and my friends have been just running from planet to planet.

Avery/GM: Oh, that's very space pirate of you. You lead such an interesting life. Well come, let's go into the Winston Family booth and you can meet some of my cousins. They'll love to meet you. I swear.

Zach/Zahn: Uh-oh.

Bee/Polaris: Fuck dude. Shit. Fuck

Zach/Zahn: Are these first cousins? I hope they're only first cousins.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris Text’s and chat to Ollie. Ask if they've all been together, traveling together?

Chris/Ollie: Hold on cause it's still like three hours, right? Like little time has passed.

Avery/GM: It's about an hour.

Chris/Ollie: About an hour.

Avery/GM: She didn't go straight to the booth. She kinda wandered around.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: You know,

Zach/Zahn: talked about herself, you know, you know how it is.

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm. parasol in hand, you know, walk amongst the garden.

Chris/Ollie: So Ollie's gonna allow that text, the ping to audibly play and he's going to, you know, un-focus for a second and say, my apologies, my team requires quick repairs before the match. I have to take my leave, but I will return before it starts.

Bee/Polaris: sick.

Avery/GM: She takes her hand from you and she's like, oh, I must admit, I've never been stood up right outside my own private booth before. That's a new experience. Okay, that's fine. But you're not gonna back out of our little bet are you?

Chris/Ollie: I wouldn't dream of it.

Bee/Polaris: It's funny cause you can't dream

Chris/Ollie: Got him!

Zach/Zahn: except for that one time that he did.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, that's right. I gotta remember to look up some info on that.

Avery/GM: The door opens into her private booth and she quickly takes her leave of you.

Chris/Ollie: So Ollie's going to with an hour left. Can I get those drones up and running?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: Have you picked your fittings?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I got you know, some pretty standard fittings. I'm gonna fix up the stalker drones. Here, I'll just message you what I put on.

Avery/GM: Okay. Did you put him on your character sheet in roll20?

Chris/Ollie: No, I didn't, haven't done that yet. I'll do that later.

Avery/GM: Okay, no worries.

Chris/Ollie: But yeah, he's gonna get those fixed up. And while on the ship he's going to carve his core before it's too late. I do not know how long that'll take, but I think it's a fix roll.

Avery/GM: Yes. Intelligence fix.

Chris/Ollie: Okay and just in case, I wanna shave like a, just like a tiny piece of off the top so it doesn't even look like it's been cut. It'll be like a 1% 99% cut.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh. You're really… Okay. So that's like if you, if you're leaving like a little shred on the ship.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I'm gonna put it in the companion. That's fixed up on the ship.

Avery/GM: Okay. What's the companion bot look like? Is it humanoid or is it animal?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, actually, yeah. Let's do animal. It'll be a puppy. A little robot puppy.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go!

Zach/Zahn: Oh my gosh,

Avery/GM: yes.

Jenine/Marty: Yes!

Bee/Polaris: What kind?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, it's gotta be a golden retriever. I mean, classic. the pet of the future.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, so we're going on the ship with a dog? We're entering the race with a dog as our crew mate? Nice.

Chris/Ollie: No, no. The dog’s just my backup.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: That's if Ollie gets destroyed as he currently is.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. Gotcha, gotcha.

Chris/Ollie: So I got 13.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. Easily done. .

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Is there a spare light saber on the ship? Those make it really easy

Avery/GM:you could probably

Bee/Polaris: Polaris has both of his in his hands currently still. He has not turned them off.

Avery/GM: I Think Zahn is currently doing tinkering, so I'm sure you could just walk up and be like, could you cut this? And Yeah. Wouldn't be a problem. But yeah, either way you're able to cut it, no problem, no complications.

Chris/Ollie: Right on and got the drones working. Well pretty much gonna ask, is there anything anyone needs me to help? I imagine everyone's pretty butt hurt at me for betting the ship. So

Bee/Polaris: Nah, Polaris doesn't care.

Chris/Ollie: as long as it's not Polaris's ship.

Bee/Polaris: It's not Polaris's ship.

Chris/Ollie: No, the, as long as I don't end up betting your ship.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, you can't bet Polaris's ship.

Chris/Ollie: Impossible. Impossible. So Bruce hasn't returned. Are there any puffs on the ship?

Bee/Polaris: are you gonna give it to Avi?

Chris/Ollie: I mean, Ollie doesn't really know anything about intestinal distress, so all of that flew over his head. He just thinks they're amazing Bean puffs.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce would've taken them all with him, unfortunately.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: That, or if he did leave some, there would be like an explicit note that just says, do not eat!

Bee/Polaris: Dang. A perfect opportunity to take out more of the Winston's. Oh,

Chris/Ollie: also what guns do we have in the armor? We have an armory. Well, we've collected guns. I don't think we have any individual inventory.

Avery/GM: You would've had whatever you get for starting equipment, Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: yeah. I got my starting stuff.

Avery/GM: but all Winston's weapons were destroyed. There was a weapon armory thing in the ship when you first got there. You didn't really search it, but I'd say if you go searching now,

Chris/Ollie: oh,

Avery/GM: you probably find a couple basic laser pistols and a thermal pistol as well, and a couple of stun batons. Sounds like we need to get more weapons. I don't know. Y'all are doing great on this No weapon run that you've been doing.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we’re on a pacifist run.

Bee/Polaris: I wouldn't say pacifist.

Zach/Zahn: I don’t know about pacifist, Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Also, We're not allowed to have shooty shoot guns on this planet, right?

Zach/Zahn: On the planet, yeah.

Avery/GM: This is true.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that is true. However activated laser blades are totally fine cause no officer of the loss walked up to Polaris and said stop.

Jenine/Marty: well obvi!

Chris/Ollie: Does that restriction hold for the race?

Avery/GM: No, because the race is not contained inside of the atmospheric bubbles that are on this asteroid.

Chris/Ollie: Okay Perfect. So Ollie will equip one thermal pistol and one laser pistol to the stalker drones with their gun fitting.

Zach/Zahn: Does everybody have Vacsuits by the way?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: I don't think I do.

Caden/Bruce: I don’t think Bruce does Either.

Jenine/Marty: When I say squishy, I say squishy.

Avery/GM: That's okay. They would supply Vacsuits if required for whomever. Gotcha. Ends up sponsoring you. Mm-hmm. noise. Speaking of sponsor Marty and Polaris, you're still on the hunt for a sponsor.

Bee/Polaris: to the Polycule!

Jenine/Marty: To the polycule!

Avery/GM: You walk into the Lucky Tentacle Casino and there are four of these tentacled aliens that I have called Nokeloids. They're basically octopus looking, kind of like, if you've ever seen Futurama or Simpsons the green aliens that have like a little glass bubble on their head and then a bunch of tentacles yeah, that's the, I'm thinking of the Simpsons.

Avery/GM: Anyway, they are sitting there on the casino floor basically laughing up a storm, having a good time, and they're all wearing name tags with their name on it. Terry, Carrie, Mary, and Larry. Terry is purple in color.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, there are four.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. Polycule.

Avery/GM: Terry is purple in color. Carrie is blue. Mary is red. And Larry is green and they are engaged in a lively conversation when you walk up and one of them turns to you and just says, welcome, welcome to the Lucky Tentacle. Are you, are you here to gamble?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris looks down at Marty and then just looks back up at them and says, no,

Jenine/Marty: we are actually here to not like play here, but like we are thinking we are A team that is looking for a sponsor for the races, and we saw that you guys are looking to sponsor a team?

Avery/GM: Larry walks up to you, Marty, and leans down and sticks his big eye just right in front of you and is looking you up and down and is just like, Hmm, you don't look like much of a racer. Have you ever raced before?

Bee/Polaris: like in this particular race?

Avery/GM: Any races. Have you, are you a pilot?

Bee/Polaris: I'm the pilot. I pilot.

Avery/GM: Oh, excellent. Okay. So how, how many years have you been flying ships?

Bee/Polaris: My life. My whole life.

Avery/GM: Wow. And what about you? Human?

Jenine/Marty: Ah, yes. Well, I'm more of the support type. I'm here to help out my team as much as possible. I also kind of translate sometimes. And gives a big smile.

Avery/GM: Carrie saunters up and is just like, oh, come on Larry. Give them a chance. You know, it can't go anywhere than the last racers we sponsored.

Jenine/Marty: What, what happened to the last racers?

Avery/GM: Well, this was before the Assembles corporations started sponsoring, but the last racers that we hired sort of crashed our shuttle into their spotter right at the front of the race.

Jenine/Marty: Oh. Mm-hmm.

Zach/Zahn: Oh God.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Didn't even make it, you know, a hundred yards.

Bee/Polaris: So to Polaris, that sounds like it was a problem with the shuttle and not necessarily the, the people piloting the shuttle.

Zach/Zahn: I don't know. What were the qualifications of the people they quote unquote hired? Cause you guys are seeking them out, whereas these other people were hired. These other people could have been bums on the street.

Bee/Polaris: Right. Polaris will just tilt his head and say, were they unskilled pilots?

Avery/GM: Oh, absolutely.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Bee/Polaris: Cool. Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: I mean, no skilled pilot would crash right at the start of the race.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: That some scary foreshadowing.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: It'll all be fine, I promise.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just kinda like slowly nods at that.

Avery/GM: I will say our new shuttle is top of the line.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. How top of the line.

Avery/GM: It's not fully autonomous, like that death trap that Professor Infinity's been pushing on people. But it's very fast. Very fast. We may have installed a spike drive on it just in case.

Zach/Zahn: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is still live streaming. Are there any comments from the other crew?

Jenine/Marty: yeah, what’s in the chat? how's the chat reacting?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn snaps up from working on the the grappling launcher. Like the fuck, who puts a spike drive on a mini open cockpit shuttle?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Also, you have to be like, decently skilled in piloting, you have to at least have some skill in piloting to, to handle a spike drive.

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

Avery/GM: I'm just giving you ways to cheat if you want .

Bee/Polaris: Thanks. Thank you.

Avery/GM: With substantial risk, you know,

Zach/Zahn: to cheat and die

Avery/GM: some risk and some reward, you know?

Bee/Polaris: I see. Gotcha. Okay. So we have a few ways to cheat. Gotcha. Okay. Hmm. Considering no one else can really pilot a spike drive can, I mean, can Hermes pilot a spike drive? Yeah. Hermes can pilot a spike drive, right? Yeah. He was a ship.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: He is a ship

Avery/GM: for all intents and purposes. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. What I mean, how's the rest of the crew feeling about that? Having a spike drive on the shuttle? Who is on the shuttle actually?

Avery/GM: I think it's Marty and Zahn.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. All right.

Avery/GM: And whatever drones Ollie puts with y'all, I think.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Is Bruce gonna join the race or is Bruce just gonna watch from the stands?

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce feels like he'd just get in the.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Avery/GM: Oh.

Caden/Bruce: I think Bruce is more just gonna be on the stands, but I feel like also Bruce is just kind of like feeling a little bit guilty.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, because of the the bean tarts?

Jenine/Marty: Because of the beans!?

Caden/Bruce: yeah. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: No, it's revenge from Jamie.

Jenine/Marty: No, you're fine.

Bee/Polaris: Jamie sucks. we hate Jamie. All my homies hate Jamie.

Zach/Zahn: Anyone who knows anything about good food hates Jamie.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bee/Polaris: I really hope there's no listener named Jamie. I'm sorry. Any possible Jamie's.

Caden/Bruce: Unless it's Chef Jamie, in which case we do hate you.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. If your name is Jamie and you're a chef, we hate you.

Jenine/Marty: Go away.

Bee/Polaris: You should be nicer to lizard people.

Avery/GM: Terry's just like, so what'll it be? you crazy Kids wanna take a chance with us as your sponsor?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is deferring to the chat. what does chat say?

Avery/GM: You can also go talk to big Fred, As an option.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Hmm. What could we put a pin in this cause we're still, still kind of new at this and trying to like have our options open. You guys, y'all, y'all seem like a really nice group that we would potentially like to work with, if that's okay?

Avery/GM: Oh sure. We'll be here. But if someone picks us up as their sponsor before you get back, then nothing I can do about. Can't sponsor two teams.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, totally understandable. Okay, bye .

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris walks away. once there's that like silent pause, pull just turns around and walks away.

Avery/GM: Okay, so one more sponsor and then we'll make a decision.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: and then get to the race. That way we can do some actual racing this session.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah. We speed walk to Fred’s?

Jenine/Marty: Big Fred!

Avery/GM: You walk in and Fred is noticeably a lot more dejected looking than he was just a few hours ago. You can see that he's taken like paper triangles and he's like flicking them over. A little like goal post.

Bee/Polaris: Aw, he’s playing Sad Football!

Avery/GM: Sad football. That's right. Yep.

Jenine/Marty: Who do we need to fight? I will fight for this, for this, for this big Fred. What's up?

Bee/Polaris: Does Marty say that out loud?

Jenine/Marty: No!

Bee/Polaris: When we walk into the shop? Okay.

Jenine/Marty: That's what… the face that Marty is making is that face ready to like throw hands.

Bee/Polaris: This is the man that sold me the laser blades, yes?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris walks into the shop waving the laser blades like, like waving at him, and then sees that he's dejected and then puts the laser really down at his side still on And looks over at Marty.

Jenine/Marty: Could I try and turn off the laser? Cause that is near Marty's face now.

Bee/Polaris: I mean like in the, in the like when Polaris put his hands on Marty's shoulder, he was still holding the laser blades and both of them were on. So , he is not turned these off at all!

Jenine/Marty: why not? I just go boop!

Avery/GM: Big Fred looks up you and is like, oh great… Did you come for a refund? Are they not meeting your expectations just like everything else I do I guess.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like does the thing where you like hold the thing in your hands away from the person and he just says, no, these are mine.

Avery/GM: Oh, well that's good news. I guess. What can I do for you?

Bee/Polaris: What happened?

Avery/GM: Oh, just, you know, my older brother. It was just being such a jerk.

Bee/Polaris: How so?

Avery/GM: He's just saying that I'll never win a race. You know, been trying for five years and just, you know, no one ever wins. You know, before assembles it was always little Fred and his super secret racer that no one knows the identity of was always the winner, and it was just such a bummer. And I, I thought with assembles taking over the sponsorship. I don't know. I might have a better chance, but it just still hasn't happened.

Bee/Polaris: Well, we were planning on winning and we need a sponsor, so…

Avery/GM: oh, you, you don't want me as a sponsor, I'll, I'll probably just drag you down.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris looks over at Marty.

Jenine/Marty: I text in chat: We are playing for him.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris does a thumbs up in chat and also on his visor.

Zach/Zahn: You get no disagreements from Zahn.

Jenine/Marty: Well, big Fred, We, let's, let's prove your brother wrong!?

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll a Charisma Connect check or a Wisdom Connect check.

Jenine/Marty: These are my favorite rolls. I love doing these. Watch these be like snake eyes, that would suck. Oh, that was a, that, that rolled for too long. It's okay. That is going to be a 10.

Avery/GM: A 10. Sure. He looks up to you and he's just like, you'd, you'd really risk your reputations racing with someone like me?

Bee/Polaris: We don't stay here. We don't have reputations.

Jenine/Marty: We don't have one.

Avery/GM: Oh, well, you know, I mean, If you're sure. I mean, I know Professor Infinity's got like super cool, you know, experimental racer.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, it's terrifying.

Bee/Polaris: It's a death trap.

Jenine/Marty: It's terrifying. She, oh, she's Laurel. They're they, Laurel seems like an great AI to work with. They are very terrifying.

Avery/GM: Well, and then, you know, Terry, Carrie, Mary, and Larry, they all have some sort of, Super cool thing up there Sleeve this time around and

Jenine/Marty: Yeah…

Avery/GM: I don't know if you're sure. I'd really appreciate it

Bee/Polaris: Thumbs up!

Jenine/Marty: Thumbs up. Big smile.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris doesn’t do a thumbs up. The, the laser blade that Marty turned off, he holds it out and turns it on.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, pulls a BB-8 where the where the little torch comes out and sticks up?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. Well, do you have your own fighter? I don't have a fighter,

Bee/Polaris: yes.

Avery/GM: Okay. I do have a shuttle. It's nothing special, but it'll hopefully get the job done. It's got some really good shields on it.

Bee/Polaris: Perfect.

Avery/GM: It could take a beating before, you know, it blows up or anything.

Bee/Polaris: Perfect.

Avery/GM: Cool. Well then, I'll meet you with the stuff down in the docking bay for the ships in a couple hours.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Avery/GM: Thanks. You hear the music shut off from the other side of the wall,

Bee/Polaris: oh boy

Jenine/Marty: Oh

Avery/GM: and you hear a voice come from behind the curtain and it's just like, so did you find that he get some on a race fo you, you a big dummy or are you gonna pack it in?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris looks at Marty and looks at his laser blade and then looks back at Marty.

Jenine/Marty: I put the laser blade down.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris slowly puts it down. He doesn't turn it off, but he slowly puts it down.

Avery/GM: And big Fred excuses himself, and then walks behind the curtain and you hear him and little Fred kind of start to argue and bicker a little bit like brotherly argue, you know, the way siblings do when they're teasing each other, not like mean bullying or anything.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. All right. Okay. So it's, it's teasing. Okay, cool, cool. It's not bullying it's teasing.

Jenine/Marty: It's, it's like banter.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's, it's the sibling fighting.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah yeah yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Cool. Cool, cool. Good, good, good.

Jenine/Marty: Alright, cool.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Sweet. Polaris was fully prepared to walk behind the curtain.

Jenine/Marty: it's cool. I was about, I was about ready to do some stuff too.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Sick. Cool. Glad we're on the same page. Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Somebody about get a fucking beat down.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I was debating on whether or not Polaris would ask I Marty or Big Fred how at attached to his brother he is . Cause Polaris has no concept of siblings, so…

Avery/GM: oh yeah, that's true.

Bee/Polaris: Oh goodness. All right, cool. We gotta sponsor.

Jenine/Marty: We gotta sponsor.

(Ambience fades out, intro music plays then fades down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Product. Be sure to follow us on twitter: @Furthest Pod. 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. Tracks used include: Cyberpunk City, Orbital promenade, and Cyberpunk bar. We’ll be back in 2 weeks with the next episode of our show.

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(outro music fades back up and then plays out)

Episode 11 - High Stakes, High Rewards!

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 11 of Beyond the Furthest Stars. A Quick Trigger Warning: This episode contains brief mentions of gambling. If you need to skip those sections, the time stamps are in the description of the episode. Now let’s get to the action!

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

Avery/GM: Where we last left off, in case anyone forgot, Ollie had decided to try his luck, uh slash cheat at Blackjack at the Lucky Tentacle Casino, and you were doing pretty well winning some of your credits and suddenly a tiger furry sat next to you and bet just a bunch of money. Luckily, it's blackjack, so it doesn't matter what your fellow players at the table bet, because they're not playing against you, they're playing against the house.

Avery/GM: And I believe 3 million is what I said that she bet. And if not, that's what it's gonna be because I'll just rerecord over. So that happened. And while Ollie was gambling, the rest of the party had decided to go check out the Pendulum of Doom Death Races sponsored by Assembles Singles. And Zahn had left to go sell one of your hover bikes.

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

(Ambience fades out, background rock music fades in)

Avery/GM: So let's start with the sales and acquisitions of this Hover Bike. Zahn. You coming to Little Fred's shop? Seeing as how little Fred was the one selling vehicles vehicle equipment earlier, you have a good feeling that he'd probably be interested in buying this from you. Obviously, you don't have it with you, but you have like a little hologram version of it that you can pull up for him, kind of.

Zach/Zahn: Yep.

Avery/GM: Qui-Gon Jinn style, uh, sort of from Phantom Menace. You come in and that same kind of heavy metal music is playing, uh, in the background. As you come in. He's reading some sort of magazine and he looks up and he is just like, ah, what do you want?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, you're, uh, you're the vehicle guy, right?

Avery/GM: Ah, I Sell vehicles, I sell vehicle equipment. You know, this and that. Who's asking?

Zach/Zahn: A potential seller?

Avery/GM: I don't really do trade ins. But let, let me take a look.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, he does the, the chef's kiss against his helmet and he is like, mm. Top of the line, pulls a hologram of the, the cool hover bike pristine core worlds hover bike Here.

Avery/GM: He hops down off his little step stool and walks around to the front of the little display case here, and he's just like, lower it down here. So I, I can see better.

Zach/Zahn: I kneel.

Avery/GM: Sure. and Marty. You start coming up to little Fred's shop and you can hear this kind of heavy metal, like rock music coming from inside. Yeah. You walk in just as Zahn is bending down, showing little Fred the hologram here, and you hear little Fred say, eh, it is nothing special.

Jenine/Marty: Mm. Cool. She walks in.

Avery/GM: you see it's just, it's just a Hover bike, you know? Yeah, you're right. It's cool. It's, it's from the core worlds… top of the line. Look, if you're really trying to get rid of it, I can go 2000 credits.

Jenine/Marty: Could, could I, could I, can I check? Can I observe the emotional state of this?

Avery/GM: Of course!

Jenine/Marty: of little Fred? to see how he actually feels about it? Awesome! That's just a, I think it's just a, the role on your part, I believe. I'm gonna double check that.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Basic forms of contact Do not require a saving throw.

Jenine/Marty: What's he thinking? What's little Fred thinking?

Avery/GM: His emotional state is. That he's trying. Let's see. In one word, I would say hopeful.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. Clarification on the hopeful. Was it like after he had said the amount?

Avery/GM: Yes.

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

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna say, man, you're, I feel like you're low balling me here, dude. I know you're gonna turn around and sell this thing for what, 7k? I want six.

Avery/GM: Oh, no, no, no. I, I can't, I can't do six here. That's, that's way out of the question here. Yeah. Let's see. Go ahead and roll a charisma connect check.

Jenine/Marty: Rip.

Zach/Zahn: Double rip.

Jenine/Marty: Darn. I should have tried to swoop in, my b!

Avery/GM: you can, yeah, you can roll to help. If you have a good line,

Jenine/Marty: I can roll 3d6s and then take rid… get rid of the lowest.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Oh that’s good cause technically I think I have a minus two, right?

Jenine/Marty: Oh my. I can only give you a plus one if I succeed.

Zach/Zahn: Cause I have a minus one for charisma and then I have a minus one in connect. So does that make it a minus two overall?

Chris/Ollie: Uh, yes. If it's a charisma connect.

Avery/GM:

Zach/Zahn: All right, so I rolled a four, so that is a two.

Jenine/Marty: oof! I don’t even know if I could save you!

Zach/Zahn: Oh, there's no saving. That's why you're here.

Avery/GM: you rolled a four?

Zach/Zahn: I rolled on dice four

Avery/GM: oh!

Zach/Zahn: And then minus one for charisma and minus one for connect is a two total.

Chris/Ollie: We need Marty to come in with a, some hand wave and just, you will give us 6,000 credits for the bike.

Jenine/Marty: Well, actually… I can’t.

Zach/Zahn: you'll give us 6,000 credits.

Jenine/Marty: Unfortunately, I can't.

Zach/Zahn: ooh, you know, it'd be really cool if we just swap the, uh, the hover bike for this heavy machine gun I'm seeing in the, in the shop for vehicle weapons.

Jenine/Marty: Can you carry it?

Avery/GM: Oh no. You, you put it, it on that ATV.

Zach/Zahn: we carry it back to the ship and then we put it on our ATV.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, interesting. Okay.

Avery/GM: Like Rambo, out here oh my goodness.

Zach/Zahn: Heck yeah, brother.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, we need, we need at least one.

Avery/GM: He says, look, I like you kid. I don't like you 6,000 credits with though. I can go as high as 2,500.

Jenine/Marty: What about five? And I just flash the biggest smile.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, And Zahn looks over. He is like, oh, what's up Marty?

Jenine/Marty: Hello.

Avery/GM: Okay, you've thrown 'em off a little, so go ahead and roll a charisma connect check and add one for kind of double teaming this fellow

Jenine/Marty: sick.

Zach/Zahn: Good. Take, take no penalties from me.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. that will be 11

Avery/GM: That's really good. Cool. He's like, okay, look, I'm gonna level with you. This thing here it is not actually worth that much money. I think I can probably get five for it, but the thing is I'm gonna turn around. I got a racer who's enter one of these races and, and he needs a really fast machine now. I'm not gonna give you five for it, but I'll go with 4,000. 4,000 credits.

Jenine/Marty: is he lying? Can I, can I check again?

Avery/GM: Yeah. He's actually not lying to you.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Avery/GM: You actually get the, he's actually being level with you about what he intends to do with it.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn looks over at the, at the wall, he sees this heavy machine gun. He's like, how about even trade? Even Stevens this, uh, this year hover bike for your, for your sponsor and uh, we get that pretty machine gun over there.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Hmm. He rolled a two though. That was early.

Zach/Zahn: I did roll a two. So his opinion of me can't be real shit. And I do have money. I can't sweeten it with a little bit of money.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's true. Okay, one more charisma, connect check and we'll see how you do.

Zach/Zahn: Oh God.

Avery/GM: I know.

Jenine/Marty: Do I… Is there help with that?

Avery/GM: You can help with it if you have a line.

Jenine/Marty: My associate is very interested in technology and wants to upgrade a little bit more and assist you in the technology that you need.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. Good enough. Go ahead and roll to help.

Bee/Polaris: You guys could also let him take it for a spin, you know?

Jenine/Marty: that's so much better.

Zach/Zahn: What's nice is I actually, I rolled halfway decent.

Jenine/Marty: How much did you roll?

Zach/Zahn: So I rolled nine, comes out to be seven.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: And I rolled an 11 plus one, so with a 12 for .

Avery/GM: With that, I will give it to you. He'll say, all right, how about this 500 credits, The hover bike, and the machine gun's yours, and he spits in his hand to like shake.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, to who does? Who does he?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn like goes to shake and then immediately hesitates at the spit part. He's like…

Avery/GM: he's holding it out to both of you. He's holding out his hand to either one of you.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn just doesn't want like spit in his well… It's one of those, like spit and oil are two different things. You know?

Avery/GM: he sees you hesitate. He's like, oh, I'm sorry about that. Force a habit, You know? That's how we used to do things back in the day. Fist bump, anyone?

Jenine/Marty: Give a little fist bump,

Zach/Zahn: Zahn shrugs and actually like shakes his hand anyways, he's like, eh, spit and oil Ain't that different, is they?

Avery/GM: Marty, you fist bump and then Zan just kind of grabs both of your hands and shakes them up and down.

Jenine/Marty: cute.

Avery/GM: He's like, all right, so which land in bays yours?

Jenine/Marty: 12.

Avery/GM: 12? Yeah, I think my brother had had some deliveries down there earlier. So did I. So yeah, we'll get that delivered. I take it, the hover bikes right inside the, uh, Dockin’ bay there?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Avery/GM: Great, great. We'll get you all squared away. Appreciate you doing business and, uh, yeah, my, my race is really gonna love this thing. . Now get out. I got reading to do,

Zach/Zahn: I got reading to do

Jenine/Marty: as we're walking out. I'm like, should we let Hermes know that someone is coming on the ship to take the hover bike?

Zach/Zahn: I’m heading back to the

Jenine/Marty: Oh, cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool

Zach/Zahn: ship now anyways, I'll, uh, I'll let 'em know. Okay. I got some, I got some tinkering to do. Uh, that, that. Brother delivery that he mentioned was, uh, was all me.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool. Where's the rest of the team?

Avery/GM: Yeah. So actually that's a good question. Bruce and Polaris, after Marty took off, what did you two end up doing?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris probably would've followed Marty.

Avery/GM: Oh. Okay,

Zach/Zahn: just standing outside.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, just wouldn't have said anything but would've made sure to like look back and see what Bruce was doing.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce probably took his shopping to the ship and organized. Bruce probably brought his shopping back to the ship and is organizing his, quote-unquote “pantry” With all these different variety of beans and then like having seen the racism, what the race entails, he starts making these mini bean tarts. And the objective of these bean tarts is, and I will tell you cause I've been thinking about this, they're gonna taste amazing. You are gonna want to eat so many of these. And as he's making them, he's making them in like little tiny like cupcake tins. And the goal of hi of this is he's gonna make them and give them to the other teams so that the pilot gets to get stuck on the toilet.

Bee/Polaris: that's a great idea.

Chris/Ollie: The Long Con!

Jenine/Marty: Here for it!

Avery/GM: Biological warfare.

Caden/Bruce: I'll, I I'll be very clear. Bruce is not, Bruce is not poisoning. He's not like, these are gonna taste phenomenal. It's just gonna be a bad time. You're giving

Zach/Zahn: a nice, it's just causing of a national… or of not national natural bowel movement, not actual virus illness.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, Bruce is just being a bro and bringing all you can eat Chipotle.

Caden/Bruce: Exactly. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay, so you're gonna be using your cooking skills for not evil, but like underhanded purposes. I like this… So let's go with an intelligence work check.

Caden/Bruce: not gonna lie, that is really good because that's a 12!

Bee/Polaris: Yo

Jenine/Marty: Let’s Go!

Avery/GM: Let's go. All right. So yeah, so you make the batch exactly how you intend to do it. You, you heat the… the heat that you use to make these little pastries is just enough to cook the outside of the pastries, but the dough in the middle is not so undercooked that someone would notice while, but it's undercooked enough that it will cause some gastrointestinal distress. So you have succeeded. So you have succeeded there, and Zahn As you come back to the ship, you smell this wonderful smell of tarts, wafting through the air.

Zach/Zahn: As he enters the ship, you just hear a hot damn, Bruce, what do you got going on?

Bee/Polaris: You can spell in your helmet. Sorry.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, I can turn that on and off.

Bee/Polaris: Sick!

Caden/Bruce: Well, um, let's just say I'm making racing pastries.

Jenine/Marty: Racing pastries. I'm here for it!

Zach/Zahn: is that gonna be, you know, for all of us or just the…

Caden/Bruce: I would suggest that you don't eat them.

Zach/Zahn: I guess I'll just make my cheese sandwich then.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will kinda like til his head and like look his on and be like, I mean, I haven't tested to see if they work. If you wanna try.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh

Zach/Zahn: I don't like the way you said “tested the way they work” now I'm not so sure I want to eat them anymore.

Caden/Bruce: I just, if Polaris wants to race, would like Polaris to win the race, so I figured that this could potentially help.

Bee/Polaris: Ouch.

Caden/Bruce: I'm not good with guns or ships, but I like to think I'm good at cooking and if this. Give Polaris a leg up in the race, then, um, that's the way I intend to do it. I mean, I'm sure it's not against the rules as far as we read the rules giving other teammates food doesn't seem to be illegal or a penalty So, That's what these are for, but if you wanna test to see if they work, go right ahead. Um, I just would recommend you don't leave the ship after you consume one.

Zach/Zahn: you know, he's gonna do that whole like slow back away thing with the finger guns and be like uh, you know I'm just gonna go ahead and, uh, get the cracking on some cool stuff that I have planned in the workshop.

Caden/Bruce: If Polaris wins the race, uh, Assembles Singles is the, uh, sponsor. I'm sure you could probably try and get a lifetime supply of, um, what you like to call cheese.

Zach/Zahn: That sounds cool. I'm, I was planning on helping in, uh, in my own way as well. Um, he pulls out the Grapnel launcher. He's like, I got this here, baby!

Caden/Bruce: Bruce Slow blinks.

Zach/Zahn: we’re gonna make it cooler.

Caden/Bruce: Okay, I can bring you down a, uh, well, what you like to call a good, um, grilled cheese if you would like. I promise I won't, um, give you one of these.

Zach/Zahn: That would be nice.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will nod and start making a grilled cheese.

Zach/Zahn: You can also secretly. Make it not an assembles grilled cheese, and he'll probably blow his mind. It's one of those, Zahn has almost entirely been like in space going from place to place. He's only ever had like processed foods, so to him, yeah, processed cheese of assembled singles fucking fantastic.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, if it's not processed, then it's not cheese.

Jenine/Marty: S tier. S tier cheese, period.

Avery/GM: So as Bruce is engaging in biological warfare, and Zahn is doing some tinkering in the ship. We flash back to our casino scene. Ollie, you are sitting here at the table when an anthropomorphic tiger sits down next to you and starts betting big. She bets 3 million, indicating that she's a very wealthy. And let's see… Nine. Okay. She's showing a, she is showing a nine on the table, and your cards are showing. You see that you have an eight on the table and an eight underneath, not, not showing on the table. So you have a, a double, a set of double. , and I'm not expecting you to know all the ins and outs of blackjack, but,

Chris/Ollie: Hmm. she, I can't remember from last session. She hasn't interacted with me at all, right?

Avery/GM: No, not yet.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. is there anyone else at the table?

Avery/GM: No, just you, the dealer and this tiger furry, but there are several other patrons kind of all around.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will turn and, and politely nod. And, uh, say greetings, just the classic. hello to be polite.

Avery/GM: Oh, hello. It's so nice to see another friendly face at the table. Are you enjoying yourself today?

Chris/Ollie: Certainly. I have noticed that everything requires credits and I can never find enough. So here I am.

Avery/GM: Yes, yes. The universe does run on credits. Unfortunately. It's so tiring. You know, sometimes I just have so many credits. I just sit down and bet them until I lose. It's quite fun. Sometimes losing money.

Chris/Ollie: he's gonna cock his, or Ollie will cock his head a bit and say, to lose is fun?

Avery/GM: Oh yes. I mean, when you're, when you're always winning, like I am, Sometimes the thrill of losing is much more enjoyable.

Chris/Ollie: She's tired of winning.

Avery/GM: She just needs to feel something. That's it.

Chris/Ollie: Great. I can it kind of brings the whole tiger fur into a new perspective as well. Beautifully done.

Avery/GM: Ollie. Go ahead and roll an intelligence notice check.

Bee/Polaris: By the way, is Ollie still live streaming this? Cause last session Ollie was live streaming.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yes. He would not have stopped.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Cool, cool, cool.

Chris/Ollie: intelligence notice you say

Avery/GM: Yes, please.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Cause uh, my cognitive boost should still be active.

Avery/GM: Mm-hmm.

Chris/Ollie: so it says, Oh, it wasn't, which my bad. It was intelligence know, right?

Avery/GM: Yeah. Or no intelligence…

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Never mind.

Avery/GM: Last time, did I have you roll intelligence know Check?

Chris/Ollie: yes.

Avery/GM: Oh, then that's what I meant. Sorry.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Well, because that would automatically succeed.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: If at all possible. Um, but if it says, if it's primarily mental and requires only basic physical actions, I get a plus two. So whichever one you wanna go with.

Avery/GM: you're literally just counting the cards, so it's not even, okay. It doesn't even take physical actions to, to do. Yeah. You calculate that you have a 75% chance of winning the hand if you split your eights

Chris/Ollie: split. What's that? Wait, what's that mean? Sorry. I'm very bad about blackjack.

Avery/GM: That would basically mean that you'd get two cards or I mean two hands because you have eights, you have a pair of eights in blackjack. Anytime you have matching cards, you can split them and basically give yourself two hands. Yep.

Zach/Zahn: I didn't know that.

Chris/Ollie: Really?

Avery/GM: I watched way too many black videos that so, yeah.

Chris/Ollie: I mean even, even when all those like. Blackjack tournaments were just like on every channel, like on Spike and, and all that. In the early two

thousands, I'd never even seen that. Okay. Uh, then yes, I will defer to the master Ollie, uh, plays to always the optimal chances.

Avery/GM: Okay, so I roll for this, uh, for the rest of the cards. So the dealer deals you attend and an ace giving you 18 and 19. The Tiger furry flips her cards and shows that she has a 20 and stays. The dealer flips his card and shows that he has a seven. He hits and he has an eight, so he has to hit again and he gets a seven. So he busts. So you both, uh, you both win, uh, your money. Um, so how much did you.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's pretty much Max bedding every, every hand.

Avery/GM: Okay. we'll say that After this, you have probably won a total of about 40,000 credits. Heck yeah, brother. Just over the course of all your gambling so far. Wow. She's like, oh, well. Okay. More money for the family, I guess. And Ollie, in your head, you hear Hermes’ voice come in and say Ollie, I feel the need to warn you that this is Avi Winston, one of the Winston family. You should be very cautious around her.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will reply: I thought she looked familiar. Do we know how much she knows?

Avery/GM: you do not.

Jenine/Marty: did we also all hear that?

Avery/GM: Yeah. Anyone, anyone listening or watching Ollie's Little Stream would also have heard that?

Jenine/Marty: Could we, could we, could we space Google her?

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, but we know for sure like the, uh, that the message from those spy drones got. Or

Avery/GM: Yes

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: You know for sure that it got out and got back to Olympia. Whether she has been to Olympia since or has been in contact with her family, you obviously wouldn't have that information.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. So Ollie is gonna play, uh, unless you need a minute to read something,

Avery/GM: go ahead.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Ollie's gonna play totally dumb and, uh, ask the family, where are you?

Avery/GM: Oh, just, you know, the capital of the Republic Olympia. We have quite a number of properties there. I just find high society so restricting sometimes I just like to get out to some of the more rougher places of the galaxy from time to time. you are a fascinating little robot, by the way, far too curious to just be a gambling machine.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, thank you. I am personally on a journey of self-discovery.

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Chris/Ollie: My name is Optimax 11 E, but my friends call me Ollie. What is your designation?

Avery/GM: My name's Avi. Avi Winston

Jenine/Marty: Oh Avi, not Abby!

Chris/Ollie: Do… Ollie's gonna like text message the group real quick and ask if we have a sponsor for the race?

Jenine/Marty: Currently, No. But again, can we, can we google search this?

Avery/GM: Yes. I was gonna get to that. Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Sick.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Before we say yes.

Chris/Ollie: go ahead.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So because y'all basically got like little personal communication devices back on the custodian ship. So yeah, Marty, go ahead and roll. Yeah, I guess it would be intelligence know. Or intelligence program, if that's better.

Jenine/Marty: Sick! *Rolls Dice* oh, no. Okay. Well, um, , that is, that is a four!

Bee/Polaris: Can I also roll? Cause Polaris, like once they got back to the ship, Polaris is just sitting outside crisscross applesauce, just playing around with his like not light savers while watching the live stream.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You can also roll either intelligence program or intelligence know.

Bee/Polaris: Okay

Avery/GM: Marty, you type in Avi Windstone and you get articles about a famous asteroid miner, who 200 years ago found the biggest deposit of asteroid gold in the galaxy. And it's a really old article and you probably think that this person probably isn't actually the one you're looking for cause they would've been dead by now.

Jenine/Marty: Positive thinking! Now I have some stuff for trivia night.

Bee/Polaris: I got a seven, just a flat seven.

Avery/GM: A flat seven.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You find a few like gossip particles, like from like space people magazine about Avi Winston, you know, talking about how like she took the, the Winston yacht, the Winston Space Yacht for a joy ride around a nebula kind of, you know, you get the general sense that the paparazzi at least has painted her to be kind of a rebel, a wild child, so to speak.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. Polaris will copy and paste that into the group chat and just put a shrug emoji.

Jenine/Marty: Does she have any connection to, uh, does it show that she, I'm asking this to, um, is there anything in those articles about like how close she is with like her other relatives specifically? I don't know. The, the, the one that we met on the planet?

Bee/Polaris: Is there?

Avery/GM: Hermes chimes in and says Yes. Avi Winston is the third great-granddaughter of the patriarch of the Winston family and the matriarch of the Winston family. She is second cousins with Lord Winston, whom you blew up. I'm sorry. Whom we blew up. Smiley Face.

Jenine/Marty: We Smiley Face!?

Bee/Polaris: You said second cousin?

Avery/GM: Yeah!

Jenine/Marty: I think that’s fine.

Zach/Zahn: She probably doesn't even know who Lord Winston is.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: maybe… we don't know!

Zach/Zahn: second cousins and this chick is so disconnected from reality. Yeah. She probably doesn’t know.

Jenine/Marty: and she's like third in, is she like third in line? Is that what like third in line to get like everything? Or just third rem…?

Bee/Polaris: We don't know actually, Polaris was about to ask for a family tree from Hermes.

Jenine/Marty: Give us the visualization of this tree.

Avery/GM: I will happily visualize that for y'all next time.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: I didn't think about that, but I should actually Family tree this out.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. If we're gonna go through a whole lot of 'em, we, we kind of know which ones we gotta destroy.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, yeah. What's, what, what is our like list of, of, of these people that we are about the, these tigers that we're about to go through?

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Also, we gotta know if there are any children, so we don't orphan them. And also children are like, immortal in this game. So…

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: so Hermes pipes up and says, I believe she is kind of considered a black sheep of the family.

Jenine/Marty: Didn't they say that about Lord Winston too?

Avery/GM: Yeah. Whether or not this information is accurate, you know, ,

Chris/Ollie: the entire family are black sheeps.

Caden/Bruce: which is funny considering they’re tigers

Avery/GM: They all don't like each other.

Jenine/Marty: RIP

Bee/Polaris: You know what, that's fine. That means they won't come and get revenge.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Dammit.

Jenine/Marty: They're fine. Yeah. Let's do it. What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen?

Zach/Zahn: What's the worst that could go wrong?

Caden/Bruce: What's the worst? I can heal. It's fine.

Avery/GM: Ollie, You hear the dealer announce that it's time for his break. And so he'll return to the table in about 20 minutes,

Chris/Ollie: how long until the race starts.

Avery/GM: The next race would start in about three hours, give or take.

Chris/Ollie: So we don't have a sponsor, but, uh, I, it's just a clarifying question for me. I'm, I don't think I'm gonna ask her to be the sponsor, but I do want all her money.

Jenine/Marty: That's fair.

Chris/Ollie: Um, so Ollie's going to. Watch the watching the dealer walk away say, unfortunate. However, we can continue to gamble. There's a race soon. Would you like to wager on the outcome?

Avery/GM: You see her crack a huge grin. She's like, gambling on the races is illegal back home! I like this. And she claps her hands.

Chris/Ollie: I didn't know they were illegal. Uh-oh.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, but is it illegal? I think she's with it. Just two people are trading money. Like it's like two friends being like, I bet you $5 you won't drink.

Avery/GM: It's illegal in the same way that like, you're technically not supposed to have poker nights at your house, you know?

Bee/Polaris: Oh.

Jenine/Marty: What?

Chris/Ollie: Or illegal in the same way. Like everything here is illegal.

Avery/GM: Exactly, so…

Jenine/Marty: I didn't know that.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, true.

Avery/GM: Illegal. In the same way that everything here is underhanded and technically, you know, dark web 2.0 type of stuff.

Bee/Polaris: Mm.

Avery/GM: You know?

Bee/Polaris: Gotcha.

Avery/GM: It would be, it's illegal based on where she lives. So, you know…

Jenine/Marty: copy.

Avery/GM: She's like, you are an interesting robot. What kind. What kind of wager would you like?

Chris/Ollie: I pretty much just gonna glance at the pile of money she's got at the table.

Avery/GM: She's like, oh, you want to wager this? This is 5 million credits. You would owe me a lot of money. And she like, runs a claw. Kind of like on your robot hand.

Chris/Ollie: He… Ollie's going to say…. just trying not to be too inflammatory here.

Avery/GM: If you win, we will tell you where to find the remains of your second cousin .

Jenine/Marty: If it’s still there.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, yeah. Whatever happened to those? Did we Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: If it’s still there?

Bee/Polaris: We didn’t burry? I'm pretty sure he just evaporated, No? Cause he was like right in the blast radius.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it was…

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Is the planet also still there?

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. The planet will be there for another million years or so before it gets sucked into the black hole.

Bee/Polaris: we should speed that up in some way.

Jenine/Marty: Just go to the evidence, yeet the evidence.

Avery/GM: Take the planet and push it somewhere else. Yep.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Ollie's just going to, you know, say that, uh, If you seek to lose money, I seek to win. I have a group of friends participating in the race. I'd like to wager on them.

Avery/GM: She kind of rubs her in for a minute and she's like, well, that certainly would be thrilling. Losing that much money in a race . That would be so much fun. Daddy would get so mad. Okay, you clever little robot, You! What If we wager this, your friends win and you take this nice pile of money with you, but if your friends lose, I get whatever ship you came in.

Chris/Ollie: Done. immediately.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts a yikes emote in chat.

Jenine/Marty: live reactions.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I was, I was actually gonna say, can I get a quick vibe check from all the stream watchers? But, uh, that, that pretty much, uh, spelled it out. Yeah, I'm, yeah. Ollie's gonna immediately agree.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. When Ollie, uh, suggested to bet on us, uh, players put a blank face emoji and then we immediately agreed. He puts a, a yikes emoji

Jenine/Marty: a yoinks!

Avery/GM: Will you also be participating in the race?

Chris/Ollie: No.

Avery/GM: Oh, good. We can watch together in my private booth.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, no

Jenine/Marty: That’s a yoinks!

Avery/GM: and she stands up and hooks her arm into your arm and she's just like, come on, the race is gonna start in a few hours. Let's go get seated.

(Club ambience fades out, cyberpunk city ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: So you have three hours until this next race that you are now apparently doing.

Bee/Polaris: We don't even have a sponsor.

Jenine/Marty: We still gotta find a sponsor.

Bee/Polaris: We can't enter the race until we get a sponsor.

Jenine/Marty: Who can we get to sponsor us!?

Chris/Ollie: How much? How much would that cost? She might be willing to do it.

Bee/Polaris: sponsor a race.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Sponsor. She's betting against us

Bee/Polaris: That you bet with her on?

Jenine/Marty: yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Hey, she is. She seems pretty crazy.

Zach/Zahn: She likes to lose.

Avery/GM: Yeah, so there are a few options for sponsors that I have already subtly presented. You with, but if you would like me to be more explicit, I will be more explicit.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, I was about to ask if like at the, at where you signed up for the race, if there's like a list of sponsors that don't have a team to race for them and you could just like, oh yeah, I'll just sign up with this one.

Avery/GM: You could probably find a list of sponsors looking to get a racer at the main building.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Caden/Bruce: Can we be sponsored by Assemble’s singles?

Bee/Polaris: They're sponsoring the whole race.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that'd be funny though.

Bee/Polaris: Also don't they already have a team?

Avery/GM: I did say they do have their own team, so

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Avery/GM: Whether or not you decide to be on that team,

Bee/Polaris: Oh, we have to partner up with other people. I see.

Avery/GM: That's one option.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: You could be your own team. You could partner up with another sponsor that already has a team. You could make up a sponsor. See how far that gets you.

Bee/Polaris: We can lie.

Jenine/Marty: Oh?

Bee/Polaris: could Hermes be our sponsor? ,

Jenine/Marty: honestly…

Bee/Polaris: Do we have any other like robot chassis with us currently on the ship?

Zach/Zahn: They're all damaged at the moment.

Bee/Polaris: Oh… Well.

Chris/Ollie: Well, Wait cause I've been fixing 'em from a little bit

Avery/GM: yeah, I was gonna say you at least fixed two of them.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: One of the companion bots and the security bot.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent. Cause yeah, everything pretty nice except, uh, I didn't really expect to be taken prisoner there at the end, so, Hmm.

Avery/GM: I'm sorry Chris, I didn't, I wasn't saying you had to go with her, she was just

Chris/Ollie: Oh, no, no, no.

Bee/Polaris: social prison.

Chris/Ollie: socially in prison because

Avery/GM: Oh,

Chris/Ollie: leaving would be pretty sketchy. So.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: At least to her.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, you could just say that you left your oven on!

Chris/Ollie: true… Cause it's pretty much gonna be the game plan for when we go back. He's gonna be like, Hey, I need to be right back real quick. Uh, use the robot, the little robots room and then run over and just like hack off a piece of my quantum core and then go back and be like, oh no, we're good. Oh, we haven't been doing those roles.

Avery/GM: Oh, you're right. I'm sorry. Roll a percentage dice. Sorry.

Chris/Ollie: Should I do two? Cause I, I don't think we did it last session either.

Avery/GM: Yeah, yeah. Roll two, uh, 19. Okay. And you were at 64% last time, so we're back up to 83%.

Bee/Polaris: That's pretty good.

Chris/Ollie: And then 21

Avery/GM: Okay. Your core is fully restored.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, that's good because Ollie might be in a little bit of trouble.

Avery/GM: You'll be fine. You'll be totally fine. All right, so the other sponsor opportunities here would probably be any of the shopkeepers that you've interacted with, aside from Little Fred.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Cause he has a racer already.

Avery/GM: Because he has a racer already. Yeah. you haven't explored the hotel yet, so there might be sponsors. or you could go back to the actual racing building and get a list of sponsors.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie could probably also, uh, just call out up in the upper class booths. Hey, anyone need a team?

Bee/Polaris: right in front of the person you just made a bet with That'd be, wait, isn't it her private booth? Are there gonna be other people there?

Chris/Ollie: Uh, her security.

Avery/GM: It is the Winston Private booth.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, are there other Winstons?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, oh, I didn't even think about that. Uh-oh

Jenine/Marty: That’s a yoinks.

Avery/GM: Also, we should establish who actually is gonna be doing the race.

Chris/Ollie: I said that I wouldn't, but I'm gonna be there.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, so you lied. Got it.

Chris/Ollie: Secretly. I'm gonna be there like in Cognito.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Oh, so did you wanna have your core already split, basically?

Chris/Ollie: Well, I'm gonna use one of my subroutines to split my consciousness so I can, you know. Be mentally, multiple places at once, and I'm just gonna like pop into like Polaris's helmet down in the corner and just be like, Hey, I'm here. Don't tell anyone I'm helping out.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris will not be part of the race. He's gonna sit on the sidelines.

Chris/Ollie: What?

Bee/Polaris: I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

Chris/Ollie: The ringer.

Bee/Polaris: his whole deal is being a pilot.

Jenine/Marty: My heart dropped for a second there.

Bee/Polaris: No, I'm joking with he's gonna be there.

Avery/GM: I was like, I planned this whole thing.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. No, no, no. It goes without saying is gonna be part of the race.

Zach/Zahn: If I have enough time to make the, the modifications to a suit that I want, yeah, he’s definitely gonna be there!

Avery/GM: Which mods did you wanna make?

Zach/Zahn: So definitely gonna be having mag boots. Um, he wants to, you know, modify his, his helmet to do the cool thing. he wants to have a, uh, data pad computer on his left wrist. He wants to insert the laser blade into his right wrist predator style. And then he's gonna ma modify the grappling launcher to have, uh, cause on the front of it, it's currently just a grappling hook, right?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: He wants to have it as a magnet head.

Avery/GM: Okay, so you have three hours until the next race I will give you. That gives you enough time. Actually, let's make it interesting. Go ahead and roll. Intelligence fix.

Zach/Zahn: That's a 14.

Avery/GM: Okay, I'll give you three. You have enough time to do one mod per hour given your roll.

Chris/Ollie: Definitely One of the grappling. The grappling hook one.

Zach/Zahn: Well, yeah. Grappling hook and mag boots are essential. so in that case, uh oh, I want the helmet one though, but I guess I'll go predator wrist cause that sounds more useful.

Avery/GM: Okay. Marty, are you gonna be on the shuttle part of the race, or are you?

Jenine/Marty: I don't know which is more helpful?

Avery/GM: I mean, you can heal

Jenine/Marty: I can heal! So… Let me double check this. It's two vehicles, right?

Avery/GM: I can go over the rules again if you need me to

Jenine/Marty: One more time! I have them down, but I do not remember. I cannot read my own chicken scratch.

Avery/GM: you are totally fine. One vehicle is called the Spotter. They are basically a fighter ship that maneuvers around the track, dodging debris, blasting obstacles, and protecting the other ship.

The other ship is called the shuttle. It's an open top hovercraft that needs at least two other members of the team, to basically pilot the shuttle craft through the track, dodging any obstacles that aren't blasted by the spotter. Fighting off teams of other shuttles who will either try to board your shuttle, ram you to knock you off or run you into debris.

Jenine/Marty: Hmm. I'll be on team shuttle. I can help out.

Avery/GM: Okay!

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: I don't think anyone else can be in, uh, the ship with Polaris anyway, yeah. Other than

Avery/GM: probably not.

Bee/Polaris: robots that can get into the system.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's probably right. I don't,

Bee/Polaris: I mean, Polaris is just, just wants to race, so he didn't even consider that sponsors were something that you needed. So he probably just go with like the pre gen list at the actual signup place unless someone else has an idea of getting a sponsor.

Zach/Zahn: I like Big Fred as a possible sponsor.

Jenine/Marty: That would be fun.

Bee/Polaris: He did give, yeah, he did give us those cool, cool laser blades.

Zach/Zahn: Cool, cool. Laser blades and, uh, a shit ton of like parts and stuff.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. What do the sponsors get out of sponsoring racers?

Avery/GM: Essentially the sponsors get the prestige of having basically sponsored a winner. They get the street cred and the social benefits of being the winner of the day, that kind of thing. Additionally, they do get a cut of the prize money.

Bee/Polaris: There's prize money.

Avery/GM: Oops.

Zach/Zahn: Of course there’s prize money. Do you think people just race and death races for fun?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Why not?

Chris/Ollie: I mean, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris quite literally would have! That was his whole goal!

Avery/GM: First prize is 1,000,000 credits. Second place prize is 500,000 credits, and the third place prize is 250,000 Credit.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Gotcha, gotcha.

Caden/Bruce: But running in the race is priceless.

Avery/GM: Yes,

Bee/Polaris: exactly.

Avery/GM: We'll say you downloaded the generic list of sponsors when you got the pamphlet as well.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: And the current list of sponsors includes, Dex, who is the owner of the Ornate Dreams Hotel, featuring the Sapphire Tree Restaurant. Another sponsor is Terry, Carrie, Mary, and Larry. And they are a polycule that owns the lucky tentacle. And then… And then also you could do Doc. Doc is sponsoring racers cause hey, if they get injured, that's more business for him.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent. did we visit Doc?

Avery/GM: I don't know. I think, I think you did.

Zach/Zahn: I did. I think

Avery/GM: yes. Yes, you did.

Zach/Zahn: Yes, Because I bought stuff from Doc

Avery/GM: and then Professor Infinity is sponsoring racers. Next to his name is a little asterisk, and at the bottom, the asterisk says, testing out highly experimental shuttle craft.

Bee/Jenine/Zach together: Ooh, ooh.

Jenine/Marty: How, how experimental?

Zach/Zahn: oh, right. Professor Infinity is the, is the mad scientist.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yes. Yeah. There are no other details to answer your question, Marty. There are no other details about what highly experimental means.

Jenine/Marty: That's a little sketch, but, okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will send a screenshot of the list and chat, but like with the highly experimental shuttle, uh, highlighted and then raised eyebrow emoji.

Zach/Zahn: and like triple underlined with an exclamation point… Sorry!

Jenine/Marty: No, no, no, no, no. This was, this is another clarify. We get provided a shuttle.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Right. Okay.

Avery/GM: Okay. The shuttle is provided by the sponsor.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Avery/GM: And most of them are pretty bare bones. So someone saying that they're testing out an experimental one is a bit interesting, to say the least.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: while Bruce is poisoning the other, uh, contestants, should we , I mean, sorry, feeding the other contestants. Should Marty and players go talk to some of these sponsors? Maybe, yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. So let's start out with Bruce. You wanted to take little treats into basically the locker room?

Caden/Bruce: Oh, I have a very, very distinct idea of what Bruce wants to do.

Avery/GM: All right. Lay it on me.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Caden/Bruce: So what Bruce is gonna. Is he's gonna put on the chef hat? Well, he's probably still wearing it, honestly. He's gonna keep his apron on. And what he's done is he did buy a can of Jamie's beans and what he's gonna do is he's gonna take the label off of chef's Jamie's, and he's gonna borrow Polaris sewing machine and very rut, sew it onto his apron.

Caden/Bruce: and what he's gonna do, He's gonna go down there wearing this, wearing this uniform with his tray of made like bread roll tarts, which as we've already like established, are like, they look and smell amazing. They're just dangerous. And he's gonna go along to like, into the contestants corridor and just try to promote Chef Jamie's.

Caden/Bruce: Company by being basically giving these out as, uh, you know, um, like companies do, you know, like, here's, here's a freebie. If, if you like it, come back and, and, and buy the product. You know, like how uh, Costco gives away free food to try and promote to buy the thing that they wanna sell, but no buys…

Zach/Zahn: Oh the samples!

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, no one ever buys the, like, you never actually go and buy whatever they're selling. You just go and eat all the free samples of food. And that is basically what Bruce is doing. He's just, uh, knowing the outcome of this promoting chef Jamie's brand. That is, that is what I wanna do.

Avery/GM: I love this. This is great. Yeah. Yeah. So you come into the main corridor of the death race registration area. You see the bars in the clubs, and they're all kind of bumping and getting excited, getting ready for the next race. And then you see a sign with an arrow that says contestants, and it points down a flight of stair.

And you come down this flight of stairs and you see about 12 individuals kind of, they're like in like sets of like threes and fours. They're chatting with each other kind of off in different corners, and they're wearing like pilot jumpsuits. They look like they're, you know, kind of just trying to relax before the next big race.

Caden/Bruce: Excellent. Bruce is gonna hold this tray and, uh, like nervously flick his tail, but like, try to control himself and just, uh, walk into the room and be like, Fresh out of the oven, chef Jamie's brand new beans and more buns here to give you motivation to help satisfy your cravings before the next race. Would you like to try one?

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll a charisma connect check.

Caden/Bruce: Oh no! Of course I have to roll.

Bee/Polaris: can the, the smell wafting in…

Avery/GM: I'll give you a plus one because No, no, I'll give you a plus two because they smell so good and they came out so great. And you rolled a 12 on your earlier check, right?

Caden/Bruce: What was the, um,

Avery/GM: then I'll, I'll give you a plus two.

Caden/Bruce: It was Connect and, uh,

Avery/GM: charisma connect.

Caden/Bruce: Charisma. I got a plus zero on both of those. That's fine. Uh, with the plus two, that's an 11.

Avery/GM: Okay

Jenine/Marty: Nice!

Bee/Polaris: That’s Pretty good!

Caden/Bruce: That's pretty good.

Avery/GM: Nine of these individuals, a few. A couple from each team, and then a whole team come over and start taking samples. And one of 'em is just like, oh yeah, food. That's exactly what I need. Helps calm the nerves, you know?

And one of these racers is like a humanoid mushroom, a little miconid, and it wattles up to you and reaches up its little tendril and grabs one and looks at it and it's just, I rarely eat people food. Uh, but sure why not? Jamie's a good person and eats it.

Bee/Polaris: They know Jamie?

Avery/GM: they know TV personality. Jamie.

Bee/Polaris: ah, fair.

Caden/Bruce: If this mushroom very rarely eats human food, it is like one of the best things this mushroom has eaten in a very long time. Like, these things taste good. Bruce did not make something that tastes bad.

Avery/GM: Bruce would never,

Caden/Bruce: Bruce would never,

Avery/GM: yeah. You see its eyes kind of get big and then it reaches up for another one and asks, uh, can I have a second?

Jenine/Marty: Oh no.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will kinda like look around at like the people who have already established here and like know that he'll have leftovers and smile and be like, Of course, and you can take one for the road as well if you'd like.

Avery/GM: It takes another one and waddles back over to where its team was sort of chatting and you see it stuffing its face with all these samples that you've given it. And do you stay down here and monitor or do you leave your tray and just take off?

Caden/Bruce: I feel like to not look suspicious, Bruce would have like done a lap of the room and then like gone off and. Like made sort of the same sales pitch to other, um, people who are watching this event, but like, but like, he is very, very sure to like, not give this to anyone who's like super elderly or like a small child.

Caden/Bruce: Like he might see like a parent, like nursing a baby and just. Kind of be like, oh no, I wouldn't suggest having this like with a small infant, you know, don't wanna like blow their taste buds outta their brain sort of thing. And just, you know, like he, he is, he's given, he's given them a way to not look sketchy, but like, Also trying to be somewhat nice about it.

Avery/GM: Totally. Okay. I'm just gonna make a note here. Uh, chef Jamie impersonation…

Caden/Bruce: He's not trying No, no, no, no, no.

Bee/Polaris: No. Employee. Employee.

Avery/GM: or No, no. Not impersonation.

Caden/Bruce: He is, he is, he is marketing chef Jamie's beans and buns now, apparently and just, they taste amazing. They're just gonna have… you know.

Avery/GM: I'll put marketing subterfuge.

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: Fantastic.

Avery/GM: This, this is great. Cool. Yeah. So Bruce, you hear a few people say, wow, I can't wait to try these at, at bean me up later. Oh, I, I hope they get these in stock soon.

Bee/Polaris: Uh oh.

Avery/GM: and your bean roll are becoming the talk of the race, surprisingly.

Caden/Bruce: Uh oh.

(Ambience fades out, outro fades in)

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. Tracks used include: Cyberpunk bar, cyberpunk city, and orbital promenade.

be sure to check us out @furthest Pod on Twitter and Tumblr

We'll be back on December 15th with our next episode.

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro music swells, continues playing, then fades out)

Episode 10 - Shopping Time!

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 10 of Beyond the Furthest Stars. Quick Trigger Warning: this episode contains discussions of drugs, alcohol and gambling. Time stamps are recorded in the description of this episode, so that you can skip these sections. This episode is mostly a shopping episode, but there are plenty of funny and fun moments in between. Alright, let’s get to the show.

(Intro Music plays, then fades out. Ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: So here you are pulling into the docking bay of this hollowed out main asteroid in this asteroid belt. This place is well known throughout the galaxy. People come here hoping to strike it rich at some of the gambling establishments. Others are just on the run from the law and sort of just hunkered down here cause it, it makes its own law out here and still others are looking to feed their particular vice, whatever that might be.

Avery/GM: And as your ship is docking inside of docking Bay 12 you see several other battered ships of various sizes kind of coming in and out of other bays that are kind of pockmarked throughout the asteroid here. And there is a little safety robot waving two little glowy sticks to, to guide you in, Polaris, as you're parking.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, I guess I'll listen to him. .

Avery/GM: Yeah?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean, I feel like, I feel like there's no other choice. I don't wanna like zip through the hanger,

Avery/GM: I mean, you can run him over. I don’t know.

Bee/Polaris: No, I'm super not gonna run over a tight little robot dude. .

Avery/GM: Okay. And you park perfectly fine. It's totally cool.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet

Avery/GM: Access bay… or the, your access ramp on your ship lowers down. Do y'all disembark? Do you do anything before you disembark?

Bee/Polaris: We have to sell some stuff, right? Yeah, So we should probably the big atv, one of the bikes and some random stuff. Did I write it down?

Avery/GM: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: I did not write it down. Did someone else write it down?

Avery/GM: No, we

Zach/Zahn: left the big one because I had convinced us that we could potentially use it to rob people with

Bee/Polaris: Oh, did we? Okay. So are we just selling one of the bikes then?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think it was reversed. So we brought one of the small bikes to sell.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, so we just took one of the small bikes and then we had a bunch of like scrap and stuff that we were gonna sell.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Okay. Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: Y'all are pretty familiar with like galactic trade. You know that you don't have to like haul like your bikes and stuff out in order to sell them. You can just send someone down here later and they can offload it

Bee/Polaris: sick

Avery/GM: like it's a pretty established practice so they could arrange to meet you or something.

Zach/Zahn: Next galaxy is a thing here instead of next door. Next Galaxy.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Next star. Next star. Next star. Sounds better.

Avery/GM: Next star. There you go. That's better. . So you load up with your stuff. Do you take Hermes out of the ship?

Zach/Zahn: We need to leave Hermes with the gun to defend the ship from being stolen.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we can leave, We'll leave Hermes in the ship and Polaris will just send a text message to Hermes, just basically saying like, If it's not us, don't let anyone else on the ship without authorization.

Avery/GM: You see the little the little green hologram pop up with like a little gun.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, good.

Avery/GM: He just cocks it.

Zach/Zahn: Oh God. He's armed now.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Zach/Zahn: I love it. Hermes…

Avery/GM: It's a little virtual gun. It's not a real

Zach/Zahn: Hermes, It's not a toy.

Chris/Ollie: It's like a small replica of the plasma cannon

Bee/Polaris: Hermes. Did you watch your firearms safety protocol video?

Avery/GM: So, yeah. As you come down the little access ramp into the docking bay, the safety robot has put its glow sticks away and has kind of zipped over on its little, its little wheels. It rolls around on wheels to get around. It's very fast. And it's sitting there waving at the party all happy and has like a big LED smile on its display panel.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris’ First thought in his own head is I wonder if I can drift that.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my goodness.

Bee/Polaris: I'm kidding.

Zach/Zahn: Is it big enough for you to ride on?

Bee/Polaris: if it has wheels… No, I'm kidding.

Zach/Zahn: you just hop on, grab onto it’s head and ride it around like a unicycle.

Avery/GM: I was gonna say, it's about the size of a unicycle, so

Bee/Polaris: I'm kidding. I'm totally kidding.

Avery/GM: And it just, it, it, it, it greets you and it's like, Welcome to Bragos, bastion of Freedom in the Galaxy. I am your Bragos Registration Access Terminal or BRAT for short.

Zach/Zahn: That's cute.

Avery/GM: Please enjoy this complimentary map of the facilities our main asteroid has available. Auxiliary facilities are available to platinum members at a subscription of 5 million credits per person.

Bee/Polaris: What the fuck, Dude?

Avery/GM: please be aware that weapons are not permitted on the surface and that any projectile weapon discharges within Brazos properties will be subject to immediate termination of your sentience. Have a pleasant day and then it wheels off.

Bee/Polaris: This is pretty par for the course.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, looks down at the pistol at his side. Oh, well, shit. looking at everybody else to. Should I, should I try and hide it or should I just put it back?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna go put his laser pistol in the, the weapons locker on the ship.

Chris/Ollie: Could I like hide mine inside of my body?

Avery/GM: I'm sure you have like a glove compartment of some kind.

Zach/Zahn: I was about to ask if I could hide mine in him too?

Bee/Polaris: I mean, I have I have a knife. Does the, does a, a knife count?

Chris/Ollie: you said No weapons and projectile weapons.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Does Polaris, does Polaris ask that out loud?

Bee/Polaris: No, I'm asking I'm asking you if like a, a knife would count as a weapon that would be prohibited?

Avery/GM: I, I actually meant projectile weapons. That is my bad.

Bee/Polaris: All right, cool.

Avery/GM: So, yeah

Bee/Polaris: Polaris,

Avery/GM: anything that could puncture the little glass dome that keeps everything contained.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, that's totally fair. Polaris goes and puts his gun away.

Avery/GM: They just don’t want to get vacc’d.

Jenine/Marty: I don’t think I have any weapons. Do I have weapons? I have no weapons on me.

Bee/Polaris: Would Marty have any weapons?

Jenine/Marty: No, I don’t know. No one ever gave one to me.

Zach/Zahn: Is the dome protected against laser and only worried about projectiles cause there are two there… Those are two different things.

Avery/GM: I mean, look, you know what I mean. Don't get pedantic.

Zach/Zahn: I have to at least attempt for

Avery/GM: no, of course

Zach/Zahn: for conversation sake.

Avery/GM: No. Yeah. The amount of things I try to pull in, in, in, when I'm a player, of course.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn puts his pistol inside of Ollie’s Carapace.

Bee/Polaris: Now are you doing that in the middle of the hangar bay where everyone can see you, including the cameras that are probably in the hangar bay?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. My pistols already in there, so I don't need to like hide it, but they can probably see you.

Zach/Zahn: We just nonchalantly turn our backs to whenever cameras there and I just put the…

Avery/GM: roll a notice check.

Chris/Ollie: Can I, I can assist him, I'm guessing.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: What?

Avery/GM: And that'll be intelligence.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, good. I have a plus in that

Chris/Ollie: The assist is just one dice, right?

Avery/GM: No, you roll the same check.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: And if you succeed then you add plus one.

Zach/Zahn: Where's my notice at? It is, Oh, yay. I made notice…. or I actually took proficiency in this. So that is five. I got a five.

Avery/GM: you rolled a five?

Zach/Zahn: I rolled a five,

Chris/Ollie: I rolled a 12.

Zach/Zahn: That's a lot better.

Avery/GM: Okay. That got it up to a six. I'll say that you notice two cameras, one directly above where the, the ship is docked to kind of keep an eye on the ship and then you notice another one that's like above the entrance leading in and out of this bay into like the main concourse area.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha. So there's surely a spot where, you know, you could just kind of yank that in there. Super stealthy Like.

Avery/GM: I mean, theoretically there's nothing under the ship. You could always just get under a wing or something.

Bee/Polaris: You could also come with me to the weapons locker to fe putting your weapon away and give it to Ollie .

Zach/Zahn: Oh, well see.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: That's smart.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: No, we're, we're just like the ship fixers.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet .

Chris/Ollie: Give Broke ship. We fix.

Zach/Zahn: We were like, we, we pretend to look like we're looking at like some, you know, blaster burns or something, and then I just put it in there.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Perfect.

Avery/GM: I don't know why you think you're gonna need weapons in this. Totally safe. Not at all. Hostile place.

Jenine/Marty: Who needs weapons?

Bee/Polaris: That's crazy because yeah, we, we were told that this place is like super illegal. So I imagine violence is quite the norm.

Zach/Zahn: though I am highly tempted to pick up this rail gun nail gun… where is it?

Avery/GM: Wait, did I say nail gun or rail gun?

Zach/Zahn: No, I, I'm finding it in the actual…Spike thrower. That's it. ,

Chris/Ollie: that's probably something you could build.

Avery/GM: before that little robot zipped off it handed one of you a data pad with a map of the facilities.

Caden/Bruce: Ooh.

Avery/GM: So as, as you exit this docking bay, there's kinda like this central area that is, that all feed, like everything directly goes to like this central elevator that just raises directly up to the surface of the asteroid. So is that, I assume that's where y'all are heading? Or did you have more stuff to do at the ship?

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: No, I mean, I'm good.

Jenine/Marty: I'm good.

Bee/Polaris: I'm following whoever's leading.

Chris/Ollie: all good.

Avery/GM: Luckily for you, for y'all today is a very slow, It's a very slow time right now, so there's not a very long wait to get on this elevator. And you step onto the little disc and it starts rising up. And as it rises up, the, the ceiling above you sort of opens you know, just this metal, this metal door opens and it lifts you up and there's this bright light that kind of comes shining down, and as it, it becomes flush with the surface of the asteroid, you're met with basically these five kind of building clusters inside this glass domed structure.

And there are bright lights that are kind of shining and illuminating this central square. There's signs that are advertising drinks, gambling weapons. and they light up the windows of these various building complexes. There's people kind of milling about kind of stumbling and you know, there's a few people probably having a really good time on some really good substances,

Others are crying over, having lost all their money. There are people dancing in the street performing tricks like juggling and fire breathing and all that fun stuff. And there's these ridiculously looking statues of presumably famous people from local history. I assume ,

Zach/Zahn: the founders of this asteroid

probably, yeah. And, and, yeah. So these, these five buildings on your map here there's, so building number one contains some shopping options. There's big Fred's weapons, armor, and ammo. There's tiny Fred's bombs, blasters and more. There's the Daily Disguise and Professor Infiniti's Robot Emporium.

Building number two. You've got Docs’ Dox, Vox, and Pox! which is kind of a general store and medicine store. You've got Bean Me Up, which is a bean based grocery store.

Bee/Polaris: So good.

Avery/GM: And then there's Pick Your Poison, which is kind of a more illicit substance facility

Zach/Zahn: Apothecary Big question or big ex big quotation marks. Apothecary

Avery/GM: Yeah. building number three, you've got the or Ornate Dreams Hotel featuring the world famous Sapphire Tree restaurant building. Number four, The lucky tentacle Casino and spa*.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: And then building. And as you're kind of taking in this scene, building five really stands out as like the centerpiece of this asteroid. It's the pendulum… pendulum of Doom Death races sponsored by assemble singles.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: and there's like a… there's like all these bright lights and like search lamps floating, and then there's like a little a little like dancing, like assembles cheese mascot,

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God.

Avery/GM: Out here.

Zach/Zahn: Would Assembles cheese be a triangle?

Avery/GM: Of course. No. It's, it's a flat square.

Zach/Zahn: Aw, but Kraft’s already a square. I was just trying to make it different.

Avery/GM: Oh, I see, I see.

Bee/Polaris: Make it a circle.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's fine then. Sure. Okay. It's a circle

Zach/Zahn: cause it's assembled. So you put two triangles together to make a square.

Avery/GM: Oh, I love it.

Jenine/Marty: It’s like building blocks. They're building blocks.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, right.

Avery/GM: Okay, great. I love it. Yes. Now is this, that is a great little .

Bee/Polaris: Is this mascot like a dude in a suit or a robot?

Avery/GM: Oh, it's a dude in a suit.

Bee/Polaris: I just know he hates his job. I just know he hates his job.

Jenine/Marty: RIP. That's probably not like what is, what is the weather temperature? Like what is the temperature in this space? Is it like hot? Is this guy like just baking in there like, like a guy on a street corner in one of these suits and, and

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Does he look like he can use a water bottle?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Can he even make use of one?

Avery/GM: Jenine, to answer your question, this place is probably a nice, comfortable, like 67 degrees.

Jenine/Marty: Ooh, nice.

Bee/Polaris: Fahrenheit For any, anyone that might possibly listen from anywhere else other than .

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: But would it be hotter for him under all these lights?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: it is definitely a little hotter under the lights and this person looks like they are sweating a bit.

Bee/Polaris: RIP

Avery/GM: Yeah. So y'all have found yourself in Space Vegas. Sweet. Space Vegas.

Zach/Zahn: Space. Vegas.

Chris/Ollie: Spegas!

Bee/Polaris: Wait, what was, What was building number four? I was writing these down.

Jenine/Marty: It was a casino in spa.

Avery/GM: Oh, I’m sorry

Bee/Polaris: Wait, then what number 3?

Jenine/Marty: There was quotes around something or question mark next to something. There was, there was some kind of punctuation

Zach/Zahn: There was an asterisk.

Jenine/Marty: Asterisk! Thank you.

Zach/Zahn: Was asterisk next to the spa.

Jenine/Marty: Cool Cool Cool Cool. I was trying to figure out what the, what the, the, the punctuation was.

Bee/Polaris: Wait. Okay. So was number three Just the hotel then.

Jenine/Marty: And has a nice restaurant.

Zach/Zahn: hotel and restaurant.

Bee/Polaris: sweet. Okay. Okay.

Zach/Zahn: One that Bruce has gotta put their taste test to.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Bruce. Bruce should go in there and challenge the chef.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, that'd be awesome.

Avery/GM: Duel of the chefs

Zach/Zahn: chef off.

Chris/Ollie: It's like Shokugeki no Soma all of a sudden,

Bee/Polaris: can we get the, Can we get the space Great British Bakeoff ?

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Caden/Bruce: Space version of Chopped

Bee/Polaris: space version of Hell's Kitchen.

Avery/GM: So yeah, Building four is the Lucky Tentacle Casino and Spa Asterisk

Zach/Zahn: pendulum of Doom Death Races

Avery/GM: sponsored by assemble singles. .

Bee/Polaris: Why does a cheese company a sponsor death races ?

Zach/Zahn: Because it's ironic cause all the ships are probably breaking apart.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Chris/Ollie: Assembled singles are people .

Zach/Zahn: Oh God, it's Soylent singles.

Chris/Ollie: Soylent singles. Perfect.

Avery/GM: It wasn't go, I wasn't going there, but

Zach/Zahn: Oh my god. It's… that would Zahn’s outlook on the best grilled cheese though.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. After you win a lifetime supply of singles from the race

Zach/Zahn: Assembles singles, it's all people.

Avery/GM: So y'all are here. Where to first?

Bee/Polaris: Is there, is there a a bubble tea stand?

Avery/GM: I'm sure there probably is. Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: I think that would probably be in building two. Cause that seems to be where all the food is.

Jenine/Marty: That was the correct question.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Does anyone to shop.

Zach/Zahn: Let's get

Chris/Ollie: Oh, absolutely.

Zach/Zahn: Let's spend this. We got this, We got a hole burning in our pocket with this a hundred grand.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Who's holding that by the way?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Where is that located?

Zach/Zahn: Obviously on Ollie.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent.

Avery/GM: Just uploaded it into the

Chris/Ollie: Excellent.

Zach/Zahn: He’s got the data pad on him somewhere. I don't know, either that or Zahn in his big ass backpack.

Chris/Ollie: So since I have the finances, Ollie will just Apple pay everyone 20,000 credits in their messages and say have fun with your shopping trip. And then Ollie's just gonna go for the, the robot Emporium.

Avery/GM: Okay. Professor Infinity.

Chris/Ollie: Yes, sir.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn will make for building one, as I'm assuming that's where I can find some mod components to start beefing up our ship and our armor and our guns and all the other cool shit

Avery/GM: Oh, Zach, of course.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yes.

Avery/GM: I forgot to do mods.

Zach/Zahn: That's okay. For the most part A there's pretty decent ones made out here. It's one of those I plan on mostly making them up and then running 'em by you.

Avery/GM: That's fine. I just forgot to do anything related to that, so I'm gonna have to pull up the book. So I apologize for not finishing my prep.Like I thought.

Bee/Polaris: you're, It's fine. You did. Hey, you did enough.

Zach/Zahn: You did good for one week.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. I need the raw material cuz most of these are just like, Oh, they need this much money and up to one hour and a functioning thing or, Yeah. So I just need, I literally just need parts. And I can build my own shit.

Avery/GM: So, yeah. So while other people are doing their shopping, brainstorm a few like parts that you wanna buy and we can…

Zach/Zahn: Thankfully they keep it pretty general of just like they, they keep it generalized by saying like, Oh, this costs this much money and one unit of pretech salvage or, a type A power cell runs this or, So just super

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Easy stuff.

Avery/GM: Okay, that's fine.

Zach/Zahn: And I guess for easy sake I would keep it for the cost or the, for the credit cost, we would quote, unquote call it parts and I would just buy X amount of parts for x number of credits.

Avery/GM: Okay, that's fine. Okay. Yeah, that's fine.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I'm gonna need a lot of parts too.

Bee/Polaris: How much did Ollie split the, the money by again?

Chris/Ollie: It should be even 20 K for everyone.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: But we haven't sold the the hover bike yet, so

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Should we sell that stuff first before doing shopping so we just have more money?

Zach/Zahn: I mean, we can do that in building 1 too as well. Oh, sweet. Cause that seems to be where all the tech stuff is.

Zach/Zahn: Unless we, unless you wanna potentially use it as a contender for the, the race. We don't know what kind of races they have, what vehicles they use for the races.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. If it's like Red Line,

Zach/Zahn: if it's speeders or

Avery/GM: you'll not, you'll not need any of your own personal vehicles except the Strike Fighter that Polaris has.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, okay. Got it.

Avery/GM: I've, I've got something fun planned for that. Hopefully

Zach/Zahn: nice

Avery/GM: Or it'll fall flat. Who knows? we'll find out.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we could just, we could also solve this death race with cake and Bombs . It seems to be our MO

Chris/Ollie: never goes wrong.

Zach/Zahn: There was also a list of ship mod. There we go. Ship Mods is also one 12 of the pdf.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: They're also a bit more expensive. 20 grand is sadly not gonna get me as far as I thought.

Avery/GM: No, no. You'll, you'll probably have to find some big score to really get some good stuff, but

Zach/Zahn: Right. Ship's armor score is increased by five 50% of whole two components slash hull class

Avery/GM: anyway. So we know what Zach's doing. We know what Chris is doing.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris doesn't need to buy anything.

Avery/GM: No. Okay.

Bee/Polaris: So he's just gonna follow around Marty and Bruce.

Jenine/Marty: Marty doesn't need to buy anything cause I got all the medical stuff from the planet.

Caden/Bruce: Well, Bruce wants to go to building number two.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: We follow Bruce?

Zach/Zahn: Hey Marty, can I, can I have some of your funds?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, sure. I'm not gonna do anything with it.

Zach/Zahn: Hell yeah, brother.

Avery/GM: what?Oh. Oh my goodness. Okay, Cool. Ollie, let's start with you. Where did profess, There we go. So Professor Infinity's Robot Emporium is sort of a, a fairly big shop space in this building. Takes up quite a bit of real estate and it, it is just packed to the brim with. Robot chassis and you know, different parts and modifications and stuff, you know, different sorts of arms and wheels and legs and all kinds of cool stuff.

The person who runs this place, Professor Infini, is the, is dressed like the stereotypical mad scientist. He wears a big white lab coat goggles over his eyes. He's, he has got this like greenish blue skin and wild frazzled hair that sticks out straight from his head, kind of just all, all up and, and everywhere.

But he's, he's, you know, about average height, you know, 5’ 8”, 5’ 9”, and. Pretty scrawny build. And he comes as, as you come in he's sort of hunched over this little desk and he's got like a wrench in one hand and he's tightening this thing on this robot. And after a few moments, the robot sits up, shakes his hand, and is just like, “I'll see you next week, professor.”

And it hops down off of the, off of the desk. And this is a really tiny robot, like maybe 12 inches tall, and it just waddles out of the store. , as you're coming in,

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna give the diminutive robot his space and waltz in and start perusing the shelves. Just so you know, I, I'm also looking to buy drones.

Zach/Zahn: Ooh.

Avery/GM: Cool Drones are gonna be in building one at little Fred's.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Excellent. Then I or Ollie will approach Professor Infinity and say greeting Sir, are you the proprietor of this shop?

Avery/GM: Ah, another customer. Oh, you are, you're an old model. Ah. What brings you in here today?

Chris/Ollie: I see you too are an old model.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God. Came for this man's whole life.

Zach/Zahn: caught in 4k.

Bee/Polaris: Geez, I'm gonna say that. Gonna say that to a boomer

Chris/Ollie: I mean, he's still learning social interaction, you know.

Avery/GM: No, that's fine. got him. He's, he kind of turns his head. It's like, I've never gotten that response before. You're a curious one. Mind if I take a look and he's kind of like, his fingers are kind of like wiggling.

Chris/Ollie: Sounds kind of sketchy, but Ollie's pretty trusting, so he's gonna be like Please do, but be careful.

Avery/GM: Do you like open up? Where your pro, where your core sits or what?

Chris/Ollie: No, I imagined he's got like a flap on his his chest that flips down and it's like a, a keyboard with a screen for diagnostics.

Avery/GM: Professor Infinity is typing in, looking at like your diagnostic. He's like, Oh, you, you're from the hegemony. Oh, I've never had one of you in before. Oh, please, please look around. Look around. What, what interests you today?

Chris/Ollie: I'm currently searching for a processing node. I'm in dire need of more RAM.

Avery/GM: Ollie, Professor Infinity looks at you and it's like, Oh, I see. So you're an ai, not just a, not just a very strange looking robot?

Chris/Ollie: as I understand it. Yes. I. Recently was under employ by the hegemony, but then decided I did not want to do that.

Avery/GM: You seem like pull out like a little notepad and like start, like jotting down some notes. ah, that's fascinating. Yes, yes. Processing notes are over there towards the back corner. Just bring up however many you need and, and we'll get you squared away. Anything else you're, you're interested in?

Chris/Ollie: So we have back on the ship where did this go? We've got civilian security bots and janitor bots on the ship. Right. Those are the, the four that we have. And he's currently a work bot? Yeah, I do. Or would like a repair bot. So

he's gonna mention that as well. I, I see you or Ollie’s gonna say Your signs indicate you have repair bots for sale?

Avery/GM: Oh, yes, yes, yes. Right, right. Over this way. And he gestures towards like a rack of like pretty standard looking, you know, repair bots, you know, they've got different tools attached to them and stuff. They come in a variety of packages and, you know you know, custom kits and stuff depending on what your needs are. Tell me, are you more of a, a ship based robot or are you, you have permanent housing on a planet somewhere?

Chris/Ollie: Ship based.

Avery/GM: Hmm mm-hmm. . Yes. Yes, yes. I definitely would recommend the the X-4 model over there. Yes, yes. And he's kind of like off in his own world, kind of just like going through the motions at this point now. Like he's really invested in the notes that he's taking.

Chris/Ollie: Hmm. So I'm gonna look at this robot. Does it have like a, a chassis perk? Like is it the same kind of thing that I'm wearing right now, the the Jack chassis? Or does it have like a custom thing for it? Cause I, I, I figured the work bot was what I was, but they both kind of fit. Of course you can just come up with whatever, whatever thing you want, but like each of the chassis will have a passive perk.

Avery/GM: Yeah, I was looking for that.

Chris/Ollie: yeah, cause I forgot. Cause this one has plus one to fix and program. So I guess I don't need a repair bot. Okay, so Ollie's going,

Zach/Zahn: Robots being op over here. Damn, .

Chris/Ollie: Well, I mean…

Avery/GM: Oh, robots are ridiculous.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I don't even need to sleep. I get like 50% more day. So Ollie's going to scan or take a look at this robot and figure, eh, I don't need a, a repair bot. And so he is gonna turn to professor… or professor or doctor.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Professor Infinity.

Chris/Ollie: Turn to Professor Infinity and say on second thought, I do not require this chassis, but I do require drones. Do you have any of those I could buy?

Avery/GM: Oh, no, no, no, no. Drones are, No, no, I don't handle those. Those would be handled by little Fred down the way if you, if you must know that's where that is.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. And so Ollie will say oh, wait, have I already bought the node.

Avery/GM: Not yet. No.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Then the node,

Avery/GM: how many nodes are you gonna get?

Chris/Ollie: Actually, that’s a good question.

Avery/GM: Basically, one is 1,000 two is 5,000, three is 10,000 four is 50,000.

Chris/Ollie: Cause I wanna say I need some money for the, So I'll just stick with the plus three right now.

Avery/GM: Okay. So three nodes, three extra nodes.

Chris/Ollie: Well, it's, it's one, it's one node that's plus three. Cause the thing is like I can connect to them wirelessly, but if there's like ECM jamming, I need to physically touch it. So that's why I wouldn't maybe want more than one.

Avery/GM: Gotcha. Gotcha.

Chris/Ollie: But no, I'll just stick with the plus three.

Avery/GM: Okay. So one plus three node?

Chris/Ollie: Yes.

Avery/GM: Okay. That's fine. Excellent. Yeah, so he, he takes your credits, you know, you transfer 'em digitally to, to him and He's like, Feel free to come back whenever you'd like.

Chris/Ollie: Thank you. And your store is lovely. And he'll spin on his heel and just walk out. So yeah, I'm gonna make my way over to little, what was it, Little Joe's or Tiny, Tiny Fred’s. Is, is that where Zahn is or he and Big Fred’s.

Avery/GM: Where did Zahn go?

Zach/Zahn: Little Fred is, or little crap already forgetting names. The little guys was the bomb place. The big guy was the weapons emporium.

Avery/GM: Yes,

Zach/Zahn: the disguise one first for armor.

Avery/GM: You're going to daily disguise?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: Oh you probably go to him and then, because you're gonna make your way to Tiny Fred's, right?

Zach/Zahn: I'll eventually make my way to Not the bomb one, The gun one.

Avery/GM: So Chris, you leave Professor Infiniti's and our camera zooms in on him and he has a little glint in his eye, and then we zoom back out. We keep following Ollie for a little bit. And you're going to little Fred’s for some drones?

Chris/Ollie: Yep.

Avery/GM: Cool.

Zach/Zahn: Tiny Freds.

Chris/Ollie: There should be,

Avery/GM: Oh, I did say Tiny Fred.

Chris/Ollie: There should be Big Fred, Little Fred and tiny Fred. We're missing a brother.

Bee/Polaris: This is medium Fred erasure.

Avery/GM: Ollie, you walk into tiny Fred's bombs, blasters and more, and you're hit with just this wall of like metal music, right? Like, it's like, it's like walking into a, a, a hot topic or something, right?

Zach/Zahn: It's like walking into a doom action scene.

Chris/Ollie: Yes, he's listening to the ost

Avery/GM: and you know, this place is, is, you know, covered wall to wall in big guns and like model. Size, like display size versions of like hover tanks and stuff like on display here.

And there's just a short, bombastic little individual here with grayer and kind of a hyena like face. And he's he's just, you know, kind of just hurrying around his shop, kind of throwing things in different places, being very like nonchalant with like the amount of explosives that are stored here, it's kind of dangerous. And he looks up to you and he's like, Yeah, what do you want?

Chris/Ollie: Is the music like very loud?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. So Ollie's gonna turn his volume output up to be greater than the music, however loud that is. He's gonna continue on in his normal voice and say You know, that is very unsafe to handle those explosives in that way. You are breaking 37 codes in safety infractions.

Avery/GM: Ah, what do you know? I, I've been handling bombs since before you were born. Wait, you're a robot. You weren't born, You know what I mean! What do you want? Oh, you here to buy something? Or here to had a talk smack about how I, I throw these bombs places and he tosses like a fricking package of little, ex, like a grenade package, like behind him. Just nonchalant.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, no offense sir. I'm merely a warning. I've am a bit too experienced with bombs from my own liking , and they are quite unpleasant to be blown up by. I am here searching for drones.

Avery/GM: Ah, yeah, I got, I got some drones for you. Come, come on over, over to the, the countertop over here.

Chris/Ollie: Yep. Ollie will just follow him over.

Avery/GM: And he's got a few different kinds of drones. He's got, he is like, Yeah, we got the, the void hawk there. That's, that's a pretty popular one. A pretty standard drone. You got your stalker drones here meant for like, hiding and, and stuff like that. Kind of, you know, getting in there. And then you got the, the top of the line, the Pax drone here. Now this one, this one is a class act and I have to say my personal favorite,

Chris/Ollie: Does he have multiples of these drones or these

Avery/GM: yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Hmm. So I'm going to Ali, he's just gonna go for one void hawk and two stalker drones.

Avery/GM: Sure. That brings it down to 3000 credits. He's like, yeah. So you carrying these out here on your own or you, you want me to drop 'em off at a, at a dock and bay here?

Chris/Ollie: Are they currently operational? Actually, wait. No, nevermind. I was just gonna activate them all and start flying 'em around, but I can only do two at the moment.

Avery/GM: Well, he was gonna say they can be for a price.

Chris/Ollie: Ooh. Elaborate .

Avery/GM: Well, Mac normally these things need to be assembled. You know, they come prepackaged from the manufacturer. I don't usually touch 'em, but, you know, you squeeze a couple thousand credits my way. I could, I could assemble 'em for you. Get 'em all set up for you. Let it, let you fly around the, the little asteroid, but you didn't get 'em from me. If you do that, you know?

Chris/Ollie: I appreciate the offer, but unnecessary.

Avery/GM: All right. All right. So where am I delivering these to?

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna give them the location of the ship.

Avery/GM: Sure. Docking Bay 12.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent. I'm guessing he has got these fittings. For now, Ollie's just gonna like peruse the fittings while I, while I you know, physically peruse them myself.

Avery/GM: Sure. Yeah. I mean, he's got heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, all kinds of stuff to modify like vehicles and stuff like that, so. Excellent. Yeah. Bruce, you are going to building number two, you said?

Caden/Bruce: Yes, please.

Avery/GM: All right. We go building two.

Jenine/Marty: I will be joining you on building two trip

Bee/Polaris: Yeah Polaris is too

Jenine/Marty: Marty is following close behind.

Avery/GM: All right. Going to Doc’s Dox, Vox, and Pox or Bean Me Up, or Pick Your Poison.

Caden/Bruce: I wanna go to both bean me up and pick your poisons, so whichever first it doesn't matter.

Avery/GM: Sure. Bean me up is a very standard like, Grocery store layout. Like you come in and it's weird for an asteroid place to have such a weird set, have such a setup cause you come in, you have your grocery cart and you can start perusing the aisles and kind as you, as you come in, you notice like when they say everything is bean based, they literally mean everything is bean based.

There are bananas that are clearly grown from like genetically modified bean plants and there are, breads that are baked with beans in them for some reason. Like everything is bean based. Coffee bean, pinto bean, all of the beans.

Caden/Bruce: Awesome.

Bee/Polaris: That's a lot of beans.

Avery/GM: It's a lot of beans.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce's face just lights up and he'll look back at Polaris and Marty and just be like, So do you have any requests for food?

Jenine/Marty: Could you make ice cream?

Bee/Polaris: vanilla bean ice cream? I hope the store only employs lesbeans.

Avery/GM: Oh God. I… Oh, that would've been a, I sure it's Canon now. Sure.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah. .

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce just goes around and he starts putting a variety of beans in his cart and like every so often he'll look over his shoulder and be like, I'm gonna make some hummus out of this. I'm gonna have some coffee beans so we can have fresh coffee on the ship. Oh, you know what? I think they even have some black-eyed beans. These are great for stews and sauces. So we'll get a couple of these too, and he'll just like, continuously, like tell the other two what He's getting these different beans for us. He just like fills up the cart very excitedly, like his tails do. The happy cat swish as he walks like

Jenine/Marty: I also feel like I'm pushing a cart as well, just as like an extra. An extra little place where you could put more items in. I'm just like close behind. I'm like, okay. You know when you go on shopping trips and it's like you're, you're doing bulk buys and your mom's like, You gotta get a cart.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: That's what Marty is doing.

Caden/Bruce: The little shoppers training cart.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Polar is very confused by everything. And he also has a cart, but like after a couple minutes of everyone… of you guys shopping, he's just like doing the thing where you like, run with the cart and then hop on and like ride it.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my gosh. Polaris hasn't had caffeine yet.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris probably shouldn't have caffeine. Yeah. Yeah. Polaris doesn't know what anything in this store is.

Avery/GM: right, right before the death races. Three cups of coffee for Polaris.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, no. Like, like six shots. Let's see what happens.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Six shots of espresso, let’s see what happens.

Avery/GM: And Bruce, as you're perusing the aisle, you find a name on one of these canned goods here that I, I don't know how it makes you feel, but you see that it's Chef Jamie's special bean mix, right? And Chef Jamie's xyz. Like this is a brand. And you, and you recognize the picture of Chef Jamie as your former cooking partner that threatened to cut off you tail off and they are apparently a famous chef.

Zach/Zahn: That bastard.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce doesn't react, but like subtly, like turns the cans. So it shows the ingredient list instead of like the face marketing of the labels as he just like, nice continues walking and like as he walks past it, like he doesn't wanna be mean to the workers who work at the grocery store, but like, he takes one with his tail and like puts it at the very, like, he just pushes them all the way back… doesn't, doesn't them off. Just pushes them out of the way.

Avery/GM: That's great.

Bee/Polaris: Aww.

Avery/GM: and, yeah. So you've got this variety of food. If, if you had to guess, like, do you fill all three carts? Or, or does or is Polaris's cart still empty? What do you, what do you

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Polaris's cart is still empty and it's just like Bruce's cart is full and then there's like a certain amount of like jars and cans of beans in Marty's, but it's not that full at all. He has like one and a third cart.

Jenine/Marty: Oh good. I'm not strong.

Caden/Bruce: And I feel like it'd be the kind of thing where it's like Bruce is the kind of like alien where it's just like, you know, four cans to his can and just like, he'd look over and like kind of see that Marty's like a little bit sad, so he'd like put a little tiny one, so.

Bee/Polaris: Aww.

Jenine/Marty: Yep.

Avery/GM: Okay, so you get to the front of the store and Yeah, we'll present. Okay. And the total comes to 800 credits.

Bee/Polaris: Hm, not bad,

Caden/Bruce: decent shopping trip.

Avery/GM: And you've got, we'll say you've got enough food to last you on the ship, probably for you and the whole crew, at least a month and a half.

Caden/Bruce: Awesome.

Avery/GM: Nice. So that's a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. And you got a lot of ingredients that that you could probably make anything, any, any recipe you could imagine you, you could probably make with, with the ingredients available.

Avery/GM: Although they're all gonna be bean based. So that's

Caden/Bruce: Hummus for days.

Avery/GM: Hummus for days.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: Y'all hop over to pick your poison next. And this place is, I don't know, have, aside from the people who already live in Oregon, has, has anyone been to like a modern day dispensary?

Jenine/Marty: No, I'm the designated driver to them though.

Avery/GM: Okay. like these places look like

Jenine/Marty: they look like Apple stores, right?

Avery/GM: Yeah. A lot. Like it's, yeah. Basically this Pick your poison place is like the Apple store of drug stores. . It has just a wide variety of different substances available all for your mind altering needs. There are some actual like cooking alcohols and things like that, but there's also like straight up like hard alcohol that could actually get you drunk.

Avery/GM: There are drugs that are definitely illegal, such as psych and Reverie and squeal. Some of these. As you, as you're perusing them, Marty, you see some of these labels and realize that you have some of these in your possession that you took from Winston's Bunker.

Jenine/Marty: I do.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You have, I believe I gave you a couple doses of squeal and a couple doses of psych.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah, you did.

Zach/Zahn: You could have potentially turned around and sold those.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah, you did. I was like, what?

Avery/GM: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: I was trying to figure out why those looked familiar.

Chris/Ollie: Just become a dealer

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. We're just gonna leave those there. We're not gonna pay attention to them. That's fine.

Bee/Polaris: sweet.

Avery/GM: And yeah, and this kind of smooth talking fellow is running the desk here and, and, and he's just like Hey man. What you, what you in the market for?

Caden/Bruce: Oh very simply, I need four bottles of the sy and then that's probably about it. They're the best for flambés.

Avery/GM: Oh, sure, sure. Doing, doing some cooking, huh?

Caden/Bruce: Yes. And Bruce kinda like shrugs.

Avery/GM: Okay. Well, hey, we also got a special deal on, on tsunami right now. And that stuff, that stuff hits like a wave, man. Get it. Wave, tsunami…. Haha… You're not, you're not laughing.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce kind of like, he'll, he'll like blink his two eyes and just be like, No, I'm sorry. I don't think I understand. But just, just the Synthenol.

Avery/GM: Okay. That's a hundred credits.

Caden/Bruce: And he'll hand over the money and he'll like, look at Marty and be like, Do you think I would be allowed to flambé on the ship? Probably. Right. I mean, I know Hermes likes weapons and all. I just don't want them to get any ideas about how alcohol can be lit on fire.

Bee/Polaris: Can't Hermes hear you right now?

Caden/Bruce: Neither Marty or Bruce have coms, I don't think so.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we gave you coms.

Jenine/Marty: Little earpieces. They're little earpieces. Are they just like always on or do we have to like We gotta click a button.

Zach/Zahn: Remember I made a joke last time that you have to touch your, your finger to, you're like a spy.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Okay.

Avery/GM: And that, and that's Cannon. Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Cool. Cool, cool. So when, when Bruce asks that question, I just kinda like do the little. Hey, Hermes Would, would you be okay if, if we flambé on, on the ship?

Avery/GM: researching …

Bee/Polaris: Good job.

Avery/GM: Ah, flambe, yes. That would be totally acceptable. And I would enjoy watching the flames .

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God. We're turning this robot into a psychopath.

Zach/Zahn: He's about to turn into a freaking arsonist.

Jenine/Marty: I'm assuming all of us hear that message.

Avery/GM: Yes. Even the ones without context.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just makes a… Polaris, just makes a frowny face on his visor.

Jenine/Marty: Marty just blinks and she goes, Okay, okay. Also, how are you doing Hermes? How, how, how is everything going over there? Everything good?

Avery/GM: It is quite quiet. There was small person who stopped by with some drones for Ollie just a few minutes ago. He was quite loud.

Jenine/Marty: Good to know. Thank you for keeping us updated. We'll be back, I don't know, soon. I don't know when, but we will be back and of then stopped end Transmission.

Zach/Zahn: over

Chris/Ollie: Hang up.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah… I should… yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will smile as he like, puts the sythenol like, I guess into like a reusable bag cuz that's just the way that Bruce would be. And just kinda like look at Marty and be like, Thank you for asking. I usually just ask for forgiveness honestly. But I think if I try I could probably make some Crème Brule.

Jenine/Marty: ooo yeah. Oh, is, is Marty Lactose Intolerant? Well oh well!

Avery/GM: Well find out.

Jenine/Marty: We'll find out.

Bee/Polaris: Gonna have to rule for it.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, No

Chris/Ollie: trust in the heart of the dice.

Avery/GM: Cool. Is there anything else Bruce, Marty and Polaris would like to do on their little shopping adventure?

Bee/Polaris: At least for Polar… Polaris doesn't need to buy anything and also has never been here, so he's mostly just looking around and goofing off.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce would wanna go to Big Fred's. But not realizing that when it says like, an enforcer hammer. It is not actually a hammer that you use to flatten out meats. It is a weapon

Bee/Polaris: yes, yes!

Zach/Zahn: Like a meat tenderizer that you use to destroy something?

Caden/Bruce: correct.

Bee/Polaris: You can just make a really, really, really big smash burger

Zach/Zahn: that would tend to rise the fuck out of some meat though.

Caden/Bruce: Like he's going through like the leaflet of like what this has and he is like, Oh, it has like a little knife. Oh, it has like a little blade. Ooh, it has a, This sounds, this sounds great. I don't see any whisks, but you know what, we'll have a look. .

Bee/Polaris: Bruce thinks it's a kitchen supply store.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: Oh, I love it. So the three of you head into big Fred's weapons ammo and more. And maybe it's the and more that maybe off a little bit. Because why would you say you have more than just those two things?

Caden/Bruce: The hammer's right here in the booklet

Avery/GM: and you come in. So Big. Fred is a towering, gigantic individual. He's got dark brown fur and the head of a hyena. And he wears like, kind of like this black jumpsuit. And he speaks with a very, a very soft voice and he's just like, Hello, Welcome to Big Fred's. I am Fred. Please look around and if there's anything you need, just let me know. I will be more than happy to help. And through the wall, you kind of hear like that metal music, but it's like kind of like a faded, like, there's like several layers of like between.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce will look around and like look at the hammer and like, Slowly blink and just be like, This isn't what I thought it would be. Do any of these utilities come in smaller sizes? I just think they're a bit too big for my kitchen.

Bee/Polaris: as Bruce is saying that in the background, Polaris has picked up the laser blade and I assume it's off. So he's like looking into the barrel of the laser blade.

Zach/Zahn: No.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I see that. And I just put, put the hand down. I'm just, Okay, let's, let's not

Avery/GM: Bruce Big Fred blinks at you and kind of turns his head. He's like, But, but my, my, my brother says Bigger's always better. Wouldn't, wouldn't a bigger hammer be of more use to you than a little hammer?

Caden/Bruce: No. If you over tenderize the meat, it can actually make it taste quite tough instead of having it quite juicy and nice,

Avery/GM: let me take a look and back and he kinda hops off of this little, this little stool that he was sitting on and you hear it kind of creek underneath him. And he heads through like this back door, There's like a little curtain. And he disappears for a few minutes, , and he comes out holding like a box. He's like, these are all kind of defective models. Mostly they either like just broke or You know, didn't meet the needs of the, of the customers.

Avery/GM: I do actually have this and he holds up like, what looks like basically half of one of those hammers. It's like basically just the, the blunt end of the hammer or the, the smashing part of the hammer. And then like part of the handle . It's like, I, I think this might work, work better for you.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will kind of smile cause he realizes that this is a sweet thing and just be like, I think that definitely could work, Indeed. And do you have a smaller version of one of those and he'll point to the laser blade that Polaris is holdig.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. By this time Polaris has figured out how to turn it on and he's waving it around recklessly.

Avery/GM: He’s like, Oh please, please be careful. Actually, those, those shorten you can just, there's a little knob on the side. and he kind of like gestures like to you, Polaris, he's like pointing kind of like if you look at the side,

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: There's like a little knob

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will make it shorter and then a surprise emote will pop up on his visor and he'll start swinging around slower.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah. So that, that just, you know, you can shorten that any length you need. Actually it makes really good toast. I'm not supposed to say that, but it does.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will smile and be like, okay, I'll take one of those two then please. And, and he'll look up Polaris and just be like, Do you want one as well? It seems like you're having fun. I think as long as we keep these away from Hermes we’ll be okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris was li it has definitely been livestreaming this to Hermes.

Avery/GM: Oops.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts up a little smiley face on his visor and a thumbs up.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will

Bee/Polaris: and keep swinging around.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will look at Fred and go make that two laser blades. Do, do you want one Marty or anything?

Jenine/Marty: I, I, I'm okay. I'm good. Thank you.

Caden/Bruce: And Bruce will nod and just look back at Fred and just like slow blank

Zach/Zahn: I don't know. They could be real useful for medical tools.

Jenine/Marty: ohh….. I have no fight in, I have no fight in me.

Bee/Polaris: I have plenty players. Just doesn't know how to use it properly. ,

Jenine/Marty: what do I have in, I don't need to say it. There's nothing .

Bee/Polaris: You can also use the de cauterized wounds .

Avery/GM: Sure. Yeah. So that, that ends up being about 800 credits cuz he gives you a little bit of a discount on the, the little mini hammer.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, I know so much money. I think having like bought everything that Bruce wants to, he'll look at the other two and be like, Should we go and see how much damage the other two have caused?

Bee/Polaris: Real quick, what is, is, is dual wielding a thing in this game?

Jenine/Marty: Not yet.

Avery/GM: Ya know…

Jenine/Marty: Not yet?

Zach/Zahn: Possibly, but I, I feel like especially since you have little experience with one you'd probably be like rolling with a minus for dual.

Avery/GM: Dual wielding requires at least one level in shoot or stab, depending on the weapons used. What's that? Like and then, You suffer a minus

minus one penalty on, on rolls to hit, but gain plus two damage bonus. Oh. And it only lets you use one weapon per round anyway.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: So they kind of discourage it.

Zach/Zahn: Well, That's kind of weak sauce.

Avery/GM: I know, man.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. I won't get another laser blade .

Avery/GM: I mean, you can, and we can totally modify these rules to make them more cool. Though y'all haven't done much fighting really, So Yeah. Who knows, right?

Zach/Zahn: Right? Not yet. You could also Darth Maul it.

Bee/Polaris: that was the plan.

Zach/Zahn: Put two together.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that was the plan. I was gonna put a magnet on the bottom of each. Anyway. I'm buying two.

Zach/Zahn: That's what I'm talking about. Was coming up with Mod Shit.

Avery/GM: Okay talked you into it.

Zach/Zahn: Talked you into it.

Avery/GM: Anything else in, in big Freds

Caden/Bruce: that was everything that Bruce wanted?

Bee/Polaris: Same.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Exit. Big Freds. And there is, Did three of you have any more places that you wanted to look at?

Bee/Polaris: Not yet.

Caden/Bruce: No.

Jenine/Marty: Nope.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna ask for Zahn’s turn.

Avery/GM: That's what I'm, that's what I was get. I, I wanted to finish up, you know, one scene at a time.

Zach/Zahn: Yay.

Avery/GM: So over to Zahn. Zahn, where are we headed?

Zach/Zahn: We are headed to the disguise place first. Cause I want to get my armored vac suit.

Avery/GM: Okay. You walk into the daily disguise. I've created little characters for all these little shops, by the way. So have fun with that.

Zach/Zahn: Good.

Avery/GM: The daily disguise is run by a wife and wife team of hyperactive mouse like creatures. They are short, quick, and to the point and they kinda gunner about, and one of them's just like hey what, what, what can we get you? We got all kinds of stuff in here, so just let us know what you need.

Zach/Zahn: I'm in the, he's like glancing around with his helmet on scanning the room. He's like, Yeah, I'm looking for. Armored vac suit, you know, exterior ship maintenance kind of shit.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, Yeah. We got lots of those. Lots of those over in the back right next to the fitting rooms actually. Go ahead and try it on and then just bring it up if it, if it fits well.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn gives the thumbs up head straight there.

Avery/GM: Sure. They got all kinds of colors. What color, What color is Is Zahn feeling?

Zach/Zahn: We're, we're feeling Rusty Construction orange with with like gun powdered gray fiber.

Avery/GM: Sure. They got one of those. Why not ? Cool. Yeah. So 400 credits and they, they take your money and they're just like we hope you enjoy your purchase.

Please let us know if there's anything else we can get you. We got all kinds of good stuff in here. Tell your friends.

Zach/Zahn: Will do my little guys friends. Meece? This is why I don't talk to Pete. He like gives the awkward thumbs up and then like turns and walks away with his suit and is like, this is why I don't talk to people.

Avery/GM: Zahn gets tongue tied. cool. Where else did Zahn want to go.

Zach/Zahn: And then Zahn will now proceed to Big, big Fred’s .

Avery/GM: Sure. We'll say that as Marty, Bruce and Polaris are leaving Big Fred’s. You are heading into Big Fred’s.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is still swinging the swords. Actually he's swinging both of them at right now cause he has two

Zach/Zahn: Zahn stops. He's like, where'd you get those?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris points with one sword back to big Fred’s

Zach/Zahn: Look’s at big Freds looks at you and is like, I'm definitely getting one. And if you want anything cool done with those. He's like, does the snap and then like the fonzi thumb points of himself, he's like let me know

Bee/Polaris: polar salutes, but with still with the on laser blade in his hand.

Zach/Zahn: I'm just waiting for like Kid with Scissor moment.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: It's fine. It's fine, it's fine. I'm there. It's fine. It's fine.

Bee/Polaris: Is Marty just stressed out?

Jenine/Marty: It's fine.

Chris/Ollie: She’s just immediately ready for any and all accidents.

Zach/Zahn: Blazing Flaming Glowsticks!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is treating them like Glowsticks

(unintelligible)

Jenine/Marty: she was trained for this.

Bee/Polaris: Before, Zahn walks away, Polaris says, Excited. We should do

Jenine/Marty: Marty face palms

Zach/Zahn: PThat is a big old, maybe! I've seen some holo-flicks on people fighting with these things. I've, I've got my own applications in mind.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris nods and follows the other two

Avery/GM: Zahn,You head into big Fred's and yeah, like I said, you can hear kind of like some heavy metal music coming through the walls. Big Fred is standing there smiling and it's just like, Welcome to Big Fred's. I am Fred. Please look around and let me know if you have any questions

Zach/Zahn: before I begin perusing your, your selection. Can you gather or do you have any like cool or any mod components available? Just big bulk stuff things to keep it open mind with?

Avery/GM: Oh I, I do have kind of a, a, a junk bin in the back if that's what you're looking for. Kind of just discarded parts.

Zach/Zahn: if you're calling it junk… Yeah, I'm definitely interested in that kind of thing. If you're calling a junk here, I would be more than happy to take it off your hands actually.

Avery/GM: Oh sure. Yeah, just bring up whatever, whatever interests you in and I'll be happy to ring you up.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, how much do you want for the whole thing? I don't even need to see it.

Avery/GM: We'll say that there's probably about 2000 credits worth of stuff. It's just a big tub.

Zach/Zahn: Fuck yeah.

Avery/GM: The whole thing.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: I got money, man. He's like, excellent. Definitely gonna put that on the, on the shopping ticket. And then he's gonna start perusing the, the wears and he is definitely gonna find one adjustable length laser sword, or laser blade and, oh shit I gotta find it again. Did I say I said it was 60… Yep. There we go. One spike thrower for 600 credits is what it says.

Avery/GM: Oh, I'm sorry. He doesn't have spike throwers available here. Sorry. That's why I provided specific lists.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, you… a specific list… Oh, I thought it was like the specific list as well as,

Avery/GM: No, sorry,

Zach/Zahn: the extra list. Then he’s gonna come up to the counter and be like, I don't see any spike throwers on, on in your stuff here.

Avery/GM: Oh. Yeah, I haven't seen some of, I haven't seen those in a while. You know, we, we kind of have slim pickings out here. You know, we kind of just get what rolls in or, or what falls off a truck or, Well, you know, space truck. You know, that sort of thing. So can't always get…

Zach/Zahn: I mean that's, that's fair. It's one of those, they're real good for… you know, I'm not much of a fighter myself. I, I work construction a lot and

they're good for, you know, nailing a heavy ass bulkhead to the wall. You know what I mean? It gives them the, the shoulder nudge or the, the elbow nudge.

Avery/GM: Yeah. I suppose I've, I've, I've heard things about, about all these things that I sell. I really only sell them cause my little brother insists. But yeah, if you say so

Zach/Zahn: well is there by chance any place around here, one could get one?

Avery/GM: Not to my knowledge. You might try, if you're a platinum member, you might try some of the auxiliary services on the other asteroids. Sometimes they have all kinds of good stuff.

Zach/Zahn: It's a whole 20 k though. Zahn shrugs and he is like, Huh? I, I ain't no premium member. I mean, like I said, just a lowly worker, dude. Otherwise I'll take one of these and he puts the laser sword next to the or on the counter. He is like, also I'm do you got any type A and b power cells?

Avery/GM: I do have some type A any kind of gestures behind you, and there's like a whole rack of power cells. 10 credits is what I put 'em at.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha. And then B is a hundred, just type a's. All right. So, yeah. He's gonna pick up a bushel let's call it another 2000 credits of Type A batteries.

Avery/GM: Now this is a pretty big thing of stuff. Are you gonna like haul it around in like a wagon or are you just gonna have 'em?

Zach/Zahn: Oh no, I'm having it delivered. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Oh god, that's like 200 of these batteries, isn't it?

Avery/GM: That's fine. You'll never run out of ammo, .

Chris/Ollie: And they pretty much power everything.

Bee/Polaris: We also have that factory.

Avery/GM: This is also true. Once you get that up and running, y'all are set.

Zach/Zahn: And then how much was the laser sword? I of course closed the freaking spreadsheet.

Bee/Polaris: Oh it was 300.

Avery/GM: big Fred's. Just like, Okay. We'll I'll get these delivered downstairs. Docking Bay 12 you said?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Avery/GM: You should expect them within the hour. We're pretty fast here.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha. Yeah Do… he's definitely gonna make for doc’s next.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: Gonna pick up some stuff to integrate into my armor and make some, some hacking stuff cooler.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: Also grappnel launcher sounds fun

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's exactly what it sounds like.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, the magnet gun sounds super, super fun.

Zach/Zahn: I was tempted to get the magnet gun.

Chris/Ollie: It’s so expensive though. Yeah. So expensive.

Avery/GM: Yep. That's,

Zach/Zahn: but that's why

Bee/Polaris: I was also looking at the magnet gun

Zach/Zahn: It's so special.

Avery/GM: Just a big old magnet.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, Polaris could afford it. I mean, it's range is 200. Like the only thing with the bigger range…

Zach/Zahn: 200, 400.

Chris/Ollie: It's like a, it's a

Zach/Zahn: 200 is the close range.

Avery/GM: 400 s with disadvantage, but you know, at the same time.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, I got good shoot.

Zach/Zahn: I've got good shoot too. I couldn't think of any outside of combat application for a magnet gun.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Which is why Zahn wouldn't be immediately interested in it.

Avery/GM: So Zahn, you're heading to Doc’s?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So you come in and, and Doc is kind of an old prospector looking person wearing a straw hat and overalls and chewing on a piece of wheat.

Zach/Zahn: Oh God.

Bee/Polaris: Where did he get that wheat?

Avery/GM: That's the question, huh?

Zach/Zahn: what book did you crawl out of? Zahn goes ahead and says aloud with his minus one charisma.

Avery/GM: Didn't, didn't, didn't crawl outta no book. Just, you know, been here 50 years now selling my wares and telling the stories. What, what brings you in here, young man?

Zach/Zahn: Well, it was for some shopping, but now I want to hear the story of how you got wheat?

Avery/GM: Oh, I, I got a little, a little hydroponics bay and my, my closet, and I grow the wheat here. I like chewing. I like chewing on it… I will come up with ridiculous things Zach.

Bee/Polaris: You should introduce this man to dip. I love it.

Zach/Zahn: It's, it's illegal. It's illegal wheat.

Avery/GM: Illegal wheat. Now don't tell anybody. Don't tell, Don't tell the bean man. He'll be awfully mad that I didn't grow beans.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is like visibly like shaking a little bit as he is desperately attempting to hide his laughter. Like, he's like scoffing and choking on keeping it in from under his helmet. He's like, Yeah. So yeah. You got some cool shit listed on this here directory, and I like to pick some of it up.

Avery/GM: Oh, sure. Just peruse the aisles and grab whatever you want and I'll ring you up at the end, you know? And he's in a, a rocking chair. \

Zach/Zahn: Of course.

Bee/Polaris: I was just about to ask .

Zach/Zahn: Oh no. I immediately already assumed.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, I did too. I just didn't, I just didn't confirm. Does he have a shotgun next to him in like a, like a bloodhound sitting beside him?

Avery/GM: You know what? Yeah, yeah. ,

Zach/Zahn: He's got a la he's got a laser, double barrel shotgun.

Chris/Ollie: like inside the store. Inside the store is a porch with a rocking chair for him to sit on.

Bee/Polaris: Yes. Like the store is actually set up like a, like a fruit stand or like a lemonade stand or something like a farmer's market. And he's sitting on a porch.

Avery/GM: I love it. Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn comes back with fist full remote link units. We'll say about five of 'em. And he is gonna come back with, I dunno, two pads cuz you never know if you're gonna need more than one. Let's go ahead and fuck around with this translator torque. Maybe install it in the Ollie.

Avery/GM: Sure. Oh, you're gonna give Ollie a minus two charisma penalty. This is brilliant.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent.

Zach/Zahn: Maybe,

Bee/Polaris: I mean, we can always get, we can always get a chip to negate that right .

Avery/GM: Oh, for sure.

Chris/Ollie: I mean we haven't needed it so far. And in a case where we talk, talk to someone who can't speak our language, A minus two is better than nothing.

Jenine/Marty: Hey, guess what? I can talk to people who can't speak our language.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, we got a psychic.

Avery/GM: This is true. Telepathy.

Jenine/Marty: Ha ha

Chris/Ollie: Yeah

Zach/Zahn: And then of course, slapping on top of all of it is the grappnel launcher.

Avery/GM: All right, cool. I assume you calculated that out properly and I trust you enough. Keep track your own

Zach/Zahn: I am keeping a tab. I'm definitely not hit the 20,000 or the cause I, I didn't take all of Marty's money I only took 10k instead of the whole 20 cause I’m not an asshole.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: So I've got 30K to work with here.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. Yeah. He's just like, Oh, that's a mi a mighty big arsenal You got there, you planning on taking down the republic itself? I'm just kidding. You wouldn't do that. You're just one, one person…

Zach/Zahn: I'm just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe.

Avery/GM: Mm-hmm. He’s like, well, you you have a, you ever need more stuff, you know where to come. Doc’s. Dox, Vox and pox.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Totally . And he like takes his arm full of shit, packs it into his already pretty cramped backpack.

Avery/GM: Cool. Okay, so we've got our shopping done. What's everyone feeling like next on this little space Vegas adventure?

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will have definitely had made his way to the casino since leaving. Little or tiny, whichever one we decided on. Little Fred's.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: So real quick, how do rounds work outside of combat?

Avery/GM: That's a good question. What are you specifically thinking of?

Chris/Ollie: Well, I don't wanna spoil it but…

Avery/GM: oh Text it to me.

Chris/Ollie: Sure.

Avery/GM: In Chat if you don't wanna, Cause I'm gonna have to know eventually.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, yeah. You should definitely know about this because that would be pretty…

Jenine/Marty: I think Marty would look at the group that she's currently with and go, Should we, like, just check, not, not apply for the race yet, but like, check out what exactly Polaris is gonna get in store with? Should we just like check it out or do you wanna just blind?

Bee/Polaris: thumbs up on the visor. Polaris is already walking towards where the race like info is . As soon as Marty mentions that he put, he like turns off his little swords and puts some, puts 'em in his pocket and starts walking towards the race thing. Completely forgot about that.

Jenine/Marty: A sigh of relief .

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will like walk beside Marty and just be like, I think it's a good idea and I think Polaris thinks it's a good idea or is at least excited about it.

Jenine/Marty: Two thumbs up. And then I also just like pass on comms. Hello to all. We're gonna go check out the races. We're not gonna apply or anything, we're just gonna check it out. Is everyone okay? Over?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna get with the guys about selling our…Avery. Is it a hover cycle?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: Okay. Cause I, I found the stats for it, so I was just like, Which one is it? I'm gonna go see about selling our extra hover cycle.

Jenine/Marty: Do you want more charisma? Bla

Zach/Zahn: What do you mean? I'm… for like a split seconds on. It's just like, What do you mean I, I'm full, I'm full of I don't even have this self confidence to try and defend myself. Yeah. So I could probably use a hand with that.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, now Marty's just waiting on Ollie. What's, what's happening there?

Chris/Ollie: Is this over comms? Or have we met up?

Jenine/Marty: I was just doing a… just doing a check in on everybody

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's gonna respond over the text that he's in the hot seat right now.

Zach/Zahn: He’s in the hot seat?

Jenine/Marty: What?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris sends a question mark over text

Chris/Ollie: about to win the big one.

Bee/Polaris: Oh No! Polaris doesn't know what gambling is, so he just sends a thumbs up

Chris/Ollie: Ollie didn't either until recently and…

Bee/Polaris: Sweet

Avery/GM: looked up the definition for casino and was like, I'm gonna try.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, well he, you know, he finds himself out of money now and he is like, Oh, well there's, there's a casino. Apparently, that's a good place to make some money. And now…

Jenine/Marty: oh no,

Chris/Ollie: I don't know. He might be a gambling addict.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Can a, can a robot be addicted to something?

Avery/GM: So A.I.s are supposed to have breaks. So actually that would be a, like, stuff that prevents them from being like the super powerful evil intelligence that sci-fi horror makes them out to be

Chris/Ollie: Oh like quirks?

Bee/Polaris: Uh Oh

Avery/GM: So that could be one of Ollie’s breaks.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: That someone put on, put in into the software

Bee/Polaris: I didn't know that was a thing. Yikes.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah… Yeah. You technically, technically Polaris. And you wouldn't know this, but technically the custodians are Unbreaked AI,.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. That makes sense.

Chris/Ollie: sense. Um, Yeah. Any, any breaks you wanna implement on me as. I dunno about gambling addict, but yeah, we'll see how this turns out.

Avery/GM: Yeah, well, we'll take it as they come, but I was just mostly making a joke.

Chris/Ollie: If he's fantastically successful he might, you know, might wanna go back.

Avery/GM: Okay. Let's do the death race first, or at least the building first. Marty, are you sticking with the group that's doing the pendulum of Doom, like checking out this building? Or did you go to meet up with Zahn first?

Jenine/Marty: How desperate does Zahn sound for help?

Zach/Zahn: You can come in a little late where he is like trying to negotiate. It's not going well. So you can, you can do something else first.

Jenine/Marty: cool. I, well, it, it is mostly Marty's, like I need to look at the safety of things. Buton needs help kind of where she's torn right now. Cause she wants to, she wants to know what's going on in those death. Cause death was said in the races and was not specified before. So now Marty's like, well I gotta know what's happening, make sure I have the correct medical things just in Casies. So she's gonna prioritize that.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Jenine/Marty: And then help with over with the dealings.

Avery/GM: So you approach the pendulum of Doom Death Races sponsored by assemble singles building. And this is the shining jewel of Bragos. It is lit up with all kinds of multicolored lights. There's screens outside the building that

are showing like highlights from recent races like crashes, explosions, and epic victories, all that stuff.

And there's the little dancing triangle mascot out there. Just singing a little jingle like “assembles singles. We sponsored the death races. Come and check them out.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is making a, a, a wide U around that guy.

Avery/GM: And as you come into the building everything is, is decorated like to the nines here, you know, there's nice expensive upholstery. There's multiple like bar areas where like drinks and food are being served. It's like very like clubby in a lot of ways. There's massive display panels that show the current race that's going on with like, you know, rankings of, of where everyone's at.

All in all, this place is more like an arcade and less like a, like a place to watch some races. Right. And then there's a central desk in the middle of all this chaos with a sign above it that just says: REGISTRATION!

Bee/Polaris: Is there a, a pamphlet of information about the race?

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah, there's, you could probably grab like a little… there's probably like a little QR code that you can scan with like

Bee/Polaris: sweet.

Avery/GM: your data pad or whatever. And it lays out the following information about how to register for a race. You need 10,000 credits to register as your registration fee. You need a sponsor, either a corporate sponsor or a private sponsorship from another racer, and you need at least one fighter class ship to be your spotter.

Avery/GM: And essentially how these races work is there is an obstacle course of debris and me and asteroids and all that stuff that each race passes through. And basically the race consists of a team of two vehicles. One vehicle is the spotter and basically maneuvers around the track and dodges and blasts away obstacles and protects the other ship.

Avery/GM: The other ship is called the shuttle. And the shuttle is basically an open top hovercraft where at least two other team members are on top of it. And their goal is to pilot the shuttle around the debris that the spotter can't get rid of, and to also fight off the other members of the shuttle of, of other shuttles that

are racing with them so they can board other shuttles and try and like, get rid of the other racers.

Avery/GM: They can, you know, try and bump into them and make the other ones crash. All kinds of things. Basically along the way the shuttles have to pass through these, a series of gates that are like checkpoints and the first ship to pass through all the checkpoints and to cross the finish line or to eliminate all the other spotters and shuttles Wins the race.

Avery/GM: And the only rule for spotters is they can't shoot the other shuttles. They can shoot other spotters, but not the shuttles. And then there's a little asterisk at the bottom of this data that you're scrolling through, and it says, “Due to recent sponsorships, the brags pendulum of Doom Death Races has instituted a new safety feature to ensure that deaths are not blamed on Assembles.

Avery/GM: The track uses several Psionics with teleportation abilities. Each member of the team wears a special helmet that's connected to the, to a team of psychics. Any explosion or near death experience causes the wearer of the helmet to be teleported back to the docking bay safely because they don't want to tarnish the good name of assembles cheese!

Jenine/Marty: Ah. Okay

Bee/Polaris: Ah, corporate safety measures.

Avery/GM: Yep. don't wanna get sued.

Zach/Zahn: Of course, of course.

Avery/GM: but they still kept death in the name question.

Jenine/Marty: Double checking question.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Jenine/Marty: Two people have to be in the shuttle. How many in the spotter?

Avery/GM: However many will fit in the spotter ship.

Jenine/Marty: Got it. Okay.

Avery/GM: The shuttle can… shuttles at least two people. It can be a maximum of five people.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. So do they …another clarify. Do they have to be like humanoid bodies? The in Marty's brain, It's just kinda like, Could we put Hermes?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: On the shuttle?

Bee/Polaris: I was gonna say, I was gonna say we should totally put Hermes in there. Hermes can fly the shuttle.

Avery/GM: So non sentient robots are considered property so they can't race. But sentient robots like A.I.s are considered people and so they can race

Bee/Polaris: sick.

Avery/GM: So I'm gonna say you could put Hermes in it. Sure.

Jenine/Marty: Uhhuh. Okay. .

Avery/GM: Hey Hermes, Ollie. Go race!

Jenine/Marty: Well, it is mostly like, I think they put a gun in in Hermes Hands… possession he’ll have so much fun.

Bee/Polaris: question. So strike fighters have a crew of one. So only Polaris can technically fit in his ship, but Marty is small.

Avery/GM: Uh huh.

Bee/Polaris: Could Marty also fit in the ship with Polaris?

Avery/GM: Let me look at your build real quick. Your, your ship build.

Jenine/Marty: I can just ride in the trunk.

Avery/GM: So Polaris, I will say, because your ship is also like, Basically modified from the, the pod that they found you in, right?

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: I'm gonna say probably not. I'm gonna say it's probably a tight fit for Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, that's fair.

Jenine/Marty: Now, now another question.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Jenine/Marty: Building off of that, and still on the same frame of “what if Hermes?” does, could we just put Hermes in like small robot body

Avery/GM: Yes

Jenine/Marty: and also put with… on the shuttle craft with Polaris and with a gun?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is in the the spotter. because Polaris's ship is the spotter Yeah, cuz Polaris's ship is the spotter. It's a fighter class. Ship.

Jenine/Marty: Oh. Now I got my ships confused.

Avery/GM: Got it. No, you're fine. I threw a lot of, Threw a lot of info.

Jenine/Marty: You threw a lot of S’s at us, Avery. Lots of S’s. It's so cool though. This is very exciting.

Avery/GM: Okay. I was trying to make it fun.

Jenine/Marty: This is really cool. Much appreciation.

Avery/GM: Yeah, so that is how the races work. You could totally put Hermes in a little robot body and put 'em on the shuttle with everyone and have a fifth person to help defend your shuttle with.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: We have to get, We would have to get a tiny robot body. Let’s put him in a Roomba!

Chris/Ollie: I mean are the ones, the ones on the ship operational by now?

Avery/GM: You'd been working on them off and on. I'd say probably at least one of the companion bots was Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. He’s free to use it.

Bee/Polaris: We should, we should put Hermes in a Roomba.

Chris/Ollie: one of those tiny little Yeah, that'd be so perfect. That's when he is on timeout. When he gets too crazy with the cannon. You're go, you're gonna go in the Roomba.

Bee/Polaris: In the Roomba… Perfect.

Avery/GM: So the only things you're missing are the registration fee.

Bee/Polaris: Got that.

Avery/GM: And a sponsor.

Bee/Polaris: Yep. I'm not sure how we're gonna swing that one.

Zach/Zahn: A sponsor?

Jenine/Marty: A sponsor?

Avery/GM: because they wanna know that you're not just some hotshot coming out of nowhere,

Zach/Zahn: which is literally what we are

Bee/Polaris: That is exactly what we are

Jenine/Marty: I send over the like QR code to like our group, group chat, just so the other two know what's up. I’ll also send it to Hermes.

Avery/GM: After a few moments, Hermes just sends back a fire emoji.

Bee/Polaris: Great. Polaris has been live streaming everything that they've been doing to Hermes.

Avery/GM: Totally. Yeah

Bee/Polaris: Just so Hermes is in the loop.

Avery/GM: So let's jump over to the lucky tentacle. Cause I think, I think this is a good way to end this session and tie everything together.

Bee/Polaris: Hell Yeah

Avery/GM: So Ollie, let's talk about what you're doing here at the Lucky Tentacle.

Chris/Ollie: He's using his Robo Brain to count some cards and trying to get some money.

Avery/GM: So are you, So, so there are four options. Four, four kinds of games. You've got the slots, roulette, 21 or liars dice. Sounds like you're wanting to go 21.

Chris/Ollie: Yep.

Avery/GM: Cool.

Chris/Ollie: The classic ever present blackjack even far flung in the future

Avery/GM: in a totally separate galaxy. You know why? It's because it's cause, even in galaxy's far away,

Chris/Ollie: people still gotta play

Avery/GM: Decks of cards still got, you know, the same, Yeah, the same makeup. Okay. So let's go ahead and roll. Okay. Do you want to, we could do this one of two ways. You could just roll it as a skill check or you could actually tell me to hit or stay based on what you get.

Chris/Ollie: I'd rather do the skill checks.

Avery/GM: Sure, that's fine. So I think if you're gonna count cards, let's do a Intelligence notice check.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. I'm also going to begin cheating a little bit. Just trying to figure out which one… It’s a notice, not a know check, right?

Avery/GM: Hold on… “know facts about academic or scientific fields.” I would say counting cards is at its root a science.

Zach/Zahn: It's

Avery/GM: cause it's not luck

Zach/Zahn: it's a form of math actually I believe.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So, so I'll say if, if, if you need it to be a know check, it can be a know check.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. And how would on turn, like when I commit a processing point on turn? Oh wait, no, that's for the scene. So yeah, it's only one. So just trying to figure out which one I want to use here. I'm going let's see if this will work. I wanna commit a processing point for cognitive boost, commit processing for the scene on turn to automatically succeed any know check skill if success is at all possible.

Avery/GM: Okay, so you sit down at the table and at first the, the little the, the dealer kind of gives you kind of the up and down and it's just like, okay, I guess we're doing this. And starts dealing you cards.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, Ollie will say greetings! Apparently, life as a sentient being, requires much money. I'm told this is a way to acquire some and just politely at the, the dealer as he sits down.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you got that right. Mac, definitely a lot of way to get your money. I mean get you money. Yeah, let's, let's play some cards. And he deals, deals you out some cards you play probably about eight or nine hands and you are up. How much did you initially bet?

Chris/Ollie: He just threw down all his money, 3000 or 3200. Just 3,000.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: Make or break?

Chris/Ollie: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: Okay. So you essentially get after, after all said and done, you get about another 15,000 credits back after those few hands.

Avery/GM: And you notice you're actually getting some crowds around you. And there's a couple big burley guys kind of watching you out of the corner of your ocular sensors that you can see and you're playing this game and people might be catching on to what's going on here. No one was born yesterday.

Avery/GM: They know that robots are really smart. So you see that they change out the decks and then they shuffle in like three other decks into the deck. So it's a little harder to count cards after a while. And after a few minutes of sitting here, someone else sits down at the black jack table next to you and they are well dressed. They are wearing a big floppy purple hat and they are a tiger furry.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Jenine/Marty: Oh no.

Avery/GM: You hear them speak and she says let's make things interesting. Charles, I'll bet 3 million. And she looks at you Ollie and gives you a smile.

Bee/Polaris: god damn it…

(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 a creative commons license. Tracks include: Star Freighter, Orbital Promenade, Cyberpunk City, and Cyberpunk Bar.

Be sure to follow us on twitter at https://www.twitter.com/furthestpod

We'll be back on December 1st with our next episode.

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro Fades back up then plays out)

Episode 9 - Visions, Memories, and Destinations

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

We'll be back in 2 weeks with our next episode.

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Interlude - Halloween Special

Avery: Hello and welcome to the ‘Beyond the Furthest Stars Halloween Special’. We are excited to bring you a game that is set as a story within our larger story. It features new characters completely unrelated to our main campaign. Our wonderful cast member Bee, who plays as Polaris, has stepped into the role of GM for this episode, and we are using a gaming system of their own design. So, sit back and enjoy this very special Halloween episode of ‘Beyond the Furthest Stars’

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: So, Zahn, you have been informed by Polaris that the ship formerly known as the Minos can be tracked via its engine transponder code by the Crimson Chaos Pirates. And you have already started to head into the ship to get that code changed up. As Polaris and Marty have successfully prevented the pirates from destroying you, or attempting to destroy you… you know, who wants to deal with all that mess?

Zach/Sherms: right?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: So, you come into the, the engine room of the ship and you're noticing that it is pretty quiet in here. What do you do?

Zach/Sherms: Sliding out my, my helmet and cracking in my knuckles. I -uh- pull up, let's see, what's the off-brand version of Spotify? We'll call it dot.a.Ramma.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: dot.a.Ramma, okay.

Zach/Sherms: So, he pulls up dot.a.Ramma and he's slipping through. He is like, hmm, do I wanna listen to the usual, or do I wanna put on something new? Do I wanna listen to people talk? Ooh, interesting. Scary stories from across the galaxy. Huh. Should be entertaining enough. Play.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: And the story begins with a narrator.

Bee/GM: Welcome to today's episode of Scary Stories from Across the Galaxy. Today's story: The Rose Red Wedding.

We open the scene with a well-dressed young man staring out the window of a train, watching people as they leave and board. Sherm, can you please introduce yourself, your pronouns, and who you'll be playing?

Zach/Sherms: I am Shermit Dee Frog. I go by Sherm, sometimes Zach. I am he, he/him. And I will be playing Prince Augustus Theodore Shermsworth the third, aka Sherms.

Bee/GM: And I believe your code name will be uh-Frog Agent Frog for this.

Zach/Sherms: I know that, that sounds good.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Okay. Very straightforward.

Bee/GM: Huh?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I said very straightforward.

Bee/GM The agency's all about simplicity. Your thoughts are interrupted. When you feel a weight shift in the seat. A young woman sits down next to you.

Brianna, can you please introduce yourself, your pronouns, and who you will be playing?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I am Brianna Jean from Pseudonym Social, My Pronouns, are she/her, and I'm, Tonight I'm going to be playing Natasha, who also goes by Yaga in certain circles.

Bee/GM: Great. Across from you are two more young men, one who's studying you with curiosity and the other who is yet to make eye contact.

Chris, can you please introduce yourself, your pronouns, and who you will be playing?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Sorry, I am Chris, he/him and I will be playing as the incorrigible Hugo Allset.

Bee/GM: Uhm and what? Oh yeah, sorry. Can you all, Brianna, can, your agent’s name is uh Yaga, right?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yes.

Bee/GM: Okay, And Chris, your agent’s name is?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Uhm. I would figure just Cobbler.

Bee/GM: Okay

Zach/Sherms: Agent Cobbler.

Bee/GM: Okay. And then Avery, can you please introduce yourself, your pronouns, and who you will be playing?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I am Avery, He/they, and I am playing Quinn Parker, the bookish and shy agent. And yeah, that's, that's me.

Bee/GM: And your agent’s name is?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, Agent name would be Leshy

Bee/GM: Okay. You all sit in a brief silence. There is a last call for passengers and then the train begins to move.

Sherm, you were notified a mythology unit would be deployed to your location. Due to the less prospective agents being recruited, you were given a solo mission. Mythology has business in the area, and the two departments sought necessary to play nice. Who's the first to break the silence?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Theo is almost vibrating excitedly in his chair. So yeah, he's excitedly staring at Sherms shaking and as soon as before too long starts excitedly asking

“Your contact from the Fairytale unit. Right. What's your name? Where are you from? What do you do?”

Zach/Sherms: Sherms is dressed in absolute finery uh given his, his status, but he also has like a pin in his, in his overcoat that is, I don't know, let's call it, go ahead and say it's like Oxford or something.

He is currently just a student cause he's basically in the process of like learning the world so that he could be king someday; and he's sitting in the, in the train chair with like his legs crossed and his hands holding the, the top of his like golden cane. And there's very notable, a like a palm size golden ball at the end of the, of the cane.

He's like, “Oh, yes, I am. Oh. First mission, right. Only supposed to give your code name. Yeah. I'm Agent Frog.”

Brianna Jean/Yaga: “This is all the first missions?” Natasha pipes up, before she was staring out the window.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: No, but it my, my last mission was an abject failure on my part. So, hope-hopefully you know, hopefully this goes a lot better than my last one.

Bee/GM: Agent Yaga, you are familiar with the details of Agent Leshy’s mission and it was a complete disaster.

Zach/Sherms: Oh no.

Bee/GM: Which is why you are here to escort him to this, on this mission.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I'm, I'm aware of how that went, to this is why I am not currently on the vacation. I was told I'd be able to go on. This one will go better cause I'm going on that vacation after this.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, ye-yes. Of, of, of course. Yeah, I-I-I will not mess up this time, I promise.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Don't worry. You won't.

Zach/Sherms: I wasn't su- I'm not sure which you guys were told, but this should be quite the cake walk. I am also most excited as we get to meet Prince Phillip.

Ah, somewhat of my stature. Finally!

Bee/GM: That is his code name. You don't know if he's an actual Prince,

Zach/Sherms: I am immediately assuming.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: No one would dare use the title Prince if they weren't actually a prince

Zach/Sherms: Exactly.

Bee/GM: Agent Yaga, you are aware that this guy is probably not actually a prince. Not, not Sherms, but Prince Phillip,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: she's, she's not gonna say anything. Just, just let this little baby assume, he’ll learn.

Zach/Sherms: And all it is, is a simple retrieval mission. Like, this guy shouldn't be too big of a problem. Alright. Like, I'm just saying.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I’m not sure what you were told, but there's going to be more to it than that.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yeah. I, there's, there's a lot more than just retrieval. I, I mean, there's several missing people and there's some weird goings on

Zach/Sherms: He, he holds up a hand. Well, what was that about people? Like, I'm just told to collect. He's a former agent of my department and we're just getting his stuff, or a retiring agent of my department.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Quinn shows what they've been doing this whole time. They've been drawing on a map of the town,

like little dots and shows it to you and it's like, well, a-a-a-according to my analysis this is where all the people disappeared from around the town and uh I-I'm trying to find a pattern because I-I- I feel like there's more to it than just a bunch of missing people. Uhm, so I-I-I don't think it's as simple as-as retrieving some-some books.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Especially with how close we were to going to be to the world of the Faye

Zach/Sherms: Sherms pulls out one of the, the like manuals or whatever that he was, he was given

Bee/GM: I believe it would be your-

Zach/Sherms: book of fables,

Bee/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Sherms: And he starts like, he, he goes to the tab that's all about the Faye,

Bee/GM: You studying up on what you might encounter?

Zach/Sherms: Yeah, it sounds like a good idea.

Chris/Hugo Yeah. Theo is already way ahead of you, nose deep in a book, muttering to himself, taking notes.

Bee/GM: All right, well as you guys’ study, Agent Yaga, can you do me a favor? And roll me, let's say lore?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Got a five.

Bee/GM: Okay. As the train continues on its journey, you do see off in the distance where you will be approaching the town. You can see the train station for the kingdom in the distance. And as you get closer, you kind of feel a weird, magical sensation.

And then it passes, almost like you passed through a barrier.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: must be some kind of barrier or, or a one on here. It just entered into something could be an effect of being this close to the Faye world. It could be something else. But explains would also be mark where the strange weather occurrences occur.

Bee/GM: As you say that, some of the passengers do have their windows open, and while it was much hotter at the first train station where you guys were initially waiting, it is now the perfect temperature.

Zach/Sherms: Is that odd for this time of year?

Bee/GM: Uh-Yeah. Mythology unit has the, has the deeps on that. You were given your mission and nothing else.

Zach/Sherms: I was gonna say, I was given like nothing.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Your job is a simple retrieval mission.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: and they weren't exaggerating about the weather.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh yes. This is actually perfect weather. Very, very strange for this time of year, but I guess not strange for, for here.

At-at-at least there won't be any more uhm, mud slipping incidents like my last mission.

Bee/GM: The train pulls into the station into a small town or a small kingdom, officially known as the Moors, but lovingly called the Flower Bed by locals.

Bee/GM: As the train pulls in, you understand why. The station is decorated with vining flower plants. In every window there's a flower box and there are perfectly placed, repurposed wooden barrels filled with flowers planted in them. The station attendant uniforms even have embroidered roses on the hymns of their uniforms.

Bee/GM: And it looks like just beyond what you can see from the station, there seems to be a celebration that is going on.

Zach/Sherms: Sherms is absolutely gonna want one of those pins,

Bee/GM: One of the pins with the, the flowers in them.

Zach/Sherms: Yes. Cause that sounds awesome.

Bee/GM: You can indeed get I mean there's flower stuff everywhere.

It looks like they're celebrating some sort of festival, so there's definitely merch that you can buy.

Zach/Sherms: Yeah, yeah.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Natasha will ask someone passing by that looks like they're from here. What's celebration that's going?

Bee/GM: You pull aside one of the locals and it's an older woman carrying a basket of flowers and she had been handing out flowers to people getting off the train.

And she hands you one and she says, Why the marriage of the princess, of course.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Oh, interesting. Thank you for telling me. She will accept the flower and get in a buttonhole or something.

Bee/GM: Sweet. Let's say it's just a pink carnation.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Theo will run up alongside and excitedly reach for, or well not reach for, but stick his hands out for a flower. He's quite demi diminutive, so he's gotta reach up.

Bee/GM: Noticing your enthusiasm. The lady hands you two.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: And while doing that, he's asking, so there is a prince?

Bee/GM: Soon to be.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Where is he? Where is he? Can I see him?

Zach/Sherms: He taps you on the, and Sherms taps you on his shoulder. See, I told you.

Bee/GM: This flower lady is very puzzled. You do hear behind you, an older lady who is dressed in a, I believe green sundress. She's an older woman about grandma age, and she walks over and she says I'm here for an Augustus. I was told to bring him to the castle.

Zach/Sherms: Sherms perks up and he is like I, that would that would be me.

Bee/GM: Excellent. I wasn't aware that you would be bringing company, but it should be all right. I assume they're with you?

Zach/Sherms: He looks to his ragtag companions. Yes, I suppose they are

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Natasha steps forward, also, correction she tucks the flower back into her hair. Cause she has her hair pulled back. So

Bee/GM: lovely.

Zach/Sherms: Ah

Bee/GM: you said you stepped forward,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: She steps forward. Yes. We heard. we have a mission in the area. So, we figured we would merge one stone, yes?

Bee/GM: Yes. A mission?

Zach/Sherms: All right. We're just visiting the-the prince and or soon to be Prince and Princess

Bee/GM: She looks a little puzzled between you and Agent Yaga and she says Very good. Then follow me. I'll take you to the manner.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: We’ll follow

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Quinn… Quinn follows, but they are also like stopping and like analyzing these flowers like. Every chance they get

Bee/GM: Roll keen.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, that's, that's a two.

Bee/GM: These are flowers.

Zach/Sherms: Mm-hmm.

Bee/GM: This place is probably someone's worst nightmare if they have hay fever or pollen allergy.

Zach/Sherms: Oh no.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: That double major in zoology and botany really paid off.

Bee/GM: Heck yeah. These are some good, good flowers, well taken care of. All right, so you guys follow this elderly woman through the town. And as you're passing in through the town you notice that as you get closer to the center of the town, the architecture begins to change. Almost like they're trying to emulate like a, a renaissance fair, like medieval kind of look as you get closer to the center of town. People are walking everywhere. There's a market where there's like fruits being sold, and like street food, flowers are adorning every single building. Even some petals are kind of lightly floating in the wind from flower boxes that are planted high above street level.

Do you guys stop for anything or do you continue following this Elderly woman?

Zach/Sherms: Sherms would like to stop for definitely one of them-One of them pins and get a flower or two as well.

Bee/GM: You do so successfully the Yeah, the locals are very, very kind and accommodating. Can everyone do me a favor and roll keen?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: That's better. That's four

Zach/Sherms: 11.

Bee/GM: Jesus. All right.

Chris/Huey: Nine

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Also. Nine.

Bee/GM: Okay. Everyone but Agent Leshy, notices that around the - like there's a big crowd of people milling about, some people look like they're tourists. Some people are dressed in different, like clothing and stuff like that. And the townspeople are pretty noticeable because, you know, they look like they know their way around this place.

But you do notice that there are some townspeople that are adorned with white masks, with painted flowers on them. Each of them a different type of flower.

Zach/Sherms: I would like to ask our escort what the meaning of these are.

Bee/GM: The elderly woman slows and turns to you and looks around at what you were referring to, and she says, oh, those are uhm, those are to commemorate and respect the, the ceremony that will be happening at the wedding.

Zach/Sherms: Oh, yeah. What kind of ceremony?

Bee/GM: It's a bit of a local one. Nothing you need to really worry yourself with, a lot of working parts. You know?

Zach/Sherms: his brow furrows, I'm very curious, like his brow furrows, but like, he's like, Nah, it's actually like really cool. I kind of wanna know. Fill me in here. We got quite a walk.

Bee/GM: She continues walking. She doesn't answer your question. She seems kind of like she's been kind up until now. Until now, but it's mostly like kinda like the customer service sort of facade, but now she has no patience for you. There's a lot to be done.

Zach/Sherms: Oh, wow.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yeah. if she's hiding something or she really does have work that she needs to be doing instead of dealing with us weirdos.

Bee/GM: I mean, as you like, because you rolled so high, because you guys rolled so high, you do notice that a lot of the townspeople are still like working on preparations and stuff for this festival that's going to be happening.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Is there anything that we could help with?

Bee/GM: No. I don't suppose there is. After all, you weren't staying long, are you?

I was told you came to collect some things.

Zach/Sherms: Indeed.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yes. How, how often do we get to see the wedding of, of two royal people? I mean, not very often.

Bee/GM: Well, I suppose if you would like to stay, you'll have to take that up with the royals being married.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: of course. We wouldn't want to intrude or overstay hospitality.

Bee/GM: Indeed. And she just continues walking. You guys are walking through the town and as you're getting closer to the manner, which you can see from the street view of town, there

are a lot of trees around. There are a lot of like mature trees in this town. All of these trees are also decorated with like flower.

It's not like tinsel, do you know what I mean? Like it's just like, it's kinda like a tinsel,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: garland?

Bee/GM: but it, yeah. Yes. That, so you guys do eventually you're walking down this path and you can see towns, people walking to and from the manner to town and it's kind of, it's a gravel path. There are some people on horseback and there, you know, riding around their horses is adorned with flowers as well with their mains braided and flowers, you know, put strategically in a beautiful way in their hair.

You guys get to the, where the forest opens up and reveals the manner and you see quite a large building that has a lot of windows like. All of the windows are open, and it's clear that the design of this building was meant to incorporate as much of the outside into the interior of the building as possible.

And there are flower beds on every window sill. There are vines wrapping up around the building. There are like hedges that are perfectly trimmed. In fact, you can see some gardeners and groundskeepers making sure that they stay immaculate. There are gardeners tending to the flowers in the front, and the two double doors at the front are wide open.

And I'm gonna share screens so you guys have a layout of the map. So, you guys enter in through the large double doors and on either side of you are two staircases that go up to the second level. And in the corner of each staircase is a fountain. The floor is stone and you can see people and servants like setting up chairs and, you know, rearranging flowers.

And there's just like a lot of hustle and bustle going around. You see occasionally two other older women that look identical to the woman that you guys were following, except instead of a green sun dress, one is wearing a blue one and the other is

wearing a red. And as you guys are kind of led through the grand entrance hall you guys go out the second set of double doors onto the deck and there is what Sherm would know because you have his case file to be Prince Phillip, and he is talking to some servers. And the older woman kind of gestures you guys forward and stays at the door.

Zach/Sherms: Nice. Yeah. Sherms is going to approach Prince Phillip.

Bee/GM: Yeah. As you do. He takes notice of you and he politely excuses himself from talking to the server who goes off and continues to arrange the decorations. And as he's walking towards you, you kind of like look out at the back of the like the courtyard in the garden and there are three large fountains two on for closest to either wing of the building and one large one with three massive fountains in the center of it.

And he walks over to you and he says, ah, you must be agent Frog.

Zach/Sherms: Ah, Prince Phillip, it is a grand pleasure to meet you.

Bee/GM: The pleasure's all mine. I assume you're here to recuperate my things from the agency.

Zach/Sherms: Indeed. And may have stay for the festivities. This is quite a festival you have going on.

Bee/GM: Oh, well I'm sure I can find some extra seats to accommodate. The ceremony will be tonight.

So, bit short notice, but shouldn't be an issue.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Quinn is kind of hovering next to this conversation that, that the princes are having and is being the kind of uncouth vagabond that he is. He's just going to speak up and say, well, is it really appropriate to have a wedding when there's, you know, 10 or so missing people in, in, in the kingdom?

That seems a little irresponsible.

Bee/GM: He kind of like, turns to you and raises an eyebrow. There are missing people?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yes. 12 actually, to be precise.

Bee/GM: I haven't heard a word of this. I assumed the local authorities would be dealing with something like that, but that is quite curious.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Would you be able to point us to someone we can talk to who may know more about what's going on?

Bee/GM: I mean, probably the chief of police in town, but he's been on vacation for a while so. I mean, I, I, I'm actually, I'm not from here. I'm only here because I'm getting married, so I, I don't know anything about this actually.

Zach/Sherms: That's quite fine Prince Philip. I'm, it's one of those, I'm, I've kind of picked up on this being my first mission, you probably know. How these mythology department kind of people are very straight and to the point, you know, no time for fun festivities.

Bee/GM: He, he kind of like laughs a little and says, oh, I've had my run in with the mythology units before. I mean, it's understandable. Our work is very important, but yeah, I, I'm sorry, I I didn't have any, I didn't know that they were missing people.

I assume that's why you three are here then.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yes. And Natasha rolled her eyes at the common ballot, like all straight to the point. No, when she just rolls her eyes. . She's supposed to be on vacation right now. Y'all

Zach/Sherms: supposed I'm supposed to be sipping margaritas in the Caribbean .

Bee/GM: Yeah. You were supposed to be on vacation after a particularly difficult mission, and then you were called to babysit

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Well if you happen to hear anything, let us know. I don't suppose you would recognize any of these names. And she'll show him the names just in case.

Bee/GM: He kind of like reads through them and he, he like seeing the amount of people that are missing and like, this is a, I mean, it's like a kingdom, but it's like pretty small.

So like to have that many people missing is concerning and he is like an agent. So he, he does the same work as you guys and he knows the importance of the work that you guys do. So he is genuinely like, bothered that there are this many, many missing people. But he kind of shakes his head and says, no, I'm sorry, I haven't heard of these people.

They must be from out of town.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Any other strange or odd things happening?

Bee/GM: Not that I've noticed, but again, I'm, I'm not a local. Maybe, maybe my fiancé might know. But she's busy with preparations. I'm actually not sure where she is. I haven't seen her all day.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: What is her name by the way?

Bee/GM: Brier

Brianna Jean/Yaga: like a very fae name. Natasha is not gonna say that, but that sounds like a very fae name.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Well, I-I-if you truly don't know anything, perhaps we should look around the this, this lovely castle of yours. Perhaps something will come up that we can, you know, some leads or something we can follow,

Bee/GM: Be my guest. I will be leading you guys to the study so that you may collect my old things.

So, you can follow me if you like, but after that I do have to get back to preparation. So once I'm, once I show you the way to the study.

Zach/Sherms: Oh, to short,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: of course,

Bee/GM: he begins to lead you guys to the study. And so you guys go back through those big double doors and to the grand hall and up the stairs and I think this is the right, yes. So you go up the stairs you pass somewhat looks to be servant's quarters, and then you continue down the hallway to the study. And one thing you did notice that's a bit unique about this house is underneath the study and across from it all of the walls are like windows. So it's like a, an indoor greenhouse.

Bee/GM: And in fact the, there doesn't seem to be any sort of attic in-instead there's just a lot of skylights. And this house is also quite decorated with plants. There are vining plants hanging from hooks, there are plants all over the banisters, on tables, in small pots. Very much kind of gives like a botanical garden vibe. And as you enter the study, you do see that there is a terrace that goes out and you can like overlook the courtyard, but there are quite a bit of shelves in here. There's some seats and then there is a large desk. And he says, this is my study. I've managed to get what things I could into one spot so that you can grab those, but you might have to look around for anything that the department might see fit to take.

Zach/Sherms: Excellent. Do you have like a trunk or something that I can carry them all in? It'll be quite awkward

carrying some of these things in my bare hands as you, you can probably will guess.

Bee/GM: Oh, quite right. I'll go get Flora to bring you something.

Zach/Sherms: Excellent.

Bee/GM: He nods and he says, well, if you need anything grab a passing servant and they may be able to direct you to me or they may be able to help you with whatever you need.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: You said there are, are like plants in here?

Bee/GM: Oh, there are plants literally everywhere. Like this place is pretty much its own little botanical garden .

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Very cool. I would like to talk to them.

Bee/GM: Oh, right. Yeah, right. What do you, so you walk over to, I don't know a potted plant. What are you, what are you saying?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Sure. It's probably like a, like a hydrangea or something like that, right?

Bee/GM: Yeah, sure. Those are, Yeah, sure.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: And uh

Bee/GM: And I mean, yeah, they're plants, but they're, they typically grow pretty large, if I remember correctly.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, I don't know. I, I should have looked up some, some plant examples.

Bee/GM: Let's say it's a, let's say it's a pathos. I have one of those. Sure. They're like vining plants.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yeah. That works. And It's just gonna be like say have you, have you seen any strange going on around here?

Bee/GM: Define strange.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Anything that a plant? Well it's, it's weird cause you don't actually see, I-I guess I should really clarify.

Have you, have you noticed any odd people coming through? any mysterious behavior, things like that?

Bee/GM: Define odd. I don't What is odd to you?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: You know, people sneaking people taking things that aren't theirs, stuff like that.

Bee/GM: I mean, I've seen some of the servants sneaking off together, but they usually come back

Oh, that's, is that weird?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: No. That's perfectly normal. Or so I hear ? No, you know. You, you know what? Okay, fine. I'll let you get back to your, your, your planting business.

Bee/GM: Sure. It goes back to absorbing sunlight.

Zach/Sherms: What does he have collected?

Bee/GM: He has the typewriter, He has the book of lore, and he has his shield.

Zach/Sherms: Alrighty. I need to find the fraud sword and the keys as well as any other things.

Bee/GM: Yep. So get to searching

Zach/Sherms: Well, I guess I'd like to check his desk.

Bee/GM: Okay. Yeah, you kind of rummaged through his desk. Roll Keen

Zach/Sherms: six

Bee/GM: Okay. You find the keys. His the department issued keys. And you notice that the desk is actually quite neat and tidy as if it was like arranged, you know, just in case people weren't gonna be wandering through since they have a lot of guests kind of like running around here.

Zach/Sherms: Good. That makes it easy.

Bee/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Sherms: And then is there any like trophies or like a bookshelf? Or both?

Bee/GM: Oh yeah. I mean there's, there's like four large bookshelves in here. There is like a table that has like a drawer and stuff like that.

Zach/Sherms: The, the drawer will be faster to go through first. So I'd like to go through it.

Bee/GM: You open it up and it's empty.

Zach/Sherms: Who keeps an empty desk drawer? And he like closes it and then he is gonna go to the, the bookshelves and peruse through the books to see if there's anything that stands out that would be particularly

Bee/GM: juicy?

Zach/Sherms: Juicy, yes.

Bee/GM: What are the rest of you guys doing?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/Cobbler: Are our lore books between departments the same?

Bee/GM: Essentially, yeah, it's just a different look. It's like having an Android versus an iPhone.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/Cobbler: Oh, okay. Just wondering if they were like secret between the departments cause…

Bee/GM: they're essentially like catalogs of creatures that you've faced before or that previous agents have faced before, like research done on anything that you might encounter.

All of them are kind of like infused with magic. So anytime there's an update, your book of lore is automatically updated.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/Cobbler: Pocket Wikipedia. I love it.

Bee/GM: All of the information that's ga- cause you guys, you guys do have like, have your own journals probably, or you can just write directly into your book at the in the back pages.

But essentially like if there are any notes or anything that's taken on a mission where the creature isn't something that they've encountered before, generally agents will take notes, have it sent to the archive, and then they'll kind of pour through it, verify it, and then update the books.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: So, we would be able to possibly check and see what updates he would've added recently if he's noted anything.

Bee/GM: Yeah, I mean, you can check the back of his book if you'd like, but generally after the information is sent to the archive, it kind of like erases itself once it's been approved so that it can be added into the book, you know?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: That makes sense.

Bee/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/Cobbler: All right. I ask because Hugo's just gonna be idly flipping through the book, lying on the table and ask how is this gonna help us find the missing people?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Would, do we be able to possibly look at the mythology for this particular area, see if there's flip and see

if there's anything interesting there? Or would I have been able to, Kind of read up on that beforehand? Probably on the train ride

Bee/GM: It would be in the fae section of the book. There aren't, there's not like a a map for where you currently are and what has been there, because usually that would be given to you in a missions briefing. If it was going to be a problem you would be encountering.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I was just double checking what I would, what us, what we from the mythology department would know about this area.

Bee/GM: from, based off of like your briefing, you probably were told that there has been no, like, dangerous or out of place fae activity that has been happening just because the royal family is in charge of keeping this area in check so that the fae doesn't like bleed through and cause problems for your world.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yeah. Cause that would be bad. It can be scary .

Bee/GM: Yeah. So you assume that Breyer and her family are usually the ones that kind of keep to that. They're like, they're like an affiliated family with the department, but they're not officially part of the department, so they don't have like their own lore book and stuff like that.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Okay. That makes sense.

Bee/GM: Mm-hmm.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I guess while we have people poking around that room, I think Natasha might just took her head out and see what information she can gather just from listening or if someone looks, she's trying to find a starting point for figuring out where all these missing people went.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/Cobbler: Yeah. Have we seen any guards?

Bee/GM: Not that you're aware of. The only people that are kind of like differently dressed in any sort of significant way are the people that have those white masks with the flowers painted on them. But they seem to be doing the same jobs as the people around them.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Are there any servants that look upset or nervous beyond the nervousness about like, getting job done right, kind of thing?

Bee/GM: I mean, I assume you're peeking your head out of the study into like back into the hall and not into the, the room across from where you came in from, right?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yeah, just maybe like, or like standing out in the hallway, just somewhere where I can look around, but I'm also nearby in case the people in babysitting do something.

Bee/GM: Yeah. So you do see like servants kind of coming in and out of the servants quarters, and you do see like maybe one of the younger servants is really, really nervous, but it's probably due to her being new at this.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yeah.

Bee/GM: But she is very jumpy.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Natasha, might go over be like, Oh, alright? You seem nervous?

Bee/GM: Oh. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. This is just like my first, this is like really big. Like how often do royals get married? Right. And, and the lady's been preparing for weeks now. I, I just don't wanna mess anything up. I've already messed a lot of things up.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Just a deep breath. It's one thing at a time. Mistakes are easier to fix than most people realize.

Bee/GM: Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, you're right. But also like, I don't wanna mess this up. What if I like knock down a vase or

something? You know? This is just like, a lot of today has to be perfect.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: you say it’s been weeks of preparing, yes?

Bee/GM: Yeah, well, I mean, there had, I mean, all these flowers, they didn't come out nowhere. People had to clip 'em and make sure that they were arranged properly and they also stayed alive.

And it's a lot of work. And now we have to rearrange them and we have to make sure that the manor is clean because a bunch of people are gonna be coming to the mayor tonight. So, yeah, lot of stuff,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Lot's going on. Lot of pressure. I can imagine.

Bee/GM: Yeah, lots. Someone calls her name from down the hall and she's like, oh, sorry, I got, that's me.

I gotta go. And she like waves it and runs off.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Remember to breathe.

Bee/GM: Yep. Got it. And she like, she like turns around and does like a thumbs up at you, but like when she swings her arm, she knocks over the vase and she's just like, I'll get that later. And she just runs off.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Oh boy.

Bee/GM: Very reminiscent of something that you were babysitting.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Quinn has no idea what you're talking about. .

Brianna Jean/Yaga: She's like all young. Oh wait, she like rushes back to make sure the people she's babysitting haven't broken anything.

Bee/GM: Have you guys broken anything?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Quinn has been pulling books off of the shelf to like, try and maybe find like a, Like, cause Quinn is starting to be like, Okay. Well there's always a secret door in, in a study, so.

Bee/GM: Oh, so he's like pulling, He's actually pulling books off the shelf

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yeah.

Bee/GM: To see if there's a secret lover. Okay, cool. Yeah. So Agent Yaga, you come back in and , Agent Lessie is just destroying the bookshelves.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Will you put those back? What are you doing?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh I just, you know, looking for secret, secret doors in-in-in bookshelves, you know, that's a thing, right?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Not really put those back.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh Yes ma'am. And starts putting them back like not properly, like the spines going inside

Bee/GM: Yeah, super wrong

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: out of order, you know.

Bee/GM: Yep. What was,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: that hurts me on a personal level.

Bee/GM: what was Agent Cobbler doing?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/Cobbler: He's standing over the pile of books that Leshy's piling up and he is going through the titles. Just perusing them.

Bee/GM: Yeah, right. I mean,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/Cobbler: seeing if we, if he can come across any flower related you know, lore.

Bee/GM: I mean, there's like a ton of books on gardening, like the Farmer Almanac, like

Chris/Hugo/Theo/Cobbler: Oh yeah. More magical lore.

Bee/GM: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Roll keen,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/Cobbler: let's see. Four. That was awful.

Bee/GM: Nope, you don't see anything

Chris/Hugo/Theo/Cobbler: and the books that he doesn't take any interest in. He just tosses over his shoulder.

Bee/GM: Okay, cool. So as Agent Leshy is like haphazardly putting these books back, Agent Cobbler is like knee down in front of this pile and just kind of like looking at the title.

And then if he doesn't like it, he just tosses it over his shoulder.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/Cobbler: Nothing. Nothing. It's all worthless. .

Brianna Jean/Yaga: We're supposed to be professionals. What did - stop?

Zach/Sherms: Yes. What are you doing? He, he sure says this. He is like gently pulling a book off, looking at the title, making sure it's not an artifact or something important, calmly putting it back.

Have you guys ever been in a library, like respect the space? Damn.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh yes, of course. But you know, sometimes the mission must take precedence over niceties.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: How is this something that the mission, you were just destroying this person's library?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Well a-Agent Yaga, Senior Agent Yaga. I just, I thought that maybe, you know that there might be like a-a secret door leading to a-a chamber where all the missing people are, you know? maybe the prince is in on it? That kind of a thing.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: One we’re on the second floor. Two the walls are made of glass. three, not something like that, would not be hidden in somewhere like this. We're in basically in a large green house.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: We’re on the second floor.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yes. I, I suppose that that would be a accurate hypothesis. Oops.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Pump the initiative. Just think a few seconds next time. Okay?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yes. Yes, exactly. And Quinn pulls out like a little notepad and starts like, scribbling down, like these little pointers.

Bee/GM: Yeah. This is a senior agent. You gotta learn everything you can .

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Think before you do

Bee/GM: Agent Frog. As you're kind of like watching this unfold, you come to the conclusion that these people, if they went to your school, would definitely be in a locker right now. Also what, what is it that you were looking for?

Zach/Sherms: Supposed to be trying to find additional possible artifacts that the that the agency would want. So.

Bee/GM: yeah. Go ahead and roll keen for me

Zach/Sherms: just double checking to see if he's got like, any extra books of Laura and stuff that he is accumulated.

Bee/GM: Fair.

Zach/Sherms: Nine.

Bee/GM: Perfect. Okay. So. You're kind of like looking through these books and everything, and you do find some books on the Fae and like the Fae in the area, but you assume that these are for the family's records and not necessarily the agencies.

So you're not entirely sure if the agency has the knowledge that these books have, or if they have already been shared with the agency,

Zach/Sherms: I am going to add them to the pile .

Bee/GM: Okay. I mean, it very clearly has like the family crest on it, which is like a rose emblem and agent, the agency things have a very specific like, book emblem on it for the fairytale department.

Zach/Sherms: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bee/GM: All right. So you edit to the bio.

Zach/Sherms: We'll, we'll mail it back if if we don't need it or when we're done with it.

Bee/GM: Yep. Gotta be thorough

Zach/Sherms: for , he says, in a, in a cult like tone for the agency, ,

Bee/GM: you stare off into space. This is your first mission too. So.

Zach/Sherms: right? Gotta be, gotta be thorough

Bee/GM: All right. So you're claiming their family books for the agency. You get about like three or four books that have that kind of seal.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Natasha sees this, He's like, eh, people learn. However he needs to learn

Bee/GM: for Agent Yaga is in the baby dinner, just like for the three of these Goons.

Okay. So you do recover those four books. Agent Yaga, I assume you're trying to direct your two wards to clean up their mess

Brianna Jean/Yaga: and do it properly.

Bee/GM: Yeah. So you guys, you do spend some time doing that. Agent Frog, you kind of continue looking around this study and you don't find anything else and you are still missing the sword.

Zach/Sherms: Indeed, we're gonna have to search the rest of the building for that, but I would like to currently at least wait until the lady with the trunk shows up so that I know it's all together.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: That's usually the building. We could also ask somebody using our words,

Zach/Sherms: ask for directions? What do you think we are?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Peasants?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: On the job.

Bee/GM: All three of you are, except for Sherm. So yeah, you guys are peasants. Uhm, okay. The elderly lady that looked identical to the woman that brought you to the manner walks in and she's the one that's wearing a red dress and she comes in with a trunk that has wheels on it. And she says, this is for your things.

I was told by the master to bring it to you.

Zach/Sherms: Ah, excellent. Thank you so much. While you're here. And he says as he pops it open and starts putting the items in. Do you know where the master keeps a broad sword?

Bee/GM: There are many swords in this estate. I, I'm not entirely sure which specific sword you would like.

Zach/Sherms: One of plain iron

Bee/GM: that does not narrow it down. Many swords are made of iron.

Zach/Sherms: Got it. Shit . That's all I was, that's all the first description I was given on it was just a iron broad sword.

Bee/GM: Yep.

Zach/Sherms: Are there any of particular significance to the master?

Bee/GM: The master is quite fond of swords. You're going to have to, I'm not entirely sure what specifically you're looking for.

Zach/Sherms: And-and he mutters under his breath: Me too. Shit.

Bee/GM: Well if that's all I'll be off to my duties.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: And we appreciate your help. What is your name for me to call you?

Bee/GM: Laurel. She nods and leaves.

What do next Crew? You have a whole, the whole manner is your proverbial oyster.

Zach/Sherms: So I put all the stuff in the trunk and then,

Bee/GM: There's a key with the the trunk that you, so you can lock it as well. That she handed you.

Zach/Sherms: Yeah. I'm gonna go ahead and lock it. And then I'm gonna look to everybody and be like, don’t freak out.

And I snap my fingers. And the physical form of a young servant appears next to me, and it is Henry the trustee and faithful.

Bee/GM: Thank you for adding those two words. They're important to his title. Yes. Henry appears and he says, What's up? What can I do for?

Zach/Sherms: What's up buddy? I need you to cart this trunk around for me.

What we find what the agency needs.

Bee/GM: You got it! You want me to just like, do it in front of people? Or like, how do you wanna go about this? Cause I'm super invisible.

Zach/Sherms: Oh, is he invisible?

Bee/GM: Yeah. He's not a real dude. He's like a ghost man. like everyone else can see him. Like he's a, like, you know how people take blurry pictures of ghosts?

Like, kind of like that.

Zach/Sherms: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Screw it. It's just, it's it's not that big a deal buddy. People have seen weirder.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Right. I'll follow you. He just picks up the trunk. One. One armed over the shoulder.

Zach/Sherms: Oh, I it was on wheels, so I thought he was just gonna kind of like drag it.

Bee/GM: Yeah. You thought, But Henry is trustworthy and also fuck. What was his other title? Faithful. He is faithful and also trustworthy. And so he has to be impressive.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: because this is not going to attract all of the attention. What we try and find where the missing people are.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Agent Yaga, you can see, you can very clearly see Henry as he appears to Agent Frog.

But the other two of you, you guys just kind of like, see like the faint outline. Like if there was like the static of a person being there. So you just see this trunk kind of just get lifted up and start floating.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, most useful. A-a-a trick you have there, Agent Frog. Perhaps, perhaps we should leave the trunk here though and be a little more conspicuous

Brianna Jean/Yaga: perhaps we come and collect it when is when we are ready to leave?

Zach/Sherms: Nah. Every, how busy everybody is like seeing a floating trunk. I'll just tell 'em I have mind powers or some shit. It's okay. They'll be odd, not weirded. It's okay. Come Henry and then he starts walking out.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Can we hear Henry talk clearly?

Bee/GM: It kind of sound, you know how like people are like, oh, ghost whispered in my ear and it was creepy.

Like, kinda like that.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: E G S. Yeah.

Bee/GM: Yeah. So you just, so Sherm you hear you got it and he just like starts following you, but you guys hear you got it

Brianna Jean/Yaga: We just see Yaga pulling out a little notebook or she writes notes. Tell whoever, like she has like the page for each of these kids that she's babysitting with notes to dance into the people, whoever who are teaching them. Just like so for sure, teach subtlety,

Bee/GM: You can, you can write in your scroll to your your, what it, your patron, I believe to like kind of inform them, or you can just keep a straight up notebook up to you.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Well, in that case she'll just somewhere Baba Ya Gets, gets a message. Agent Frog needs to learn subtlety.

Bee/GM: Excellent. So Agent Frog, you walk out of this room and there's a servant cleaning up a mess and they look over and they see the floating drunk and they scream and drop the mess that they were cleaning.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: All right. No, you're putting that down and we're leaving it here. .

Zach/Sherms: What? No.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: We will come back for it later.

Zach/Sherms: Fine. Henry, please put it back.

Bee/GM: Yeah, alright. He like turns around and puts it back.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Friend is wonderful. This is not the best time and way to be using his abilities.

Zach/Sherms: Nah, Henry can do that. Henry sit on the trunk

Bee/GM: He does .

Zach/Sherms: He gives him the wink. We'll be back for you later, buddy.

Bee/GM: You got it. I'll just be here waiting until you come to tell me otherwise.

Zach/Sherms: Or I snap my fingers again.

Bee/GM: or you snap your fingers again and I return to the dark void that is death.

Zach/Sherms: So sad.

Bee/GM: Where are you guys headed to first then?

Zach/Sherms: Well, the bedroom's right there.

Let's let's go, Let's go. Snoop around his bedroom.

Bee/GM: As far as you know, Prince Phillip has pretty much given you guys like free rein. He did say like, if you need something, just kinda like snoop around until you find someone that you need. So he in Invertedly gave you free rein

Brianna Jean/Yaga: And it is

Zach/Sherms: I just, don’t want to walk in on the princess mid changing into our wedding gown.

That would suck.

Bee/GM: Well just knock on the door. That has never worked. That has never gone wrong for you.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Probably the princess.

Zach/Sherms: Except that one time that it did.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Princess is probably the best person to talk to here. But she is so busy.

Zach/Sherms: Yeah, cause her entire family is also part of the agency.

Bee/GM: They're not part of the agency. They're affiliated with the agency because of their location and the fact that they've been here for so long, they're no longer part of the agency, or, I mean, they're not part of the agency. They're just kind of like an affiliate family that works alongside the, the agency.

Zach/Sherms: Got it.

Bee/GM: Yeah. You guys are pretty much given free reign of the manner.

Where are you guys going?

Zach/Sherms: The master bedroom directly to the north.

Bee/GM: Yep. All right. You just open the door.

Well, I knock first

Bee/GM: you open the door at No. Yeah. Okay. You, you knock and you don't get a response.

And then I open the door,

Bee/GM: and then you open the door, you walk into the master bath and you hear the shower in the bathroom going,

Zach/Sherms: I'm,

Bee/GM: And then it cuts off. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It’s a call back.

Yeah, you walk into this master bedroom and unlike every other room in this house that's immaculate, this room is very much lived in. Like someone's boots are just kind of like thrown over. Like there's some clothes just kinda like tossed on the bed. The bed's not made. There are a ton of plants still in this room.

All of the windows are closed though. Unlike the rest of the house

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I'm not asking these plants,

Bee/GM You're wait?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: No, Sorry, I was making a joke.

Bee/GM: You said you weren't asking the plants anything?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yeah, I said I'm not asking these planes, anything.

Bee/GM: Oh, a good call.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I also,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah, what happened to the master

Brianna Jean/Yaga: we walk the master bedroom. Is this the king and queens room?

Bee/GM: Yes. Well, I mean, no, no, no. This is Breyer and Prince Phillip's room.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Okay. Didn't realize they already had a room, but yeah, whatever. I just like lost my master.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Scandalous .

Yeah. This is the master bedroom, but it's very clearly for Briar and Prince Phillip. In fact, you have not seen any like parents.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: The way you said that has me questioning things

Bee/GM: I mean, I say things weirdly all the time. That's not necessarily me being a GM, being like, you haven't seen any parents. It's just, you know, you just haven't seen any parents.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: There's just no Yeah. No king or queen.

Bee/GM: Yeah. There's no king or they are the king or queen.

As far as you know,

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Quinn is sort of like trying to not, like, purposefully not touch anything. Like, just like keeping, keeping their hands to themselves just like mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. looks all very nice in here. I don't see a sword

Bee/GM: Yeah. There, dude, there is no sword. I will give you that .

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Anything that seems out of place or odd?

I know we have very little frame of reference for that, but.

Bee/GM: Yeah. I mean there's just like, there's like a disgusting amount of plants in here. Like, it looks like a, actually, I don't know if that joke will land. Never mind. There's just like a lot of plants in here.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: It’s weird. Natasha is not used to this many plants just in general, much less in someone's house.

Bee/GM: Yeah.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Its weird

Bee/GM: I mean they got like a canopy bed and like they have vining plants on like the posts of the canopy bed. Like there plants are incorporated into the design of this home as much as possible.

Zach/Sherms: So, yeah. Are there any cool mountings on the walls?

Bee/GM: Yeah, there's just like some paintings of landscapes, and paintings of water, and paintings of the forest.

There's some swords that are like hung up on the walls, like swords, axes, you know, cool medieval weapons. But like, not the sword you're looking for.

Zach/Sherms: Got it. These aren't the swords you're looking for , but I guess I would like to potentially investigate them to see if there are of any other value that the agency may want.

Bee/GM: Fair enough, Fair enough. Roll keen,

Zach/Sherms: Ka-Chow, nine.

Bee/GM: What the fuck this is like this your third nine in the row.

Zach/Sherms: I keep rolling a six and a three.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I mean sometimes the dice just like one person in particular.

Bee/GM: That is true. I hope that doesn't backfire. You backfire on you someday anyway.

Zach/Sherms: It usually does.

Bee/GM: Yeah. So none of these swords are special.

They're just swords. Cool swords, but you know just swords

Zach/Sherms: Just swords. Alrighty. Is there anything else really of note in the master bedroom?

Bee/GM: I mean, there's a bookshelf if you guys wanna destroy that one too.

Zach/Sherms: not the worst idea to give it a looked over.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah. Theo will give the, the books a once over

Bee/GM Okay. Yeah, you kind of - like whoever's investigating the bookshelf roll Keen for me.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Natasha will probably check it out while she's side eyeing the other two to make sure they don't mess with anything.

Zach/Sherms: Eight.

Chris/Theo seven.

Bee/GM: Okay.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: And that'll be a seven.

Bee/GM: Quinn, are you?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Uh, no.

Bee/GM: Okay. So eight, seven and seven?

Zach/Sherms: Yes.

Bee/GM: Okay. You guys kind of like look through the bookshelf and you don't really find anything of note.

Are you guys still staying in the master bedroom or?

Zach/Sherms: No. At that point? Sherms will probably be leading this investigation. I think it's just the bathroom or whatever to the

Bee/GM: Yeah, it’s a bathroom

Zach/Sherms: to the left. Yeah. There's probably not anything in there.

Bee/GM: Oh, are, were you going in there, or no?

Zach/Sherms: No.

Bee/GM: Okay.

Zach/Sherms: I don't need to go through their, their toiletries.

Bee/GM: You never know. They might have some evil dastardly soaps.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: There could be 12 bodies piled in there.

Bee/GM: There could be bodies piled in there…

Zach/Sherms: There's just a big bathtub full of lie.

Bee/GM: Yep. But you won't know until you put your finger in it.

Zach/Sherms: I doubt they'll have anything of artifacty in the servants quarters because they don't want the servants potentially like stealing them or some shit.

Well, or I don't know, potentially.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Is there any other

Zach/Sherms: We can go in there?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: studies or armory?

Zach/Sherms: I think we can, we should go ahead and check out the servants quarters, just so that way you guys have a potential to ask the servants some questions.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Listen, perhaps the servants may also know where this iron sword of yours is.

Zach/Sherms: I wasn't given a very good one. Okay. Sorry. . You know, the, the agency apparently didn't really super trust the new guy

Bee/GM: I mean you have a picture of it. It literally just looks like a plain sword.

Zach/Sherms: Oh, cool. I have a picture.

Bee/GM: Yeah, you were a picture of all the stuff that you have

Zach/Sherms: Oh, I didn't, I didn't know I had pictures.

That's my bad.,

Bee/GM: Oh, my bad. Yeah, you have pictures. It's just like a, it's just like your common everyday generic sword. Like, it just looks like a normal sword.

Zach/Sherms: Okay. Yeah. I would've show that to the, the first lady then. But I can ask one of the servants that this time now .

Bee/GM: Yeah, sure. Are you guys going in the servants quarter?

Zach/Sherms: Knock first.

Bee/GM: Okay. You knock on the door and you hear someone call just a minute. And a moment later, a servant comes out and she's like buttoning up the last few buttons of her blouse.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh yes. The plants have said that they, that this happens.

Bee/GM: Did you say that out loud?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yes.

Bee/GM: She like, looks at you and like raises an eyebrow slowly

Zach/Sherms: Sherms, pauses, does the side eye and is like Sorry.

We're not catching you at a bad time, are we? He puts the charm on.

Bee/GM: N-no? I was just changing because I had gotten mud on my skirt. You guys always think there's something dastardly going on.

Zach/Sherms: Ugh,

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: no I was in, I was informed by plants that servants sneak off.

Bee/GM: Yeah. In the night.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: apologize. They have active imaginations,

Bee/GM: she like furs her brow and looks even more perplexed at that.

And also like, kind of worried

Zach/Sherms: anyways, getting straight to the point. We are you could call it guests of the prince the prince to be I suppose, looking and collecting certain I items for 'em. And I am looking for this sort in particular. Do you know where it is?

Bee/GM: Oh no. It kind of looks like 10 of the swords hanging on the walls.

I mean, I can show you to all of those swords, but they're all identical so.

Zach/Sherms: Mm. Nice.

Bee/GM: Yes

Zach/Sherms: Just go ahead and give us like a general guesstimate and we can, we can find our way.

Bee/GM: Sure. Okay. Yeah, sure. She just kinda like gives you the, the locations of where the swords are hanging up a, around the manner and they are pretty scattered, so you would have to like go to pretty much every area.

Zach/Sherms: All of them? Yeah. Nice, nice.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: So have you heard any, I heard that there's some people who have disappeared, recently gone missing. Have you heard anything about. There'll be something around the town.

Bee/GM: Go ahead and roll allure for me,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: that’s six.

Bee/GM: Anyone else kind of observing can roll. Keen if you would like.

Zach/Sherms: I would of course like to roll Keen.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Natasha of course sounds like genuinely concerned cause she's genuinely concerned.

Bee/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: 9.

Zach/Sherms: 7.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: 5.

Bee/GM: Okay. So then Agent Yaga you are like, you know, you asked this lady this question and she says, oh sorry, I, I have no idea that there were missing people. That is unfortunate. Have you talked to the deputy?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yeah, we have not yet, but we intend to. Figured out, just can see if there's anything people heard before we to get walk all the way back to town.

Bee/GM: Agent Cobbler. You noticed that after Agent Yaga asks this question, the servant visibly tenses in a way that you can catch, but no one else has seemed to.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Hmm. Okay. Kyle or Hugo will also hop up and say hi. Also, where are the queen, the princess and her family?

Bee/GM: Oh it, it's just the princess and her fiancé. Unfortunately, her family passed in a tragic accident.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Oh no.

Bee/GM: But she should be around here. I believe she and her fiancé are tending to preparations for the wedding tonight.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Be interesting to meet her now for congratulations. In person. If we have pass by her way,

Bee/GM: she like smiles and nods and says, I'm sure she'll appreciate it if you're able to find her. She's been running around like a mad woman off for the last few weeks. She wants this day to be perfect. You know how brides are.

She just kind of nods and says, well, I do have to get back to my duties. Apologies that I couldn't be more of service to you. But if you need anything else, you're, you can ask anyone. We'll be willing to help in any way that we can. And she kind of like dips out and, and leaves,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: When she's outta earshot, Hugo will turn to the party and be like, she was suspicious.

She definitely knew something. She went off down the hallway, right?

Bee/GM: Yeah, she ended up going down the hallway through the doors and you can hear like her going downstairs.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Is the servants empty or quarters empty behind her?

Bee/GM: Yes.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I'd like to slip in and take a peek. Just look and see if there's any, any. Anything suspicious outta place.

Bee/GM: Okay. You walk in and I mean, , it's a, it's a servants, quarters. Where were you looking first? There's three beds with three trunks. There's a bookshelf and then also a desk.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Just gonna look through the bookshelf and the trunks and see if there's any, like, notes or anything, anything suspicious after she you know, tensed up.

He's, he's, he's sussy,

Bee/GM: Yeah, alright. You kind of like look through some things and you look through the bookshelf and you look through the desk and a lot of the stuff that's there is pretty much just like books on how to properly be like a a useful servant. How to like, properly fold things, you know, that kind of stuff.

Like etiquette, all that

Brianna Jean/Yaga: book on how to fold fitted sheets.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: confound it. They're too well prepared.

Bee/GM: Did any of anyone else follow suit?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: My guys just standing outside.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Are are there plants in this room?

Bee/GM: Yeah, oh, there are plants everywhere. You don't have to ask if there are plants in the room. There are plants everywhere. .

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Okay. Okay, I am gonna go up to like the nearest nearest plant.

Maybe a, you know a nice little rose, sunflower or something sitting in this room.

Bee/GM: You just keep naming super big plants.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I know. I like big plants.

Bee/GM: Oh yeah. There's a, a potted sunflower in here.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: room.

Zach/Sherms: A potted sunflower.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: There's skylights. So it's, it's getting plenty of sun, I'm sure.

Bee/GM: Yeah. It's standing in a particularly sunny spot in the room.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I’m just gonna be like so, uhm. Have you seen anything suspicious going on, specifically stuff that does not normally happen in this, in this room?

Bee/GM: The sunflower just kind of like, kind of slowly turns and it's just like, sh you're disturbing the sun light.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, I apologize. I, I just was hoping you could answer some questions.

Bee/GM: Sure. What, what do you want?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Well, like, do the servants talk about any strange goings on in the castle

Bee/GM: servants?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yeah. The, the, the people that tend to come and go from this room.

Bee/GM: Oh. What do you wanna know?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Well, do they, do they talk about things, things going on in the, in the castle? The, the upcoming wedding?

Bee/GM: Yeah. They've been talking about that a lot.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: What have they said?

Bee/GM: There's a lot to be done. There's like people coming, I don't know. I mostly just hang out at the sun.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, I, I see. Well thank you for your information. I will make note of this in my report and you know, enjoy the rest of your sun plant person.

Bee/GM: You got it. And it just turns back to the sun.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Of course. flowers.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Do we all just see you? You like talking to a plant normally?

Bee/GM: Yeah. You, you . Yeah. Essentially you just see him talking to a plant. You did see the sunflowers like turn in his direction though.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I saw him talking to that other plant too?

Bee/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: After seeing you talk to him, Hugo is gonna walk up and put a hand on your shoulder and say, Hey the agency gives us great healthcare. You should talk to someone.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: damn shots fired .

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: He's genuinely worried. He sees this man just talking to plants.

Zach/Sherms: Oh, oh. Agent Cobbler. I've, you know, as you, as you saw a couple minutes ago, I can summon a ghostly dude. Like talking to plants is not the weirdest thing.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yaga is still standing out in the hallway.

Bee/GM: keeping watch?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: well both keeping watch and she doesn't see any particular interest in snooping around there.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Fair.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Keeping watching, just like casually listening to conversations. Not specifically eavesdropping, but just saying what she hears.

Bee/GM: Yeah, so I mean, there are servants kind of like running around, but they are mostly staying away from this wing just because it is the wing where the prince and princess stay.

And it's also their quarters and if they don't have anything they need in there, they don't really have to be there. So they're mostly throughout the rest of the house, particularly downstairs.

Zach/Sherms: Perfect. Then yeah, I would like to head to the library.

Bee/GM: Yeah, alright. So Agent Frog kind of like decides that this room is a lost cause and gets up and just starts walking out of the, that particular wing.

You get to the other side of the manner after cutting across this loft and like looking down at the loft, there are still quite a few people that are busying themselves with the preparation. So you do see like four people carrying like a really large cake out into the garden.

And you guys kind of like walk across and pass the second serv-servants quarters and into the library. And the library is set up quite similarly to the study. Only there is like a, a small indented pit where people can sit and read.

Zach/Sherms: Oh, nice. Are there any current books on the reading area?

Bee/GM: No. This room is pretty immaculate.

Zach/Sherms: Excellent. Alrighty. So first comes first I would like to look for my swords or the sword .

Bee/GM: All right. Roll Keen

Zach/Sherms: six.

Bee/GM: You do not find a single sword in this library. There are two acts though.

Zach/Sherms: Are they of any particular interests to the, the agency?

Bee/GM: You don't know.

Zach/Sherms: Darn it.

Bee/GM: They're just axes.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: A-a-agent frog. I, I do see two weapons up on the the wall there. Are those what you're looking for?

Zach/Sherms: No Damns. Who'd thinks that finding just a plain, fucking broad sword in a giant ass mansion would be so hard.

Bee/GM: Almost like trying to find a, a needle in a haystack

Zach/Sherms: Almost. And then I would like to set about looking over the bookshelves for more interesting lore.

Bee/GM: All right. You can go ahead and roll Keen. What is everyone else doing?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Hugo would do the same.

Bee/GM: do the same? All right.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: scan the books.

Zach/Sherms: Seven,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: eight.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Also gonna look around cause Arius

Bee/GM: Gotcha. Keen?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Eight

Bee/GM: Okay. Is is Agent Leshy doing anything?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yeah, but I'll do that after this.

Bee/GM: Okay. You all are kind of like looking through these bookshelves and you actually do come across quite a bit of books that kind of document. Different like fae creatures that have come in and out, kind of like their own little lore book, but it's not as like magical because it's not all contained in one book that you can easily update.

Who had the highest?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I also had eight.

Zach/Sherms: I had seven.

Bee/GM Gotcha. I'll say Yaga. You find a small book. Agent Cobbler, you find like a diary. That the diary was hidden behind a couple of books on the shelf.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Is any name on it or is it just unmarked?

Bee/GM: It looks like the name was scratched out.

Chris/Theo Oh,

Zach/Sherms: Ooh.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: What is my small book that I found about? I carefully remove and start flipping through.

Bee/GM: You start flipping through the book and it just kind of like, it looks like it's an old, like, collector's edition of the Fairytale Sleeping Beauty.

Zach/Sherms: Ooh.

Bee/GM: But like, it, it's like a kind of an amalgamation of all of the sleeping beauty tales in one collector's edition book.

So it would take you a, a, a bit of time to actually scan through it to see if there's anything odd about it.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: It’s collection of all the Sleeping Beauty tales.

But I find this interesting.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Hugo will also scan through the diary real quick.

Bee/GM: Okay. It appears to be one of the diaries of a former servant in this manner. And it kind of like details, like at first it kind of like details like their day to day, their tasks, like their first arrival, how they get along with other servers and whatnot.

But you notice that there are pages at the end that are torn out.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Mm.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Hmm. Hugo was reading every reading aloud as he read through it. Nothing suspicious on the near to last pages. Just the torn out ones?

Bee/GM: Nope. Yeah, it just cuts off.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yaga is of course not gonna read the whole book, but she'll kind of like flip through and skim just to

see if there's anything that sticks out or stands out and like, or, or anything like that.

Bee/GM: So as you're kind of actually roll keen for me

Brianna Jean/Yaga: it'll be an eight

Bee/GM: Okay.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Rolled several variations of eight and it's only ever eight.

Bee/GM: You kind of like flip through this book and you kind of notice that sometimes, like some letters are in bold, but it, it might be just like a printing error and you don't really notice anything else. Like it's just random words that are in bold. or not words, but like random letters.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Oh, I'll probably kind of go through and note the ones that she finds.

Bee/GM: Yeah, all right, I mean, that's gonna take you a while, so you might have to do that while you guys are, you know, snooping. Cause there's a lot of pages in this book.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: So occasionally glancing up at Leshy just to make sure. Cause she's, she also has to do her other job, which is babysit, but

Bee/GM: indeed Leshy, what are you doing?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: So Leshy has been kind of seeing Agent Frog kind of swing and miss in finding this sword this whole time and has pulled out their hawk feather and has kind of been like twirling it in their fingers. And it's just like A-agent frog. I, I do have an idea that might be able to help. I could go and look through all the windows of the manner and see if I can see your sword in any of the rooms.

Zach/Sherms: I mean, you know what? I'm not even gonna be weirded up by the fact that you could transform into a, a bird of

some kind cause you know, I feel you. But the problem with that is that apparently there's like way too many of this damn sword and I'm like holding up the picture and I'm like, you're gonna have to be able to get a close look at it to figure out which one it is.

And if you're just looking through a window, I feel like that might be a waste of your time, bud.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Well yes, but being in the air will keep me from destroying more bookshelves and irritating senior agent yoga.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Who will also have you outta the, my line of sight for far longer than I'm comfortable with.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I-I-I promise I will not start any animal wars.

I will not insult any plants and I will not drop my hawk feather and then fall from the sky.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: She just gives you that look like that, that you expect me that to make me feel better?

Do I even want to know how you got that?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: The, the, I found it on my way to the, the train station.

Bee/GM: See-senior agent Yaga, you have read the files of the people that you are like watching over and you know that this is one of his abilities and that he probably has had that feather for a while. So yeah,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: In that case she's just, well, she's still just like, why, but why, why do I have. Probably more of a question of why me?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I can also just fly around and see if I hear any suspicious activity going on.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: There gonna be some kind of suspicious activity going on, but it could be an interesting way to gather an information. unless you're careful.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I will be very careful.

Don't drop the feather.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Nope. No feather dropping.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: For you to do it and then goes back to her attempting to see if this is actually a puzzle or just a weird printing error.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Is there an open window nearby Bee?

Bee/GM: Oh yeah. All of the windows are open and also there is a terrace that kind of leads out into the courtyard...

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Okay. Yeah. I will go out and activate my shapeshifting power.

Bee/GM: Gotcha. Yeah. So you transform into this hawk.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yes.

Bee/GM And your senses are immediately kind of like much sharper.

I'm gonna go ahead and give you one more temporarily in Keen.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, cool.

Bee/GM So where do you go first as a hawk? And also if, if you guys are staying in the library, for those of you who have found books, you can investigate those books further or you can continue investigating the shelves.

Zach/Sherms: Well, seeing as though I haven't found any books, I will continue investigating for now.

Bee/GM: So can you, for those of you that are in the library and investigating and whatnot, can you go ahead and roll me keen while I and then put your result in chat?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: and then I will start with the rooms that are actually right next to the library just to see if they're worth kind of going in.

Bee/GM: Okay. Yeah, you fly by the windows and none of the I mean all of the rooms are immaculate, especially the guest bedrooms.

Presumably there will be guests staying and you don't really see anything of note. There is in the guest bed, in the second guest bedroom furthest from the library. There is like one of those swords kind of mounted up on the wall, but that's all you see there.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Okay, cool. Yeah. Then I will fly down to,

Bee/GM: I can switch layers if you need it there.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Sure. Oh, you know, where people love to gossip? Is, is in the kitchen, so I'm actually gonna fly and maybe like find a perch either outside the window or on the window sill of the kitchen.

Bee/GM: Yeah. So you fly and all of the windows are open so you can perch on the kitchen window and looking in. You can see that a bunch of people are in the kitchen just rushing out, getting appetizers out, and like preparing dishes to be served during the ceremony.

It looks like there is like a, a, a type of cookie that they're kind of recreating in large amounts that are shaped and decorated to look like a rose and in, in various colors. And so they have like just trays and trays of these particular cookies and. Yeah, there's just like a lot of people kind of like running around.

I will say you do see that there is a kind of closed off space where you assume it would be the pantry and then in front of

the pantry, kind of in the corner, it looks like a trap door into the cellar, but it is closed.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Super suss

Brianna Jean/Yaga: that the cellar's closed?

Bee/GM: Yes, the cellar is closed. Gotta keep all your, you know, wines in hot, not cold.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: People don't leave their cellars open. That defeats the purpose of putting it in the cellar

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yeah, right. That's true. But it's a Halloween one shot

Bee/GM: indeed.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Never, never trust a hole in the ground.

Bee/GM: Hehe

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Cool. Yeah, I'll I think with that information I will fly back up to the library.

Bee/GM: You do so. You fly back up to the library and everyone that you guys put your results in chat.

Zach/Sherms: Yep.

Bee/GM: Sweet. Jesus Christ Chris.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I got, I got my one good role for this session. Let's go.

Bee/GM: Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I'll start with the other two. So Sherm, you find another one of those small kind of like diary books. And kind of flipping through it, the pages at the end are also torn out.

Zach/Sherms: Oh shit.

Bee/GM: Brianna, you are kind of like looking through this other book that you had found earlier and you've been kind of studying where they, like letters are bold, in bold and stuff, and you, you kind of like, as you're flipping through, you notice that on the e like edges of the page, in the corner of the page, there's like a rose emblem and sometimes it's bolder and sometimes it's not.

And you kind of like get the sense that you have to, in some way be able to isolate those pages. So that's what you gather from that.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Don't wanna like rip it apart to isolate.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah. Just start tearing .

Bee/GM: And and then, Chris, you realize that after kind of like flipping through this book, and like you, you've recognized at this point the handwriting is kind of like burned into your mind for how, how many times you've been trying to like find something in there and you realize that you there in the study there were kind of pages that had that same writing while Agent Frog was rummaging through the drawer.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Interesting. Can I peek over Shemy’s shoulder and see if the journal Oh no. It was senior Agent Yaga has a - Can, can I peek over whoever had the other journal's shoulder and see if it matches the handwriting?

Zach/Sherms: That’s Sherms

Bee/GM: Yep. Okay. Agent Frog. Nope. The handwriting is different and actually kind of reading through it like it is a different servant.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Okay.

Zach/Sherms: Are they dated? Is there a similar timeline or are they completely like years apart?

Bee/GM: Go ahead and roll keen for me.

Chris/Theo Oh,

Zach/Sherms: five.

Bee/GM: Yeah, I mean, that meets, so you notice that the dates on the book that you are holding have been altered.

Zach/Sherms: Oh shit.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Mm. that’s suss.

Zach/Sherms: Have they been altered to be more recent or older?

Bee/GM: More recent.

Zach/Sherms: And then is agent cobbler's is his more recent or theirs older.

Bee/GM: Theirs is like maybe a month or so ago.

Zach/Sherms: Oh shit.

Bee/GM: But that one's pages have not been altered other than the pages that torn.

Zach/Sherms: Got it.I would like to bust out my typewriter to my narrator.

Bee/GM: Okay. Oh I'm the narrator ,

Zach/Sherms: or to my author. Sorry.

Bee/GM: Yeah,

Zach/Sherms: you're the, you're the narrator… To my author

Bee/GM: it's me.

Zach/Sherms: Yeah. And I'm going to type in case weirder than, than briefed mythology unit looking for missing people, found altered journals of servants. Any info question mark.

Bee/GM: After you send it, the paper kind of like resets itself and you're, you kind of like move your hands away.

And the typewriter begins to type on its own. And it says: Knowledge about mythologies presence in kingdom is unknown. Ask agents. Unsure of any missing persons. Your mission was recovery. Nothing more. Stop.

Zach/Sherms: Am I familiar with senior agent Yaga’s find on the snow white stuff? Or sleeping Beauty? Is it snow white or sleeping beauty?

Bee/GM: Sleeping beauty. I believe you announced it, didn't you? Agent Yaga?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: She, she might have mentioned something about it and she said Aurora might find this interesting.

Zach/Sherms: is there anything interesting in this area pertaining to the sleeping beauty fairy tales? Question mark.

Bee/GM: The paper resets ones more and it like begins typing again and says: From current records, there was an agent that used to be active that ended up retiring and staying in that area, but that was hundreds of years ago.

Stop. The descendants have been ruling over the land since. Stop

Zach/Sherms: Current Princess Family. Stop.

Bee/GM: That is correct. Stop.

Zach/Sherms: I was about to be like thumbs up emoji. Stop. on a typewriter. You can't do that on typewriter.

Bee/GM: Nope. Can't do that on the typewriter. ,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: you, you got like a special custom key on there.

Zach/Sherms: Hold shift space. .

Bee/GM: You just like painstakingly.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: No you make an ascii photo of a thumbs up.

Zach/Sherms: Oh God.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Just use the whole page .

Brianna Jean/Yaga: 20 minutes later. What are you doing?

Bee/GM: Yeah, it just takes like the whole rest of the day on a typewriter. Agent Leshy, you do return by the time you, you've returned by the time that Agent Frog has finished their message.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Perfect. Yeah. I'll, I'll fly in and then like perch onto like a chair and un transform and then realize that that was a mistake as I fall onto like the, on the back of the chair and kind of like split it.

Bee/GM: Yeah. You like perch on the chair and un like, you know, transform back into yourself and you immediately knock over the chair and yourself and you like, hit the floor hard.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yeah. Oh sorry about that everyone. So I, I think the sword is in the next room.

Agent, agent frog. Also, I, I, I didn't, I didn't really see anything else of, of note. I did see some activity going on in the kitchen. It looks like the looks like the ceremony is getting closer to completion.

Zach/Sherms: Ah, neat. That hopefully narrows down the search,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: only the starting place where to find missing people. And I'm hoping we don't have to go all the way back to town. But maybe that’s what we need to do,

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Well, I, I, I did see a a cellar door in the pantry. Or in, in, in the kitchen area. Could be used for storage of food, but could also be used for storage of, of bodies.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Why?

Zach/Sherms: That's rather morbid of you.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I mean, look, keeps 'em preserved and, you know, it's a just a natural hiding place. Not very many people are gonna go down into the ground.

Zach/Sherms: Unless they're dead.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I repeat, why? Dangerous to have be doing such a thing.

Zach/Sherms: But on a, on a side note, agent, Agent Yaga I just finished talking to my author. Apparently the, the princess is like founding family is somewhat connected to the sleeping beauty fairy tales that you're digging through right now.

But they settle here hundreds of years ago.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Oh, it looks like there might be some kind of message in here. Do you will show how the, like the ones where the symbol seems to be bold, there must be some way to connect them. I'm just not sure if it's connected to what we're trying to do. Cause I would rather not tear this book apart if it's not related.

Zach/Sherms: Mayhaps one of the, the family crested law books that my friend Henry is sitting upon in the in the study.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Worth investigate thing. Let's go see what we can find there.

Bee/GM: Back to the study?

Zach/Sherms: He's like quick sidebar. Gotta go check that sword location.

Bee/GM: Yeah. I mean, you can you run into the guest room?

The second guest room?

Zach/Sherms: Yep.

Bee/GM: Where you were informed to look and it is a sword.

Zach/Sherms: I I hold the, the picture right up against it. I'm like, where's the slightest indication that this is the same sword?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Corporate wants you to find the difference between these pictures.

Bee/GM: It looks identical. Just like the other swords.

Zach/Sherms: I'm just gonna take it .

Bee/GM: Okay. Yeah, alright. Yeah. You take a sword.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I mean,

Zach/Sherms: Its one of those

Brianna Jean/Yaga: it's not, it's not your fault. They weren't more specific.

Bee/GM: How could they be? This guy owns 10 of the same looking sword.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: No one has, like how is he supposed to know? Like, which specific one it is?

Bee/GM: Exactly.

Zach/Sherms: I was hoping there would be like some kind of like sword grain or like small sigil or something that would differentiate it.

Bee/GM: Yeah. I mean, you won't know unless you find the sword .

Zach/Sherms: Got it.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: We're just gonna have to take 'em all

Zach/Sherms: That's, that's, you know what, that's what I'm gonna start doing.

Bee/GM: All right. Yeah.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I'm not kidding

Zach/Sherms: which now I've also like doubly armed. Cause now I have a sword.

Bee/GM: Yeah. So you have another sword

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: as we're leaving the library. Quinn is gonna like stand up on a chair and try and like grab one of these axes and be like, Wait, Agent Frog, you forgot one of these.

Bee/GM: Yeah. So you grab- Oh, go ahead.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I was gonna ask if it, if it's hard for me to pull it off of the wall or not.

Bee/GM: Oh, I was gonna say that like you grab the ax and like go to pull it down and it's like set in a formation where they're crossed and so you just pull the whole thing down and the other axe clatters to the floor.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: perfect. Yes, yes, exactly.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yaga takes out her notebook and says, Leshy needs to learn situational awareness. Desperately needs to learn situational awareness.

Bee/GM: I would say. Yeah, you drop that very sharp ax and also the thing that was holding it. But you are holding an ax

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: more like dragging. I'm just like, wait, wait for me. I'm coming.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Okay. So you're dragging the ax and you also like, scratch the wooden floor .

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Just leave a gouge in the carpet.

Bee/GM: As you're walking there, there's like a, a clean line where the, is cutting into the floor. .

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yaga is going to stop. Leshy, what, what third are you doing?

Zach/Sherms: Sherms does the face palm and he is just like, All I needed was a sword, not an ax,

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Is this not a sword?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: No

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: but it has a blade. It's a, it's a weapon. It's decorating the wall. It, you know,

Zach/Sherms: it's an ax.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Well, yeah, but I. ax sword. It's, it's all semantic really.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: If he needed that he would have grabbed it, also as note he adds, like, adds another note. Leshy needs to understand weaponry. How are we letting him out?

Bee/GM: Alright. You add another note.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh. Oh, okay. I guess we'll just leave this here then. And I just drop it.

Bee/GM: Yeah, you drop it.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yaga will take it and go put it back as best as she can. Cause just no

Zach/Sherms: Sherms is just gonna leave it. That's this

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: half embedded in the floor.

Bee/GM: Sherms as you're leaving the library, you see a servant kind of rush over and say, I heard a loud noise.

Is everything all right?

Zach/Sherms: Yes. You really should tell the, the, the master of the, of the manner to really secure these sword or these weaponry better to the wall. The, these axes nearly fell and hurt the, one of his honored guests.

Bee/GM: She like puts her hand to her cheek and she's like, Oh, dear. I, I thought they were pretty well secured.

I mean, you would have to pull it off in order for it to fall

but I'll, I'll go ahead and make note of that. And please she just sighs and goes to find someone to help her with this. So, yeah, I mean, Yaga you like do your best to put it back, but you, I mean, it's, it was pretty well mounted. Like he literally pulled it off the wall like there's no,

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: like the dry wall.

Bee/GM: Yeah, exactly. Now there's like a, a big hole in the wall .

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Heck, if she can't get it up, she'll at least like, you know, put it somewhere nearby where it's not like a tripping hazard or something.

Bee/GM: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's kind of hard to miss when it's surrounded by like drywall and, you know, a big line in the, the floor and the nicely polished high class wooden floor

So yeah, you make it so it's not a tripping hazard, even though it's impossible to miss. And I assume you guys leave the library. Yeah?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: yeah,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: yeah.

As you guys are walking back to the study, you kind of like look out over the loft and you do see that the sun is beginning to set and you guys make it to the study.

What do you do?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Hugo's going to grab all the notes that he recognized the handwriting from and peruse those,

Bee/GM: Roll keen

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: five.

Bee/GM: They are no longer there.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Oh, no

Zach/Sherms: oops.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Oopsy poops.

Zach/Sherms: Sherms is going to go to the trunk in motion for Henry to stop sitting on it.

Bee/GM: Henry stands up as like we moving?

Zach/Sherms: Soon, soon buddy. And he unlocks the, the trunk, opens it up and pulls out the the lore books with the family crest on him and motion for Agent Yaga to bring their sleeping beauty compilation over to the the study desk.

Bee/GM: Okay. You do so what you guys planning on doing?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Can I talk to Henry?

Bee/GM No.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Is that possible? No. Okay.

Bee/GM: I mean, you can, but it's gonna be like super, like cut out and like, you know, it's gonna be hard to actually communicate with him cause he is like a, a ghost.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: But I can see him, right?

Bee/GM: Sort of

Zach/Sherms: Okay. He's like, he's like a force ghost to accept more translucent.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I'm gonna slide up,

Bee/GM: Yeah. And also like flickers in and out

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: be like, Hey Henry. Give me a thumbs up if you saw anyone come in and fiddle with the notes on the desk here.

Bee/GM: You see a very ghostly thumbs up,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I think.

Zach/Sherms: Ooh,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I think they were onto us.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: You described them?

Bee/GM: I don't know, like a, just a, I don't know a lady.

Zach/Sherms: He says this is just some lady. Was she like finely dressed? Was she servant layered dressed?

Bee/GM: I mean, they were all, I mean, everyone here is kind of well dressed, so like, I don't know. She was, she was wearing white. Is that important?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yaga will describe the survey we ran into it. Just like does, Was that her or?

Bee/GM: Nope.

Zach/Sherms: Do I have a description of the princess?

Bee/GM: No.

Zach/Sherms: Oh,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: and Yaga's asking, was she wearing a white dress?

Bee/GM: Henry points at Agent Yaga and says yeah, that. She came in, she was like looking for something, was rummaging around. And then she just picked up some books and some notes and dipped.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: She say anything while she was looking like talking to herself?

Bee/GM: Nope. She looked real focused. She didn't look at me, which was kind of weird, but

Brianna Jean/Yaga: she did?

Zach/Sherms: Wait, she actually saw you?

Bee/GM: Yeah, I'm a ghost.

Zach/Sherms: All right. That definitely has to mean that cause I, I'm kind of assuming that like non fairy fair or mythology touched people can't see Henry at all. And then like, you know, people who are touched can see him, but as a ghost. And then I see him like normal because he is mine.

Bee/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Sherms: So if the princess and her entire family line are affiliated with the fairytale agency, that means that they're all somewhat event touched, which means by process of elimination it was definitely the princess.

Bee/GM: An astute observation that I can ne-neither confirm nor deny

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Is there a porch in this room as well?

Bee/GM: Yeah, there's a terrace.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Okay. Can I go out and see if I can see any, any princess looking people gathering in the, in the garden down below

Bee/GM: you can look down and I guess roll keen

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: six.

Bee/GM: Sweet. You do not see any princess type characters, but you do notice one of the people in the white painted masks staring directly at you, like people are moving around them and like doing, like, preparing and whatnot, and they have stopped what they were doing and they're staring directly at you.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I will wave.

Bee/GM: You cannot see their eyes. They do not move. It's like a full face mask.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yeah totally. Totally. Hey, hey everybody, this person's kind of staring at me. It's kind of freaking me out. I, I, I waved at them and they, they didn't react. Should we, should I go fly down there, see what they want?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Perhaps all going together instead of splitting off would be bettered idea, especially with all the people who go missing.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah, ask him if he knows where the princess is.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, that's an excellent idea.

Zach/Sherms: Just ignoring Agent Yaga.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: No. Quinn will just back up slowly from the edge of the terrace. All right. Still waving. Still waving unless

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: she's learned the the value of Yaga's suggestions.

Bee/GM: Yeah. You slowly back away from the terrace and you can just feel them like still watching you until you are out sight.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Do we have a rough count on how many of these weird mask people there are? We've seen? Like how many we’ve notice?

Bee/GM: No. Quite a bit. So it's a good mix. Like maybe one third of the.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Ooh.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Okay. So I was like, I was like, are there just 12 people ?

Bee/GM: No, no, no, no, no, no. It's like, cause there's a ton of, like, the whole town is kind of pitching in for this.

So there's like the bakers coming in through here, his family, whatnot. Like just like a ton of people are coming in and out and you notice that like about a third of the people are wearing those sorts of masks. And like some of the servants are, some of the townspeople that come in are, but not everyone.

Like, there'll be a family of like a mom and dad and their kid helping out and maybe like the kid is wearing a mask. Like it's a random amount of people having these masks.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Okay. We didn't see it, well we've seen, would there have been anything in the lore book that we saw that would explain that?

Bee/GM: No, because these are all lore books about Fae

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Fair point.

Zach/Sherms: Ah. But we happen to have four family lore books that the agency might not have.

Bee/GM: Yeah. And they're all about the fae.

Zach/Sherms: Oh, okay.

Bee/GM: Yeah, because they, this family like watches over they,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: They are these families lore books, not lore of the family.

Bee/GM: Yeah,

Zach/Sherms: Got it.

Bee/GM: Yeah.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: So we go introduce ourselves

Zach/Sherms: Sherms is gonna go ahead and take the books, put 'em all in the trunk,

Bee/GM: Okay.

Zach/Sherms: Put the, the one broad sword that he's collected. Put it in the trunk.

Bee/GM: yup

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: So I, I, I do believe we have not looked downstairs for any of our missing people or items.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: So let's go downstairs then.

Bee/GM: You all tourists downstairs.

Yay, Nay? You okay, cool.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Definitely gonna pay special attention to any and all white mask people I see.

Bee/GM: Go ahead and roll keen for me, if you're paying attention to specifically white mask people.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Sure.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Nine,

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: five

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yaga’s also gonna be paying attention

Bee/GM: who’s all paying attention?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Four I got, but not much. Apparently. She's probably more focused on Leshy.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yeah. Leshy is kind of nervous now that someone was like staring at them so Leshy's kind of like getting nervous and like paying attention to their surroundings. I rolled a five.

Bee/GM: Is Agent Frog paying attention as well, or just like Belin to get these dang swords?

Zach/Sherms: Yeah, he's actually looking for a servant to fetch the, the prince directly so that he can just tell me where this damn sword is.

Bee/GM Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. While you're kind of looking around for a servant that you can, that isn't. Currently holding something heavy and stuff like that. Just like an available servant Agent Cobbler, you do notice that every so often one of the people with white mask will like stare at your group and even if you make eye contact, they'll continue to stare and then slowly turn back to what they were doing.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Have we ever heard one of these white mask people say anything?

Bee/GM: No.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Oh, that's spooky

Bee/GM you haven't heard them say anything directly to you, but you do see that like they're standing in front of someone and that person is talking to them and they're like, they seem to be like they're talking about,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Okay

Bee/GM Yeah

Brianna Jean/Yaga: The seem is pretty heavy there in the middle of that sentence. .

Bee/GM: Well, I mean you can't tell what their face is doing cause they're wearing a completely white like porcelain mask.

Agent Frog. You are able to find a servant and you pull them aside and ask them to go get the prints and they do dash off. What are you guys doing in the meantime and are you guys just standing in the, the grand hall?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I don't know if we wanna split up now that they're watching us.

Brianna Jean/Yaga Is there anything I can roll to see if I can figure out, like, figure out why these white mask people are suddenly putting weirdly intent on us?

Bee/GM: Nope. That sounds like a thing. You gotta talk to them and ask them about.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: We'll go with that actually. Well if any, unless anyone else wants to do anything.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yeah. Just like go up and do the tour. Like how to do like the confused tourist. I just have to know what's with the masks. Just go up and

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah, exactly.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Ask them,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: just walk up and, hey, that's pretty much what I'm doing unless anyone else is doing something.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Go for it.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Go for it. I was kind of interested in the art hall.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Well Hugo will get annoyed at watching the, the masks watch him. So he is just gonna march right up to one of them and be like, Hi. Did you want to talk? I noticed you looking at me. Your mask is really interesting. Could you tell me about it?

Bee/GM: Are you walking up to one of them that is staring at you?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yes. The one that's looking right at me.

Bee/GM: Okay. Yeah, you do. So roll resolve.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: My resolve is four.

Bee/GM: Okay. You look up at this person and you get ready to open your mouth to say something, but you are like washed with an overwhelming sense of dread and fear and you kind of reflexively back away.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah, he's gonna tuck his tail, run back to the group, hide behind senior agent Yaga while saying, Oh, super. Sorry to bother you, I was sorry. Wont happened again bye, bye.

Bee/GM: way? So what you guys see is agent cobbler, just like confidently walk up to this person and then he, as he gets closer, he like slows his pace.

He, you hear him start to say something, he stares at them for like a second and then immediately comes back.

Brianna Jean/Yaga What happened?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I don't wanna talk about it. He's very scary

Brianna Jean/Yaga: about right today. Senior Yaga's gonna walk right up. She's faced scary before and is now learning how to be scary. So he's gonna walk up and ask why the interest? and what is about masks? They're very fascinating.

Bee/GM: Roll, resolve

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Come on dice. Heck yeah. 10.

Bee/GM: Yeah, you beat it. You kind of feel that overwhelming sense of dread and it's familiar to you because you've spent so much time with Bobbi Yaga that like, it, it is overwhelming. It, it kind of feels like that first time that you met her, that fear that you had but then like that kind of washes away from you and the person just kind of stares at you.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I feel like anyone watching or sees like her shoulders tense and then they just relax.

Bee/GM: Yeah. They just kind of like tilt their heads slightly. The other three of you, do you mind rolling Keen for me?

Zach/Sherms: Oh nine.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I am never not using these dice. I got an 11.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Damn. Oh, I said four, sorry.

Bee/GM: Okay, so as agent Yaga walks up to this person you do see her visibly tense after she like gets us to a certain like threshold, but then she like kind of pushes past that and like walks over and starts talking to them.

And as she does, like this person like looks at her and tilts their head and to the two of you that didn't roll a four you kind of look around and you notice that all of the white people that are within eye shot are looking at you guys, and more specifically looking at Agent Yaga and they all have their heads tilted the same way.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: All of the white mask people.

Bee/GM: Yeah, but you don't notice that cause you're talking to one of the white mask people. .

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yeah. Just like, well this is a good way to get information. Keep, keep the intention on me. The others might notice something, especially the value of teamwork. It doesn't realize how rather unsettling this situation is.

Bee/GM: What do you guys do? ? I will say Agent Leshy you probably notice that the other two with you are kind of looking around and they do not seem like they're having a good time.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Excuse me. Agent Cobbler, you seem very distressed. Might I offer you a, a gentle back rub

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah, I'll, I'll take you up on that offer after, or on that offer afterwards, but we might have a bit of trouble right now. He's gonna nod his head towards the white mask people.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh yeah. That's very strange. Why are they all looking at, at senior agent Yaga?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: That's what I'd like to know.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: She's currently talking to one of them.

Bee/GM: Yeah, you're talking to one of them and like, I assume you're still like asking them questions and stuff, but they're not responding to you whatsoever.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: And she's, she's got her, she's keeping her posture relaxed, but she's also already, just in case things go sideways. But she's, she's not currently attempting to look threatening.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Okay. Sherm, what are you doing?

Zach/Sherms: Feeling very awkward.

Bee/GM: Fair enough.

Zach/Sherms: Like he's just like not used to this part.

Bee/GM: Yeah. This is very unsettling.

Zach/Sherms: It's very unsettling. I'm going to slowly head my way outside to the courtyard.

Bee/GM: Okay. As you turn to do so, actually the sun has begun to set right now and it is becoming dusk.

Some bells begin to ring and it seems like the ceremony is going to begin. And so a lot of people are beginning to file out into the courtyard as well. They're across the fountain on the other side of the largest fountain is like a stage that has been put up and decorated for the bride and groom

Zach/Sherms: Nice

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Has my creepy mask friend moved at all? Or are they still just standing perfectly? Still staring

Bee/GM: As like, everyone is like starting to file out, like once the last few people, like, once the crowd starts to thin out, all of them white masked people begin to move at once and follow suit.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Quinn is gonna whisper to Agent Cobbler. You know, while everyone is distracted, this might be a good time to finish looking around the house.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Y you did say there was a cellar, didn't you?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yes. Yes, I did. Shall we investigate

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Lead the way? Actually no. He's not gonna say lead the way . He's gonna say, Follow me , because Leshy.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: you don't want the clutz sneaking around taking the lead.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: How shadowy is it? Probably not much. It-Well, it's getting dark.

Bee/GM: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's dusk, so it is becoming dark, but there are quite a bit of candles kind of lit amongst all of the decorations and whatnot. So it is, it is decently lit, but there are some places that are shadowy.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah, the best is he can Hugo’s goes going to sneak along the shadows dart from shadow to shadow all the way down the hall to the kitchen and see what he can see.

Bee/GM: Okay. Agent Leshy go ahead and roll Keen

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: That's a big fat goose egg. That's a one .

Bee/GM: You lose agent cobbler. Oh no. He steps into some shadows and disappears.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I'm just in the art hall, just like looking. I, I, I get too distracted by the art.

Bee/GM: I'll go ahead and say that because you rolled poorly on Keen to follow Agent Cobbler. You do like, investigate this art pretty, pretty deeply.

And you noticed that the art in like a lot of the art is like either landscapes or like paintings of the garden or the courtyard, but there are are also family photos. And the one thing that kind of like, actually roll keen, again for me

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: that's a six.

Bee/GM: Okay. Yeah. The one thing that you notice is that the royal family, like the people that kind of rule over this area are in more ornate frames and they're kind of like put up along the wall in like family portraits and whatnot. And the one thing you

notice is that all of the women, all of the women that are in the position of queen or princess, all look almost identical, say for a different hair color or a different eye color, but bone structure, facial structure, it is all the exact same.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Oh.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: A, a agent. Agent Cobbler. Where, where, where’d you go?

Bee/GM: Yeah, he's gone. Agent Yaga. What are you doing? These mask figures are leaving.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: She is now very suspicious of them just for the behavior. The fact that it didn't speak, the fact that just starred and tilted its head. She's, sorry Leshy, she's not following you. She's,

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: That's fine.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Following this master figure thing cause she's like, I, I don't trust this. There's, there's too many of them. I don't trust this.

Bee/GM: And I believe Agent Frog is going outside as well.

Zach/Sherms: Yep.

Bee/GM: All right. So you two? Yes. Split the party. So you guys go outside and the ceremony begins. And music is already being played. People are sitting down in their seats. The masked figures, most of them are on the outskirts, like kind of standing around the seating area or around the fountain and whatnot.

Some of them are in the crowd like seated, but it's usually like, I mean, they're pretty spread out. It's not that many. Most of them are actually standing on the outside. And for the first time you do see the princess as she walks onto the stage with her soon to be husband and there is a priest kind of like reading out everything.

And the ceremony to be wed is beginning. Agent Cobbler, you're darting around in the shadows. You have lost agent Leshy.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah. When I notice I'm gonna stop for a bit and be like, how can I be the junior agent on this team? But yeah, so I'm gonna try and make my way to the kitchen and peek in and see if the coast is clear. If I could make my way to that cellar door.

Bee/GM: Yeah

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Excellent. So he is just going to confidently march on over and open her up.

Bee/GM: You pull on the handle and it is locked.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Can I attempt to pick the lock?

Bee/GM: Uh sure, Roll Keen.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Let's see nine.

Bee/GM: Yeah. You, it takes you a bit, but you do eventually pick the lock. Agent Leshy, what are you doing?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I am going to start running towards the kitchen. Okay. Assuming that's where we were going.

Bee/GM: Yep. Yeah, you run towards the kitchen. So halfway through, you picking the lock Agent Cobbler, Leshy runs in.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, I, I do apologize. I, I I lost you for a moment, but did you notice back there with all the paintings the Princess Queen person in, in all the family photos all basically look the same? Is that, that, that's weird, right?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Certainly weird. I think it's all starting to come together. Oh crap.

I'm not with the group cause it would be great to ask, oh, What's his name? Your servant. Your man's servant.

Zach/Sherms: Oh, Henry.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah. Ask Henry to ask Henry if the, if that is the woman he saw, but I'm not there.

Bee/GM: Yeah, you're not there.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Good.

Bee/GM: Unforty

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Unfortch. Oh, well, are we gonna continue on here or go back to them?

Bee/GM: Yeah. I mean, it's telling you guys.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Okay. I, I, I see you're picking that lock. Are you, are you sure we should do that?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I'm not sure of anything anymore, but

Bee/GM: as you say that, the lot clicks open

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: and as I'm pulling it open, I'm gonna say, but if we are gonna figure out anything here, we're gonna need to take some risks and he is gonna stick his head down in the cellar.

Bee/GM: Yea, alright. Agent Frog and Agent Yaga, you guys are watching the ceremony and it, it doesn't seem to be like a traditional like wedding ceremony where the vows are super long and there's like a, you know, the whole long spiel by the priest. Eventually they do like the whole kiss the bride thing and they are officially wed and the priest begins to walk off the stage and the princess steps forward to address the crowd and she says, Hello everyone.

Thank you for joining us on this wonderful day. I appreciate all of the help from everyone here. And I would like to say a special thank you to our guests that have come and she gestures to you two standing on the terrace.

Zach/Sherms: Oh shit.

Bee/GM: And the crowd kind of turns around and like claps and she smiles and the Prince, Prince Phillip is also like pretty happy cause you know, he just got married.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: What are the mask people doing?

Bee/GM: They're just, they have not moved . They are still staring forward at the stage

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Attention's been mostly on them, but when people start paying attention to me, I do just kind of roll with it, but I'm keeping my eye on those Mask peep, The masked individuals.

Bee/GM: Yeah, those dastardly guys.

Zach/Sherms: Sherms is definitely like reveling in it.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Yeah, of course.

Zach/Sherms: It's like, yeah.

Bee/GM: She like, after everyone, like the applause settles down, she turns back to the crowd and she says, as you all know, 10 years ago I fell ill. And it wasn't until my darling husband here came and helped make me better and everyone like cheers and claps and stuff.

Bee/GM: And she says, While I was away, however, I was given a vision. As you know, our town is always in the perfect state, always the perfect weather. Our crops have never failed. We've never had any sort of natural disasters, and that is all thanks to who I met while I was away. Unfortunately, in order to keep it that way, I need to make sure that I don't awaken again.

And as she says that from her dress, she pulls out the sword that Sherms has been looking for,

Zach/Sherms: God dammit

Bee/GM: The entire time.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Can I try to get to the stage?

Bee/GM: Sure. So you start running towards the stage. Go ahead and roll me agility, put it in chat, and we're gonna jump back over to Cobbler and Leshy.

So Agent Cobbler, you stick your head down into the dark cellar and it is a cellar.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Excellent.

Bee/GM: Yep. There are shelves. There's table down there. I can’t switch to the map.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I hope we bought flashlights.

Bee/GM: Are you asking if you brought flashlights?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Well, I would've if I, I'm not quite sure in the timeframe. This is like totally modern, right?

Bee/GM: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you guys, it's modern, but for the town, they're all running on like medieval, like, you know, candle, you know, so there's no flashlights that you can grab.

Zach/Sherms: Oil lanterns that kind of stuff.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Exactly

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah. So I pull out my cell phone and turn on the flashlight

Bee/GM: Yeah, right. You do that. You look in there and yeah, the cellar is, I mean, it's a cellar There's a table, some shelves.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I don't see anything. Didn't you say there would be bodies down here?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Well, I, I, I just thought, you know, it's a pantry. It, it's a cellar, you know that's where people keep bodies usually.

Zach/Sherms: How much experience does Leshy have with bodies and cellars?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Very little like, like horror movies on Saturday night. That's the experience.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Leshy watched one horror movie and now is convinced every cellar has bodies in it.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yep. Exactly.

Bee/GM: This is a really nice Cellar, but Where's the bodies? Yeah. I mean, you don't see anything down there, but you are just like hanging upside down, sticking your head down into the cellar.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: How like big is it?

Bee/GM: Big.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Big. Okay. Then not seeing anything immediately he will drop down and start poking around in the corners and what not.

Bee/GM: Okay. There is a ladder, but if you drop down, go ahead and roll agility for me.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Oh sure. He'll be flashy about it. 10. Thankfully I put stats in that.

Bee/GM: All right, excellent. You, you like kind of let yourself slide down and you do a flip and land on your feet. Agent Leshy?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, that was quite impressive!

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah, is Leshy gonna try and do that?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yes, let me try as well!

Bee/GM: Oh no.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah, I knew it

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: two.

Bee/GM: So Agent Leshy attempts to do the same as you and doesn't do it as gracefully. And so instead of landing on his feet, he lands on his head. You're gonna take, Oh Jesus…

Brianna Jean/Yaga: This is gonna end in a casket

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Well, there is a body down here now.

Bee/GM: Yeah, you knock yourself out cold.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh no.

Bee/GM: You are at zero Vitality.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh no.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: “oh let me try that!” gong!

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Can I use my fate coin?

Bee/GM: Yeah, sure. What do you wanna do?

Zach/Sherms: Oh Right, I forgot we had that.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I would like to not fall on my head like I would like to maybe seeing that I'm about to fall, like maybe like I lose my grip and so instead I reach into my jacket and grab my feather and turn into a hawk.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Okay. So as you're falling, it kind of goes into bullet time for you and you realize you're probably not gonna

make it out super great. So reflexively you just like shove your hand into your pocket and pull out your feather and transform before you hit the ground. And you just, as soon as you get like an inch from the ground, you get begin flapping your wings and you're flying

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: *Makes really bad bird noise*

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Thank you for not switching places with me.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: oh!

Bee/GM: So mark that you have used your, your coin.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yep.

Bee/GM: Okay, so back to da agents. Outside, you see the princess pull out this sword and I believe you guys are both running towards the stage.

Zach/Sherms: Yes

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I definitely am,

Bee/GM: What was your role?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Was I rolling?

Bee/GM: Yeah. Roll agility. Okay.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: It’s a five.

Zach/Sherms: Hey, we both got five.

Bee/GM: As you both are running towards this stage a few of the white mask people intercept you and slow you down before you can get to the stage. And you watch as in one fluid movement movement of her swinging the sword around. She absolutely decapitates the prince.

Zach/Sherms: Nooooo

Bee/GM: And blood just sprays everywhere.

Some of the people in the crowd are just like screaming and like terrified and they begin to scatter and her dress is spotted with red and she turns back to the crowd, big grin on her face. And she says, in order to keep this town alive, I have to remain asleep. And she raises a sword and we cutting back to the other two!

So you guys are down in the cellar? what are you guys doing?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Do we hear the screams and commotion going on?

Bee/GM: Roll keen

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: six.

Bee/GM: Agent Leshy?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: That's a two. Okay. I'll, I will also note, oh, wait, I have an extra keen when I'm on a hawk form, so, sorry.

Bee/GM: Oh yeah, That's a true.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: That's an eight.

Bee/GM: Sweet. Okay. Yeah. You both hear the, it, it's very, very muffled, but you do hear the commotion, you hear the screaming and like people's like scattering.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I make a hawk noise and start flying out of the cellar.

Bee/GM: Okay. Yeah. You fly out of the cellar/

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Can I grab your claws as you fly out.?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I, I am a Redtail hawk, Sir.

Bee/GM: he is not a large hawk. He is a very small regular hawk.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Oh, he gets small. Okay.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Yeah. 2.4 pounds and 18 inches .

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: What is a carrying capacity or the flight speed of an unladen Red Falcon?

Bee/GM: I'm just gonna give it to you right now. I believe you are a what? 22 year old man?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Very diminutive man.

Bee/GM: Okay, well. Yeah. I promise you if you jumped to grab his legs, you will break them bones. Birds bones are fragile.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yeah. Just a little bit. .

Bee/GM: Well, you're gonna have to climb with the ladder.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yep. I'm gonna go for the ladder climb.

Bee/GM: You can also just switch places with him.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah. You're like, Sorry, nothing personal kid. No. I'm gonna attempt to very quickly climb the ladder

Bee/GM: roll agility.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Oh no

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Ladders are harder than you think

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: they are. It's come. The good rolls have run out. I got a three.

Bee/GM: Okay, well, yep. Yeah, you just, you you climb the ladder and you just slip a little.

You don't like fall or anything. It's just taking you extra time to get up that ladder.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah, it's taking longer than if I climb it normally.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Agent Leshy, you fly up and out to like out the window to see what's going on and you see the princess on the stage covered in blood. You see your fellow agents being restrained by these white masks people and she raises the sword up and she says, may the rose bloom eternally.

And she plunges the sword into her chest.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh God.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Can I, can I have done something like, as she was raising the sword?

Bee/GM: Sure. What do you wanna do?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I want to use one of my spells, Ignite and conjure a flaming skull, right into her face to either potentially blind or distract or something.

Bee/GM: Go ahead and roll agility.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Okay. That's another five.

Bee/GM: Okay. I'm sorry. It was one above you. You are able to conjure this spell, but before you do, she does plunge the sword into her chest.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: It. She just got tricked by a fae. She got tricked by a fae while she was asleep, damn it

Bee/GM: And the ground begins to rumble and,

Zach/Sherms: Oh boy.

Bee/GM: I'll say that Agent Cobbler, you're still trying to climb this ladder when the ground begins to rumble and you can hear

kind of like off into the distance, you can hear something echoing behind one of the shelves in the cellar.

And as the mansion begins to rumble, as the ground begins to rubble from the fountain, you see vines kind of shoot out of the stone and begin to grow. And as they do, you see rosebuds blooming from the vines, massive roses, and they're just slowly blooming. What do you guys do? People are running and screaming.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I am. Before anything else, Sending a message to Yaga. Say like a quick basic princess. Tricked by Fae. She and the prince are dead. Help .

And, can we tell like there's something special about the roses beyond the fact that they're big?

Bee/GM: Sure. Yeah.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: and blooming quickly.

Bee/GM: They’re black

Zach/Sherms: Oh god. Okay. Fun.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Mm.

Bee/GM: Yeah. So yeah, the roses are black and actually as they begin to bloom you can see a few of the smaller ones blooming first.

And in the center of them is a massive rose bud. But the ones that you do see blooming first in the center of the rows are eyes and they are looking directly at you

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Leshy takes to the air .

Bee/GM: Yeah?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Leshy goes home.

Bee/GM: I must go to my people.

Leshy, you have an aerial view then of these roses. Once they bloom the eyes are looking around and they're looking at you all. But they're also looking at the people that are like run, running and screaming in panic. And as they see these people running away, they like lock onto someone and like that person gets like speared through with a vine and they begin clearing house just locking onto people.

And vines are shooting from the ground, and it is a blood bath.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I just had an idea.

Bee/GM: What's up?

Brianna Jean/Yaga: If, is there a way if I can get up to the princess's body to possibly use Koshi’s needle to bring her back?

Bee/GM: You gotta get up to the body.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I'm, I'm gonna, I'm just, you just see Yaga is booking it for the princess's body.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Right. The white masks, people have stopped restraining you and they have fallen to their knees and like in a praying kind of pose and the vines are like not hitting them. Roll agility for me. Agent Yaga.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Okay. I should've dumped another in agility. That was a six.

Bee/GM: Nice. Okay. Yeah. You dodge a vine as one of the roses has locked onto you and it tries to spear you through, but it misses and you keep running.

Agent Frog, what are you doing?

Zach/Sherms: So as these vines are going out and lashing out at Agent Yaga, I'm going to pop my golden ball off my cane and shove it in my mouth just right plop. And I'm gonna turn into a frog.

Bee/GM: Yep. You frog it up. what are you doing?

Zach/Sherms: I'm beelining it for the stage.

Bee/GM: Okay. Yeah.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I have a frog following me. Cool.

Bee/GM: Yeah. You are small enough that the roses don't really take much notice of you, yet. So

Zach/Sherms: Yet

Bee/GM: more of these roses are blooming from these vines. Agent Cobbler, what are you doing?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: The noise I heard behind the bookshelf, was that like a spooky noise or was it just like.

Bee/GM: Yeah, kinda like a, the ground is cracking and echoing sort of noise.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Mumm, as much as I'd love to investigate my people need me

Bee/GM: You take to the skies, no you climb up that ladder. ,

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah, I climb up the ladder. And are there any doors in the kitchen?

Bee/GM: No, but there's a, well, I mean, there's doors like leading back into the dining room, but the windows are open?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: but back outside. Okay. Then I'm gonna hop out the window.

Bee/GM: Yep. First floor.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: And they're like on the deck. Is that right?

Bee/GM: now the agents are like closer to the main fountain.

They're, they're aiming to get to the stage, which I'll just go ahead and draw that for you right now.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Oh, okay. So yeah, I'm gonna hop out on the the north window of the kitchen.

Bee/GM: Uh huh. Yep.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: And seeing that they're going for the princess on the stage and being kind of bewildered at the sudden development of a giant thorn monster with black eye roses.

Bee/GM: Yep.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: He's just gonna try and make his way to the same place.

Bee/GM: All right. Roll agility for me.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Eight

Bee/GM: Okay. You successfully dodge the vines. You will get there before the other two agents, Agent Frog and Agent Yaga. Please go ahead and roll agility for me. And if you could put that in chat. And then Agent Leshy, what are you doing?

Are you literally just leaving?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: No, no, no. I was just flying above the, the chaos to try and see like a good vantage point.

Bee/GM: Gotcha. What? Okay,

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: so I can, I can see like where like, so this thing with the eyes, is that almost like, like a, seems like the center of like this creature's being

Bee/GM: Yeah, I'll say that the rose sprouted right here in front of the stage and in between the fountain.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Okay.

Bee/GM: And vines are just kind of like shooting up randomly in places and like they're growing over the fountain and whatnot.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Excellent.

Bee/GM: And just like spearing people.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Well, Brianna will know this trick very well. I'm going to fly directly over this little central thing.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Yes

Bee/GM: Yeah.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: And I would like to un transform midair. Okay. And then grab onto my bear claw.

Bee/GM: Sure.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Ethically sourced bear. All my, all my artifacts are ethically sourced.

Bee/GM: Yes. No animals were harmed in the collecting of artifacts

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: and transform into a bear midair to like come down on this thing.

Bee/GM: Okay. Roll agility.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Sure. That is a five.

Bee/GM: Excellent. And roll agility again,

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Four.

Bee/GM: not so excellent. So, you do successfully transform into a bear. And the thing about bears is they're quite large and so when you have multiple eyes it's kind of easy to see large things. And so this rose, the main one, has finally bloomed in a giant eye in the center of, it looks up at you as you're following in this bear form.

And two of these vines strike and spear you. So you are gonna take, I'm gonna say as a bear, you have five vitality.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy Okay, that's good.

Bee/GM: You take three

Avery/Quinn/Leshy oof.

Bee/GM: as two of these vines kind of spear you and stop you in midair.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Okay, cool. Uhm,

Bee/GM: agent Yaga, you are running towards the stage and you look up in the sky and see agent Leshy transform. And because you are momentarily distracted, one of the vines does get you in the leg and you lose, you lose one vitality.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I'm like, if I,I need to get there before I lose the . Any ability the needle has, I need to get their fast

Bee/GM: Yeah, yeah. Agent Frog, you are able to avoid these vines. And you meet agent cobbler at the stage.

Zach/Sherms: Nice.

Bee/GM: What are you guys doing?

Zach/Sherms: Once I reach the stage, I'm going to plop out the, the golden ball and turn back into me.

Bee/GM: Yep.

Zach/Sherms: And then I'm going to grab the, the broad sword .

Bee/GM: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you do, you pull it out.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I believe you have something that belongs to me.

Zach/Sherms: for the,

Bee/GM: I'm looking for this everywhere.

Zach/Sherms: For the agency.

Bee/GM: Yeah. You pull out the broad sword from her chest and you whisper to yourself for the agency. And you look down at the princess and she is just smiling super wide and her eyes are like fully open.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: I hate that. Thanks.

Bee/GM: Yeah, of course.

Zach/Sherms: Yeah. , it's one of those like, she's dead and she's just got like the, the permanent grin on her face, right?

Bee/GM: Yep.

Zach/Sherms Yep. With the sword. Going to snap my fingers and summon Henry the the trustworthy and faithful.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Mm-hmm. , he's there. He's like, whoa, what's going on here?

Zach/Sherms: Bad stuff. Anyways take this and I hand him the sword.

Bee/GM: He takes it,

Zach/Sherms: Get that in the trunk and make for train station.

Bee/GM: You got it boss, and he goes and does that

Brianna Jean/Yaga: you're just a floating blood covered sword.

Bee/GM: Yep.

Zach/Sherms: Well I give him the key too is just so he can actually get into the damn chest .

Bee/GM: Thanks boss. He keeps running.

Zach/Sherms: And then

Bee/GM: yeah,

Zach/Sherms: if I can do like one more thing, I'll draw my cane sword.

Bee/GM: Yeah, right, you do.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: So I've given Hugo a range weapon. That's cool.

He's gonna pull out his hand, cross bow and attempt to shoot the eye monster in the eye.

Bee/GM: Yeah, I'll allow it. . Okay. Go ahead and roll. Roll Agility, either agility or keen up to you.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: 12,

Bee/GM: What was it?

Zach/Sherms: God damn.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Yeah. 12.

Bee/GM: Sweet. You super hit it. Which one were you aiming at? The big eye or like one of the other eyes?

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: The one that's directly below our boy Leshy staring up at him.

Bee/GM: Great. The super big one. So you fire it at it. You are behind it so you can't see the eye, but you fire through the pedals and Leshy, you see this thing it's like pupil kind of like constricts and like, it, it looks like something has hit it and it lowers the vines and kind of lowers you to the ground and turns directly to the two of you on stage.

Zach/Sherms Wonderful. Oh,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: it's number is frantically.

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: I'm sorry,

Brianna Jean/Yaga: trying to get to the stage .

Bee/GM: Yeah. Yaga, you can go ahead and roll agility once more to get to the stage.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Okay. Cause I feel like I'm, like, I'm getting close. ,

Zach/Sherms: I was tiny, I was just able to dodge all the bench.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Okay. I got another five.

Bee/GM: You make, you are able to get to the stage.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Okay. So I'm gonna go up to the princess. Am I allowed to do two things eventually?

Bee/GM: Yeah, I'll allow it. Go ahead.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Okay. So first thing I'm gonna do, as I kneel next to her is I'm going to channel winter, so that'll lower the area around the body and hopefully lower, lower the body temperature, 10 degrees.

Bee/GM: Okay. Go ahead and pick higher, low for me. I'm meant to do this at your last spell too. My bad. High. Okay. Yeah, you attempt to cast the spell, but there's too much going on and you can't focus enough to cast the spell.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Oh, in that case when that doesn't work, you see her, she, she pulls what looks like this strange looking needle out of her hair.

She's gonna like place it over the wound, put a, the magic cloth on top of it, press down on it and use whatever magic Yaga taught her to see if she can get the death ward to work on the princess.

Bee/GM: Okay. I'm gonna need one heck of a keen rule.

Brianna Jean/Yaga: Oh, I have two. I have two, two d-six in Keen, so that was a seven. I would probably not,

Bee/GM: no, I'm sorry. I rolled super good. You press the needle into the princess and you channel your magic, but you can just feel that death has already taken her. And at that, you kind of look up at this rose with one massive eye and you look at your companions around you. And as you're kind of taking it in, seeing the carnage that this thing has weighed lace to did I say that right?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Laid ways too.

Zach/Sherms: Laid weight to?

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: I think you might've switched to W and the L, but that's okay.

Bee/GM: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. You know what I mean? , all of you. Roll me one final agility.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Do I have any extra agility as a bear.

Bee/GM: No, you get blonde actually.

Avery/Quinn/Leshy: Oh, Five.

Zach/Sherms: Five as well.

Bee/GM: Eww. What did you get Chris

Chris/Hugo/Theo/The Cobbler: Four.

Bee/GM: Okay, well sorry guys.

You all are kind of like stuck in this situation and this rose keeps like pushing vines up through the earth and eventually it's just too much and everything kind of fades to black.

We open with the scene with a well-dressed young man staring out the window of a train, watching his people board and leave. As he watches, he notices a strange sight, a single rose

growing from the concrete of the platform. His thoughts are interrupted when he feels a weight shift on the seat, and that is where we will end it.

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

Avery: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Production. Find more of our work at 1upPodcasts.com. Intro and Outro music by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks include: Age of Steam, High Rannoc Village, Throne Room, Antiquarian Study, Middle Earth: Dawn, Castle Kitchen, Court of the Count, All Hallows Eve, and Terror in the Woods. Special Thanks to Brianna Jean the creator of Psuedonym Social: Changing Reality, one story at a time. Check out her work at PseudonumSocial.com. We’ll be back on November 1st with our next episode. See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro music builds then fades out)

Episode 8 - Cake Diplomacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Yeah.

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

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

Bee/Polars: Oh yeah.

Avery/GM: I remember

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: All right,

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

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

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

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

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polars: Mm-hmm.

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

Bee/Polars: Indeed.

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Man the giant turrets!

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Yeah. By the way,

Chris/Ollie: If it even can.

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Mm. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Hi,

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

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

Jenine/Marty: That's fair.

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

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

Avery/GM: you have two ships available.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Bee/Polars: hm. ok.

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

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

Zach/Zahn: Heyyy!

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

Bee/Polars: Oh, sweet. Okay.

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Okay. Okay.

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

Bee/Polars: Okay. So.

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

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bee/Polars: I believe you did.

Jenine/Marty: do

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

Bee/Polars: Ok sweet.

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

Zach/Zahn: I fired two, actually.

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

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

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

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

Chris/Ollie: Oh Okay.

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Vibe check!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Sure.

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

Avery/GM: “aye, Yeah, I'm here.”

Jenine/Marty: “Oh, hello.”

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

Jenine/Marty: “we do, well-”

Avery/GM: “and you pick an intern?”

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: “Oh! we what? No…”

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

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

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

Avery/GM: add. Add another plus one,

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

Zach/Zahn: All the more plus ones.

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

Avery/GM: Oh, that's great.

Bee/Polars: It's pretty good.

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

Bee/Polars: Aw.

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

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

Bee/Polars: The ship exploded immediately!?

Jenine/Marty: Marty just like, face palms.

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

Avery/GM: You just hear weeping.

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

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

Bee/Polars: Oh my God…

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

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

Avery/GM: fruit?

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Okay.

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

Jenine/Marty: Yeah!

Bee/Polars: True.

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: hundred k.

Chris/Ollie: yeah a hundred.

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Celia.

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

Avery/GM: Celia had the keys.

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Oh no. Was he?

Avery/GM: Yeah

Bee/Polars: Oh, he was

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

Bee/Polars: Oh,

Avery/GM: Or at least have seen him.

Bee/Polars: okay. yup.

Avery/GM: Sorry.

Bee/Polars: Ooooo.

Jenine/Marty: Rip

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: The first three seconds

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

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: He wants the ship back tho.

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: “Yes.”

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

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

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

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

Chris/Ollie: Better than negative.

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

Avery/GM: You spoke up.

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

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

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: What?

Avery/GM: “for him and everything.”

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

Bee/Polars: I was about to say

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: “Lemon, just lemon cake.”

Bee/Polars: There's probably some lemons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: The Hegemony took him prisoner

Bee/Polars: Okay.

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

Bee/Polars: Oh, okay.

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Pania.

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

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Excellent.

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Aw.

Bee/Polars: Thats cute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Oh, no.

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

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

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

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

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

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

Bee/Polars: Yeah, Bear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Nice.

Jenine/Marty: Fair.

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

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Hello Home ec with Bruce.

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

Bee/Polars: Okay.

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

Bee/Polars: I got an 11

Jenine/Marty: I rolled in. Go ahead.

Bee/Polars: Oh, I just said 11.

Jenine/Marty: I also rolled in 11.

Bee/Polars: Let's go.

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

Bee/Polars: Yay

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

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God.

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

Chris/Ollie: I mean, we can.

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

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

Chris/Ollie: true.

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God.

Bee/Polars: Just space tang

Zach/Zahn: Was it really?

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

Bee/Polars: Oh, that’s awesome.

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

Caden/Bruce: Can I describe my beautiful cake?

Avery/GM: Yes, please.

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

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

Avery/GM: Oh, that's cool.

Zach/Zahn: Aw.

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Ha!

Caden/Bruce: And just smile.

Bee/Polars: Oh,

Jenine/Marty: does it like fall?

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Im a chef!

Bee/Polars: yay.

Avery/GM: Constantly giving away his chef hat

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

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

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: How tall is Marty again?

Jenine/Marty: four 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Space transition noise)

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

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

Jenine/Marty: yeah,

Avery/GM: Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Sweet.

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Oo!

Bee/Polars: A rabbit folk!

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

Bee/Polars: Wow.

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

Bee/Polars: Wow, that's really

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Oh, commit. Commit effort.

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Will they be aware of it?

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

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

Bee/Polars: Okay!

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

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

Bee/Polars: Oh, sweet. Okay cool.

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: What are the vibes like?

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

Bee/Polars: Let's go.

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Aw

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

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Good. I would hope so.

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

Jenine/Marty: Sneezy

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah, I was, I

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Crimsooon Chaaaos.

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

Chris/Ollie: we made friends.

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Holy crap.

Caden/Bruce: We have so many good IOUs.

Bee/Polars: Yeaaaah!

Jenine/Marty: look at us Go!

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

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

Avery/GM: The captain. Yeah,

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

Caden/Bruce: Facebook friends.

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

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

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

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

Chris/Ollie: extra stoked about fightin’ ‘em

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah. Huh.

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

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

Bee/Polars: Yeah. Polaris is

Avery/GM: with the pirates?

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Sweet.

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

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

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

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

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

Chris/Ollie: Certainly.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce would do that.

Zach/Zahn: Yep.

Bee/Polars: Was Bruce in the bridge?

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

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

Chris/Ollie: Yes, same.

Avery/GM: the Daft Punk,

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Oh my god.

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

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

Bee/Polars: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, it would.

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

Avery/GM: Oh my god.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: “That's fair.”

Avery/GM: Never trust a pirate.

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

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah. Huh?

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

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

Bee/Polars: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro fades back up and then plays through)

Episode 7 - Home, Sweet Spaceship!

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 7 of Beyond the Furthest Stars! Just a heads up that this session we recorded had a few technical difficulties with our mics and so some of the audio quality is impacted here. But it will clear up after this episode. Alright, Let’s get to the action!

(intro music plays and then fades out)

Avery/GM: The ramp lowers down and we see these three figures that Polaris has been referring to this whole time. Bee could you describe these happy little characters?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, it's my, okay, cool. Yeah, I'm, I'm not gonna roast them, so let me… in my original descriptions, I was roasting them, but let me pull up their picture. So I remember their descriptions.

Jenine/Marty: Roast them.

Bee/Polaris: I'm not gonna roast them. Okay. So there, okay, so there are three figures… so there are like three human looking beings standing there.

Bee/Polaris: One of them is like five-two. And they're wearing like a cut, like an off the shoulder, sort of red jacket that zips up. And they're wearing like standard issue flight pants and some boots. And they have goggles on their head. Their hair is like kind of an uneven Bob kind of like ghost in the shell sorta where the bangs are longer in the front.

Bee/Polaris: Their bangs are tied back underneath the goggles and they have. Like their hair is dye in a way where the black is on the outside and the blue is on the inside and their eyes are like an unnatural, like piercing blue. They also have dark skin and gold, two gold earrings on each ear.

Bee/Polaris: The tallest figure is about the size of Bruce. Yeah, very tall. And they have long dark hair and like a full like scruffy beard. He basically looks like a really tired dad, he's wearing a leather jacket and like a gray shirt and like security, cargo pants and security, like work boots. He does have a laser pistol on, in, in a holster on his side which is a very good turn of events from what he would usually bring.

Bee/Polaris: and the last figure is just a little bit taller than the first figure. And they are, I would say that they're albino, but like their skin has just enough pigment to look somewhat human. Their hair is white and they have bright piercing, yellow eyes and They, they have glasses, they're wearing a lab coat and like a grade turtle neck, and like a pencil skirt and just sneakers. And they're probably in the back, like away from everyone else.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha!

Avery/GM: Yeah. And. These three figures are standing there. The five foot-two one with the blue hair walks up to, to Bruce or not to Bruce to Polaris and is just like, “okay, so you, you made it back safe and sound. Where is the AI?”

Bee/Polaris: Polar will toss Hermes to Merak.

Avery/GM: “Oh, this is excellent. Good, good, good. You know, it's funny. Alioth here was super worried about you” and from, from the back, you, you see this this pale figure, just sigh exasperated and just says:

Alioth: “Exasperated. I was not worried. I merely calculated the probability of Catalyst Designation Polaris perishing on this mission to the five hundred millionth decimal point. You are as capable as any other human.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just does a finger guns and says, I always beat the odd.

Jenine/Marty: Noice.

Avery/GM: Merak says, “so I, I guess you'd like to show your friends, friends is that. Is that where we're gonna call them around our, our home. Right?”

Bee/Polaris: Yes, please. Don't shoot them.

Avery/GM: you just hear… you just hear bear grumble. “Well, we'll be on the bridge if you need us. Okay?” And they just sort of in their, in their typical way, just kind of end of the conversation and, and walk off.

Zach/Zahn: Presses B on dialogue options. I'm.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: yeah, pretty much.

Avery/GM: and you are all here on the custodian ship. In this in this hanger bay, there is a strike fighter ship that you can see that Polaris, obviously this is your personal ship that you usually use on missions.

Bee/Polaris: my ship.

Zach/Zahn: Is this the one that we'll be attaching and taking with us From now on.

Bee/Polaris: no, cause it's well. Oh, well it's I thought it was like real small. Oh, well I guess, can it fit in the…

Avery/GM: it is. I blew it up because I'm blind.

Bee/Polaris: ah, so am I don't worry.

Avery/GM: It'll, it'll it'll fit. When it, when it needs to

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.f

Avery/GM: there are a variety of ship lockers towards the back that probably have Polaris, you know, that they have like space suits and tools and, you know, some like basic weapons and stuff that, you know, could be used in case they were.

Bee/Polaris: Which is weird, cause Polaris is the only organic being on the ship, but

Avery/GM: Yeah, they took the protect, the organic one at all costs a little too far. And just they, they got more weapons than they needed. For sure.

Zach/Zahn: Sounds like bear has fun playing with them.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Avery/GM: and then there are a variety of computer stations and whatnot. And of course there are fueling lines here as well, that connect to these ships or to the fuel scoops on this ship.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will put on his helmet and basically send like a, just like a text message to Merak and say, can you hook up the ship to be refued?

Zach/Zahn: Give us the hookup.

Avery/GM: Thumbs up emoji

Bee/Polaris: Sweet Polaris will also send the video of him making the bomb to all of them. And then he'll take off his helmet.

Avery/GM: Okay. And, oh, I should also explain this. The Ursa major is a capital class battleship. So it's very big, very spacious. And so there are a lot of different places that y'all can go as Polaris is your tour guide. So I will hand it over to to you, Bee.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Okay. So Polaris will turn to the Group and motion for you guys to follow.

Caden/Bruce: Following Along!

Bee/Polaris: I think first stop is probably gonna be the workshop to cause I think Ollie needed some, I don't, I don't know if you said that, like during the discussion on the ship for where we were gonna go, if you needed to get something.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I was need, well, I do need to buy some like one of those extra core things I need to buy as much.

Avery/GM: Processing nodes

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. The processing nodes. I need to buy as much like scrap metal or scrap you know, just whatever that is as well as I can get my hands on.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, I wanna, I wanna get a, I wanna get big stock of scrap so that I can add mods to the ship.

Chris/Ollie: And I want a big stock of the chips too. So those are like the pretty much three things I'm always gonna be on the lookout for.

Bee/Polaris: Gotcha. Well, I don't know about chips, but I assume that the custodians have just like a shit ton of scrap.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So, the workshop is actually kept pretty clean cause that's where Alioth does a lot of its work,

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm

Avery/GM: but kind of knowing what, what Ollie is after you take the crew to the mobile factory first.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that.

Avery/GM: and this mobile factory is honestly pretty defunct as far as like it hasn't been used in ages. It was originally used to create all manner of extra parts for the ship extra weapons or hull pieces or just random repair stuff. And currently in here, there are crates upon crates of extra parts, extra robot parts scrap metal, extra electronics, and things like that.

Avery/GM: Ollie, you start kind of running some calculations. In the background and you determined that if you spent a good couple hours, you know, if you sustained quite a bit of damage and came in here for about an hour, you'd be able to find pretty much whatever you need to repair yourself with ease.

Avery/GM: But some of this equipment does look very, very old, like older, older than you're probably used to. truth be told.

Chris/Ollie: So, but it's all… Okay. Well, yeah.

Avery/GM: You might be able to get it up and running, but it would probably take a, a big lift

Chris/Ollie: Well, what, what does it make?

Avery/GM: it can make literally, so this is the description in the book. The ship can stock raw materials and can basically use these to pay for repair or maintenance costs.

Avery/GM: And it can also create and repair vehicles, equipment planetary structures, et cetera. So I'm also expanding that to being able to create or repair like robot chassis and things like that.

Bee/Polaris: It's basically just like a big 3d printer room. Right?

Avery/GM: yeah, essentially, yup.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, so just a, a lot of elbow work you say because Polaris's fam is cool with us, like using all of this and…?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, they're not cool with it, but Polaris is. And so they, by proxy, they are

Chris/Ollie: So it's that kind of like ohhh the punk friends are over

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Well, I mean they, yeah, I mean, they probably are cool with Ollie, but literally everyone else, they are not cool with.

Chris/Ollie: Well, if we're gonna be here for a little amount of time, Ollie's gonna mention I don't know if you mentioned a specific amount of time,

Bee/Polaris: Nope.

Chris/Ollie: but

Bee/Polaris: I don't think any of us did.

Avery/GM: Oh, about an hour, just to kind of sort through like all these different boxes and kind of see what you would need.

Chris/Ollie: So yeah, Ollie's just gonna be “beginning repair search.” He's gonna say, and then start sifting through stuff.

Bee/Polaris: Would it go by faster if Alioth helped with the repair?

Avery/GM: Probably

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna

Avery/GM: Do you want to?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris is gonna shoot a text to all off and see if all off is cool with it.

Avery/GM: Yeah, what's what's the text say?

Bee/Polaris: Oh crew mate Ollie needs help with repair in factory. Help?

Zach/Zahn: No helpers.

Chris/Ollie: left you on Reed or red.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, that's a very, Alioth thing to do. Polaris is only asking because Ali is a robot. If it was literally anyone else, ally off would not even read it.

Avery/GM: You get the rolling eyes emoji from Alioth, and then just say a response that says “I'm currently analyzing the AI, but I'll be there as soon as I can.”

Bee/Polaris: Thumbs up, heart.

Avery/GM: And Ollie. You're just gonna wait in this room and, and start repairing yourself?

Chris/Ollie: Well, he pretty much fully repaired himself after the we had enough scrap

Avery/GM: Oh, you were gonna like gathering parts?

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. I was gonna start fixing the machine.

Bee/Polaris: Ah,

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, those that's. Yeah. That's what I was talking about with repairs. My bad.

Bee/Polaris: I feel like that's gonna take a little more than an hour.

Avery/GM: Oh, yeah, that'll take quite a bit of time, but you could probably fix one of these machines. Go ahead and roll an intelligence, fix check for me. And take a minus one penalty because of how old this stuff is.

Chris/Ollie: Well that will negate my plus one bonus from fix from my chassis. Let's see what is my bonus? It is seven I'm get… is Zahn Totally not on board with what we’re looking at?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah,

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's neck deep in like searching through all this scrounge, seeing what he can find useful.

Jenine/Marty: Valid.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, you could just, you could just throw in the scrap and 3d print, like what you need if the factory's fixed, right?

Chris/Ollie: Exactly. But Ollie's pretty much doing the exact same thing. He's just, instead of keeping the stuff, he's just looking for whatever I need on hand to fix. What's what the immediate problem is.

Avery/GM: So you open up one of these… you open up this first machine here. Near the entrance of the room and you see that the problem is that it's just covered in dust and cobwebs and just, it is, it is, it is old, it is old stuff. But you realize that even though a lot of the circuitry has degraded with how old it is, circuit boards are, they could be replaced fairly easily.

Avery/GM: You have a few robots back on your ship, you might be able to swap out some of the electronics here and maybe get this one up and running. If you were to scrap one of your chassis that you recovered from Winston's. That is what a seven gets you.

Chris/Ollie: Because I'm just thinking like, If it would be cool for us to use this really, to fix it and use it and stay the amount of time that it would be required. Ollie he isn't thinking about that. He just sees, you know, broken machinery and he's like, I can fix that. cause he doesn't sleep. He doesn't do anything So he's got nothing better to do!

Bee/Polaris: I mean, we never really, yeah. I mean, we never really established any sort of like when we're leaving and stuff like that. So, I mean, Polaris's mission was just to drop off Hermes, you know, mission complete.

Avery/GM: Okay, so you want to just sit and tinker with it, then?

Chris/Ollie: First, he's gonna look up and ask and be like excuse me? How long are we planning on staying here?

Bee/Polaris: players just shrugs and says, well, I'm home. I don't know what you guys want to do.

Chris/Ollie: Well, I guess, yeah Polaris, or Ollie's gonna look to. Because on is kind of his bonded human.

Zach/Zahn: Oh shit.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, you are his father.

Zach/Zahn: God dang it. I forgot that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. You're his dad.

Avery/GM: that's gonna have to be a conversation later. I think

Zach/Zahn: son, you're all grown up now.

Chris/Ollie: time for you to leave the Nest boy!

Zach/Zahn: I mean, if you want

Bee/Polaris: You guys haven’t played catch yet!

Zach/Zahn: oh my gosh. So I'm just kind of shrugs. He's like, I'm more so used to just kind of moving from place to place and doing work. So, I mean, if you guys got work here to do that's great willing to stay, but we should probably. Or I should probably move on. I don't know. I'm not used to the idea of we, but you know, I kinda like you, people, you guys managed to keep me alive and stuff better than other people in the past. I suppose.

Bee/Polaris: If you're worried about safety, this is probably the safest place

Zach/Zahn: It’s kind of quiet though. Isn't it? He, he he's like kind of quiet though. Isn't it? And he like hits the. The, the bulkhead of the wall and then just echo,

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris just kind of like tilts his head. I've never noticed

Zach/Zahn: which is something you're used to, and I'm not, I suppose,

Bee/Polaris: that's fair. I can talk to the custodians about any other. I mean, they do quite a wide range of jobs. If we want something to do.

Zach/Zahn: Indeed. I mean, heck you just did a job. Mission. I don't know what, what you had to do to escort Hermes here. Maybe we could get around to, or I could help you out with doing that. I don't know.

Bee/Polaris: throws up a thumbs up.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, look at all this scrounge.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Yeah. There is quite a bit of stuff.

Chris/Ollie: This, this is certainly the best place I've ever been.

Bee/Polaris: Haven't hasn't Ollie only been on the Hegemony ship.

Chris/Ollie: Yep. There's Jimmy ship cleaning cleaning bathrooms and fixing tiny, small vents and, and ducks and all the, the crappy work.

Zach/Zahn: And the throw up and the

Avery/GM: getting pushed over.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, getting pushed over,

Bee/Polaris: oh my gosh.

Chris/Ollie: out of the way, bot!

Zach/Zahn: by the way, we gotta look into upgrading your, your chassis, Ollie!

Chris/Ollie: Well, I've, I've got the idea of cause we got the Arnold Schwarzenegger thing and the security bots. So I want to beef one up, put the Arnie chip in it.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, my gosh.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God. Yes,

Chris/Ollie: Just like “get down. I've come to save you.”

Avery/GM: Oh, my gosh.

Bee/Polaris: hilarious.

Zach/Zahn: stick around.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris will turn to Bruce and Marty.

Caden/Bruce: “My workplace got blown up. So I am okay with whatever we decide. I do have a question though, and it is rather important. You only ate protein bars, Is there a kitchen here?”

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yes, I was gonna take. You all there on the tour, there's a kitchen and there is a hydroponics garden.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will look at the others and like put a thumbs up.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, I imagine that there is like a pretty good size kitchen. It just doesn't get used for anything other than making those like nutrient bars.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Would you like to go there next?

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Avery/GM: Ollie, Do you continue the tour or do you just stick around

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's going to…

Avery/GM: in the factory?

Chris/Ollie: See them going or Isan going as well, or is.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, Zahn's actually gonna motion for you to follow being like, eh, this isn't going anywhere.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah all, he's going to look at that and then look back at what he's doing and hesitantly like get up and, and follow.

Avery/GM: okay.

Zach/Zahn: and see your hesitancy. Zahn's just gonna be like, I mean, you don't have to come, you're your, you're your own bot, you know? And gives you

the, the shoulder smack and then it shrugs and turns and starts following the rest of them.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. And then Ollie will look down, you know, the, the corridor, the empty corridor, both ways. And then follow.

Avery/GM: So you come into this this hallway. And this is sort of there's a lot of stuff going on here, obviously. So first you have there's, there's four things in this area. There is the armory, which bear kind of keeps under tight lock and key.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, you got some BFGs in there man.

Avery/GM: yeah. But it's and it's rarely used because the custodians have rarely needed to use them in the first place. Not very many people mess with it. There is a door that is closed that says Exodus bay, which Polaris you would know is, was once meant to house of vast amount of long term sleep pods, but has basically just been filled with scrap parts, broken sleep pods, and just various junk.

Bee/Polaris: I was just gonna say, there's probably a little paper on there that just says ‘junk closet’ and it's just like taped to the door.

Avery/GM: Yeah. And then to the left is a hallway that leads to a disused kitchen with one chair and a hydroponics bay that is growing fruits and vegetables. As you come into this kitchen, Bruce, you see that like the stove top is set like on some sort of like automated schedule. And there are like some tubes that kind of run back towards the hydroponic bay and it looks like there's like a robotic arm that just picks vegetables as they're ripe and sends them into this tube.

And the tube deposits them into this almost pressure cooker. And there's a tray that has a few already created, like quote unquote nutrition bars on it. But it looks like a very like utilitarian process here. Like…

Zach/Zahn: 100% soulesss.

Avery/GM: they just, they just extract the nutrients from the veggies and fruit and put it into this bar for Polaris to eat.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is gonna pick one up and very tentatively take a bite of it.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris handed you one before the cake.

Avery/GM: I, I, I think, yeah, I think Bruce, if I remember correctly, you sniffed it, but you didn't actually eat it?

Caden/Bruce: Correct

Bee/Polaris: it had no smell.

Caden/Bruce: this time we're actually taking a bite.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. It has no taste.

Avery/GM: Yeah. It it's kind of like eating cardboard.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is gonna look at it and look back up to the stove and then turn around and look at Polaris and be like, do you not have chefs here? Is this what you consider food?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just drugged and says it's what I consider nutrients!

Caden/Bruce: was cake better nutrients?

Bee/Polaris: cake was… Cake was Delicious.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will not in smile and be like maybe rest of people here would appreciate also having cake, not just nutrients.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just kind of shrugs and says, none of us use the kitchen, its all yours

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will smile.

Avery/GM: And Bruce, one thing you notice as you're kind of like looking over the kitchen and kind of, you're probably like doing like some sort of like, kind of mental inventory of like what's here and stuff, right?

Caden/Bruce: I would imagine so opening different things with my tail and such.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You notice that a lot of the pots and pans are kind of dusty and some of them even have some like corrosion going on. From just disuse. Like, you're not sure how long some of these, these pans have been stored here.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is gonna like wipe off the dust and such, and like, just start basically doing dishes, even though they're unused. and just like looking over at the rest of the food inventory and is just like trying to think of things that he could create that would be well much better than these just nutrition bars.

Jenine/Marty: Marty notices that and will help. Will like come over to the dishes and be like, could, could I do the, I could do the dishes if you wanna keep looking for food.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will smile and be like, “that would be appreciated.”

Jenine/Marty: Of course. And then she's just gonna stay at scrubbing.

Bee/Polaris: Players doesn't know how to do the dishes. Otherwise he would help. you don't need dishes when you have Nutrient Bars!

Jenine/Marty: The truth.

Caden/Bruce: Nor do you need taste buds, but here we are.

Avery/GM: Oh man. Yeah, so it, it doesn't take long. Y'all kind of stand around awkwardly as, as Bruce and Marty kind of tag team, this, this kitchen fiasco. And after a while, there's, there's a nice stack of clean pots and pans and silverware. And Bruce, you kind of determine that there's a good variety of vegetables here that probably for your first like crew dinner tonight, maybe you could make a nice salad.

Bee/Polaris: Ratatouille

Avery/GM: you know, Yeah… Something like that. You could probably use some of the ingredients you found on board your other ship to probably, you know, make something real creative and fun. Yeah. Polaris. Do you continue the tour?

Bee/Polaris: indeed. I do have a question though. Is it safe to assume that this kitchen is like pretty well equipped? It's just, none of it has ever been used other than like,

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Cool. Cool, cool.

Avery/GM: It's just old and not used except as a place to hold this tray of nutrient bars as they're being made.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, my goodness.

Bee/Polaris: yeah, this is the, before the crew got out the ship, this was known as the nutrient bar room.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Sign on the doorway just says Nutri room. That's it.

Bee/Polaris: Yep. All the like tags for all the doors have been covered over with like a piece of paper that's taped over and it's just like been renamed for whatever they use that room for. Yeah. Polaris will continue the tour. We went to the factory, we went to this room. Let's go to the med bay. Let's go to the med bay. So Marty can check out all of the stuff.

Zach/Zahn: Yay. Marty stuff.

Jenine/Marty: Marty. Woo.

Caden/Bruce: Ooh.

Bee/Polaris: There are lasers.

Avery/GM: yes. So, as you come into the med bay area there are a variety of just cold sleep pods here that. They do see their use because sometimes Polaris, you don't want to go all the way to your cabin to rest. Sometimes you'll just hop into one and take your nap.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: efficiency sometimes over comfort. Marty, as you, as you come into this med bay area, you see. despite the rest of the ship seeming very old and very like very disused. This place is upgraded and state of the art. Like they just,

the, the custodians, it looks like they just custom built this med bay to have the best of the best stuff here.

Avery/GM: And as a med student this is like a dream come true as far as having access to this level of care. There are you know, beds that can read your vitals, take, you know, administer medications automatically with just the touch of a button. You come over to this computer station and you see that it just contains like a list of like various medications and drugs that can be administered from a storage area elsewhere in, in this room. And yeah that is, that is what you see here.

Jenine/Marty: You see, you know how in like cartoons there's like the eyes just sparkle. that's what's going on with Marty right now, as she's just walking around this space.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris says, “and this is the nap room.”

Zach/Zahn: this is the nap room!

Jenine/Marty: But do it, but it's, I mean, like, it's not exactly a nap on, like, you could take a nap in here and then it'll help to fix things. It's not really. Okay. Wait, nap turns to see the pods behind turns back. I understand why you say nap room. It's not really a nap room.

It's more of like, if. You got injured. This is a place you go to fix injuries, but it's very interesting, cause this is very much like, no, I've only read about this stuff. Like the, most of the things that I saw, we didn't have this yet because you know, like not, we're not, we weren't under budget. We went, I went to really nice school. It's just like we, we were learning about this stuff…. Hello.

Bee/Polaris: I'm assuming that means it's.

Jenine/Marty: Yes. Did, are there other, cause this isn't really for ro… robots per… is there's no, this is mostly for like flesh bodies. Yeah. Like most of the things in this room is

Avery/GM: Oh, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris will. Polaris will nod. Yeah. “I'm the only organic being on this ship. Other than you all now.”

Jenine/Marty: okay. Interesting. Why is it, why does this exist then with all of the most recent updates and you only use it for a nap?

Bee/Polaris: So you see, like on cause Polaris isn't wearing his element. So you see like, basically like the human equivalent of like the, the like thought, like loading screen and then Polaris just shrugs

Jenine/Marty: It's fine, cause Marty's also doing the human equivalent of loading screen of confusion, like buffering with. Like, you know, like the, the questions that like pop up or like, you know, the dinosaur thing when your Internet's down on, on Google on Chrome that's, that's, what's going on. Like, there's a thing happening, but it's not processing what's happening at the same time.

Zach/Zahn: I'm just waiting for the windows BootUp sequence.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris, just kind of like motions to their helmet and just says, I, I could ask.

Jenine/Marty: yeah. Could I also like investigate to see when the last time any of these have been used while you're asking?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Avery/GM: Oh,

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I thought that Marty was asking in character. Sorry, go

Jenine/Marty: both, both

Bee/Polaris: thumbs up. Helmet on.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Marty, if you want to roll a notice check with either wisdom or intelligence.

Jenine/Marty: You said wisdom or intelligence? Haha. I'm smart. Oh, I only saw the three and didn't see the other number and I'm like my heart dropped for a second. It's nine . It was a three to five. So it's a nine.

Avery/GM: Okay, so you start kind of going through like the medicine cabinets and checking drawers and stuff. You look over at some of the consoles next to these beds, you're starting to kind of go through like the history of use and stuff like that. And you see that, like, there are records of vitals you know, blood pressure, cholesterol readings, stuff like that, that have been taken fairly regularly, like every six months, but there's no name assigned to the readings at all, but, you know, context clues might point to it being Polaris.

Avery/GM: And they're all super healthy. Like they're all super good. But yeah, so there, there it's used pretty regularly and it goes back just a couple of years, cause like I said, this stuff is all like fairly new and upgraded.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, well, no, no suspicious business going that I, that I can tell this. Just, this is just, this is just. They just wanna protect the little one. Got it. That's that? Okay. Okay. I understand. Yeah. That's that's, that's how Marty's… I understand. Gives a nice little head nod. Looks to Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, player says his helmet and he's asking, he's sending a text message to, to probably Alioth text… Yeah.

Avery/GM: go ahead.

Bee/Polaris: He's just asking why do we have a, a good med bay?

Avery/GM: You just, the response is just like, so you don't die.

Bee/Polaris: Thumbs up emoji. He takes on his helmet and turns to Marty and just says, “so I don't die.”

Jenine/Marty: That that. Yeah. Understandable. Cool. It is a very nice space. If you would like to let them know. It's. It's great. It's cool. It's amazing. Wow.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, they can hear you.

Jenine/Marty: They can!?

Bee/Polaris: He just like kind of points to like a calm system on the ceiling.

Jenine/Marty: Waves.

Bee/Polaris: would there be security cameras in all of the rooms?

Avery/GM: I'll leave that up to you. I, I would lean towards no, cause they're the only ones on the ship, so they don't really worry about it, but…

Zach/Zahn: I would say yes, just for the people who probably created it. Would've put them there and they'd…

Avery/GM: Oh fair.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah. That's fair. Yeah, no, that's probably exactly, but they're probably like super old

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: so like modern day 144P.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, yoinks

Bee/Polaris: It's like super grainy.

Jenine/Marty: ah yoinks scoobs!

Bee/Polaris: it looks

Zach/Zahn: It's like the typical camera footage outside of a seven 11. So it's like super grainy.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, it looks like someone recorded it on a DS.

Avery/GM: Yeah, exactly. And then over in this side of the room, you see that there is a bunch of like lab equipment and stuff that could be used to like run experiments and stuff. And it looks like it's, it gets regularly used, but it's nowhere near as advanced as the med bay side of things. and then there is a door here that just says restricted.

Jenine/Marty: Does Marty wanna Snoop? I don't know if that's a Marty thing. No, if it's marked Marty's not gonna mess with stuff that's marked and the restriction she's, she's a goody goody. She ain't gonna do stuff like that.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, there's probably like a keypad and stuff anyway, so it's like locked

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: but there's also a piece of paper with tape on it that says nothing to see here

Jenine/Marty: Yoinks.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Also pulls takes off the paper that was over the med bay name plate and takes off the, the nap room paper.

Jenine/Marty: So I'll just Marty, then just looks over the papers one more time. You don't need any medications, right? Just, just making sure, like, there's not like a specific thing you need here that you haven't been carrying, just checking.

Bee/Polaris: Not that I'm aware of.

Jenine/Marty: Looks at screen to make sure.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you don't see any distributed medications aside from like maybe like a headache medication once in a while or something like that.

Jenine/Marty: All right, cool.

Avery/GM: Cause everyone gets headaches.

Jenine/Marty: yeah, a hundred percent. Lots of screens, lots of colors that hurts the head a lot.

Avery/GM: yeah. So there are two more areas, three more technically.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: you have the luxury cabins, the workshop. Or the bridge,

Bee/Polaris: Workshop.

Avery/GM: unless you want to show them the restricted area.

Bee/Polaris: No, Polaris probably wouldn't even think about it because Polaris probably isn't allowed him there.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: So not today. Maybe if we ever play hide and seek

Avery/GM: Mm-hmm

Bee/Polaris: Workshop, so Zahn can see where he can do work things and stuff.

Zach/Zahn: do work things and stuff.

Jenine/Marty: Mood.

Avery/GM: So the workshop is where Alioth spends most of its time. I have that right, right Bee?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Avery/GM: That Alioth has It/Its pronouns. Okay Trying to make sure I, I keep that straight. Actually, as you come in, this is where you see a tinkering with the Hermes's chaos, Emerald at this computer station here. And it doesn't even look up when you come in or acknowledge your presence. It's just like,

Alioth: Query. I thought I was supposed to be helping your robot friend with repairs in the factory.

Bee/Polaris: Not anymore. Well, not right now.

Alioth: You should have updated me. I would have wasted valuable time walking to that part of the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris rolls His eyes. “noted.”

Avery/GM: But Zahn you come into this room and it's, it's not quite heaven, but it's pretty close. There are all kinds of computer stations here for running experiments or probably researching like different mods and stuff that you could use for like, you know, your equipment. There are pieces of technology kind of strew about on some of these tables here.

Avery/GM: And there is a work bench in the back corner. With a, a variety of tools, kind of hanging on the wall and, and on the, on the bench itself Here. This is a, a tinkerer's paradise

Zach/Zahn: Heck. Yeah. Zahn is like meticulously shifting through all the cool shit to look.

Avery/GM: Polaris, You see Alioth lift its head up and look at you with like

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: this look on its face of like,

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Polaris is. Specifically

Avery/GM: They’re touching my things.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Polaris is very specifically standing by Alioth so Alioth doesn't try and murder Zahn. it's like holding an attack. Dog's leash or collar Polaris is just like standing by Alioth so that they don't do anything.

Zach/Zahn: Hot damn, you guys have got some serious tech here. We're gonna have to look into maybe integrating some of this stuff into our ship so I can take it on the go. This is, this is nice.

Bee/Polaris: Sounds good to me. Polaris says staring Alioth directly at the eyes

Alioth: Well if it sounds good to you, then I guess it is fine.

Bee/Polaris: that actually reminds me, do you think we could get some calm systems for our friends without helmets?

Avery/GM: Alioth Without, like really looking up from, from what it's doing, just points to the table next to where Z is standing and says.

Alioth: There should be a box of communicators somewhere on that table.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, Hey, I found a box of communicators right here.

Alioth: Take them. Use them how you want. They all should all pair with your helmet.

Bee/Polaris: Thumbs up

Avery/GM: And actually, while you're in here, you hear Hermes pipe up. And he says, “I am excited that you all are still here. Does this mean we will be going back to the ship soon?”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just shrugs.

Zach/Zahn: The concept has potential.

Avery/GM: “I have just about finished my debriefing with Alioth it is going fairly well, although it does not seem to enjoy my company as much as I thought.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just shrugs. “Alioth hates everyone.”

Avery/GM: “Ah, I see.” Oh, and Ollie you notice right here, these two little blue pads are basically robot charging stations. So if you ever need to go offline for some reason the, that would be an option. For some reason, like your circuitry was damaged, something that like couldn't necessarily be repaired.

Bee/Polaris: Sick

Avery/GM: yeah, anywhere else you would like to go on this little extravaganza

Bee/Polaris: where, where is left?

Avery/GM: The bridge and the luxury cabins.

Bee/Polaris: Okay Polaris is gonna take 'em to the luxury cabin, so they have their own rooms.

Avery/GM: So this is not to scale because…

Bee/Polaris: Fair.

Avery/GM: But essentially, yeah you come into these this luxury cabin area. The sign on the door says command crew, and then the paper on the paper label over it just says Polaris's bedroom and that's because Polaris probably has his pick from where he wants to sleep when, when he actually comes up here.

Avery/GM: But there are six rooms here and each room offers a comfortable bed, a storage container and personal restroom and shower. Polaris are any of these like Decorated with like anything that like Polaris would find interesting or

Zach/Zahn: Is it shotgun through the entire cabin?

Bee/Polaris: So there's actually probably one room that Polaris just sticks to. And it's just like, the door's probably open because like, you know, Polaris and the custodians are the only ones on the ship and it is like filled with like stuffed animals and like mannequins with like clothes on them and stuff like that

Bee/Polaris: but mostly stuffed animals. but yeah, all the other rooms are just like as if they got the ship and that's how they came. So, yeah. Polaris just kind of like stands in front of his room, but like most surrounds the other rooms and just says “you guys can pick whichever rooms you like.” Cause I imagine everyone has like bags and stuff, you know?

Avery/GM: Yeah. If anyone wants To drop off their, their gear or their stuff here.

Zach/Zahn: That's the thing Zahn is So used to moving from place to. All of his possessions are on his person.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah.

Zach/Zahn: So he has like, no, like really attachment stuff. He's got like his one trinket, I think somewhere, but that's about it. So, he is like, I get to pick one? I, I wasn't expecting staying. Well, I guess it's one of those, like he's, as he's saying it he's, the revelation is kind of sinking in. So I was like, I wasn't planning. Huh.” and then he just kind of wanders off into this one

Avery/GM: Polaris, you get a text from Alioth and says, are they serious? They're planning on not staying?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris texts back. No

Avery/GM: sad Emoji

Zach/Zahn: Sad emoji!

Jenine/Marty: Oh, butts.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris sends a middle finger emoji.

Avery/GM: So, yeah. So this is the ship that Polaris calls home and is offering to you all as a sort of home away from home for the moment. (Anything) anyone would like to do in this moment, before we wrap up.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna slowly like come out of the room after having like spent a minute and like literally just like looked at the wall and been. This is My Space and he comes out and he like extends it. He comes out to Polaris, like stares at him for like a second through the helmet and like extends a hand cause he doesn't know, He doesn't know about like hugging or

Bee/Polaris: yeah, Polaris doesn't either.

Zach/Zahn: showing affection. Cause it's been like

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Zach/Zahn: 20 years since he really actually had feelings for another person. Or like shared feelings and stuff. Cause he is just like kept himself and stuff. So he is like super awkward and he just like extends a hand. He's like, thanks.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris kind of looks at his hand and like tilts his head and the custodians are robots, so they don't do hugs but they do like pat Polaris on the head. So Polaris will awkwardly like… how tall is Zahn?

Zach/Zahn: So Zahn, Glances over at sheet because I don’t remember… I think he’s like five 10, but he comes out to be about five nine with the hunch

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah. Okay. So Polaris is like almost he, Polaris is like, I think I said five eight or something like that. So Polaris just like pats Zahn on the head.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is like, he still has his hand out awkwardly to like shake, but he's like, “Got it.” And he puts his hand awkwardly back down.

Bee/Polaris: Do any of the normal people? like,

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: you, you dare say that anyone on this crew is normal.

Bee/Polaris: Marty's probably the most normal, Marty and Bruce are probably the most normal.

Caden/Bruce: Bar is on the ground.

Jenine/Marty: The bar IS on the ground.

Zach/Zahn: The bar is below sea level,

Caden/Bruce: The most normal of this crew is a giant alien. Got it.

Zach/Zahn: giant alien frog man frog lizard.

Bee/Polaris: Hey, it's space. That's space.

Zach/Zahn: That’s space!

Avery/GM: Its space, baby!

Jenine/Marty: normal's normal.

Zach/Zahn: in space!

Bee/Polaris: that's so fucking awkward. I got like secondhand embarrassment.

Avery/GM: Y’all are great. well, if no one has anything else, we. Move to the last scene.

So Polaris, you finished showing everyone around and you're, you're heading up to the bridge to show them kind of where Like the ship is kind of run if, you know, traveling or whatever. you get to the bridge and Merak and Bear are there kind of just running some diagnostics and stuff, probably getting the ship ready to, to actually leave this system since the Rendezvous is over.

As you enter, the alarm begins blaring on the ship. A voice comes over the Intercom, it says “alert, alert, unidentified ships have entered the system, alert, alert, unidentified ships have entered the system” and Mierak says, “well, that's not good. Is it?” And you just see Bear kind of pick up like a gun from somewhere

Bee/Polaris: Ah, yep.

Avery/GM: and just like starts checking it.

Bee/Polaris: It's probably a big gut that he just like pulled from the vent or something.

Avery/GM: Yeah. and you hear the, the comms ping on the ship and a voice comes over it and says “OY, this is Captain Blitz of the Crimson Chaos space pirates. We know you got our mates ship, the Minos board. We've been tracking its transponder code for days. Hand over the Minos and Captain Byram, or we'll blast this hunk of junk into rubble. You've got five minutes to comply!”

and that is where we're gonna end it.

(outro music starts then fades down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1upPodcast Network Production. Intro and Outro music by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks include “Generation Ship”, “Starship Medical”, “Star Freighter”, “Nephilim Labs”, and “Starship Bridge”.

Special thanks to Kelly Hayes for sound design on this episode. Be sure to check out her website http://www.kellyannelinhayes.com/ Link in the description.

We’ll be back on October 15th with our next episode. See you out there:

Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro music swells then fades out)

Episode 6 - Going Home

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 6 of Beyond the Furthest Stars. Just a little note that When we recorded this session, which will comprise this episode and the next episode, there were some technical difficulties with the mics so some people’s mics are a bit difficult to understand. I’ve done what I could to improve the audio quality but just know that we do transcribe all of our episodes and the transcription is in the episode notes or available on our website, 1upPodcasts.com. Alright, let’s get to the action.

(Intro music fades out)

(Background music fades in, Ship Flying sound effects)

Avery/GM: Where we last left off y'all were heading out of this doomed system off to deliver major Tom, the only survivor from this crashed ship on this doomed planet, back to the nearest Republic base. And you trusted Herms enough with the choice of destination and it paid off.

Zach/Zahn: Did it though?

Avery/GM: it did.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, never again.

Avery/GM: He didn't pull one of his oopsie doodles this time. And you arrived at the Republic base. And after some quick little, Hey, what are you doing? This is a restricted area, Tom foolery going on Major Tom was allowed to land At the base and was shuffled off into the medical center and with a wave of his two, right arms he thanks you all for saving his behind and promises to return the favor in the future if he can.

Bee/Polaris: Nice. quick question, Is there like intergalactic email or something? So we could like give him one of our emails so we can keep in contact.

Avery/GM: Sure. Yeah. There's probably. You know what he can, he can email Hermes Hermis.shipai.biz.

Bee/Polaris: Dot biz? We're a business. That's awesome.

Chris/Ollie: We got those business kickbacks.

Bee/Polaris: let's go. We get tax breaks. Okay. That was my only question. Sorry.

Avery/GM: no, you're fine.

Zach/Zahn: Do we get a like a founder's reward for returning a lost soldier?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, good question.

Avery/GM: They said they'd let you know.

Zach/Zahn: so no?

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Well, they have our email.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, they have our email and we could always pester them, you know,

Avery/GM: Yeah. And that's my way of saying, I didn't actually think about that, Zach. I'm sorry.

Caden/Bruce: Please send a galactic e-transfer to this email address!

Zach/Zahn: should always take greed and exploitation into account with us.

Caden/Bruce: You think we do this for free?

Avery/GM: They said they'll… to just invoice them and they'll, they'll pay it. It's fine.

Bee/Polaris: Invo that is a lot of power to give us. We could just say like, yeah, a million credits, please. give us one of your battleships.

Zach/Zahn: No, no, we, we officially have a tab with the Republic, we're just like, yeah. Put it on the tab.

Bee/Polaris: Nice. I mean machamp has gave us an IOU, so

Jenine/Marty: is true. This is true.

Zach/Zahn: He's got five years of back pay. So… on major’s salary, no less.

Bee/Polaris: yeah, we did save a high ranking officer.

Avery/GM: You start taking off from this Republic base and Hermes comes on and says, “where is our next destination? I have found several points of interest

from the previous owners travels that may be of interest to you or Polaris, if you would like to continue your kidnapping of me, we can continue to the rendezvous view point.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris has been like sitting in the, in the like pilot seat, like with the, the plate of cake still just like slowly eating it to enjoy it. And when Hermy says. Continue your quest to kid at me, his face just goes blank. And he just like looks at the rest of the crew. See what everyone else is thinking.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Cause I don't think any of you knew that that Polaris was actually supposed to be kidnapping.

Zach/Zahn: So as this is like holding his own plate of cake, like having ha… like almost half viciously devoured it. He like suddenly stops at the kidnapping. You kidnapped the AI?

Bee/Polaris: “Annoyed. No, I did not. Kidnap Herms. Herme asked to be brought off the ship. I was simply the delivery boy.”

Avery/GM: “Yes. I put out a kidnapping contract on myself and the custodians graciously. They were not supposed to know that it was me who put out the contract on myself, but somehow Polaris figured that out.”

Jenine/Marty: Marty is like eating her cake Like it's popcorn, listening to this conversation So intensely, so confused, but like so enamored and like what I love this, this is great. That's her reaction the entire time. Okay. Keep going.

Bee/Polaris: Players just like puts down his fork and says, “I take no responsibility for any crimes that may have happened on that ship we left.”

Zach/Zahn: Zahn shrugs. “Yeah. Got us here. I guess we're alive. I'll I'll, I'll take that as a win.” And it takes a nice big fork full of cake.

Jenine/Marty: “So Hermes like mid by Herme. Is there somewhere you wanna go be now that you are free?”

Avery/GM: “I would like to go as far away from the hegemony as possible. They have become unreliable.”

Bee/Polaris: “Elaborate.”

Avery/GM: “Approximately three years ago, the leadership of the hegemony began expanding wildly and frantically throughout the galaxy. They have been giving their officers orders to assassinate leaders of worlds and take them over by force. I do not wish to be a part of that. And so I left.”

Jenine/Marty: “Technically you didn't leave. We… you were taken and okay.” Shoves another piece of cake in mouth.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris picks his fork up again and says, “I prefer the term escorted.”

Avery/GM: “Escorted as probably a better term as kidnapping has a criminal connotation.”

Bee/Polaris: “an astute observation.”

Avery/GM: “I will correct my language in the future.”

Bee/Polaris: This fucking guy, dude. All right.

Jenine/Marty: I love Hermes with all of my heart. Must protect baby.

Bee/Polaris: oh, I love Hermes too. Especially like the aspect of him constantly wanting to use the ship's weapons. That's that's pretty fun.

Avery/GM: So here is the map of different points of interest that Hermis kind of projects out into the bridge.

Caden/Bruce: Ooh.

Bee/Polaris: Points of interest

Avery/GM: Yeah. So anyway, there's a whole bunch of different places here. That y'all can pick from.

Chris/Ollie: And I'm guessing our fuel is pretty good. We're not like we don't have to go to the.

Avery/GM: Yeah. On your way out of the black hole system, you scooped up some fuel from one of the gas giants.

Bee/Polaris: sick.

Zach/Zahn: Well that, and I certainly hope you know, after resting a high value officer the Republic wouldn't leave us without topping us offFirst

Avery/GM: Sure. They, they probably topped you off as well.

Bee/Polaris: And they also gave us a box of chocolates and a handshake. I'm kidding.

Chris/Ollie: No, they definitely gave us more cake supplies though.

Zach/Zahn: per Bruce's request.

Caden/Bruce: And some spices.

Bee/Polaris: I should, I guess we could have gotten supplies. I mean, not that we really need them though. Right? Cause we kind of looted that

Zach/Zahn: No, not really.

Bee/Polaris: furry, the tiger furry, whose name I keep forgetting.

Caden/Bruce: Winston.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. I keep confusing him with Barnabas. The guy that we

Chris/Ollie: We murdered

Bee/Polaris: murdered and took his cake from his mom.

Chris/Ollie: just for his poor association. I mean, there is some stuff I need to buy, but you know, it needs to be like a civilized system. I don't know if a rebel outpost would have like, you know, all the buyable stuff.

Avery/GM: They probably wouldn't. A military installation probably wouldn't have a general store.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I need some I forgot what they're called, but the little core thingies that add to my processing power.

Avery/GM: oh yeah. The processing nodes.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Get big brain up here.

Bee/Polaris: Is that something that Ollie would say to the group?

Chris/Ollie: No, but if asked if he wants to go anywhere, he would speak up and say he would like to peruse some, some shopping shelves, not something he's gonna come out and say.

Bee/Polaris: Is there like an intergalactic mall?

Avery/GM: I know I have one.

Zach/Zahn: So there is this planet closer to the core, I suppose. That's one quadrant over.

Caden/Bruce: Any space R us?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Wait, do we even have mu oh yeah, we got a good amount from Winston.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we looted the mess out of his place.

Chris/Ollie: I neglected to write it down though

Zach/Zahn: Oh, yeah. We also got a shit ton of money, right? No

Avery/GM: untraceable money.

Zach/Zahn: untraceable bonds on a data pad.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we have, we have a an untraceable data pad, so we can just keep loading. So we have like a, an untraceable bank account basically.

Zach/Zahn: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: Or wallet, I guess also we got four… Was it four chassis?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. We have four damaged robots.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Four damaged robot Chassis.

Zach/Zahn: two jungle brand security bots, and two companion bots

Bee/Polaris: That we did specify are not the weird kind of companion bots?

Avery/GM: Right.

Zach/Zahn: not the, the,

Chris/Ollie: They're not, they're not real doll style Companion bot.

Avery/GM: yeah. Nothing like that. But as far as if, if shopping is your destination quadrant two top right X four Y one, the belt is a very seedy place where you could probably find all kinds of legal and illegal Products.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: oh my God shopping spree?

Chris/Ollie: I mean, yeah, we, we just got a big Cha-Ching in our bank account.

Zach/Zahn: Right. This is, this is the episode where we all get like decked out in the cool shit that we've always wanted because like, I want the armored freaking vac suit so I can walk around in space and then add all kinds of mods to it and just be full, full Isaac Clark. Like, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: That'd be cool. However, last session we did make some new air quotes, friends, and those air quotes, friends, you know, they're pretty powerful people. Maybe they're on a shopping montage. That'd be very awkward if we just walk into the mall and we're like mid shopping montage and we run into them.

Jenine/Marty: Yoinks!

Zach/Zahn: We're we're walking out with like, cool. Just like accessories. And they've got like guns.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we have to like run through the corridors and like build things like Scooby doo get away from them.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, just Benny hill montage.

Avery/GM: So, yeah, so on this list, that would probably be your best bet. You could also go straight to the Republic capital and shop there. If you really wanna run into your friends, the.

Bee/Polaris: oh, no, not even a little bit.

Chris/Ollie: yeah, I wanna get a little, little geared up before then.

Zach/Zahn: Because I remember you saying that the, the Winstons. The recordings went to the core. So is the, is the, is that this planet right here?

Avery/GM: No… Wait…

Zach/Zahn: Oh, it's the only one in the, a like core of

Chris/Ollie: In the end in the center.

Avery/GM: no, no, no. I, I haven't marked that world yet. Cause it, it, I hadn't thought it would become a plot point.

Bee/Polaris: Ah.

Zach/Zahn: it's not that we want to go there. It's that? I, I just. Was curious as if it was already marked, it does not have to be.

Bee/Polaris: oh, sweet.

Avery/GM: That little one right there.

Bee/Polaris: feel like we should wait to go ther Like when we get a much, much bigger ship, preferably like a, like a battleship or something.

Zach/Zahn: a battleship, maybe an entire army of yeah, Robots completely controlled by Ollie?

Bee/Polaris: I, I mean, that would be super cool, but we really only just need the battleship to just, you know, send it off. straight into their home.

Zach/Zahn: oh my God. Okay.

Chris/Ollie: we could get like a whole Armada of ships and then I could remotely control.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, that'd be cool.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, multiple battleships.

Jenine/Marty: I have a, I have a travel question.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Jenine/Marty: Do the, are the blocks? How, how long are each box? Equal time? I don't think I English that. Right. What is the distance?

Avery/GM: So I think in the book it's. A certain amount of days travel per square. That gets really boring for a podcast. I was going to say at least a day's travel per square rather than three or four days travel per square. So…

Bee/Polaris: I mean, it's space. We could always play around with a timeline. Like if we need more downtime to do stuff on the.

Avery/GM: yeah, like in star Trek warp is exactly the amount of time to cover a commercial break. So.

Zach/Zahn: Well with that being the case, I think we should probably go to the custodians first, just because it's closer. So that way we're not going all the way from, you know, here. And then back

Jenine/Marty: Zig Zag let's go.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. So Hermes pulls up the map and I assume we just had that conversation basically in character. And so we've just decided that we're going to the custodians or yes, no. Yes?

Chris/Ollie: Unless anyone wants to like insert an in character line. I'm good.

Zach/Zahn: At the, at the conclusions Zahn shrugs in Agreeance with the list of factors that we have all agreed upon and he is just like, “fine. We can go talk with your custodial peeps. I'll be downstairs tinkering with the new toys that we got.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just throws up a thumbs up.

Zach/Zahn: that we've added to the cargo. Hold hot. Dang. It's all full now.

Avery/GM: yeah.

Bee/Polaris: all of our shit is super full.

Avery/GM: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, polaris throws up a thumbs up

Chris/Ollie: Oh, wow. Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: as he remembers that he doesn't have his helmet on and he just says, “I can show you guys around when we get there.”

Zach/Zahn: We'll definitely need it. And then Zahn finishes his cake and goes to wash his dish, cuz he is not a complete S slob. He's just very untidy.

Bee/Polaris: There's a difference.

Chris/Ollie: Not a complete slob he's just a slob. Right?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will then turn to Hermes's and he'll he's gonna ask “should we warn them before we get close enough to the SSA major?

Avery/GM: Yes. Do you have a secret code or passphrase that I can broadcast once we get within range?”

Bee/Polaris: “Not really. No. I usually travel on my ship.”

Avery/GM: “I will use the pass raise, please. Don't shoot. We are all innocent people. We do not want to die. Will that suffice?”

Bee/Polaris: “No, they very much do not like organic beings. We will be black hole’d”

Avery/GM: “understood. I will use the pass raise. We are not organic beings…”

Bee/Polaris: “or I can just get on comms and tell them I'm home.”

Avery/GM: “That is actually probably a much smarter idea. Good job, Polaris.” And you see like a little like virtual thumbs up, like up here in like the hologram area.

Bee/Polaris: He's learning! Polaris just rolls his eyes.

Avery/GM: and the spike driving gauges and you are off and you have about a day's travel between where you are and where the custodians are. Is there anything anyone wants to do during this time?

Caden/Bruce: Yes,

Bee/Polaris: Also, yes.

Avery/GM: Bruce Caden, let's go.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce, because we have a full day wants to make bread

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. Cool.

Caden/Bruce: Enough time for the dough to rise question, mark it I guess so

Zach/Zahn: Oh God. How does that work in space?

Caden/Bruce: it just does.

Avery/GM: I mean the ship has artificial gravity.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. I was just about to say. I mean it just needs a little heat and some yeast, you know,

Avery/GM: Yeah, it'll be fine. Sure. Go ahead and roll a work check to see how well this goes and you can choose. Whichever attribute you think would work best for that.

Caden/Bruce: Cause I roll 2 d6’s right? Yes. It's been a while.

Avery/GM: Yep.

Caden/Bruce: That's fine. It's a 12.

Avery/GM: Oh, perfect. yeah. Y'all are, are sitting around doing whatever you're doing. And after a couple hours, the, the smell coming from the makeshift kitchen that Bruce has set up begins wafting through the air. And it is the smell of delicious. What kind of bread? What, what, what kind of bread did you make?

Caden/Bruce: What kind of breath did I make? I think Bruce trying to expand on The very poor pallet of some of the crew mates is making some sourdough.

Avery/GM: You have an emergency sourdough starter, like on you at all times.

Bee/Polaris: It's in the blender.

Zach/Zahn: It's in blender!

Avery/GM: there's a little secret compartment. Yeah. And the ship is filling with the smell of deliciously, freshly baked sourdough bread. Bruce, actually, do you share your sourdough bread with everybody or is it just kind of a it's there? Come get it.

Caden/Bruce: Not until it's ready.

Avery/GM: Totally!

Caden/Bruce: Gotta Gottaa, let it cool. And then like probably is like making multiple loaves and like, you know, just making food.

Bee/Polaris: Delicious. Yeah, I did wanna do something. Polaris is gonna make Bruce a new chef's hat because we did destroy that.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, yeah, we incinerated it.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: You know, I was trying to think of a way to like salvage it. Like I was gonna like, try and be like, oh no, it just got blown into the air and you see it slowly drifting. But I was like, no, it would've gotten burnt to a crisp

Zach/Zahn: It's it's ground zero, yeah

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, he was the, yeah, it was right next to the bomb. It was on the bomb. Actually.

Jenine/Marty: Yep, It was.

Zach/Zahn: It was the bomb.

Bee/Polaris: It was the bomb.

Avery/GM: I think that would be a dexterity work check.

Bee/Polaris: Dexterity work. Oh, cool. I

Avery/GM: or fix.

Bee/Polaris: I'm definitely gonna use fix cuz I don't have much in work. In fact, I don't have anything in work. Yeah. Dexterity fix. Okay. Yo. Okay. Math 11 plus two 13.

Avery/GM: Perfect. Yeah, we'll say that this probably takes like a good, like, I don't know, like four to six hours to do.

Bee/Polaris: That’s pretty good for hand sewing.

Avery/GM: Okay. I, I don't know. Honestly.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Hand sewing takes quite a bit of time depending on what you're making and how big it is.

Avery/GM: Oh, okay. It can take the whole day then. I don't know. I'm sorry.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. I mean, Polaris will just be sitting in the pilots chair, just, you know, sewing.

Avery/GM: sewing away.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: Sure. Hermes pipes up and says “Polaris. What are you doing?”

Bee/Polaris: “I'm sewing”

Avery/GM: “Oh, you are sewing something for somebody.”

Bee/Polaris: “for Bruce. Bruce lost their hat and the explosion”

Avery/GM: “Oh, yes, that was most tragic.”

Bee/Polaris: yeah, I guess that out of everything else was the most tragic part of it.

Avery/GM: “would you like me to let Bruce know that he should come to the cabin and receive his hat from you?”

Bee/Polaris: “Not necessary. I can bring it to him.”

Avery/GM: “Very well. Please continue.” And then you see like two, like eyes kind of like appear in like the hologram area, just like watching you.

Bee/Polaris: polar never stopped sewing. So when Hermes says, please continue polar. Just Continues doing what he was doing. Also two big floating eyes, just staring at you is very unsettling, but polar is not phased.

Chris/Ollie: Just like looming.

Bee/Polaris: it's like the looking emoji or like the two eyes emoji.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Is anyone else in the cabin seeing this?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Now I'm just J-chilling there watching and what confused with the eyes, but we'll just continue chilling.

Bee/Polaris: That imagery is very freaky.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm mm-hmm

Bee/Polaris: Isn't Zahn messing around with the robots down.

Zach/Zahn: He is just messing around with everything that's downstairs.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Ollie in this time is also gonna be fixing up some of the chassis

Avery/GM: Oh, Ollie. That reminds me go ahead and roll a D20?

Chris/Ollie: 15

Avery/GM: 15?

Chris/Ollie: Yes, sir.

Avery/GM: Okay, then 15% of your core has grown back in the two to three days that it's been,

Zach/Zahn: Oh nice.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent. So I'm at like 65%.

Avery/GM: yeah. You almost have a whole chaos crystal again.

Zach/Zahn: You'd be more like 64%, cuz you'd have to your core couldn't be, couldn't be an even 50 50, cuz it wouldn't go…

Avery/GM: that's right.

Zach/Zahn: one couldn’t be bigger.

Chris/Ollie: But it'd be 61 because I would go. Oh, yeah, no, I would go to the mall. So yeah, it is 50 for a bit. This is about 65.

Avery/GM: you're fine. so, yeah. So you're about two thirds of the way fully developed.

Zach/Zahn: So Chris

Chris/Ollie: starting to get back to normal.

Zach/Zahn: for, for funsies. I obviously, since it's your character, I wanna ask you first.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: I think it would be fun if Zahn swapped your etiquette chip for the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie chip.

Chris/Ollie: Well, see, I'm thinking of setting up one of these companion or yeah, companion bots to be like my like diplomat body to, with all my etiquette chip and, and whatnot.

Zach/Zahn: So was that a yes, please?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I haven't memorized a whole bunch of quotes yet though, because I totally forgot about that.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, that's fine. It's one of those I, so in my other equipment I have listed what is already in you. And then the chips I have left over. I only have two, two extra chips.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. That's right. We are gonna need to stock up on chips.

Zach/Zahn: Yes, we are.

Bee/Polaris: we're gonna have to go to like chip Depot or something.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Chips R Us?

Chris/Ollie: Chips R Us?

Zach/Zahn: I was just gonna say that.

Avery/GM: Just don't go to chip Mart because chip Mart has like, kind of like some like really low quality stuff

Zach/Zahn: No…

Bee/Polaris: chips that break in a day

Avery/GM: yeah.

Zach/Zahn: No chip Mart has potato chips.

Bee/Polaris: or French fries, depending on where you were

Jenine/Marty: Correct.

Avery/GM: Anyone else doing anything while you're floating through space?

Zach/Zahn: Not really.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: I could be collecting a log on from these robots to see what extra shit they've done.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, we brought the computer with us.

Avery/GM: Yes, you did

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that's right. We do have the computer.

Zach/Zahn: we did. Because you were because. Wasn't it like Jenine was super sad about the idea of potentially killing something that…

Chris/Ollie: Ollie

Avery/GM: Ollie was sad about it. And Polaris was like, okay, we'll we won't destroy it. We'll bring it with us.

Zach/Zahn: mm-hmm

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, because it made Ollie sad.

Chris/Ollie: but in the course of time Ollie will have a dis disassembled it for parts

Zach/Zahn: oh shit.

Chris/Ollie: because.

Zach/Zahn: and integrated it into himself.

Chris/Ollie: Yes exactly. He didn't destroy it. He's repurposed it into a more useful existence.

Jenine/Marty: All right. Fair. All right. That's fair.

Zach/Zahn: Now he is got like a data pad on his arm. Now he is, got that cool, like flip up data pad on his arm.

Avery/GM: That's great.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris was I did the impression that you wanted to keep it as a pet

Chris/Ollie: he wants to become one with it.

Bee/Polaris: oh, no.

Chris/Ollie: wants to become with one with all machines!

Bee/Polaris: Ollie has become the hegemony

Zach/Zahn: Oh, God.

Bee/Polaris: or Ollie has become a rival organization called the homogeny.

Avery/GM: The Homogeny. Oh, that's good. So anyway, our camera settles on Polaris at first, sewing away, he's sewing away and it pans out through the, the view port of the ship and shoots across the galaxy to a small little escape pod where two people are sitting basically side by side. With barely enough room to get up and stretch.

And it's two people that we actually have met before: Captain Celia and Admiral Vos, who last you saw were in a gun fight in the captain's quarters.

(Background music fades out, new music fades in)

Celia: I can’t believe you took my ship from me. You know this is all your fault, right?

Vos: My fault!? You’re the one who couldn’t keep your damn nose out of internal matters.

Celia: You’re the one carrying out assassinations! Do you want the Independent Systems to launch a war on the Hegemony?

Vos: Combat and Honor is all a warrior wants.

Celia: Then warriors are fucking stupid!

Vos: Are you done? I’d like to ride out the rest of the trip back to Tartarus in peace. Its bad enough we’re squished inside this Tin Can for the next few days.

Celia: Oh yes, wouldn’t want to disturb The Admiral’s precious beauty sleep. What’s up with that, by the way? Since when the hell did my first officer get promoted to Admiral?

Vos: That still bugs you, doesn’t it? Vos got promoted, and poor little Celia is stuck as a captain… boo hoo. You’re the one always questioning orders, finding loop holes and doing things your way. Did you really think The Eternal One wouldn’t eventually come down on you? He is omnipotent, omnipresent. He gives life and takes life away, his blessings are-

Celia: Oh, cut the bullshit Vos. You never bought into that before. And yet, here you are, the admiral of the fleet. What’s the real story?

Vos: (Exasperated Sigh) Celia, you don’t get it. Of course I never bought into it before. But I do now. Do you remember the special summons I was given about 2 years back?

Celia: Yeah, the one that called you back to Tartarus for a “Extended Training Seminar”?

Vos: Yeah… That was the one. The Eternal One showed me his plans, his vision. It was… Exactly what I hope to see in the galaxy. A galaxy of peace, of prosperity. A galaxy where Tartarus is restored to the beauty and life that it once knew. A galaxy where The Republic shivers at the very mention of our name. A galaxy where we aren’t some secretive sect, banished to the outer rim. Where we have light and music and joy throughout the Hegemony. That is the vision I fight for. That is the vision I will die for.

Celia: I see. (groans as if stretching) Well… I can respect wanting a better future, I suppose. Not sure I think its possible, but I can respect wanting it. But Vos, The Hegemony’s actions don’t seem to be heading toward that future. Did you see the Armada that took apart The Eos? That wasn’t no ragtag group of smugglers or pirates. That was a war fleet from over a hundred different planets and systems. They ambushed the flagship of the fleet and destroyed it. They were able to do it in a way that not only the Ship A.I. couldn’t detect, but couldn’t even defend against.

Vos: Yes… I noticed that as well. That’s what I was doing in your quarters by the way. Yours was the only one with a clean and functioning shower after all. Who were those clowns you were with anyway?

Celia: Just strangers. Strangers trying to get off a ship and out of a war that they had nothing to do with.

Vos: Well if I ever see that man again snooping by the door, I’m gonna slice his damn hand off.

Celia: (Chuckles) Yeah. He’d probably deserve it. But I don’t think you’ll be seeing them anymore. I gave them that smuggler’s ship we intercepted early on in our drift into the Ptochea system.

Vos: Did you now? Well, I am sure the Armada did to them what they did to our fighter fleet as well. You’re right, we probably won’t see them again.

Celia: Anyway, how about some music? If we are gonna be stuck in this escape pod for a few days, we might as well enjoy ourselves, right?

Vos: (chuckles) Right. You know, they’ll probably kill you when we get back to Tartarus, right?

Celia: Easy come. Easy go.

Avery/GM: And we come back to your guys' ship, which is still unnamed, by the way.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we still haven’t named it

Zach/Zahn: Oh, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: iAlso. Zahn did knock

Zach/Zahn: Zahn absolutely knocked.

Avery/GM: Fair

Zach/Zahn: He wasn't snooping. He wasn't pushing or

Bee/Polaris: he wasn't snooping. He did knock.

Zach/Zahn: and then I pushed the button to open the door,

Jenine/Marty: A warning.

Avery/GM: I think that might be the part that, that is

Zach/Zahn: referring to

Avery/GM: contentious.

Zach/Zahn: that, and that bitch shot me.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: I also shot her. So.

Bee/Polaris: you know, I've noticed that we've caused a lot of oopsies.

Avery/GM: it's fine.

Jenine/Marty: I dunno what you're talking about.

Zach/Zahn: It's just the life and death of being an adventurer.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I don't know. I just feel like we're in the, the fuck around part of the fuck around find out cycle

Zach/Zahn: We haven't found anything out yet.

Avery/GM: There's there's no find out there won't ever be a find out part!

Zach/Zahn: Nothing will ever catch up to us. It's a big galaxy after all.

Bee/Polaris: We have plot Armor too.

Jenine/Marty: ha ha!

Avery/GM: As our camera pans back towards the end of the day of this journey, Bruce, you finish up the last of this bread and it is ready for consumption. Do you leave it in The makeshift workshop slash kitchen area Do you bring it out and start handing it out?

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce slices off this bread and puts some butter onto it. So it melts this nicely fresh, hot loaf of bread and goes out into the main area. And just sees basically who's there and just starts handing out plates of bread.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will swap you the plate for the hat.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will slow blink one eye at a time and look up polaris and just go. “This is for me,”

Bee/Polaris: polars not looking at the bread.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will like take the hat, put it on his head and just be like, “thank you. This is bread. It is like cake, but not as sweet as cake, but it is food. And hopefully you'll like it.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris nods and just, he, he just says, “I, I don't doubt that I won't, I, I don't doubt that I will like it.”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will nod and like awkwardly shuffle back in a way to the next crew member.

Jenine/Marty: Marty awkwardly shuffles to you: “Hello? What did you make?”

Caden/Bruce: “This is sourdough bread. I hope you like it. Marty.”

Jenine/Marty: “ah, Thank you.” And she just holds her hands out

Zach/Zahn: Question

Jenine/Marty: yes.

Zach/Zahn: would American cheese still be called American cheese in a time where America doesn't exist anymore?

Jenine/Marty: Well, well,

Avery/GM: Probably not

Jenine/Marty: while there is, there's a planet , there's my planet.

Avery/GM: oh, Nope. You're right.

Jenine/Marty: there’s my planet.

Avery/GM: There is

Bee/Polaris: You have America!?

Jenine/Marty: Sure no okay, no no. We don’t condone…

Chris/Ollie: Space America. I mean the hegemony.

Jenine/Marty: There is AmeriManila, which is.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, go ahead. Sorry. I don't mean to cut you off.

Jenine/Marty: No, no, no, no. Go with the American cheese question. Continue with it.

Zach/Zahn: It's just one of those, like with all the other cheeses, all the other cheeses just are like cheddar Swiss wood Swiss called Swiss Switzeland.

Bee/Polaris: shit.

Zach/Zahn: Most of the other cheeses have like names that aren't like connected to their nationality.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I mean, what happened to Earth?

Avery/GM: Oh, I know it's it.

Zach/Zahn: Earth's probably.

Avery/GM: Earth is a totally separate galaxy.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God. Okay. So this is just like, so this is alternate. Like this is a whole separate race of humans, so America. So unless we come across, our, our galaxy, we're not gonna have American cheese. Well, I mean, unless the planet is like completely evaporated. I'm pretty sure we'll come across American cheese because don't, we have like a vault of just like American cheese somewhere in I think Missouri?

Zach/Zahn: oh God.

Jenine/Marty: What!?

Avery/GM: Oh, we do!

Bee/Polaris: yeah, the vault of cheese, the government vault of cheese. Yeah.

Avery/GM: No, but I think American cheese could come from AmeraManila. Yeah, that's fine.

Jenine/Marty: I will say this as a Filipino American, we eat so much cheese in the Philippines. So like this makes sense.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Cool. Also was this question because you wanted to try and make a grilled cheese.

Zach/Zahn: 100%.

Bee/Polaris: okay I figured as much.

Caden/Bruce: You know, you could just use cheddar!

Bee/Polaris: no, it's not as creamy.

Jenine/Marty: You gotta use the, you gotta use chesse

Avery/GM: Oh, God.

Jenine/Marty: in the little plastic wrapper. You gotta use that one, you know?

Bee/Polaris: Does Kraft exist?

Caden/Bruce: fake cheese.

Chris/Ollie: Right.

Zach/Zahn: either, either Kraft or Velveeta?

Bee/Polaris: instead of Kraft? Yeah. Can we, can we call this universe's version of Kraft assemble?

Zach/Zahn: Assemble Cheese?

Avery/GM: Sure

Bee/Polaris: yeah,

Avery/GM: assemble cheese.

Bee/Polaris: assemble singles!

Zach/Zahn: Now that just sounds like a pickup line.

Bee/Polaris: Right. Okay. But

Avery/GM: a dating site.

Bee/Polaris: well, I mean, I guess that would work for like, if you go to like a cheese convention in this galaxy, right.

Zach/Zahn: that's where I want to meet my future partner.

Avery/GM: I'm gonna make a note, have a cheese convention.

Bee/Polaris: Wow. That sucks. I'm lactose intolerant.

Jenine/Marty: I'm I should also not have dairy. Oh my gosh. Oh.

Avery/GM: I'm leaving all that cheese discussion in, by the way. That was great.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. So do we have assembled singles in the stuff that we stole from Winston

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is absolutely gonna have to ask that when when Bruce comes around with the with the sourdough,

Bee/Polaris: alright.

Zach/Zahn: I sneezed as like far away from the microphone as I could. I'm surprised I picked it up.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I was gonna ask if Bruce would be willing to even use assemble singles cheese instead of just cheddar, but that's a question for Zahn to ask.

Zach/Zahn: exactly. the eternal debate. And then what kind of cheddar do we use? Sharp cheddar. Do you use medium cheddar?

Bee/Polaris: Is there medium cheddar? How many do nevermind. I'm not getting into this. Sorry. Continue.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce who has handed the plate to Marty will look at Marty and go, do you have a favorite kind of meal? I mean, I made cake for Ollie and Polaris. I feel like it's only fair that I asked the rest of the crew.

Jenine/Marty: “Oh, Hmm. Excellent question. I'm I'm a big fan of fried rice. That's, that's kind of what I enjoy. But also like I'm cool trying new dishes, which is really cool, which is also my favorite meal. Let's try new dish. I appreciate you.Thank you!”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will nod and then walk to try and find Zahn and hold out this plate of sourdough bread and just be like, “I have made bread. If you would like some.”

Zach/Zahn: Oh, he smells you coming from a mile away. And as soon as like you, you enter the, the cargo hold, he like his head pops up from behind a the, the motor part of the, the cool, like ATV or whatever it is that we stole from, from Winston. And he is like, “Bruce, that smells delicious!”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will somewhat smile and hands Zahn the plate and be like “Well, I hope it tastes as good as it smells. It Should.”

Zach/Zahn: He's gonna take like a nibble out of the corner and be like, “now, do we have any assemble’s cheese from Winston's stash?”

Caden/Bruce: “you want to put fake cheese on my newly made bread?” and he'll just stare you.

Zach/Zahn: “It's creaminess makes for the best grilled cheese sandwich.”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is just still staring.

Zach/Zahn: “Have you not tried it?”

Caden/Bruce: There's a sigh and he'll go like “I have, we will expand your cheese knowledge, but I can go and make you a grilled cheese sandwich.”

Zach/Zahn: “Thanks buddy!”

Caden/Bruce: And Bruce will like take the plate. Bruce will take the plate and just shake his head as he walks away. And like, as he's walking back to the kitchen, all like his makeshift kitchen, all you can hear him muttering is just “fake cheese, fake cheese,” And like he'll, he'll spot he'll spot Ollie and he'll look at Ollie and be like, “do you too also enjoy assembles cheese on this bread? Zahn has requested a fake cheese, grilled cheese.”

Zach/Zahn: Ollie. As far as I'm aware, still doesn't have like olfactory system.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: oh yeah.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, so far everything that he's been offered, he just put, touches it to his face and it doesn't work. And he is like, okay, well I guess it, it all tastes the same! I gotta get a synthetic bot with, you know, some real taste buds and a mouth and a tongue and all that. Just to try the cooking.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, we gotta get one of those real companion bots so that you can at least experience some stuff.

Chris/Ollie: anatomically accurate.

Bee/Polaris: Yikes.

Zach/Zahn: Pulls that pulls that shirt collar. It was, it was a joke guys. I'm I'm sorry.

Bee/Polaris: We need a spray bottle.

Avery/GM: Jesus. So Ollie, how do, how do you respond to, to Bruce offering you bread or, or asking you about this cheese?

Chris/Ollie: wait, what was the question about the cheese?

Zach/Zahn: Oh, Bruce was asking if you also wanted a fake cheese, grilled cheese.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yes. Ollie will reply. “Yes, I absolutely would. Thank you.”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will just look at Ollie and like shake his head and go back to the kitchen. Just be like, “ah, okay. Assembles cheese. It will not ruin the sourdough. It will ruin the sourdough. It is okay. It is what Zahn has requested” and Bruce is just muttering to himself.

Avery/GM: And Bruce, you, you fire up the, the oven or the stove, not oven, and you're, you're frying away when you feel the ship shutter and shake as it pops out of hyperspace. And you all arrive in system that Polaris, you know, as the desert. and it's called the desert because this place has nothing to offer anybody.

Avery/GM: It is a system that is mostly just clusters of asteroids with no real mineral value. And there's an uninhabited planet that was picked clean long ago of any sort of resources. Even the water has all been harvested from here. The atmosphere has been stripped away. It is a barren desolate place. It's a perfect place for a group of isolated people who don't want to be bothered to sit and await the arrival of their child person?

Bee/Polaris: Their meat Boy.

Avery/GM: Their meat boy.

Jenine/Marty: Meat boy.

Zach/Zahn: Excuse me.

Avery/GM: And so here we are you drop in to the system and Hermes says “we have arrived. Would you like me to establish a connection?”

Bee/Polaris: “Yes, that would probably be for the best”

Avery/GM: “now Connecting.” And there's a dialup tone.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, God.

Jenine/Marty: what’s dial up?

Avery/GM: oh, right. Sorry. Very a, a, a strange little scratchy noise and some, some ringing. And suddenly you hear a little (notification noise) and you know that you are connected.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will go over to the conversation. Cause I imagine he was flying the ship and he says “Merack?”

Avery/GM: “Polaris. Is that you?”

Bee/Polaris: “yes, it's me. I'm returning with Hermes's and a few other passengers don't shoot us.”

Avery/GM: “Oh, bear was just getting the singularity gun Ready. You are on the ship that you left on? Is everything okay?”

Zach/Zahn: in the background. You hear? “Wait, there was a singularity gun?”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris ignore you. I mean, Polaris did say we don't wanna get black hole’d.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn wasn't there for that conversation.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah, well. “why wouldn't everything be okay?”

Avery/GM: “I just hadn't calculated you coming back on the same ship that you Stowed away on. I assumed that ship would've been impounded or destroyed.”

Bee/Polaris: “then con- confused. How, how would I return?”

Avery/GM: “Oh, you are very clever. I assume you would've stolen a hegemony fighter or you know Just whatever was lying around.”

Bee/Polaris: “They were all blown up. I couldn't get to them in time.”

Avery/GM: “Oh, well, that's fine then. Do you wish to board the ship or should we send a shuttle to pick you up?”

Bee/Polaris: “We'll be landing on the ship. Hermes is integrated into the ship systems.“

Avery/GM: “Oh, excellent. Well, you know where the landing bay is, so we'll be waiting.”

Bee/Polaris: “Please tell bear to leave his don't shoot the other passengers, please.”

Avery/GM: “Oh, there are other passengers?”

Bee/Polaris: “Yes,”

Avery/GM: “Okay.”

Bee/Polaris: “they are organic. Don't shoot them.”

Avery/GM: And you, you hear in the background. “So, so should I bring the big club or the big gun?” “No, no, don't bring any of them. They're fine. They're fine. All right, we'll see you in the shuttle bay”

Bee/Polaris: thank you. Yep. and Polaris, without explaining anything, we'll just go back to the pilot seat. I don't know who else is in the cockpit. Was, was it on comms? Cause yeah. Okay. So every , so everyone heard that. Sweet. Yeah. Polaris will just go to dock ship

Caden/Bruce: Bruce walks in and hands Zahn and Ollie the grilled cheese and just goes, “I hope this is satisfactory to your liking.”

Zach/Zahn: Zahn takes a nice, big crunchy bite out of the grilled cheese and like his eyes roll back. It's been a while.

Bee/Polaris: He begins to float.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie attempts to

Zach/Zahn: Then he gives you the big thumbs up and then walks away just like shoveling it into his face.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie attempts to take a bite, but just ends up smearing a bunch of gooey cheese all over his face plate. That's really hard to get off.

Zach/Zahn: That's really hard to get off

Chris/Ollie: he is just like, “Hmm. I immediately regret this decision.”

Zach/Zahn: logging for future.

Chris/Ollie: yeah.

Avery/GM: Polaris, you're floating into the you're floating closer to the ship, and you're lining up with the docking bay and you see the singularity gun on the bottom of the ship. Like it was obviously pointed at your ship and you just see it like slowly turn to point more forward. Like

Bee/Polaris: yeah. The old singularity gun.

Avery/GM: it's fine. It'll be fine. And yeah. You dock the ship as, as you're docking. You see the three custodians standing there waiting the delivery of this ship AI,

Bee/Polaris: oh yeah. I have to take, do we, oh yeah. Do we have to take Hermes outta the ship?

Avery/GM: I mean, that was originally what the mission was. If you don't want to take him out, you don't have to.

Bee/Polaris: No, if it was the, if, if that's what the mission was, Polaris will follow the mission.

Avery/GM: okay. Before you go to remove Hermes. He, he, it pipes up and says “Polaris, if at all possible, I would like to come back to this ship sometime. This has been a very fun experience for me. You are all wonderful to work with. Also, I really enjoy the guns.”

Bee/Polaris: Yep. There it is. yeah. Polaris was just staring and waiting. Polaris just sighs and says, “yeah, I mean, we'll probably get you back on this ship.”

Zach/Zahn: As per personal request.

Bee/Polaris: it's either that or some closet

Avery/GM: And you, you, you pop the chaos Emerald out.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: and pop it into your bag and yeah, you start heading out. Does anyone else follow Polaris outta the ship?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, Zahn will come along.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is bringing the leftover bread and also.

(Outro music fades in, then down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to Beyond the Furthest Stars. This has been a 1up Podcast Network production. Check out our website: 1upPodcasts.com and be sure to follow us on twitter @FurthestPod. Intro and Outro music by Dustin Carpenter. Find his most recent album, Wisteria Lodge, on bandcamp. Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks include: Starfreighter, Robotics Lab, and Starship Bridge. Special Thanks to Kelly Hayes for the sound design on this episode. Check out her work at http://www.kellyannelinhayes.com/ we’ll be back on October 1st with our next episode.

Avery/GM: See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro music fades out)

Episode 5 - New Loot, New Enemies

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 5 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Intro music starts then fades out, background music fades in)

Avery/GM: So our, our scene picks up where we left off this forearmed creature has emerged out of the crashed shuttle that y'all picked up and brought over and he says, “so, uh, you're ready to take me back to the Republic?” And he's looking at whomever came out of the ship. I believe Polaris, you were standing kind of on the, like the loading ramp, If I remember correctly?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah. Polaris is currently crouched down, staring at the dirt. I think everyone else exited the ship.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is in his full, uh, full mechanics, get up head helmet and all, um, with, uh, his pistol on his side. But his, his arm also has a bunch of tools in it. And he is kind of just like, not looking at him, walking towards his shuttle, like to start taking it apart.

Bee/Polaris: excellent.

Avery/GM: Okay, so Zahn you're, you're walking over to this, this ship, and this, this person is just kind of staring at you like expectantly, like waiting for someone to say something “you, you, you guys are, are with the Republic, right? I mean, you got those Republic issued, uh, weapons on your ship and you know, you, you, you don't seem all weird Like the hegemony people.”

Chris/Ollie: Oh, um, quick question

Avery/GM: Yeah,

Chris/Ollie: is always chassis branded in any hegemony, uh, markings.

Avery/GM: no,

Chris/Ollie: Okay. So

Avery/GM: Unless you want it to be, it's your character.

Chris/Ollie: no, I, I was just thinking, uh, it would make sense for you to decide whether or not

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. I wasn't thinking of that. Cuz they probably just buy robots in bulk and then

Chris/Ollie: okay.

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna say, you're a mass produced product.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Walmart brand chassis.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Walmart brand.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was gonna say don't they usually just like hire soldiers and then like outsource all their work. So it, I don't think they would have hegemony brand service bots. Right.

Avery/GM: right.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent. It was probably just a sticker. I peeled it off when I, when I left.

Bee/Polaris: it was on the advertising chip.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is approaching in response. He kind of just gives ma champ a hug or a shrug. (laughing at slip up) gives him a hug. There you go. Bad, bad news buddy. No, no, no. He gives him a shrug. He's like “I dunno”.

Bee/Polaris: I bet he's good at hugs though.

Chris/Ollie: What was it that was wrong with the spike drive?

Bee/Polaris: Uh, we needed to steal a part from his ship.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we needed a, um, power converter. Ollie's going to Step forward and say “negative? Uh, we are here to find power converters”

Avery/GM: “Oh, uh, well, I mean, there's, there's some in my ship that your friend here has decided to just take apart.”

Chris/Ollie: “Oh and we thank you for them.”

Avery/GM: “Well, could I hit a ride then? Like, would that be an issue?”

Chris/Ollie: “Not at all. We are all currently hitching a ride as it, it were,”

Zach/Zahn: As, as Zahn's probably like rushing past him at this point, he kind of, he's like, “eh, let's see why not?” And then steps inside to start tearing apart The ship

Avery/GM: “What happened here?” Points to the wreckage of the house,

Chris/Ollie: “we met an interesting fellow and I had an in depth conversation with him.”

Bee/Polaris: “And we gave him a bomb.”

Avery/GM: “a, a bomb. You, you blew, you blew up this guy's house?”

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: “Only after determining that he was hostile towards us. I mean, we, we opened with a pie and everything, so…”

Avery/GM: “pie. You guys have pie?”

Chris/Ollie: “oh yes, we have much pie”. And is Bruce out here?

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, Bruce is out there and Bruce will just nod and be like, “we have extra pie.”

Chris/Ollie: I will. I'll just to, to Bruce and start, uh, saying it, “it was a amazing meat pie made with, uh, 34%, 23%, uh, ground meat and, uh, continue listing ingredients in the background. As everyone continues talking.”

Avery/GM: Bruce, you were gonna say something,

Caden/Bruce: Oh, Bruce, Bruce, just nodded and said there's leftover pie.

Avery/GM: this four-armed creature is rubbing both hands together and like licking his lips. And he's like, “it has been a long time since I have had pie. I mean, mostly I've just been eating, you know, bugs and stuff. So, uh, how about this? You get my power converters. You give me a ride and I get some of that pie and, uh, we'll call it even?”

Bee/Polaris: “Confusion. It's not like you have much of a choice.”

Avery/GM: “Well, I mean, you all could just leave me here and, you know, take off and go find power converters elsewhere. I guess.”

Zach/Zahn: You already hear the sounds of like (makes drill noises with his mouth), as Zahn is at work, taking your power converters,

Bee/Polaris: Zahn is our one man NASCAR pit crew.

Zach/Zahn: and then you hear a pause and is like, “I'm definitely taking more than your power converters, buddy. There's actually some decent stuff in here despite the crash and how old it is.”

Avery/GM: so Machamp walks up to you, Bruce, and is just like “so can you show me where the pie is?”

Caden/Bruce: “That depends. Do you have spices on board your ship?”

Avery/GM: “Uh, no, I haven't had, haven't had spices for quite a while. Like I said, mostly just bugs.”

Bee/Polaris: Wow, this man has been eating just unseasoned bugs this entire time.

Avery/GM: Unseasoned bugs. Yeah, it's gross.

Chris/Ollie: I know if he only had some spices, it would be like acceptable

Bee/Polaris: yeah, you can salt and pepper some bugs.

Avery/GM: you know, edible leaves or something like that once in a while gives us some.

Chris/Ollie: bug tacos.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Bug wrap.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will slow blink at ma champ and just be like, “I will lead you to pie once we have your parts.”

Avery/GM: “Oh, oh, okay. Okay. That's cool. That's cool. Um, maybe I'll go help that way I can get to get to the pie faster.” and, uh, Z he comes over to like help, like hold the things you're taking off of his ship. He just like holds out his hands and it's just like, “come on, come on. Let's go faster.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris would turn to Bruce and say “realization, there might be spices in the other structures.”

Caden/Bruce: You have a good point.

Chris/Ollie: You have them on fire on the map here, but are they actually burning?

Avery/GM: There's like little small there's there's small fires right now.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but they're a firefighting bots.

Avery/GM: Yep. There are firefighting bots circling around trying to put out these fires. That, that is true.

Bee/Polaris: We will have to…

Avery/GM: It's more of like embers really is what they are. I'm just not very good at map making

Bee/Polaris: No, this is very good.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will look at Polaris and be like,”it might…. With an extra member of crew that would be more people to feed. So more food. Isn't a bad idea.”

Bee/Polaris: Throws up a thumbs up on the visor. He still hasn't set foot onto the actual dirt. Like he's been he's took off his glove and has been poking the dirt.

Jenine/Marty: Oh,

Avery/GM: oh.

Bee/Polaris: he's like holding his hand up to his visor and scanning it.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, yeah. Polaris has never been on planet, right?

Bee/Polaris: yeah, this is his first time experiencing dirt and grass.

Jenine/Marty: oh, small!

Zach/Zahn: uh, from inside the ship, you hear, you hear, uh, Zahn call out “Hey, Ollie we need an extra pair of hands in here.”

Chris/Ollie: “Certainly!” and Ollie will walk over and, um, hold up his arms and they'll like, do the General Grievous thing and split apart into multiple like tools and hands.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: We need to get Ollie a lightsaber

Chris/Ollie: or four.

Avery/GM: so you have a Machamp and a robot Machamp.

Bee/Polaris: okay. We need some, we need someone to make a poke ball. Do you think, do you think Zahn could swing making a poke ball?

Zach/Zahn: Hmm, between my programming and my fixing, maybe

Bee/Polaris: Let's go. I can only make bombs.

Zach/Zahn: uh, but, uh, Zahn is in the process, first takes out the power converters cuz they're necessary. Uh, and hands those to Ollie. Um, then he takes out like he's going for like all the still intact like circuitry, good wiring, um, processors.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: Um, I'm just trying to get like a broad spectrum of good salvage so that we can like use it to modify and make mods and shit later.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Go ahead and roll. Roll Dexterity fix check

Zach/Zahn: 13.

Avery/GM: 13. Oh, that's great. yeah, you find enough parts to repair, um, the spike drive easily and you find actually enough components in here to basically fix probably you estimate at least two other whole ship systems if they went down. So, um, in game terms, in game terms, that would probably be, um, just spare parts to two things of, of spare parts. So if, if stuff breaks bad during ship combat, you can use like, you'll, you'll be able to like use like one of your actions to you. Fix something, you know, in a Jiffy.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, nice.

Avery/GM: yeah. So maybe you won't be sitting ducks when the…

Zach/Zahn: How many spare parts? Cause in my, in my character starting inventory, I have six , six spare parts

Avery/GM: Yeah. So you have two extra sets of spare parts.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, I have more spare parts as well. If we ever need it.

Avery/GM: See, y'all are gonna be great. Your ship will never break down.

Jenine/Marty: Famous last words.

Chris/Ollie: Well, I mean, I, I also need spare parts to heal myself, so

Bee/Polaris: True.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. Or they can also be used for healing, Ollie.

Bee/Polaris: Heal Ollie four times.

Avery/GM: I mean, except when he blows himself up, but that's beside the point

Chris/Ollie: there's no coming back to that.

Bee/Polaris: Rip Ollie two. I'm gonna start keeping track of how many Ollies we go through.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, I, I intend to make it a very high number.

Avery/GM: I should put a counter on the, uh, on the website.

Bee/Polaris: Ollie counter.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I want Ollie to be like the Kenny of this, this storyline.

Avery/GM: Cool. So is anyone going to search the ruins while these fire suppression drones are out there?

Jenine/Marty: yeah.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like as this is happening, Bruce kind of notices that Polaris is like a little bit nervous and like uses his tail to like swish the ground clean and like, hold out his hand. Like “it's okay. There's nothing poisonous here. I don't think at least.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris looks up at Bruce and just kind of like tilts his head and says, uh, “I'm aware that the, this area isn't poisonous or harmful, I've just never, I've never been off the ship.”

Caden/Bruce: “There's a first for everything” and Bruce will kind of like slow, blink.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris nods, “I suppose.” and, uh, he'll tentatively step off of the, the ship. And then once he realizes that it's like solid ground and like nothing, uh, bizarre is gonna happen. He's like, all right, and just walks over.

Avery/GM: From inside the ship, you hear Hermes play like celebratory music. (victory tune) And then just says, says on the loud speakers outside. “Congratulations, Polaris.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just throws up a col uh, like capital I face on his advisor, like, okay. Polaris is just gonna follow Bruce to the ruins. Where's has Marty been in all this?

Jenine/Marty: I've been just kind of watching everything happen. from a distance, just in case something bad happens. I'm like, okay, if this person falls, I'm gonna go right up there and, and help if they're injured. It's fine. Um, but now that she's seeing people go to the ruin, she's like, okay, maybe there's more people I'm gonna go join the group that’s going out.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go! Which building do we wanna go to?

Jenine/Marty: there's only one, right? No, there's two there's one on fire. And then there's one. That's

Avery/GM: they're. They're both a little bit on fire.

Jenine/Marty: Ah, sick.

Bee/Polaris: a little bit on fire.

Jenine/Marty: Love it.

Bee/Polaris: uh, let's uh, there was one bigger shed in one smaller shed?

Avery/GM: Yes, bigger shed is the one that's closer to your, is this one right here on the map to the left.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: smaller ones over here.

Bee/Polaris: Closer one?

Caden/Bruce: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. So you're coming up to this larger shed. Great. So this larger shed is almost about the size of like a studio apartment and the lock on this door is, is an electronic lock, but in, the explosion it was damaged and you see that the sliding door is kind of malfunctioning as kind of like open, close, open, close very slowly. So it won't take much effort to really get, you know, pull it open or anything. And then there is a small fire at the far end of the building.

Caden/Bruce: So do we have to stop the door? Can we just step through?

Avery/GM: You can just like, hold it. And then like step through.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will hold the door.

Jenine/Marty: Gonna walk in!

Caden/Bruce: Yep. Let's go.

Avery/GM: as you come into this building, you see that there is a, uh, small co here probably where that one human, um, probably stayed. He was alive and

Bee/Polaris: was his name? Barnabas or something?

Avery/GM: Barnabas. Yes.

Bee/Polaris: oh my gosh. I was right. Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: Look at you remembering things.

Bee/Polaris: It was a fancy lad name.

Avery/GM: There are also a number of robots in here. Robot chassis that are powered down or inactive. and behind, like, they're kind of lined up on like the, the right side of the wall of, of this building. And you can see behind them are basically what almost looks like shotgun blasts in, into the wall. Um, basically they took some shrapnel from that explosion and they would probably need to be repaired, but they would probably make excellent, um, backup chassis for Ollie.

Bee/Polaris: How many are there?

Avery/GM: Uh, there are, I think I said four.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Do we have a comm system?

Avery/GM: I'm sorry?

Bee/Polaris: Do we have a comms system? Actually, does Zahn have comms on his helmet?

Zach/Zahn: he does!

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Uh, Polaris will ping your comms from his helmet.

Zach/Zahn: you just hear like wrenches kind of, or like a, a, uh, socket wrench going as I'm unscrewing something? Yeah, what's up?

Bee/Polaris: “curious, do you, are you able to accept video feed to your helmet?”

Zach/Zahn: “Yeah.”

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Polaris will take a video of the robot chassis in the inside of the shed and then send it.

Zach/Zahn: You hear like a slide out of like a me coming out of a type place and you hear me say, uh, Hey, Hey Ali, uh, Polaris found something you might be interested.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I can probably send that feed to Ollie too. Huh? Okay. Players will send that to Ollie too. I don't know who all has helmets that can receive those sort of like that sort of information.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, what, what kind of chassiss did you say they were?

Avery/GM: Ollie, you get the feed and you see that two of them are, um, are jungle branded civilian security bots. Um, so they're like old school robots, like very old models. Um, and then, um, and then two of them are, um, companion bought chassis.

Chris/Ollie: Oh,

Avery/GM: Yeah. So.

Bee/Polaris: as in like, like friends, like, like the companion cube, but a robot.

Chris/Ollie: buddy bot.

Avery/GM: So in the book, they're just called companion bots. but they're basically like nanny bots, pet bots, uh, specifically designed to be companions for people. So like…

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. So not like a sex bot?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I

Avery/GM: no.

Bee/Polaris: about to say, I was just about to ask if it was like weird weeb shit

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, no, sorry. I didn't think about that.

Chris/Ollie: I was like, oh, okay. We're going on? A brothel infiltration mission or something?

Avery/GM: No,

Bee/Polaris: yeah. I was like, wow. Barnabus is really lonely. Huh?

Avery/GM: no. I will let you decide what like shape the companion bot takes, but yeah, they're not like for any creepy nefarious purposes, but

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. They're just like civilian bots.

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm

Avery/GM: you know, oh, this is my secretary bot or this is my emotional support dog bot

Bee/Polaris: oh my gosh. Ollie could be a dog.

Chris/Ollie: I can't. I, yeah, I hadn't even thought about that, but I was like, oh yeah, I just go with all the non humanoid chassis.

Bee/Polaris: yeah,

Avery/GM: You could,

Bee/Polaris: we could be scooby and the gang.

Avery/GM: Zoinks!

Zach/Zahn: Jeenkies!

Jenine/Marty: Here for it. Let's go! derailing, That's what we're doing now. Just solving mysteries.

Avery/GM: fine. Yeah. There's also like some like personal effects and stuff that are in here that you could go through if you wanted, um, might be, might be some stuff that's worth finding, but.

Bee/Polaris: True. That seems intimate though. That seems mean we did blow the man up. Why go through his diary and stuff, you know,

Zach/Zahn: Plus, uh, I mean the guy hunted literally an entire planet into extinction. You probably don't want to read about that.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Well, this is Barnabas’ stuff. I imagine all of, uh, uh, the, I forgot the Furry's name. What's the Furry's name?

Caden/Bruce: Winston.

Avery/GM: Lord Winston.

Bee/Polaris: Lord Winston. I imagine all of Lord Winston stuff was all in the big fancy house.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, that's fair.

Avery/GM: And to be fair, he didn't hunt the entire planet to extinction. He just, most of the area that he was in was hunted to extinction

Bee/Polaris: Which is why major Tom had to eat all those bugs.

Zach/Zahn: The bug bug population must have exploded though.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Why didn't he hunt the bugs to extinction?

Avery/GM: no fun hunting bugs.

Jenine/Marty: Well, I feel like that's better target practice.

Bee/Polaris: Exactly! Can you imagine, like using a, a blow dart or something to like pin a beetle or something to a tree you're like, I've got my trophy.

Avery/GM: See if he had just been a butterfly collector, none of this would've happened.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, truly we wouldn't have blown him up

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: is there any like canned food or spices or, you know, the, the, the things that Bruce would be looking for?

Avery/GM: Yeah, totally.

Caden/Bruce: an apron maybe?

Bee/Polaris: oh yeah.

Avery/GM: Yyou hear like the back side of the building, like the roof kind of collapse from the fire damage that's taking place. And that fire is now smothered by kind of the debris that's falling. Um, but you hear that noise and you kind of peek around like this like corner of, of the studio, um, building and you see where the kitchenette was For Barnabas. And in it, you find a variety of spices that you're familiar with as a chef. Um, I'll kind of let you decide, you know, what they are. and you also find, um, it's not great, but you find like field ration grade food. probably get the feeling that Barnabas got the junk and didn't get to eat the fancy stuff with Lord Winston.

Bee/Polaris: Poor Barnabas.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce goes to take off his, uh, chef hat and then remembers that he no longer has a chef hat. Cuz I imagine that he sometimes used it to just like store items in to bring back with him and will like look around the room for like a sort of bag. And if there is none just carry as much as possible with him also using his tail as like hands.

Bee/Polaris: Aw.

Jenine/Marty: Marty holds her hands out, ready to like, hold anything.

Bee/Polaris: is there like, is there any like white fabric or like something around the room?

Avery/GM: There's probably like a white bed sheet. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Um, does like Barnabas have his clothes in here? Like does he have like a, a white fancy suit for when he has to serve Lord Winston or anything like that?

Avery/GM: why don't, why don't you roll me or actually, call high or low.

Bee/Polaris: High

Zach/Zahn: High is always the answer

Bee/Polaris: No!

Avery/GM: I rolled low . So I'm gonna go with now

Zach/Zahn: Doesn’t matter. High is always the answer.

Bee/Polaris: okay. Uh, I'll just take the, the white bed sheet and, uh, Polaris is just gonna, while we're back on chip, Polaris will make Bruce another hat, another chef's hat

Avery/GM: a friendship hat.

Bee/Polaris: indeed. Um, Polaris does also have like a backpack, so he'll just take it off and hand it over to Bruce.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will look at Polaris and say, “thank you. This is much appreciated. Is there a certain food that you do like to eat? I'm sorry if you're like vegetarian. I, uh, I should have asked before making a meat pie.”

Bee/Polaris: Uh, on Polaris's visor, it's like dot, dot, dot. And then question mark. “I don't understand.”

Caden/Bruce: “you, you didn't eat the meat pie. So I'm asking if there's something that you would like to eat or something that you're allergic to.”

Bee/Polaris: “My apologies. I didn't know what it was.”

Caden/Bruce: “but you do eat?”

Bee/Polaris: “I consumed nutrition. Yes.”

Caden/Bruce: “So, what kind of nutrition would you like to consume? I can make you something different? salads Aren't necessarily my specialty. Apparently I make good cake.”

Bee/Polaris: Another question mark up on the visor.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will look at Marty and be like, “you, you, you know what cake is, right?”

Jenine/Marty: Yes, I'm a big fan of sweets. Also the meat pie was really good.

Caden/Bruce: “We will make Polaris cake” and, and Bruce will look around to see if there's any sort of ingredients that he could throw together to make a mean cake.

Avery/GM: Yes. You find, so you are digging into like the cabinets of, um, formerly Barnabas's home. You see, you find like this little metal tin box and it has a date on it. And…

Bee/Polaris: No! Aww…

Avery/GM: A little like smiley face next to it. And it says for special occasions and you open it up and it's

Bee/Polaris: that's so sad.

Avery/GM: it's it it's, pre-portioned like little containers of like flour and sugar and, um, butter that's in like a, a special basically computerized like refrigerator unit, right? Like little tiny one. And basically all the little ingredients you'd need to make a mean cake and a little note inside, uh, that just says happy birthday. Barnabus love mom.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, my God, you couldn't make us feel worse as soon as you said it on it. I knew I was like, oh my God, this is…, this is birthday cake.

Avery/GM: I mean, Barnabus was just there to do a job.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh, we killed Barnabas guys. Polaris, may be morally gray, but I'm not.

Caden/Bruce: if we weren't gonna kill Barnabas, Winston, probably one day would've it's Okay.

Bee/Polaris: I know, but ah, that's so rough we’re taking his cake from his mom.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. At the end of the day though, we don't know how in, you know, or how gungho he would've been about slaughtering us as our supposedly wounded crew. So

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that's true. We didn't even wait. Dang. I wish I made that bomb just a little bit smaller.

Chris/Ollie: an anti Barnabas bomb.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Out of Barnabus range.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce does take the tins by the way.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: You're valid. That's valid.

Chris/Ollie: Let him go to waste. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I guess Barnabus isn't here anymore.

Avery/GM: Um, yeah, so anyway, that's all that there really is in this building unless, like I said, unless you wanna take like his like personal stuff, you know, but

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean, we took his cake. Why not take his diary and all of his personal effects too? No, I'm kidding. No, I'm just good with the cloth that I got so I can make a new hat for Bruce., onto the next one crew?

Avery/GM: you want to search the rubble? Um, cuz the, the, so as you step out the fire suppression, drones have Ceased fire suppressing, and the ruins are now just like smoking. and you see that they all just sort of hover there for a moment and then just land on the ground. Just not doing anything

Bee/Polaris: Let's take those drones. Let's steal those drones. Polaris will send the text to Ollie and Zahn that says, do we need some fire suppression drones question mark?

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna recommend taking them anyways.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Bee/Polaris: thumbs up emote! we'll loot the drones late. For now, There's rubble to be searched.

Avery/GM: are so are y'all gonna come back for the robot bodies later, like wheel them in as you're about to leave.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: yeah

Bee/Polaris: Don't you worry? We're gonna take that stuff.

Avery/GM: Okay. No, I was just making sure I didn't wanna like…

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I mean, after

Zach/Zahn: I already wrote it down in my inventory.

Chris/Ollie: yeah, like after we're done messing around me and Zahn are done messing around with the ship. He's gonna go over and start, uh, you know, hauling him out or figuring out how to do that.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, Ollie… Zahn you're you're about finished up. Um, you're just pulling the last few pieces off of this ship and, uh, major Tom/Machamp, um, says, uh, uh, yeah, I think that's everything. Um, you can't really take much more it's it's all pretty damaged, but, um, yeah. How about we, we get out of this place.

Zach/Zahn: Uh, yeah, with a, with his arm full of stuff. Um, he's like, yeah, let's uh, get the ship, this, this shit stowed on the ship. And, uh, we'll, we'll get to collecting those bots in the neighboring house over there while the, uh, others look for other further supplies, we'll be leaving your like, probably within the hour.

Avery/GM: Okay. yeah, Machamp follows you into the ship, puts the stuff down and just sits patiently on the loading ramp, waiting for Bruce to come back with the pie.

Zach/Zahn: out of all that, did I get any units of pretext salvage?

Bee/Polaris: Ooh.

Avery/GM: Is that a specific thing?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, it's a specific thing for calculating, uh, mod…

Bee/Polaris: Like if you wanna do shit modifications and stuff like that.

Avery/GM: Yeah. We'll say you find one unit of pretech salvage then,

Zach/Zahn: Sweet! Thank you sir.

Avery/GM: um, just take off, take off one of those units of spare parts. That's what we'll say. Cool. Yeah. Um, and Ollie, you head into the, the structure. You see these robots and they're pretty easy to move you. You could easily move them. No problem. No check required in one of the companion bots you do see, um, on top of it is a, another one of those computer chips And it just says, “selected films of Holo-Vid Star Arnie Schwarzen”

Chris/Ollie: Hmm. Hmm.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God. Yes.

Chris/Ollie: okay. I'm definitely gonna, uh,

Zach/Zahn: chip.

Chris/Ollie: I've definitely, uh, if we don't mess with that this session, I'm gonna start practicing some lines. Absolutely. I gotta get my arnold voice perfect

Zach/Zahn: either his etiquette chip or his emotion chip. He's gonna become only Arnie Schwarzen..

Avery/GM: which is basically Space-Arnold Schwarzenegger, basically. So,

Zach/Zahn: absolutely.

Avery/GM: okay.

Bee/Polaris: We need to start collecting chips. We need to get Ollie a chip collection.

Avery/GM: I know, right.

Jenine/Marty: Yes,

Zach/Zahn: Oh, I've I've I've, I'm keeping a tally. I have what's in him right now. And what extras we have.

Bee/Polaris: Nice.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. And once we, uh, hit like a, uh, like a merchant or something, civilized star station, we get all kinds of like stuff to make our own and, and just see whatever crazy stuff we can roll up.

Bee/Polaris: That'd be so much fun.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So as, uh, so Ollie, I assume you take that then.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yes.

Avery/GM: yeah. So you start wheeling the robots in., Marty, Polaris and Bruce. you start kind of, are you picking through the rubble of the building? Are you going to the shed that's still intact?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. We can cut across diagonally, you know?

Avery/GM: So cutting across to agonal. So you'll hit the, the rub, the rubble first.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Yes.

Avery/GM: Okay. So for this one, I'm going to need someone or all of you, um, to roll a, uh, intelligence notice check.

Jenine/Marty: Beautiful. Got a seven.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Nope, not for me. I got a two!

Caden/Bruce: I also got a seven.

Avery/GM: Okay. That's fine. As you're picking through the rubblel, um, you don't find much of anything here. You find some broken wine bottles. I find some completely tattered, fancy suits,

Caden/Bruce: Is there still wine in the bottles?

Avery/GM: probably like a little like a, maybe like half a cup that you could probably like, you know, pour into something else.

Caden/Bruce: And strained the glass out of, I feel like, I feel like Bruce would do that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: sure.

Chris/Ollie: gonna flambé a nice steak or something. Come on.

Caden/Bruce: Exactly.

Bee/Polaris: That’d be nice.

Avery/GM: But other than that, you, you don't notice anything else really here.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. We did good here team. By the way, uh, just so that the other, uh, guys are informed, Polaris is taking like a video stream of what he's seeing from his perspective and like sending it to them. He's live streaming as they go.

Avery/GM: Okay. if either of them would like to roll an intelligence notice check while they're doing their work, they may,

Chris/Ollie: 12.

Avery/GM: Zahn?

Zach/Zahn: That is an eight.

Avery/GM: Okay. So Ollie as Polaris is, um, sending over this live feed, uh, you see, um, a hint of like metal on the ground. As Polaris quickly turns his head and you stop the live feed and you rewind and go back and slow it down. And you see that, um, underneath some rubble, there appears to be a metal door of some kind built into the ground.

Bee/Polaris: a hatch.

Zach/Zahn: A bomb shelter that isn’t doing him any good.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh. He he's like lightning fast and he just like teleports into the bomb

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, like we go in there and it's, he actually made it, he,

Bee/Polaris: Right.

Chris/Ollie: fricking like instant transmissioned into the bomb shelter.

Avery/GM: All, all, all his photographers is standing up on end and it's glowing yellow. Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: Oh, my gosh. he was a hologram the whole time.

Chris/Ollie: Actually, yeah, Ollie is just going to, uh, let it go for now. And then

Bee/Polaris: okay, cool.

Chris/Ollie: after he's done with his work, he's gonna make his way over to the rubble pile and, uh, call everyone over from there.

Avery/GM: Oh, sure. Okay.

Bee/Polaris: So we'll, we'll just check this shed and then afterwards.

Avery/GM: Okay. That's fine. Yeah. So coming over to the other shed, the fire suppression drones put out the fire that was over here. So it's just slightly charred. The, the sound wave from the explosion actually knocked this shed's door off of its hinges.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: Um, and it just went tumbling into the back of this shed. So a lot of stuff in here is ruined,

Bee/Polaris: Oh.

Avery/GM: but what you do find is some gardening tools, some fertilizer and a small seed bank.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris immediately goes over to the fertilizer cuz you can make bombs out of that. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Polaris will also send, uh, will live stream that to the other two and uh, Polaris will look over at Bruce cuz Polaris doesn't he imagines This is food.

Caden/Bruce: Is any of this food or is this just like a garden shed?

Avery/GM: So there's nothing, there's no food here. The seeds, um, Bruce, as, as you kind of like flick through some of these like seed packets in this like little storage container of seeds, uh, you do see several different, um, edible plants and vegetables that you could, uh, grow in a hydroponics area. If you wanted to.

Chris/Ollie: Oh herb garden.

Caden/Bruce: Definitely. Bruce Bruce is gonna take the seeds of the plants and vegetables that are edible and like try and get like a couple of the pots and soil to make. Not that there's very much room on the ship, but

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but Hey, we can still. That's fine. If we, if we go to, uh, Polaris's parents house, we'll, they'll be good. Um, uh, Polaris will also pick up some pots and help Bruce.

Jenine/Marty: I will also help! hands extended, ready to hold anything.

Avery/GM: Cool. Um, yeah. So y'all are, are making, making progress, bringing your, your haul of goods, um, back to the ship. oh, I need to roll a notice check for Hermes real quick. It's fine. It'll be fine. It's totally not dangerous at all.

Bee/Polaris: don't lie to me!

Zach/Zahn: its never fine When the DM says it's fine.

Bee/Polaris: right. Don't you lie to me.

Avery/GM: Nope. It's it is fine. It'll totally be fine.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet,

Caden/Bruce: Nothing to worry about at all. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Cool.

Avery/GM: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: sweet. What I thought Hermes’ noticed good?

Avery/GM: now as you're coming up into the, into the cargo bay, Polaris, your visor gets pinged

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: Hermes says “as the pilot, I thought you would like to know that I have detected several stealth drones observing our ship.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will send the ping to everyone else that can get pings

Avery/GM: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: so that we know everyone knows thats stilled, drones are fault or want to ghost

Avery/GM: “They appear to be broadcasting from this planet to unknown coordinates.”

Zach/Zahn: Hooray, we've made an enemy this day.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. polar will say to hermes “curious. Are you able to shoot them down?”

Avery/GM: Herme says, “unfortunately, my programming prevents me from firing weapons. Only authorized personnel may fire the weapons”

Bee/Polaris: Am I able to authorize you?

Avery/GM: “unknown. No one has tried to authorize me to fire weapons.”

Bee/Polaris: “you are authorized to fire weapons”

Avery/GM: Uh, you hear the, what do you guys y'all have the plasma laser, right?

Bee/Polaris: yeah we have a laser. We got a laser beam, right?

Zach/Zahn: We got, we got stuff.

Bee/Polaris: yeah, we got some sort of beam, right? like a poly structural mess beam.

Avery/GM: Plasma beam. Yep. That's what you have

Bee/Polaris: Sweet beam ‘em! get beamed!

Avery/GM: um, yeah. Okay. You hear. The ships, plasma beam aperture, like slowly move, you know, like very hesitant. and you see it kind of point off towards like the tree line and let's see. yeah, that'll do it

Bee/Polaris: Let's go

Avery/GM: um, oh wait, it's three d6. Sorry. So I'll add one more 14. Okay. How much do these little drones have?

Bee/Polaris: Get 'em get 'em Hermes

Jenine/Marty: So just clarifying everyone that can be like, that can talk to each other, know that this is happening?

Bee/Polaris: oh yeah.

Avery/GM: Yes. Yes, exactly. Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Polaris would, uh, Polaris wouldn't know about that. Actually. Polaris just assumes that everyone can…

Avery/GM: Yeah. So, so Bruce and Marty, um, you just hear the ships start like moving and you hear a very loud, um, discharge of a plasma weapon. (laser blast) cause these ships go off in space. So normally they're not super loud at all,

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah. Oops.

Avery/GM: but yeah, there's like this like deafening like boom, from this discharge of the weapon and you just see like a line, like a, a section of the tree line and the distance just get lit up and, and this stealth drone, one of these stealth drones that was observing you that Polaris Zahn and Ollie know about is vaporized.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is immediately going to drop some of the stuff that he has in his hands and run to make sure that the blender's okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will ask Hermes “are there anymore?”

Avery/GM: “I cannot detect any other stealth drones in the area,”

Bee/Polaris: “excellent.”

Zach/Zahn: Nice

Bee/Polaris: “Do you know where they were broadcasting?”

Avery/GM: “not at this moment, but I am calculating.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will turn to Marty and say “there were stealth drones following us.”

Jenine/Marty: “Oh!”

Zach/Zahn: Zahn’s soul of borderline exited his body this cause he would've been like on or very near the ship when it fires

Bee/Polaris: oh, wait. Was Zahn able to hear the conversation between Polaris and Hermes or is that just between Polaris and Hermes? So did Hermes just like immediately like blast the thing without every anyone else knowing?

Avery/GM: No Zahn and

Zach/Zahn: Unless you were broadcasting it over coms No, you, it had just been a you two..

Bee/Polaris: Oh,

Avery/GM: oh, I was under the impression that when you pinged them on comms, that… that you were basically letting them know too. So…

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I thought it was like a, I thought it was like a, like an instant message sort of thing where you can like, send a message, like copy and paste the text and send it to them.

Avery/GM: Yeah basically.

Zach/Zahn: Oh did I miss that part? I may have missed that part in which case I would know then

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool.

Avery/GM: Zahn, You still could have had that reaction though, cuz you're probably not used to hearing ship weapons, go off in atmosphere

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: yeah,

Jenine/Marty: “Right. Should we, should we go and grab the pieces of the stealth Drone that has been destroyed? Would that help us in anyway?”

Zach/Zahn: It would've been vaporized.

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Jenine/Marty: “That's true. That's true.”

Bee/Polaris: yeah, polar says “negative. It would've been vaporized.”

Jenine/Marty: “All right,”

Avery/GM: as often the distance, these trees are just burning a little bit

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. There's like a whole, like a clean hole. in the tree line of the canopy.

Avery/GM: and actually you see the fire suppression drones, like lift up and start like hovering over that way.

Bee/Polaris: Damn it

Caden/Bruce: Bruce come, Bruce comes back into the room, holding his blender and just looks at Polaris. And just like, “what was that?”

Bee/Polaris: “apologies. I authorized Hermes to use the ship's weapons to, to vaporize the stealth drone that was tracking us.”

Caden/Bruce: “Do we think stealth drone was tracking our ship or was Winston's?”

Bee/Polaris: “It was likely from Lord Winston. It is broadcasting information to a point on this planet, although we are unsure where. Hermes's is doing calculations.”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will just like slow, blink and nod.

Bee/Polaris: “we should probably move to get off of this planet.”

Avery/GM: Over the loud speaker Hermes comes on and says, “that was exhilarating. Please let me use the weapons in the future.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris, who is Morally gray and used to psychotic robots, uh, using weapons, uh, just sends a thumbs up to Hermes's. actually, Polaris will say Polaris will say on the coms, which Zahn and Ollie can probably hear. “I give you permission, unrestricted access to the ship's weapons.”

Chris/Ollie: This the a is all stoked about shooting the gun and now it's like, oh, I can shoot it however much I want.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I was muted my bad. I was just trying to say, if Ollie is done with his, securing of the, the new chassis and all that. He's going to, uh, ping everyone with a picture of the, uh, with the screen cap of the door and be like, uh, “reviewing the footage. There is one thing we missed under the manor” and, uh, he's going to ping the, uh, the location on the, you know, on the little Waypoint map that everyone's probably got.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Well, all of us that have helmets

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will lead the other two.

Chris/Ollie: everyone's, everyone's close enough to a helmet wearer.

Bee/Polaris: yeah, we need to get everyone helmets.

Avery/GM: um,

Bee/Polaris: Or like an apple watch.

Avery/GM: yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, I imagine, uh, should we, I mean, should we probably unload all the garbage that we, I mean, all the loot that we, we picked onto the ship.

Avery/GM: Yeah. I was assuming that that was that, yeah, that basically all kind of happened at once. Like y'all kind of are coming up into the ship whenOllie, uh, informs you of this door that y'all missed.

Bee/Polaris: sweet. Okay, cool.

Jenine/Marty: should we take major Tom with us?

Bee/Polaris: yes. Just so, oh yeah. Polaris will polar will say over the, uh, comms to, um, Hermes “please do not allow major Tom to steal our ship.”

Avery/GM: Yeah. Hermes says “understood. Initiating self-destruct”

Bee/Polaris: No, polaris says “do not Self-destruct.”

Avery/GM: “Oh, okay. Thank you. I did not want to blow up. It did not look fun when Ollie did that.”

Bee/Polaris: “You had plans for self destruction in the future?”

Avery/GM: “I am ready to self-destruct anytime my commanding officer tells me to.”

Bee/Polaris: “Do not self-destruct lock the co… lock the ship's flight controls.”

Avery/GM: “oh, that would be much more efficient.”

Bee/Polaris: “Affirmative.” Polaris will walk towards the hatch. God damnit Hermes.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will grab the leftover meat pie on their way out

Bee/Polaris: Yeah,

Avery/GM: okay. And, uh, Machamp is just sitting there kind of out of the way on the, the loading ramp waiting

Caden/Bruce: And he’ll pass it

Bee/Polaris: and he was just cool with us blasting the trees?

Avery/GM: Uh, no, he's he, he was like kind of freaked out by it, but he's like trying to like stay cool, cuz like he doesn't wanna like offend the people that are gonna get him off of this rock.

Caden/Bruce: on our, on our way past him, Bruce will kind of like, not kneel down, but like kinda like crouch down and just hand him the container of leftovers and be like, this is meat pie. I hope you enjoy it. I don't think it's as warm as it was when it was fresh, but it should still be good.

Avery/GM: Yeah, no, that's fine. Uh, thank you. Thank you very much. Um, I didn't get your name.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce. I didn't get yours.

Avery/GM: Oh, uh, Bruce I'm I'm major Tom. First name, Major, last name, Tom.

Bee/Polaris: Middle name. What's his middle name?

Avery/GM: Maurice.

Bee/Polaris: Major Maurice Tom.. All right. Cool.

Caden/Bruce: Well, I hope you enjoy the meat pie major.

Avery/GM: Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. And you hear scarfing noises.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce’ll just continued to follow up for Iris he's. He's just like, I don't need to continue this conversation. He knows the pie is good.

Avery/GM: Ollie you lead everyone to the location of this door. Um, you kind of push some, some rubble away to reveal the handles and, uh, you can see that there is a big, heavy lock on this door, Um, like a pad lock.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet. Uh, Polaris. Is everyone there?

Zach/Zahn: I would assume so

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Zach/Zahn: I'm there,

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will take out his laser pistol and shoot the lock.

Avery/GM: sure.

Jenine/Marty: Valid.

Avery/GM: Roll to shoot. I guess

Bee/Polaris: don't worry. I have good shoot. I just gotta, is it a D 20?

Avery/GM: uh, no, uh, two D six, since you're not hitting a target or not hitting a, another character

Bee/Polaris: Oh, that's great. Okay. Uh, that'll be a 10.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah, no ricochet or anything.

Bee/Polaris: I would hope

Avery/GM: um, yeah, you blast the lock and it's, it's liquid metal at this point,

Bee/Polaris: sweet.

Avery/GM: you open this thing up and there is a stairwell leading down into the ground.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris already has his laser pistol out, so he'll go first. He'll turn on the flashlight on his helmet.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: uh, Zahn will go second doing the same.

Avery/GM: Okay. Bruce, Marty Ollie are y'all staying out here or going in.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will go as well. Uh, lighting up his eyes like flashlights.

Jenine/Marty: I will go in.

Caden/Bruce: I, I feel like Bruce doesn't have a flashlight, but like he'll offer his tail to Marty for Marty to hold and just like, kind of like walk in front of her to follow the other flashlights, cuz he could probably see them.

Jenine/Marty: Good.

Avery/GM: Totally. Yeah. So

Zach/Zahn: He’s a frog lizard person. He can probably see in the infrared spectrum.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Also with, uh, this much light like flashlight, um, Marty will at least have some, uh, light to be able to see things.

Avery/GM: yeah, this appears to be a tunnel that leads into some sort of like security bunker of some kind, um, probably for emergencies.

Bee/Polaris: oh,

Avery/GM: As you come down this hallway, it's lined with, uh, stone it's, it's very well built. Um, very secure structurally the explosion doesn't seem to have like offset anything here and you get to the end of this hallway and the room opens up.

There are a couple of beds in this room. There is a stash of like basic food stuffs, um, you know, beans and, uh,

Bee/Polaris: Bruce more food.

Avery/GM: you know, freeze, dried fruits and stuff like that.

Bee/Polaris: Ah, that's perfect for like any sort of fruit based dessert that Bruce would like to make.

Avery/GM: Yeah. And then off to the right is what looks like an automatic like garage door that would open and close and sitting in front of it is an ATV Explorer, in this game can see eight people and was probably going to be the vehicle that y'all used to go hunting with Lord Winston.

Bee/Polaris: Ah, I figured he was gonna try and hunt us.

Avery/GM: Ah, I mean, Hey, you never know, but that's how he got around on the planet.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. I guess he didn't walk

Avery/GM: No. A Lord Doesn't walk

Bee/Polaris: you're right.

Chris/Ollie: his lordly, uh, golf

Bee/Polaris: would've carried him.

Jenine/Marty: He galavants!

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn looking at it is like, “huh? This thing will probably fetch quite a price in the outer world. Just sayin.”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is literally grabbing every single thing of food into his hands. And just for the first time he is smiling.

Jenine/Marty: Marty has hands again, wide open to help carry.

Bee/Polaris: uh, Polaris will lend his now empty backpack. Cause I imagine we unloaded everything onto the ship, back to Bruce.

Avery/GM: Totally. Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: As you guys are like filling arms and, and bags Zahn is just like, “just, just put 'em in the ATV. We'll take it to the shit. That'll make it easy.”

Avery/GM: Yeah. It's got like a little like area that could see eight people. Well, six people two in front, six in the back. So you could easily fill it up with a bunch of stuff.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet!

Zach/Zahn: Heck yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna look around for anything that would have like where the Stealth Drones would've transmitted.

Avery/GM: Yeah, go ahead and roll an intelligence notice, check

Bee/Polaris: All right, I'm good at that. And I good at that. I mean, I'm mediocre at that. Okay, Uh, nine

Avery/GM: Yeah. Um, you so other people are kinda like gathering stuff, throwing it into the ATV. Zahn's probably like looking around for the keys in like the glove box or something. And you're just carefully listening for a moment. And you hear like, sort of like a, the, the sound of like computers kind of whirring and buzzing.

Um, you're, you're used to that kind of sound. So it's easy for you to pick up on it. And it's coming from underneath, like this like white sheet that's like covering like a table of some kind.

Bee/Polaris: oh, that's ominous. Yeah. Polaris will pull off the sheet

Avery/GM: Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: and also keep it.

Avery/GM: You pull off the sheet and you see a computer screen, that is flashing the text transmission complete.

Bee/Polaris: No, no, uh, Polaris will send, uh, a message over to Zahn and Ollie that says,

Avery/GM: I mean, you're all in the same room,

Bee/Polaris: yeah, but they're like preoccupied with other things.

Avery/GM: oh, okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will just take a picture and send it to them.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will pretty much try and hack into this computer and download any, anything and everything he can and try to find out where that transmission was going to.

Avery/GM: Sure that would probably be an intelligence. I think hacking is a sneak skill. So intelligence sneak

Zach/Zahn: program. I believe.

Avery/GM: oh program. Thank you. I was just looking up. I was just gonna look that up. So, uh, yeah. Intelligence program check Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, well, I've got to figure out exactly what I'm…

Bee/Polaris: While Ollie is doing that. Polar will ask, uh, Zahn and Ollie if either of them, well, Polaris will just say, “do either of, you know, how to send a virus to where wherever that information was transmitted?”

Chris/Ollie: certainly this is, am I hacking into it or is this just like accessing?

Avery/GM: I mean, you're accessing a system. You don't have the password to.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Because if it's hacking, then I get, you know, bonuses

Avery/GM: Yeah. So you would apply those bonuses to this then, Definitely.

Chris/Ollie: then I roll awfully. Okay. so I got a six.

Bee/Polaris: Well, are you, um, what's your class because you can roll reroll once per scene, if you're an expert.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, I'm my class is a AI.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, right. Sorry.

Chris/Ollie: can I, Hmm. Oh, I should have done robot stuff before that shit. I totally forgot.

Avery/GM: what did you wanna do?

Chris/Ollie: Um, well I could, uh, where is it in the exact thing here? Cognitive boost or, no, I gotta, I've got like 10, uh, robot abilities now. I gotta find the right one.

Zach/Zahn: It's one of those. If, uh, Zahn sees Ollie clearly struggling, uh, he will give it attempt if that's ok.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Um, actually if it's okay for me to… After the fact, use defeat security. I use a processing point and, uh, pretty much just overcome any encryption or, or electronic lock that wasn't put in place by another AI. If it was then it's a programming roll off.

Avery/GM: I put that at an eight of difficulty. So I was just trying to see if you could find some way to get over those last two points.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You bypass the security using your super AI powers.

Chris/Ollie: I kinda had to remember that I was a super AI first

Avery/GM: Yeah, like, wait, I am not just a robot.

Chris/Ollie: I wanted to try it the old fashioned way, you know, I've heard so much about it with you fleshies.

Avery/GM: and you just wanted to like download the data from this computer or?

Chris/Ollie: If… my overall number one priority is finding out where the data's going. And then second, I wanna like download, you know, anything I can about Winston and what he was doing. Just, you know, as, as info.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So you start downloading this data and start kind of analyzing it as you're downloading it. Caus computers are cool. And you're able to decipher that. Most of it is like logs, like trans like communications logs between like himself and the other Winston family members.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, oh,

Avery/GM: Sort of communications just generally of like, oh, I hunted this animal today.

Or, you know, oh, I, I, I got the last trophy of, of this particular species and things like that. Um, real, real stuff that kinda like justifies like blowing up, uh, his whole home.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. I feel was bad.

Avery/GM: but you also notice that there are security logs that are uploaded every six hours and the last one just uploaded a little bit ago and you have that file. It's a video file that you can access if you'd like,

Chris/Ollie: Sure.

Avery/GM: okay.

Chris/Ollie: I'm guessing it's just the, uh, seeing the ship shoot the drones.

Avery/GM: So you play the file. Uh, you see your guys' ship land, Ollie, you see yourself walk into the building and then you see the building explode.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet. That's it? No, I'm kidding.

Avery/GM: And then your guys' ship takes off, comes back with another ship unloads and starts sifting through. And then the last thing you see in this video clip is a bright flash as the drone is vaporized,

Bee/Polaris: So it caught all of us on cam.

Avery/GM: it might have. Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Damn it.

Jenine/Marty: That’s a yoinks!

Avery/GM: And that is the last thing that you download from this system and as you start looking up the transmission logs, you see that it was transmitted to a, uh, through, through a bunch of different like relay stations and, and like probes and stuff throughout the, the galaxy ending at Olympia, the capital of the Republic.

Bee/Polaris: shit, dude.

Chris/Ollie: Hmm. Um, so I'm gonna send the summary of this information to, uh, the helmeted people.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go comms, gang

Chris/Ollie: And say, uh, we might have, uh, made a few friends today. Um, I'm also going to specifically tag all of that, uh, all of the notes from Winston to his family, about him hunting, you know, animals to extinction and all that. I'm gonna tag them under an evidence file.

And I remember that later.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go. Ollei's a lawyer.

Avery/GM: I guess they're calling you Phoenix Wright!

Bee/Polaris: yeah,

Chris/Ollie: objection!

Zach/Zahn: Brilliant.

Bee/Polaris: in response. Polaris will say confusion. That does not seem like friends.

Zach/Zahn: I think he may have been sarcastic.

Chris/Ollie: uh, my apologies. I'm just trying out sarcasm. Not sure if I've I've quite got the hang of it yet.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's still kind of in a, in a daze. Cause he is like, oh fuck. It's like, no, no Ollie. That was a not bad.

Bee/Polaris: I do not understand sarcasm much of the time.

Chris/Ollie: But summary of the story is we should probably leave and very fast.

Bee/Polaris: Is there any way to send a virus to the receiving computer.

Chris/Ollie: Um,

Zach/Zahn: I mean, we'd have to have a virus preloaded up. I think otherwise it would take quite a bit of time probably to program.

Bee/Polaris: question? Um, would would, uh, allop just have viruses that Polaris could just have on its own bit.

Avery/GM: I don't know if alio, would've probably like would, would have those, like, but I, I bet there's surprise some stuff back at the, I bet there's probably some pre-written like virus code back at the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Back at the home?, all right. All right. Noted. Well, that's gonna take too long. Might as well go.

Zach/Zahn: Uh, Zahn is going to take a second to look for a safe cuz there's no way that a Lord

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Zach/Zahn: having a secret bunker underneath the building. Doesn't have valuables locked away somewhere in here.

Bee/Polaris: Fair.

Avery/GM: Like, look at that. Look at that, Zach already, already thinking like a master criminal.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go.

Zach/Zahn: Do you want a intelligence notice?

Avery/GM: Exactly. Yep. I was about to say

Zach/Zahn: That is an eight.

Avery/GM: an eight. Yeah, there's a small wall safe, uh, with a combination lock on it.

Zach/Zahn: Oh an actual combination lock. Not some, uh, high

Avery/GM: Old school.

Zach/Zahn: old school. All

Avery/GM: Yeah. Computer locks can be hacked. combination locks. You gotta work for it.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah,

Zach/Zahn: can I apply an intelligence fix to, uh, potentially crack the safe you can say no, I only chose that cuase it's like my best skill.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So, so by the book it hacking a, a lock or picking a lock or anything like that would be a sneak check.

Zach/Zahn: well, fuck.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: I got a little, I got a little bit in sneak.

Avery/GM: Intelligence or dexterity. And once Zahn sees this safe, he probably points it out to every.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, absolutely.

Bee/Polaris: Cool. Before we get to that safe, uh, Polaris will turn to Ollie. players will turn to Ollie and say, “do we need this computer?”

Chris/Ollie: I don't know. Do we, you said it disconnected, like, did that mean it's they like shut it off from their end and that's all I

Avery/GM: Oh, no, no, no. I, I just meant the transmission was complete.

Chris/Ollie: Oh,

Avery/GM: still connected to the network.

Chris/Ollie: okay. And I'm guessing we would, we would need the computer and not the security drones in order to send a virus.

Bee/Polaris: Well, the virus was just to make, make it so like they would get the information, but then like directly after they would get a computer virus. So they wouldn't be able to like review set information, but it's a little bit too late for that.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I also, I probably wouldn't wanna make super enemies with them either.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, we did just kill their relative. So I think we are at super enemy status.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, but we're like at, at incidental enemies, but if we're doing that, then we're like directly attacking them on multiple fronts.

Bee/Polaris: True.

Chris/Ollie: Um, we're already gonna have assassins on our back, like

Bee/Polaris: Uh,

Avery/GM: you, you don't know what this faction has for assets.

Bee/Polaris: True. You're right. They are fancy boys though.

Chris/Ollie: could be super assassins.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, they could be super assassins. Huh? Okay.

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna say that, um, oh, Ollie will reply that, um, that, um, yes. Well, do you want to, yeah. Ollie will ask. “do you want to destroy them?”

Bee/Polaris: “Yes.”

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will say that, um, “though it is not sentient. It is still, uh, A state of existence that I once was, it may not be necessary to us, but must we destroy it?”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris kind of like… Polaris has like very little, uh, introspection when it comes to life or death. Uh, so polar just kind of like stares at Ollie for a little bit and then says, “will it make you happy if it stayed online?”

Chris/Ollie: “I, I do not see a reason to destroy it, but if you think it is best.”

Bee/Polaris: “My only concern is having people come back to this planet and get any other information this computer has. I suppose we could just take the information and leave the rest.”

Avery/GM: All you are still connected to it. So you could Crtl, Alt, delete it.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: all four.

Chris/Ollie: How big is this computer system?

Avery/GM: I mean, it's like a standard desktop, you know, I mean, it's nothing fancy.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will just pick it up and bring it with us.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Well, I mean, I don't wanna be, uh, when you do that, Polaris just like puts a hand out and just like, “well, we don't want to be tracked.” Yeah. Polaris's main concern is not being tracked and not getting more information on us.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Well, if okay. Ollie's confident he can like cl… wipe it, but, uh, this isn't like, uh, So, I'm not sure that it's possible, so, uh,

Bee/Polaris: Uh, could Ollie do, could Ollie just run calculations to see if it was

Chris/Ollie: I can fix him. Okay. Well then Ollie will just have his, uh, his sad eyes on and he'll put it down and say “I tried”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris… Polaris sees that and then polar will just pick it up very well. We will bring it with

Avery/GM: All right.

Bee/Polaris: back to the safe.

Zach/Zahn: Is anyone gonna crack this safe?

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah.

Chris/Ollie: oh yeah. Uh, Ollie will, as I'm walking by use my other, uh, processing to just defeat security and open the door. Wait, is this electronic or

Avery/GM: it's a combination

Chris/Ollie: oh, combination.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. It's like a manual. It's a, a, a meat boy, safe

Avery/GM: Jeanie and I saw you unmute. Did you have something?

Jenine/Marty: You think Marty's got anything for that? she's a goody two shoes!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris can dry. I can dry. What is it? Uh, SneakStealth. Stealth sneak?.

Avery/GM: Uh, yeah. Uh, dexterity sneak.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, man, I gotta get a third monitor. Okay. Uh, I'm gonna go ahead and reroll that.. okay. Um, in eight.

Avery/GM: You get the first two numbers you hear, you hear definitive clicks with the first two numbers, but the third number is alluding you.

Bee/Polaris: Dang Polaris will knock on the safe to see how thick it is.

Avery/GM: It's probably like two or three inches thick.

Bee/Polaris: how thick, uh, would a laser blast do to open it. How thick could it get

Avery/GM: Um, let's see. What, what is your pistol

Bee/Polaris: It's a laser pistol, just a good old fashioned laser pistol.

Jenine/Marty: Gosh those Moments I regret not taking telekinetic.

Avery/GM: Um, you can just rip it off the wall.

Jenine/Marty: yeah.

Bee/Polaris: well, I mean, Zahn and I have tools we could just like, you know, take it out the wall, take it with

Avery/GM: let's see. It's it's one D six, uh, damage.

Bee/Polaris: mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: I'd say it would take probably at least two successful shoot roles, um, to get.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. Two successful shooters. Not bad.

Zach/Zahn: Can Zahn attempt to get the third number.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Okay. So like Polaris raises his laser pistol after being frustrated and then Zahn comes in to get that third number.

Avery/GM: sure. Zahn go ahead and roll sneak until, uh, dexterity sneak.

Zach/Zahn: Can I attempt intelligence instead

Avery/GM: Sure, sure. That's totally fine.

Zach/Zahn: Hurray that balances out the minus one. All right. So we're gonna that I roll the six and a one. All right. So six and three is better. So nine to get the third number.

Avery/GM: I'll give it to you. That's fine. I, I probably would've given it to you with a seven

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: cause it's just one number. Uh, yeah. Uh, you crack this bad boy open and you find basically like a data pad. It's got a balance sheet on it and the balance sheet says a hundred thousand credits.

Bee/Polaris: Yo!

Avery/GM: And so this was basically some sort of like electronic wallet that Lord Winston used

Bee/Polaris: Hmm.

Avery/GM: but. A quick looking over it. It does not have his name on it. Does not have any name to it.

Chris/Ollie: It's crypto.

Bee/Polaris: it's well it's well, it's probably illegal.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Blood money.

Avery/GM: untraceable. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: It's probably untraceable. Yeah. Having an untraceable wallet is probably good. Especially since we made a lot of enemies.

Avery/GM: So there you go. Other than that, there's not much else here.

Zach/Zahn: With, with it being on a data pad, I was hesitant to use it cuz uh,

Bee/Polaris: Yeah,

Zach/Zahn: you know, it may have been like his personal bank account that his family might be able to trace. But if it's untraced unaccounted for 100K. Fuck Yeah. Heck yeah, take it.

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Avery/GM: This setup looks like the kind of set up for someone who is about to be like on the run.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Would we know if we could transfer, uh, credits to that data pad so we can just have an untraceable wallet that we just keep around with us.

Avery/GM: Uh, yeah, you you'd probably know that you could transfer. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: Cool. Is there anything else anyone wants to do while you're in this bunker?

Bee/Polaris: Um, I can't think of anything else that we can search for.

Jenine/Marty: Is there any like medic stuff?

Bee/Polaris: yeah

Jenine/Marty: Like lift or like any of that fun, little jazz

Avery/GM: Yeah, go ahead and roll a notice check, intelligence notice Marty.

Jenine/Marty: That’s a seven!

Avery/GM: Oh, that's perfectly fine. Um, yeah, you find, um, You find a little cache of medicine, um, specifically you find a bunch of pharmaceuticals, um, which I will send the list to you later. But, um, some of them are like some like kind of like mind altering substances. there's a drug called brainwave. There's a drug called lift. There's a drug called squeal.

Zach/Zahn: Somebody's down for some fun later.

Avery/GM: and, and then you've got some, basically some med kits, you know, the basic tools you'd need to like heal, heal people. There's a Lazarus patch, um, which. Basically can be used on creatures, who, or characters who have fallen to zero hit points. and there's, just

some like, you know, gauze and other, other medic stuff that someone would need in like a field kit.

Jenine/Marty: sick.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, I do have a question as well.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: Um, okay. So you know how, like a lot of cars, like when you buy them brand new, they have like the, they have like their own little first aid kit and stuff like that. Does the back of the ATV have that for extra medical supplies for Marty.

Avery/GM: I was gonna consider that as part of the, the medical Supplies.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Uh, and then sweet. And then my other question is, uh, this man hunted a lot where the guns

Avery/GM: They are upstairs.

Bee/Polaris: Nooooo!

Zach/Zahn: Uh, that's, that's what I figured, honestly,

Bee/Polaris: I thought would,

Zach/Zahn: there's no way

Bee/Polaris: I thought he would have some in his trunk.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Yeah.

Avery/GM: nah, those are his, those were, those were his prize possessions, like

Bee/Polaris: Oh, you're right. Gun people do like their guns.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. They gotta be close by his bed so he can stroke them at night.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. He has a specialty pillow for it. Uh, alright. Fair enough. I guess we drive this puppy outta here.

Avery/GM: sure. You're able to, to drive it out. The, the garage door opens, it drives out and up. Um, and, uh, basically like this ramp kind of lowers down from the ground, like this mechanical ramp lowers down and you're able to drive up and basically you're back out next to the rubble. and you're you, you cruise it up into the loading bay of the ship and it's, it's a tight squeeze, but you've managed to get every, all this loot into your ship. Your cargo bay is full at this point.

Bee/Polaris: awesome.

Avery/GM: and you are ready to take off if you want. Major Tom is, uh, is still sitting in the cargo bay, like, so can I, uh, can I, can I come up now into the, the, the cockpit area? Or do you want me to wait down here?

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris is gonna leave that Institute to someone else. Polaris goes immediately to the pilot's chair.

Chris/Ollie: Um, did we tell him he couldn't go up there?

Zach/Zahn: Walking past Zahn just motions for him to follow. Oh, sorry, Chris.

Chris/Ollie: Oh no, no, go ahead. I was just, I didn't remember if we told him that he can't or that's just something he's doing.

Avery/GM: No, he was just being respectful. He, he was eating his pie

Chris/Ollie: You're very, very polite.

Bee/Polaris: Indeed.

Caden/Bruce: Did he finish his pie?

Avery/GM: Uh, yeah, Bruce, uh, as you're walking up, up into the ship, you see the, the tray or the, the, yeah. The dish that, that the pie remnants were in is just completely like scraped, clean, like Machamp got every single morsel out of that meal.

Bee/Polaris: It looks like it's fresh out of the dishwasher.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will slow, blink and look at him and just be like, I’m going to make Polaris their first cake, if you would like to come and join us.

Avery/GM: He licks his lips, like real big, like cartoonishly and it's just like, yeah, show me, show me to the cake. Let's go.

Bee/Polaris: When Bruce is making the cake, they're like cartoon, like scent lines come out and Major Tom like floats into the air following the lines.

Avery/GM: Polaris. You try to start up the ship and it doesn't start up

Bee/Polaris: Polaris sighs, and then does the eye roll like emote and then says, “Hermes, give me access.”

Avery/GM: “access. Granted.”

Bee/Polaris: This fucking guy Polaris polar says to Hermes. “Hermes. When I sit in the pilot seat, please give me access. Even if the ship flight controls are locked”

Avery/GM: “Bookmarking those orders.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris realizes that Hermes is a baby when it comes to orders. So we gotta make a backlog of like rules and exceptions.

Avery/GM: Well, this is, this is a new ship to Hermis like it's gotta rewrite all of its old, old, uh, subroutines. Yeah

Bee/Polaris: Protocols. yeah. Babies’ new ship.

Avery/GM: do y'all take off then.

Zach/Zahn: The I'm open as we lift off Zahn points at the fuel gauge, noting that it ha was, uh, low upon entering the system. And he is like, Hey, be sure to sweep by the, uh, local star so we can siphon off some of its energy for fuel.

Avery/GM: Remember this has a black hole. So

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah, no

Chris/Ollie: no

Avery/GM: is, there is a, there is, there are some gas giants. You could probably do this fuel scoop on that's fine.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. All right. Polaris throws a, a thumbs up over to Zahn.

Avery/GM: So, yeah, you, you, you take off you're out of the, the, the planet's atmosphere floating away, making, making a B-line away from this, uh, planet and black hole that it's orbiting. Um, you dip the ship down into the atmosphere of one of these gas giants and initiate the fuel scoop. No problem. Lift back up and Hermes comes online and says, “where is our next destination? I have several points of interest that you may find fascinating, or we could return to the custodians as that is where I originally was going to go.”

Bee/Polaris: Polarislooks over at Major Tom don't know where that guy is, but…

Avery/GM: Uh, he took a… oh, sorry, let me move. Y'all back to the ship.

Bee/Polaris: ship, ship, ship.

Avery/GM: He's just like leaning back against this wall over here. Just like trying to stay out of the way.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. Maybe trying to look a little cool. You know,

Avery/GM: Yeah. Got both, both sets of arms folded.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Polaris will also turn on the emissions dampener just in case

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn looking over his shoulders, still with his helmet on, he hasn't shown major Tom real, his, his face yet. Um, he's like “We should probably stop by the closest Republic world, offload our friend here so he can get back to society.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris nods and says to Major Tom, “do you have any particular base you would like to go to?”

Avery/GM: “Uh, honestly, I don't even really, I don't even really know what's out there anymore. I've been been on that planet for five years. Um, yeah, the, the near. Neutral world is even fine. Um, yeah. Wow. Can't believe I'm actually off of that place.” And he's like, actually like kind of starting to like, get like emotional

Bee/Polaris: uh, Polaris turns back to the flight. the flight Polaris doesn't care.

Avery/GM: Just like nope!

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is gonna go fuck around with the new toys. He just.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce walks back into the, uh, main area, holding what somewhat looks like a cake, um, very proud of himself. And it's just like, this is somewhat for Polaris, but I also realize it's Ollie’s birthday. Is that how new bodies work? anyways…

Bee/Polaris: oh yeah!

Caden/Bruce: I made cakes, so, um, happy birthday and hopefully Polaris might eat this too, and he'll just slow, blink, awkward.

Zach/Zahn: Aw.

Bee/Polaris: Polar will send a message to Hermes, to take over the flight controls and, uh, set their courts to the nearest, uh, either Republic base or neutral planet, whatever is closest. And then he'll get up and walk over to Bruce.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn will stop in the hallway as he sees cake. And he, uh, comes back.

Bee/Polaris: the only appropriate response

Zach/Zahn: How often do you have cake and space? The answer is not.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just literally never had get players. Doesn't even know what cake is. So Polaris are just like looking at the cake with a question mark on his advisor.

Jenine/Marty: Oh,

Avery/GM: Okay. Um, You feel the ship shake beneath

Bee/Polaris: Uh,

Avery/GM: as it… No, no. A good shaking.

Bee/Polaris: okay.

Avery/GM: The familiar shaking of a ship entering, uh, luminal space or, or whatever it's called in this game. Um, hyperspace gonna call it hyperspace. Um, and, uh, the ships spike drive engages, and you are on course to the nearest Republic planet that Hermes has set course for.

Bee/Polaris: Wow. We really just left that up to Hermes. Huh?

Avery/GM: Oh

Chris/Ollie: True.

Avery/GM: and remember Hermis is very literal.

Bee/Polaris: well, Polaris did say neutral or Republic base.

Zach/Zahn: Whichever one was closer and it sounds like aRepublic one was closer. oops!

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Um, Oh, well,

Avery/GM: It's fine. It'll

Chris/Ollie: be like some tiny, like one man outpost on a fringe world and we drop off the dude there and it's like, what? This is no better than I was. We're like, eh,

Bee/Polaris: but now he has a friend!

Chris/Ollie: Now you got a homie, you know, you can survive together.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So, uh, Bruce, tell me about this

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Tell us about the cake. What flavor was it?

Caden/Bruce: So Bruce has made, uh, along with some of the dried fruit, an attempt of like an apricot cake. Um, and just kind of has some of like the, I, I imagine in the seed mix, there might be like some sunflower seeds and stuff, so it's just like a sunflower apricot cake. Um, and it tastes very good and it's somehow very moist despite it being made with dried apricots. and it tastes delicious and it is, it is a good cake.

Bee/Polaris: Wow,

Jenine/Marty: I vote now that for promotion, we make a cookbook. Thank you.

Bee/Polaris: Aw, that'd be cute.

Avery/GM: Oh, that'd be glorious.

Chris/Ollie: Bruce's bakes.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce’s Bakes!

Bee/Polaris: that's so cute.

Zach/Zahn: Much love, such wow!

Bee/Polaris: that sounds cute. Yeah. Polaris will like pull out like something that kind of looks like the size and like packaging of a, like a nature valley bar. And, uh, just holds it out to Bruce and says, “this is what I'm used to. I don't know how to proceed with this cake.”

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is gonna like,

Bee/Polaris: It's like, there's no labeling or anything on it.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is gonna take the bar and. Open it and proceed to smell it and make this face that sort of resembles disgust in a frog face form, like looks Polaris blinks and just says, “eat it as you would cake. This, this smells like rat food”

Bee/Polaris: uh, it probably has like, no smell it also has like, no taste

Zach/Zahn: It's pure nutrition.

Bee/Polaris: it's like purely. It's literally purely for nutrition.

Avery/GM: Oh, so like power bars.

Caden/Bruce: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: yeah, but like it has like no taste

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, but they remove the taste as a, as a favor to you because it would be disgusting otherwise.

Zach/Zahn: Indeed

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Caden/Bruce: “Eat cake As you would this bar. I don't know if I consider this food. Um, I can try and make it into good food. If you would rather eat just this.”

Bee/Polaris: Polar just tilt his head and just says “I'm, I'm just unsure how to proceed. This is all very new to me” also, to eat it. Like the power bar It would, it would essentially do be like holding it with one hand

Zach/Zahn: and shoving it in your

Bee/Polaris: like, nope! Yeah! when you unwrap a slice of cake.

Avery/GM: Bruce, have you cut this cake already? Or are you given the whole.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, I think I, I think Bruce has like cut it into pieces and like giving different place to different people. It's it's definitely like if Polaris wanted to take like the cut, like the piece of cake and shove it into mouth, that would be a possibility might look messy, but it would be a possibility.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, if there is a fork there will use the

Zach/Zahn: That would also require Polaris to remove their helmet.

Bee/Polaris: That is true. So Polaris does the thing, like, I'm sure we've done it before. Cuz we have to wear mask where you like have like a drink or something with a straw and you bring it up to your face and you're like, oh, there's a mask there Polaris… Yeah Polaris does that with a slice of cake and then stares at it. cause he is like, oh shit, I gotta remove my helmet now.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn has already removed his helmet. Set it. Down by his feet excepted cake and is now eating cake.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. If Polaris sees that Z has done, so Polaris will also tentatively remove his helmet and then try cake

Zach/Zahn: Aw, man, I don't think you would describe what Polaris looks like to everybody.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I don't think we've seen Polaris without the helmet

Bee/Polaris: Um, okay.

Avery/GM: I was gonna say the face reveal. I don't think.

Bee/Polaris: well, Polaris in the first episode, Polaris did not have his helmet on because he had to get past security, but then like once he got into the room, he, um, I believe he put his helmet on. Uh, so Polaris is, uh, well, he has like dark skin and, um, really light blue curly hair. Um, and it's currently like up in a bun, like out of his face and he has like an undercut and, um, across his face, he has like a similarly colored light blue, like freckles and his eyes are also that like really, really light blue.

Zach/Zahn: Cool.

Bee/Polaris: So he's human, but like, this is unusual for a human. And I think now that we're in space, I don't know how much, uh, space cause I know like on the international space station, they can only stay up there for so long because of the radiation. Right?

Zach/Zahn: This is, this is the far future. We don't, this is science fiction We don't give a shit about that.

Bee/Polaris: well, this is very important for Polaris.

Avery/GM: um, I, I will say be that currently the ship is shielded from the radiation at this point, so

Jenine/Marty: Oh, good to know!

Bee/Polaris: okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So the freckles are almost unnoticeable, uh, but yeah, Polaris will try the cake and Polaris's expression is largely neutral, but when he like takes a bite of the cake and like chews tentatively, he's like. Like, he's not sure how to react, but Bruce could probably tell that like, it's good.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, it's an explosion of flavor that you've never experienced.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: exactly. Polaris is like very, very overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do with himself. So he just like, looks at the cake, looks up at Bruce and then looks down at the cake again and just stares

Avery/GM: And the camera zooms in on the taste buds as they fire and, and an explosion goes off, chemical explosion goes off in Polaris's head as he wonders what he has been missing his whole life.

(Outro music fades in)

Avery/GM: Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Production. Find more of our shows at 1upPodcasts.com. Follow us on Twitter @FurthestPod. Intro and Outro music by Dustin Carpenter. Check out their new album by searching for Wisteria Lodge on Bandcamp. Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks used include: Distilled Tranquillity, Robotics Lab, and Star Freighter.

Our Next episode will release on September 15th, 2022. See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Episode 4 - Delivery Boy!

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 4 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Intro Music Fades in)

Avery/GM: To clarify, uh, what Chris was saying. So in this game, yeah. Um, you can cut a chaos, Emerald. The size that is bigger is the size that the AI is conscious in originally. So whichever chunk is bigger, that's the one you're gonna wanna put in the body that, that Ollie is gonna be going in as a decoy.

Sherman/Zahn: Gotcha!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Whether you wanna ask Hermes that or not, um, Ollie was just like, yeah, you figure it out.

Avery/GM: uh, no, Zahn's a pretty knowledgeable engineer.

Chris/Ollie: oh yeah. I mean, he was repairing me as an AI robot.

Sherman/Zahn: I was originally repairing you. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Would Polaris have known that?

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. Cool.

Sherman/Zahn: So yeah, Zahn is…

Avery/GM: I like how we've all just decided to call them chaos. Emeralds too. This is great.

Sherman/Zahn: it's perfect. Zahn cuts the, the Emerald in half. And then when he goes to reinstall it into Ollie, um, I'm gonna pull out my chips and I'm gonna fuck around with some of these too. So what, what chips does he currently have in?

Avery/GM: Oh, man, let me go back to my notes.

Sherman/Zahn: because the only one I remember is the diplomacy one.

Avery/GM: yeah. So you put in, so he had the, um, okay, so originally he was supposed to have advertisements, service and etiquette. Yeah. You threw advertisements away, service and etiquette, virtual emotion simulator. And then the aggression inhibitor chip. You threw that one away or that one got lost. Uh, so you installed the diplomacy chip and then the repair chip.

Sherman/Zahn: Ah, okay. So I'm going to… uh let me…

Chris/Ollie: Now are you doing this on my main body or the janitor body?

Sherman/Zahn: uh,

Chris/Ollie: Because if you’re sending the janitor body and you should put that assassin chip in there.

Bee/Polaris: But do we want to lose the assassin chip?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that's true.

Sherman/Zahn: right?

Bee/Polaris: Also I hope one of those chips that you… cause I'm pretty… weren't they random chips. You weren't able to actually to…

Sherman/Zahn: Yeah, I have, so I have assassination. and three or four other chips, um, which I was actually about to, um, ask Josh if, or ask Avery if I could, uh, roll to see, identify at least one or two of these.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. I was just gonna say that. I hope one of those chips is just the entirety of the Shrek movie.

Jenine/Marty: Yes, a hundred percent.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So there's 19 skills. I'll add, I'll add the entirety of the Shrek movie into one of them. Why not?

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: so, uh, Zahn, you're gonna, you're gonna replace two of the chips or all four of the chips?

Sherman/Zahn: Um, so keep service and etiquette and the emotion one

Avery/GM: Okay.

Sherman/Zahn: diplomacy. And what was the last one

Avery/GM: Repair.

Chris/Ollie: Ship repair.

Sherman/Zahn: I'm gonna take out the repair. And we'll install that. We'll keep that on the back burner of, uh, like, you know, should I need a hand? And then yeah, I'd like to identify at least one or two of these other, uh, chips that I have

Avery/GM: Okay. If you wanna identify two, roll two D 20.

Sherman/Zahn: 20,

20, and 10

Jenine/Marty: Hey.

Avery/GM: Okay. Uh, so 20 is the Shrek movie.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go.

Avery/GM: 10 is a shoot, a targeting enhancement chip.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh, dude, if we put the repair chip, the Shrek chip, the shooting chip and the assassination chip all in one chassis. That's, that's a pretty good soup if I'd say so myself. So that's a pretty good recipe right there.

Sherman/Zahn: Except he has no personality or emotion.

Avery/GM: Well, just, just the base AI, uh, personality, but yeah, no, no emotion, no ability to feel If he gets blown up.

Sherman/Zahn: Ooh,

Chris/Ollie: feel emotion for the squishy humans around me or organics.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, that's probably good for an assassination chip, but not good for the crew as a whole.

Avery/GM: Alright I need to look up some Shrek movie quotes real quick. So that way…

Bee/Polaris: I mean, I'm pretty sure you can fund the entirety of the Shrek movie script online.

Sherman/Zahn: all righty. So if this one's gonna be a decoy, I am gonna take out the, uh, Emotion chip.

Chris/Ollie: Well, we're sending the, the main body I'm keeping the main body. Yeah.

Sherman/Zahn: Oh, right. Okay.

Avery/GM: if you want, you can roll two more D 20 and identify the other two chips if you

Sherman/Zahn: Yeah. Let's just go ahead and do that.

14 and 15.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Sherman/Zahn: Uh oh

Avery/GM: I love the way I wrote this. Um, 14 is a camp counselor chip

Bee/Polaris: Oh, that's perfect.

Jenine/Marty: Mood

Sherman/Zahn: okay.

Avery/GM: what was the other one? You. Yes. Okay. That's right. Uh, 15 is going to be is actually the title of a book and it's 15 habits of highly effective tentacle creatures!

c

Bee/Polaris: we also had to read that in school, just minus the tentacle creature part.

Sherman/Zahn: of highly what?

Avery/GM: effective, highly effective tentacle creatures.

Chris/Ollie: Yo what's the rating? That's sus.

Sherman/Zahn: PG-13

Avery/GM: find it in the self-help section of space Barnes and noble.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, very good.

Bee/Polaris: Are we not gonna come up with a decoy name for an actual real life company?

Chris/Ollie: Narns and Boble.

Avery/GM: Give me a moment and I'll think of it.

Jenine/Marty: Nobles and barns

Avery/GM: Nobles and Barnes!

Sherman/Zahn: that sounds like the replacement for tractor supply. Nobles and barns.

Bee/Polaris: True. True.

Avery/GM: Books bath and beyond

Bee/Polaris: All right.

Jenine/Marty: All right.

Sherman/Zahn: Alrighty. So for this decoy, Ollie, I'm going to take out the diplomacy have it, the camp counselor chip. Does it have to have all four chips in it?

Avery/GM: Yes. Each body requires four chips. It's an arbitrary rule I just made up. So why not?

Sherman/Zahn: Then I'm just gonna put all the throwaway chips in it. So it's gonna have the, the diplomacy chip, the, uh, camp counselor, the entire Shrek movie and the 15 habits.

Bee/Polaris: No, what if we lose those? Those are very valuable chips. wait, can Zahn make those chips.

Sherman/Zahn: probably need the materials to.

Avery/GM: mean, he'd probably have to have access to like yeah. Like whatever equipment is he used to make computer chips. I don't know. I’ll have to google it.

Sherman/Zahn: I mean, I, I am proficient in, in programming, so.

Avery/GM: Oh, then yeah, you probably could at some point.

Sherman/Zahn: I'm just gonna write down all of these chips. So I know what I can swap and not. And then I'm putting the, the diplomacy camp counselor, Shrek movie and 15 habits in the decoy.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, I was gonna ask if, because we're sending Ollie down as a decoy to go meet a fancy boy. If his service bought, uh, chassis would be better to send rather than the janitor one.

Chris/Ollie: Uh,

Bee/Polaris: Because he is a fancy boy, but

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, my, my normal body isn't much better. It's a, it's pretty much the same tier robot. It just wouldn't be, uh, you know, doing the same job.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Avery/GM: And is, is Bruce going with Ollie to enhance the…

Caden/Bruce: I feel like as this is happening, Bruce has gone back to the workshop, found some sort of like “to-go” container. Put like a bunch of the

meat pie in it. And has like gone back, has taken off his chef’s hat put it on the little janitor robot body and like, takes a step back,

Bee/Polaris: Aw. Aw.

Caden/Bruce: does the little two eye blink and is just like “I mean, if they have been stuck for 5 years, they will not know if this is a chef or not and that is a very good meat pie.

Bee/Polaris: Aw.

Chris/Ollie: Perfect.

Avery/GM: Okay. So Chris, in this janitor body with these chips, I want you to add plus one to administer, connect, and lead.

Caden/Bruce: And cute for the chef’s hat.

Yes, and plus one charisma for the chef's hat. Why not?

Bee/Polaris: Let's go

Sherman/Zahn: Cool. So I only have one extra chip and that's the ship repair chip. And I have that on my person.

Avery/GM: Okay. And Chris, I'm just gonna drop in a link into your private channel and there you go. Feel free to, to drop some of those on us throughout the conversation

Chris/Ollie: Excellent.

Bee/Polaris: Nice

Sherman/Zahn: somewhat wishing I'd kept the advertisement one now.

Avery/GM: while this distraction is going on. The rest of you are planning on going to the crash site or staying in the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I thought we were staying and watching with like a bowl of popcorn or something.

Avery/GM: Oh, okay.

Jenine/Marty: I thought we were doing that as well.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, I will be transmitting my feed to the, to Hermes so he can record it.

Bee/Polaris: while they were like, switching out the chips and whatnot. Should Polaris have been building a bomb?

Sherman/Zahn: That's not a bad idea.

Chris/Ollie: yeah. Cause if we can't destroy my core and they capture me, then I'd be stuck there. So I need some way to… to self-destruct.

Avery/GM: Yeah, Polaris, if you wanna build a bomb.

Bee/Polaris: I'm so sorry, FBI and NSA.

Avery/GM: So I'm either gonna go with a work check or a, um, I guess fix… I fix would actually be better a fix check.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet cause I have nothing in work.

Avery/GM: Yeah, we'll go intelligence fix.

Bee/Polaris: sweet. Ooh. Okay. I rolled two fives plus what? So 11.

Avery/GM: Okay. So you actually, you, you go to create this bomb and kinda squeeze past Zahn while he's fiddling with, with Ollie's new janitor body. And you go down into the, the cargo hold and you remember seeing something in the smugglers hold while you were Stowed away and you can't remember exactly what it was, but you feel like it might help you in this quest and, uh, this quest to build a bomb and you head into the smugglers hold and you see a crate of plasma ammunition clips.

Bee/Polaris: Oh!

Avery/GM: Most of them are spent

Bee/Polaris: Aw!

Avery/GM: there's about three of them here and you remember reading somewhere in one of the logs that the custodians had given you to like give you education. You remember reading about how someone once figured out how to wire some plasma ammo together to create an explosive device. And you're pretty sure you could figure that out.

Avery/GM: And so you take these up into the workshop and you're fiddling around with this. And as you are connecting, like the last few wires, Hermes says,

Avery/Hermes: “be careful if you connect that last wire, it will explode”

Avery/GM: and you have successfully created a plasma bomb that all, all he has to do is connect one wire to another and it'll explode.

Bee/Polaris: Nice. Uh, the entire time Polaris was doing this, uh, he hit record on his visor so that he could send this video off to the custodians just to be like, look, look what I did smiley face.

Sherman/Zahn: Smiley face!

Avery/GM: and they put it on the slideshow of the, of the refrigerator.

Chris/Ollie: I built a bomb!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is first bomb!

Avery/GM: cool!

Bee/Polaris: I'm pretty sure there's not like a, a galactic instant messenger or anything. So players will just keep that in his back pocket to show his parents sweet players will just hand the bomb to Zahn because he's working on, uh, all these transfer. So.

Sherman/Zahn: He's like working on the last bit or plug in the last one. He like, I, I, and the, my peripheral vision, I see you hand me something. I grab it. And I like, I'm not even looking at it. I like holding it. And I put like, look at, and then I look down at it. I'm like, “ah, what, what the fuck did you just give me?”

Bee/Polaris: Uh, a question mark just pops up on the visor and he like tilt his head and he's just like “a bomb.”

Sherman/Zahn: speechless, He's just like nodding. And he is just like, okay. You could have at least told me that it was a bomb as you handed it to me.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, before it's in my hands.

Bee/Polaris: He tilts his head the other way and says, “I thought this was part of the plan.”

Avery/GM: Valid

Sherman/Zahn: it's like, “I mean, yeah, but like still you don't just hand people bombs, man. What if I accidentally did the, what if I turned it on!?”

Bee/Polaris: As you're saying that Polaris puts like, takes out a little notepad and like writes down don't hand people bombs and the notebook cover is labeled ‘good human etiquette.’

Avery/GM: Oh man.

Sherman/Zahn: that's great.

Avery/GM: I'm dyin’ over here.

Sherman/Zahn: That's fantastic. What is the, what does the bomb look like? Cause aren't we trying to hide it in the meat pie?

Bee/Polaris: I thought we were just putting it in the chassis not the meat pie!

Avery/GM: Yeah, I, yeah, I thought you were putting it inside of, inside of Ollie's back up chassis.

Sherman/Zahn: no, no, we, we can, we can do that. We can do that. We can do it.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, just a big stick of dynamite sticking out of the pie.

Sherman/Zahn: I thought the original was to hide it in the meat pie.

Bee/Polaris: yeah, he like gets his like fork and knife and cuts into it and immediately explodes.

Chris/Ollie: yeah, the dude's like,

Avery/GM: Completes the circuit.

Chris/Ollie: “oi! what's that bomb there?” He's like, oh, not, I don't, I don't have a bomb.

Sherman/Zahn: It's Bomb-ass pie,

Chris/Ollie: oh yeah. That's a good idea.

Bee/Polaris: Nice.

Chris/Ollie: How powerful is the bomb?

Avery/GM: how powerful is this bomb? It would, it would blow a hole into your ship.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, could it level the comp… the co… yeah, the compound.

Chris/Ollie: How much collateral?

Avery/GM: Probably not the entire thing, but it would definitely destroy the house.

Sherman/Zahn: everything in the room that it's in.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Cool. Cool. That's important. does anyone object to this bomb plan?

Chris/Ollie: I don’t know. I mean, he, he's kind of just fiddling with my brain parts and no one seems to really care.

Sherman/Zahn: Zahn's still like 90% positive These guys are here to fuck us over. Like

Bee/Polaris: I'm just asking, cause Marty seems to be like the, the moral backbone of this crew along with Bruce. So I was wondering if either of them are cool with this bomb plan.

Chris/Ollie: Well, the plan isn't to hurt any of them. And, uh, like if the situation arrives when Ollie is gonna blow up, he's gonna warn them and tell 'em to back up. I'm about to explode.

Bee/Polaris: cool. Sweet. I mean

Avery/GM: This unit will self-destruct in.

Bee/Polaris: okay. Cool. Cool. Cool.

Caden/Bruce: I think Bruce is just happy the bomb isn’t going into the meat pie.

Sherman/Zahn: Oh, okay. So yeah, Zahn, uh, Zahn installs it into the chassis.

Avery/GM: Yeah. There's like a little storage compartment that, you know, this janitor robot would probably normally keep like sprays and, you know…

Bee/Polaris: Windex.

Avery/GM: Windex!

Sherman/Zahn: Cleaning supplies. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Pledge!

Avery/GM: and, you know, towels and stuff. Yeah. But in this case it's storing a bomb.

Bee/Polaris: it's about Windex size.

Caden/Bruce: Is it technically a weapon if its not active?

Bee/Polaris: ehh, no.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, it's just a piece of junk right now. And then when it's active, it'll be an explosion.

Bee/Polaris: actually, by that logic, a, a gun that doesn't have a bullet in the chamber would technically not be a, let a weapon. Right?

Avery/GM: yeah. It's just a heavy club. I mean,

Sherman/Zahn: It's just a paperweight.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, yeah, no nothing you'll ever do with it will be more than a club unless you do put a bullet in it.

Bee/Polaris: that's true.

Avery/GM: And at that point, you might as well have an actual club.

Bee/Polaris: I don’t know, Clubs don't shoot people.

Sherman/Zahn: I don't know, man, I don't know, man. Pistol whipping just sounds fun.

Chris/Ollie: This is space, this is Sci-Fi we don’t know What Avery's thought up for us.

Bee/Polaris: True, True.

Avery/GM: I have nothing thought up. I am innocent and…

Chris/Ollie: I have no plans to kill and Maim and destroy you, none at all.

Bee/Polaris: I see.

Avery/GM: Winston's got plans, but me I'm, I'm a dog chasing cars.

Bee/Polaris: I See, I understand. So anyway, let's send this man this bomb and pie.

Sherman/Zahn: Hey, GU.

Jenine/Marty: I, I, I do wanna say that while this is happening, um, Marty's hanging out with Hermes and it's just like, Hey, you wouldn't happen to know anything else about this planet Would you? anything we should know before we

send out one of our own down there, anything we should look out for? Can you do a scan of some sorts?

Chris/Ollie: Is the atmosphere even breathable, kind of?

Avery/GM: Uh, the atmosphere is definitely breathable. He, he wouldn't have suggested sending you guys to this planet if, uh, if it were not breathable, you see like the little loading circle on the screen, Marty, and then Hermes's answers and says, “this planet has not been registered in the galactic registry of planets. This system is unknown!”

Bee/Polaris: Perfect for rich people murder!

Avery/GM: There's no rich people…

Jenine/Marty: Huh

Avery/GM: murder! Murder is such a strong word.

Bee/Polaris: You're right. Uh, a game of a, a Hearty game of cat and mouse in which the victor is not dead.

Jenine/Marty: I dunno. Are we having a hunger game situation happening?

Avery/GM: by the way, Ollie, what did you do about the, the guy on the line reciting his, uh,

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah, is he still spewing his thesis?

Chris/Ollie: No, I. Uh, it might not have come through. I said, I, I cut the line when I got up. And, disconnected myself. Well I said my goodbyes, you know.

Bee/Polaris: oh, okay, cool. Cool. Okay. I thought you just like hung up on him.

Chris/Ollie: it was close to that, but it was a, um,

Avery/GM: Like I've gotta go bye!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, like, I'll see you soon.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, ominous!

Avery/GM: So, if I understand your y'all's plan correctly, Ollie is gonna go into this compound, see what's going on and if necessary, blow themselves up. And if that happens, then y'all will go to the crash site and retrieve the parts you need. But until then you're waiting on the ship?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. We're eating popcorn. Well, well, actually, I don't know if we actually have popcorn cuz I don't know if that would be considered part of rations.

Avery/GM: Sure! Bruce found… Everyone's gotta have a snack, a salty snack.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris. Doesn't know what popcorn is. So Polaris also doesn't know what a meat pie is, so he hasn't touched it.

Avery/GM: Polaris also hasn't set foot on a planet yet, so that'll be interesting.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. There's a lot of firsts today.

Avery/GM: okay. Let's let's get to this scene then: the ship finally lands (landing sound) just we'll say a good hundred feet from the compound entrance. Far enough away that, uh, Hermes has calculated that the blast radius will not reach this… your ship. Unless of course, Ollie blows themselves up right outside the gate, but that won't happen, Ollie's smarter than that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I was about to say, uh, I thought we were gonna have like this ship hover, and then we were gonna like, let Ollie drop down. But then I thought about that and I was like, oh, the bomb could go off.

Avery/GM: And Ollie, describe how you're approaching this, this gate with the force field on it and all that. Like you got this meat pie, you've got your janitor body with the

Chris/Ollie: I'm just going to, uh, be approaching casually holding the, uh, the pie in two hands in front of me so they can, uh, see its glory. I'm assuming it's got like the perfect little waft of steam coming off and, uh, yeah, just approaching. I, I are these force fields kinda like, uh, Like just impenetrable walls kind of thing. Or is it like,

Avery/GM: No, I think more like the Gungans, uh, force field.

Chris/Ollie: That’s exactly what I was thinking, I'm gonna, uh, pass through it. (forcefield sound)

Avery/GM: So Ollie, you're approaching this, uh, this compound and these, these brown stone walls wrap around, uh, the entire perimeter and the force fields go high above the compound to, you know, shield it from any attacks from above. Uh, this gate would shield it from any attacks from outside the perimeter, um, inside the forest field.

As you step through, you can see two robot guards as well as a human. And as soon as he speaks, you know, that this is the fellow you were talking to on the comms and he just says: “Oi! You the Chef?”

Chris/Ollie: Ollie is going to respond: “Affirmative. Somebody once told me that you lacked one and would like some food.”

Bee/Polaris: That is hilarious. Uh, just real quick. Uh, I did need to ask earlier, do we have any way of, uh, talking to Shrek-Ollie?

Chris/Ollie: Uh,

Avery/GM: uh, yeah. Hermes is patched through.

Bee/Polaris: uh, okay. So we can, so it's a two way sort of system where we can talk back. Okay, cool. Cause like Bruce might need to give some chef vocab words to, to fake chef Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: yeah. And anything anyone needs or wants Ollie to say, uh, just shout it out.

Avery/GM: “Oi, well, I see you've already made a. A meat pie there. Uh, why don't you come in and talk to the boss he's, uh, really looking forward to your food and maybe offering you and, uh, your mates up there, a job.”

Chris/Ollie: “Gladly!” are they moving to take the pie or?

Avery/GM: No, they're, they're just gonna, they're moving to like escort you like the robots on your side and then the human is walking in front of you.

Chris/Ollie: And, uh, I'll follow pleasantly.

Avery/GM: Okay. And as you cross kind of the area of this compound, uh, to your left, you see a shed that's, you know, about the size of like a very small house, like a, like a, almost like a actually Chris, like, like the size of your additional unit at your place, just that little

Chris/Ollie: So like a studio kind of

Avery/GM: eight foot by eight foot. Yeah. Studio.

Chris/Ollie: Cool.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Uh, of in the distance, you can see another shed that's. Even smaller than that. And it's probably used for like garden tools or something like that. And then off to your right, you can see a water basin, um, that has like a bunch of pumps and machinery attached to it, probably for drawing water out of the ground or something.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, no, um, skeletons or bloody corpses or?

Avery/GM: Nope.

Chris/Ollie: Okay

Avery/GM: Nothing like that in front of you, is this big fancy, well built, uh, house made of local wood stone doesn't have any glass windows, but the, the windows have these really nice, well designed shutters on 'em that, you know, can keep the elements out if needed. And, uh, yeah, as you walk into this, this home, um, do you keep following them?

Chris/Ollie: Yes.

Avery/GM: Okay. And back on the ship, uh, you all see what Ollie sees as well as Ollie walks in. (Door opens) Uh, you see, um, This wide corridor that stretches basically to the back of the house and on the walls are hunting trophies of all kinds of different creatures. Um, you know, there's horns and there's, uh, you know, stuffed tails and different, different hunting trophies of, of various types.

And there is a staircase leading up. And then there are a few rooms that kind of lead off of this main hallway. The human escorting, you says, boss is right back there. Be respectful. He is a Lord. Lord Winston does not take kindly to disrespect or bad food, you understand?

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will Nod, uh, too bad I don't have the etiquette chips.

Bee/Polaris: Out of curiosity. Are there any, like Lord far uad dissing quotes in that little library or Shrek quotes you have?

Chris/Ollie: None. None against him.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: “Do you think you may be compensating for something?” there's that one.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah that one… But…

Bee/Polaris: all right. Cool.

Avery/GM: Um, but anyway, do you continue down the hallway? Okay. You, you come down this hallway and off to, to the side, there's one room, that's basically a kitchen, a couple robots kind of hovering in and out, um, cleaning things and whatnot. Another room off to the side is a, what looks like a library of some kind with a bunch of different books and data pads stacked up on these shelves in there.

And then you finally come into this, this den area. It's a large room. It's it's. Decorated very finely. There's lots of gold and lots of fancy paintings here. Um, there is a full stuffed moose-like creature in the corner of this room takes up a good portion of it. There is a desk in the center, um, piled high with books and behind it is a bookshelf with more books on it.

And there is a sofa to the right, that is next to a open window. And this is when you first see Lord Winston. Lord Winston is a, as I said, a anthropomorphic tiger, basically a Rakshasa, but he wears a very fancy lad suit. It's made a very, very good material and he is sitting there drinking a cup of tea with a cane resting next to him.

Chris/Ollie: a big question though. Does he have a house cat?

Avery/GM: No

Bee/Polaris: Does he have a scratching post?

Avery/GM: definitely has a scratching post.

Bee/Polaris: Wait. Okay then does he have a pumpkin full of ground beef?

Avery/GM: Wait, what?

Bee/Polaris: Some zoos will stuff A pumpkin full of ground beef for enrichment for the tigers.

Chris/Ollie: Oh,

Avery/GM: Oh, I didn't know that. That's interesting. no, there are no pumpkins of ground meat that you can see, but Ollie, this, this tiger just has this intense stare at you as he finishes his tea and he sets his cup down and he says, “ah, you must be the chef that I've heard so much about. I was unaware that you were a robot. I already have too robot chefs but I might as well what you’ve brought me.”

Chris/Ollie: That he's, he's gonna say, I'm not a puppet. I'm a real boy. And then he, he is gonna be like, oh, apologies. My Lord. I've recently had some work done, but yes, I, I am the chef and I bring this and he is gonna offer the, the pie.

Avery/GM: Lord Winston will take the, uh, the pie and he'll eat. (Fork sounds) It takes a few more bites and then clears the plate and says, oh, that was excellent. Tell me, are you the only one on that ship? Seems like a big ship for just one robot chef to, uh,

Chris/Ollie: My apologies. We had some trouble with some bandits. The ship is damaged and some crew members are injured. They are preoccupied. We came for replacement parts from the downed SOS, uh, signal We mentioned.

Avery/GM: Yes. This SOS signal you've mentioned. I was unaware that there was one going on. Seems my comms People have been letting our communication equipment get a little sloppy. I'll have to, uh, get them back in line.

Bee/Polaris: so this dude is definitely evil.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, Can we, can we like do a check to see if he's lying through this, this, this watching this happen,

Bee/Polaris: Yeah on the ship Can we…

Chris/Ollie: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: like, can we…

Bee/Polaris: Can we recognize that this man is evil?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah Ollie has no ability to recognize his sinister nature. So it's all on you.

Avery/GM: Yeah, y'all y'all watching back on the ship. Anyone who wants to can roll a connect, uh, skill check, uh, probably charisma.

Jenine/Marty: oh, aha. Better. Hey! That's a 10.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce rolled a 4. He’s just glad that the cats thought that the pie was good.

Chris/Ollie: He’s just Besotted.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris isn't even gonna roll. Polaris is just like, yep. This is happening.

Avery/GM: Zahn?

Sherman/Zahn: Zahn is not rolling either. He already written off that this guy's totally evil, like.

Bee/Polaris: regardless of if he actually is, or not?

Sherman/Zahn: Yep.

Jenine/Marty: Mood

Avery/GM: Marty, you rolled a 10.

Jenine/Marty: yeet.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Um, when, when Ollie started talking about injured people on the ship, the, the look in this Rakshasa’s eyes. It was very fast, but you

caught it because you've seen you, you've watched a lot of people be injured. You've as a medic, you've seen a lot of people express like some like last like regrets and stuff like that.

You've seen what, like pure desire looks like in people's eyes and you saw that same pure desire for whatever is on your ship. In this… in this creature's eyes When Ollie started talking about the others that are with him

Jenine/Marty: Oh, no, that doesn't Pass. Um… When Marty notices that she stands up and goes “Ah… mmm… Bad!” and is just pointing at the screen!

Bee/Polaris: as soon as Marty says that Polaris like hits the button to talk to Ollie and says, “connect the bomb”

Jenine/Marty: Oh, no, no no no no! Not yet! Wait! Wait! Wait

Chris/Ollie: Just immediately

Jenine/Marty: no don't do that of that.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris presses the button again and says “Nevermind. Don't connect the bomb.”

Avery/GM: Yet

Chris/Ollie: yet.

Bee/Polaris: “hold off on the bomb.”

Jenine/Marty: what, okay. I,… Hmm, Is this and you like, you just see like Marty start like pacing a little bit. “Okay. Wait, if he's interested in” like talking to herself. “So if he's interested in people that are possibly injured on the ship, does that mean,” and there's it just turns, “do we think that this man Is trying to hunt beings and keep them?”

Bee/Polaris: “Confusion. So are we not going to connect the bomb?”

Jenine/Marty: “well, I don't think we should do cause then they could be hostile and it only goes, the bomb only hits one area. Right. So if we take out the Lord, isn't there an entire rest of the compound. That's gonna come after us.”

Bee/Polaris: is it reasonable to say that the bomb would level this house?

Avery/GM: Yes,

Bee/Polaris: Polaris would just like turn to Marty and say “the bomb would level the house.”

Jenine/Marty: Hmm. Okay

Sherman/Zahn: That and we're in a ship.

Bee/Polaris: We have a plasma laser

Sherman/Zahn: I don’t see them have any ships.

Chris/Ollie: We didn't identify any weapons at all, like anti-ship weapons.

Avery/GM: You did not

Chris/Ollie: but we didn't specifically look for any.

Avery/GM: You also did not.

Jenine/Marty: Hm. Okay. Wait, wait. Let's not do anything drastic yet. Let's just, I might be overreacting here. I do that sometimes, I apologize.

Chris/Ollie: He could just be really, uh, wanting to help these people.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, I, I, Polaris just kind of like tilts his head and just like he says, “ I'm confused if this person is not good. Should we not immediately dispatch them. What is the reason for keeping them alive?”

Jenine/Marty: Hmm, Marty doesn't want this… This is the medics… Doesn't know what to do in the situation.

Avery/GM: Do no harm, except…

Sherman/Zahn: Murder, not murder?

Jenine/Marty: yeah, I'm intern. I don't even, I, I was having my residency. I haven't even done anything in the field yet!

Sherman/Zahn: Oh, that's okay. You haven't taken the Hippocratic oath yet? You're Fine!

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my God.

Bee/Polaris: True True. I just want, want, I, I'm not sure if it's apparent to everyone else on the ship, but Polaris is not saying this out of malice, but more out of just not understanding,

Jenine/Marty: Oh no, no. That's fair. That… Marty recognizes that is just, Marty's like uh-oh I don't know what to do in this situation now.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is very goal oriented. his goal is to get the part and get off the ship in the most efficient way possible.

Jenine/Marty: Marty is very much a water sign. And I know this as a water sign.

Avery/GM: Ollie, as you're hearing this conversation back and forth on the ship, you're also able to split your attention, cause you're a robot and you are hearing Lord Winston say, “well, you are free to bring your injured companions here and we will take care of them, but”

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Eat shit bro. No way.

Jenine/Marty: I could do medic stuff.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but he doesn't know that and we don't want him to know that!

Jenine/Marty: I don't exist. Ooh. In the shadows.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. We don't want you to become one of his employees.

Avery/GM: finish your internship

Jenine/Marty: I know! What a way finish it?

Avery/GM: Oh, uh, you see, I, I came here to this planet to enjoy one of my sports, um, that, uh, that me and my family find oh, so entertaining. And that is hunting and lately I've just, I've been getting so bored by the lack of diversity in animals here, the lack of biodiversity. But you say that there's a crash site nearby. Are there any survivors?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, my God, bro.

Chris/Ollie: Uh,

Sherman/Zahn: He doesn't sound like the most effective of hunters. If he hasn't gone 20 Miles outside of his compound into the forest.

Bee/Polaris: especially if it's been going off for five years!

Sherman/Zahn: right?

Bee/Polaris: Hmm.

Avery/GM: It's a big, it's a big jungle. There's lots of jungle.

Bee/Polaris: That is true.

Chris/Ollie: yeah, 20 miles a jungle is something else.

Avery/GM: The whole planet is basically one giant jungle. So.

Bee/Polaris: that's fair. Polaris will tell Ollie, ask him why he came to an unregistered, remote planet. If he wanted more diversity in prey.

Sherman/Zahn: especially one that's slowly being sucked into a black hole.

Bee/Polaris: right. Sus.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Oh, I'm gonna say, uh, “at first we assume that you were the survivors, but if not, then what are you doing here on a slowly dying, unregistered planet? If biodiversity is what you seek, there are infinite planets to hunt.”

Avery/GM: Lord Winston stands up, grabs his cane and begins walking kind of through his den and motions for you to follow, uh, as he is just slowly. Like

touching and pointing at his various trophies as he speaks. He says, “I've been here for three years now. And, you know, originally I came here because well, hunting laws and limits don't apply on planets that aren't registered.”

“And the thrill of being the last person to hunt on a planet before it gets sucked into oblivion is just… Ah! it's. It's what hunters live for.”

And Hermes's pipes up and says, “that is not at all. What hunters live for hunters live to eat.”

And, uh, Lord Winston continues and says, “I have hunted many animals here to extinction. Which you know, was really just a mercy on my part because they would get sucked into this black hole, but I'm running out of animals. And so if you say that there is something else that crashed here, well, then I need to find it.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris looks at Marty and an emote… a bomb emote and a question mark pops up on his visor.

Sherman/Zahn: Zahn is nodding his head.

Jenine/Marty: Huh? Well this seems bad.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Essentially he sees this as like the most thrilling place, because if he stays too long to hunt, he'll die. But if he gets, if he, you know, but he can hunt for as long as he wants and it, it doesn't matter.

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

Bee/Polaris: creatures to extinction and not face consequences. And then he can just leave the planet cause there won't be any evidence cause it's gonna get sucked into a black hole.

Sherman/Zahn: Yep.

Avery/GM: Essentially.

Jenine/Marty: I don’t like this. I don’t like this.

Chris/Ollie: I dunno, this dude sounds pretty, uh, I dunno, pretty wholesome. (sarcasm)

Jenine/Marty: He seems sus and I don't like him.

Bee/Polaris: He also did just outright say that he wants to hunt whatever is on the SOS ship.

Jenine/Marty: The imposter! Get him.

Sherman/Zahn: Shoot him out into space!

Jenine/Marty: Where's the eject button.

Bee/Polaris: The bomb of course!

Jenine/Marty: uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Marty goes, “yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm just gonna, and. Which, yeah.” Marty doesn't know what chips are in there. She, she doesn't understand robots. She's gonna sit down. “Okay.”

Bee/Polaris: Polar slaps the button to talk to Ollie and says, “offer him pie and then connect the bomb.”

Chris/Ollie: Um,

Sherman/Zahn: didn’t he already eat the pie?

Jenine/Marty: wait, should we check if there's anyone else with him with the, with the, with the evil person?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, the dude that was on the comms

Avery/GM: um, yeah, there's the, the philosopher

Jenine/Marty: no other, no other like innocent civilians?

Chris/Ollie: I assumed there were a couple other guards, but did I not see anyone other than the guy?

Jenine/Marty: There are robots, right? I know that there's robot chefs.

Avery/GM: so far, you've just seen the one guy and the two robots.

Bee/Polaris: And I don't think, well, I mean, this guy's definitely evil, so they might, there might be people in that eight by eight shed, but you know, this guy's evil and also they're not close enough to the Bo. Right. Cuz it's only gonna level the house. Not the whole compound. Yeah. Okay.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Avery/GM: And also, no, this isn't a silence of the lambs things. There's no one in a, in a pit, in one of the sheds.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah. I was

Jenine/Marty: Well, you like, you know, like, like there's there's, there was sweet, there was a ship that we were on before, where there is, there's this nice group of civilians, just working on a ship that was being attacked.

Bee/Polaris: that's true, but that wasn't, that wasn't our fault that wasn't us. that was the Armada.

Jenine/Marty: there went… Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

Bee/Polaris: yeah, Polaris will…

Chris/Ollie: well, I, uh, I don't know. I'm kind of concerned about the bomb because we don't know, you know, what might happen, where the ship's sitting right outside the front. Uh, I'm not a,

Bee/Polaris: I thought, uh, Hermes directed us far enough away. So the bomb wouldn't…

Chris/Ollie: oh yeah. But if there, if there's anyone else here who decides to retaliate.

Bee/Polaris: oh, that would be the, probably the robots cause the guys in the house.

Chris/Ollie: mm-hmm

Bee/Polaris: And he said that he had two robot chefs, which I imagine are also in the house.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You so far seen two little tiny robot chefs, like really tiny, like little hover hover bots. And you've seen two, like kind of bulky armored robots. And then you've seen the one, the one guard who you have not gotten his name and then Lord Winston so far is all that you've seen.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: And you don't hear the noise of anyone else in the house, Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: you're concerned about that, then you can ask him for like a tour of the property while the pie cools and then serve it to him and then connect the bomb.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, no, he, well, I don't know if he told me,

Avery/GM: He already ate the pie.

Bee/Polaris: Oh,

Chris/Ollie: um,

Bee/Polaris: oh,

Avery/GM: Yeah. That was like the first thing Ollie did.

Bee/Polaris: oh.

Avery/GM: So he gets to the end of the hallway here and he turns to you and says, why don't you call up the rest of your crew and have them come on into the compound.

Chris/Ollie: Ali is going to, uh, short out a little bit and say, “Hey, I'm nobody's messenger boy. Right? I'm a delivery boy.” And then explode, violently.

(Music drops, explosion sounds)

(laughter)

Sherman/Zahn: That's fucking wonderful.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh

Bee/Polaris: Excellent set

Avery/GM: oh my gosh… oh

Jenine/Marty: Rip this ship baby.

Bee/Polaris: oh my gosh.

Avery/GM: Oh man

Bee/Polaris: That is hilarious.

Avery/GM: Chris. Oh my gosh. That was great. Okay. I'm gonna roll some dice here.

Bee/Polaris: I wish there was inspiration in this game.

Sherman/Zahn: I know. I just about to ask if there was.

Jenine/Marty: Not yet.

Avery/GM: Oh man.

Bee/Polaris: the explode violently part was what got me.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's enough to do it. So the last thing that you see in this janitor body Ollie is the tail go like straight up, like scared, uh, behind Lord Winston and on the screen of the ship, you see just it go to like the snowy static. Of the connection being lost and the holographic screen goes away and you can see out of the cockpit window as a fireball, just erupts from this house that was once there and a, a mushroom cloud of, of smoke and gas, uh, rises into the air and is actually trapped inside this force field for a second, until that system short circuits, because it was connected to the house and the smoke rises into the air as a big plume as if to signal the fiery death of this janitor bot.

Bee/Polaris: May he rest in peace

Chris/Ollie: Oh, and, uh, I'm Ollie is also dearly, dearly, for Bruce's hat as well.

Bee/Polaris: That's fine. Polaris will make another one.

Avery/GM: Some debris like hits the wall inside this compound and busts a few holes in it. But luckily your ship is, uh, scathed or not, or is unscathed, I should say. Sorry. Um, your ship is unscathed as Ollie has valiantly given up its, uh, one, one of its many bodies.

Chris/Ollie: Easy come easy go.

Sherman/Zahn: How long does it take for your soul gem to regenerate?

Chris/Ollie: Uh,

Avery/GM: I was just getting to that.

Sherman/Zahn: Oh,

Chris/Ollie: pretty much, however long he wants to balance my, uh, regenerative ability.

Avery/GM: No, I mean, moments later, the, the it's a quantumly entangled piece of hardware.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, no, like, yeah, I come back, but, uh, he asked, how long does it take to regenerate? Like,

Avery/GM: oh yeah. Cause the, the gem also regrows after a certain amount of time too, that'll be to be determined, but um, Ollie you come back online in your actual body, (power on sound) your emotion chips, reinitiate your service and etiquette, all your other protocols come back online. Um, and you’re… you’re paused in this position of holding out, what was your soul gem and is now just your empty hand and you come to and what do you say?

Chris/Ollie: For a little bit, his eyes are gonna be like glitching, like flickering out, uh, with like the static lines that run through him for a sec. And he's gonna be like, “that was thoroughly unpleasant. And, uh, he is gonna slowly put himself back together, awkwardly.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will turn to Zahn and say, “I can understand why I should have told you I was handing you a bomb.”

Sherman/Zahn: “Yeah… good. Yeah. You, uh, definitely made that point. He's just staring in awe at the glorious explosion.”

Avery/GM: Oh, my gosh, that was glorious. So you have just blown up this compound or at least the main house of it. Hermes pipes up and says “Critical damage. I estimate that the complex is unstable” and you look out the display and it's just, I mean, it's yeah. Like, thanks captain obvious.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris, once again, does the eye roll emote on his visor.

Bruce/Caden: I have always wondered what the smell of flambe cat would be.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris goes and opens a window. No kidding. There's no windows on his spaceship that open.

Sherman/Zahn: I certainly hope not that be a severe structural weakness.

Avery/GM: Would you like to search the compound or do you want to?

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah, we could do that

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, kind of

Bee/Polaris: Polaris was probably having the ship hovering and ready to go. But yeah, if y'all wanna, if we wanna investigate the compound, we can totally, well, we're gonna have to wait for the smoke to clear, right And the fire?

Avery/GM: The, so the building's still on fire, but the, the force field's basically disengaged because the thing controlling them blew up.

Sherman/Zahn: Yeah, but it still takes,

Avery/GM: Smoke is just rising into the air

Sherman/Zahn: I was gonna say it still takes more than a little bit for the smoke to clear

Avery/GM: Yeah. So you could wait, you could wait for the smoke to clear,

Sherman/Zahn: Let’s go.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we can go to the

Sherman/Zahn: let's go. Yeah. Let's, let's use our, our, our transport clamps, grab the ship and then come back here. That way we have a big open space to dismantle, get all the parts.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Did we just level up from stealing a ship to stealing a planet?

Bee/Polaris: Uh, well, not really, because we can't really take this planet anywhere and also it's gonna get sucked into a black hole.

Sherman/Zahn: That's still gonna take several hundred years

Chris/Ollie: Yeah we’ve got a… a nice little home

Bee/Polaris: Okay. If we wanna stay on this planet and deforest it, I could probably, we could probably throw together some thrusters to like move the planet if we want to.

Avery/GM: What if we just take the planet and move it somewhere else?

Sherman/Zahn: I mean, all life on it's pretty much dead already.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Cause of this asshole that we blew up! do you think we can register a planet with the galactic DMV?

Sherman/Zahn: Thing is though, if we register it, we'd have to start paying tax property tax on it!

Chris/Ollie: Oh,

Bee/Polaris: right.

Sherman/Zahn: and we'd have to register it with the Republic or they'd want to conquer us. So at which point we'd have to establish who's in charge. We'd have to set up an ambassador

Bee/Polaris: Then they would discover that all the animals were hunted to extinction. They'll think it's our fault.

Sherman/Zahn: that, and that also puts a big target as to, you know, the rest of the Winchester or not the Winchester, the Winston family.

Bee/Polaris: Well, they don't know about this guy. He dipped! For all they know he could have gotten sucked into the black hole.

Sherman/Zahn: Well, because he didn't register where he went.

Bee/Polaris: Exactly.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, I'm guessing his, like his family knows

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Well, they can probably assume that he got sucked into the black hole.

Chris/Ollie: fair.

Bee/Polaris: We can probably push this planet into the black hole if we want. No, I'm kidding.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we, we spend a ton of time and resources building thrusters to move the planet and we just push it into the black

Bee/Polaris: oh, we don't need thrusters. We just need like a world ending bomb.

Sherman/Zahn: oh God, the, the other like meta meta gaming question is if this is a true Rakshasa which means he's gonna reincarnate somewhere and know that we murdered him.

Avery/GM: No,

Bee/Polaris: Oh,

Avery/GM: this isn't this isn't no, no. Yeah. It's not, like I said, that's, that's partially why I didn't use that word, I didn’t wanna associate it with the yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Only I can reincarnate, thank you!

Sherman/Zahn: But yeah, I like our grab ship, come back here and nice open space. Search it while I pull parts out Plan.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Um, the other thing the dude did say while before, you know, post explosion or pre-explosion, is that he, he has some inkling that there may be people on that vessel that he wanted to hunt.

Sherman/Zahn: I mean…

Avery/GM: Yeah, he was, he was so I, I didn't, I probably didn't explain that very well. He was just, um, saying that if, if there was a distress signal going on, his thought was, oh, well someone had to trigger a distress signal.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Oh, but he doesn't know that it happened five years ago, so we're good.

Sherman/Zahn: yeah.

Bee/Polaris: All right. Well, while the smoke is clearing, we can go, uh, grab that ship and bring it back!

Avery/GM: Sure. You're gonna hover your main ship above it instead of the shuttle, right?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I don't think the shuttle can grab it. Can it?

Avery/GM: No.

Bee/Polaris: So yeah, so yeah. Polaris will take off and grab the ship and we will come back.

Avery/GM: Okay. Um, go ahead and roll a pilot check for me.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm.

Avery/GM: We'll do dexterity, cause this is gonna take some fine manuevering.

Sherman/Zahn: Some finicky.

Bee/Polaris: Well, it's a good thing.

Avery/GM: unless someone wants to jump on the laser can and then start blasting trees.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Who has a shoot skill?

Sherman/Zahn: I, I do actually.

Bee/Polaris: yo! Well, this planet's already a lost cause

Chris/Ollie: Actually I do now, too don't I? you put the plus shoot chip in me.

Sherman/Zahn: I did I put the tactical thingy in you.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah.

Sherman/Zahn: Well, I sadly need to now delete the, uh, all those other fun chips that you used to have.

Bee/Polaris: Oh man, the camp counselor

Caden/Bruce: Bye Shrek!

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that's right. I forgot that one. I was gonna greet the guy as buddy and chief and, and whatnot.

Avery/GM: Hey Champ!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Hey champ. How's it going?

Bee/Polaris: Aw, man. Oh, you could have gone into a whole diatribe about how important the environment is and how hunting, uh, to extinction is detrimental to the environment.

Chris/Ollie: And just like, like I'm explaining it to a child, but like now you see

Bee/Polaris: Yeah,

Chris/Ollie: the ecosystem is a very important and delicate balance.

Bee/Polaris: we do need to raid a chip warehouse now though, so…

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I'm gonna need a stockpile of those.

Sherman/Zahn: I am kind of wishing I had swapped the etiquette chip for one of the other fun ones though. That's my bad.

Bee/Polaris: Nah, it's fine. I'm sure we'll find a bucket of chips somewhere.

Sherman/Zahn: Mm-hmm

Chris/Ollie: Yeah especially if fun chips are what we're looking for

Bee/Polaris: Actually they could still be floating through space,

Chris/Ollie: Those are probably, uh, gonna be easier to find than like op ones.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Yeah.

Sherman/Zahn: I mean, heck we could search through the, the dead bodies of the robots here

Chris/Ollie: True.

Bee/Polaris: Oh true. Oh yeah. I'm supposed to be doing that Piloting check my bed 10 on the die, plus two, you said? Yeah. Two so 12.

Avery/GM: Perfect. Um, yeah, you maneuver in (Flying sounds) and as, as much as, uh, Hermes's was not sure the ship would fit in this area, Hermes's clearly underestimated your pilot skills, Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: That's what the little mad phase was for.

Avery/GM: And you maneuver just above this vessel and you start lowering your ship down. when out of the tree line, um, on the… Cause you're not, obviously you can't see the tree line, but on your sensors, (Sensor alert sound) the sensors pick up some sort of organic being running from the treeline towards the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh, did, is the ship already hooked up?

Avery/GM: No, not yet. You're like lowering down towards it to like, get the clamps on it.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. Uh, Polaris will like stop that process and, uh, turn to everyone else and say there is an organic being running towards the ship. I imagine it might be the survivor.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, I'm, I'm guessing we can't like land here.

Avery/GM: No, you could lower the lower, the, the landing ramp and like walk out there if you wanted to probably Marty and maybe Bruce would and Zahn would probably all have problems with like the wind and stuff, but it wouldn’t be impossible.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. Well, we do have 50 feet of hemp. Sorry.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. You mean, you mean we have, what is it? 1, 2, 3, 4, 125 feet of hemp rope,

Sherman/Zahn: Oh, my gosh.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we could just lower like a rope down for them to climb up.

Jenine/Marty: yeah.

Avery/GM: Hermes says “I have the laser locked on. If you would like me to engage it.”

Bee/Polaris: plasma laser!?

Jenine/Marty: Let's not shoot anyone yet.

Chris/Ollie: Hermes is right or die. Holy shit.

Bee/Polaris: uh, Polaris just says, “uh, that won't be necessary.”

Avery/GM: “powering down plasma laser.”

Bee/Polaris: yeah, polar just tilts his head to the rest of the crew. What do crew.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I say we, uh, we, uh, meet this guy. Can we see him? Does he look like, uh, like a threat? Like he's gonna come in and blow us up or does he look like maybe, uh, a Castaway?

Sherman/Zahn: All we know is that it's an organic.

Avery/GM: it's an organic being, cause you haven't made visual contact yet. Cause the angle that the ship is at versus where the, the cockpit window is at. Um, and Hermes's sensors are just picking up.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, well I say, uh, uh, either let 'em on or go down and talk to 'em because this is assumingly the person we came to help,

Bee/Polaris: Uh, question, would it be possible to, you know, how like really tall birds with really long necks have to like angle their like little, their, their eyesight to look down at something. Can we do that with the ship? can we like angle it in a way, like in the bee movie where they angled the plane towards the flower, can we do that?

Avery/GM: So you wanna do,

Bee/Polaris: So that we can see them through the bridge window.

Chris/Ollie: like swing it around?

Avery/GM: mm.

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Turn it about.

Sherman/Zahn: we are in kind of tight, close quarters with the, the trees and stuff.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. But the only, the, the tip of the ship would have to be looking down at them instead of the whole ship. The whole big part of the ship could be angled up towards the sky.

Avery/GM: So it'll take some more maneuvering, but you could roll another pilot check to see if you can do it.

Chris/Ollie: Ooh

Avery/GM: like maneuver your way out and like up and then come back down so you can get a good look at it.

Bee/Polaris: uh, yeah. Polaris will turn to the rest of the crew and just say, “if you'd like, I can maneuver the ship so that we can get a look at them from the bridge.”

Sherman/Zahn: Do what you feel you gotta do, I suppose.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's gonna suggest, uh, “maybe we could, uh, back away and communicate with them through the ships comms.”

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah. Does the ship have a loud speaker?

Chris/Ollie: Well, we probably do, but I, I was guessing like he could just hop on his ships radio when he gets there, but, uh,

Bee/Polaris: You got me there.

Chris/Ollie: That's pretty risky actually. Now that I think about it, cuz he could just shoot us.

Sherman/Zahn: Yeah, we don't know what of the ship is broken.

Avery/GM: I mean, that ship is super trashed.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. True.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. It's super broken.

Chris/Ollie: But I'm all for just letting this dude do whatever.

Bee/Polaris: we can also just like on the coms, tell 'em to get in his ship and we'll airlift him to a clearer location or not on the coms with like on

Sherman/Zahn: on the loud speaker.

Bee/Polaris: Mm.

Sherman/Zahn: Yeah, we can do that. That's not a bad.

Chris/Ollie: Sure.

Jenine/Marty: Sounds good.

Bee/Polaris: Who's on comms?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, uh, I guess that is me

Sherman/Zahn: Marty! Probably?

Chris/Ollie: me or Marty? Either one.

Jenine/Marty: Marty!?

Bee/Polaris: well, I imagine, I

Sherman/Zahn: Marty had been…

Bee/Polaris: be a lot less, or I imagine Marty's voice would be a lot more disarming than a robot voice over the loud speaker.

Chris/Ollie: I agree.

Jenine/Marty: This is fair. This is true, Marty. This is, this is what I gotta, this is the, the, the bedside manners unit

Chris/Ollie: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: exactly.

Jenine/Marty: “okay. Um, okay, so we're just telling this organic being to go back into the ship and we're gonna air lift them to, to clearing, right? That's what we're saying. We're gonna give him like a tow?”

Sherman/Zahn: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: Indeed. Yes.

Jenine/Marty: okay. And the Marty goes okay. Okay. Okay. Pushes the button. (Button push) Hello. We're here to help out. We recommend going back into your ship and then we're going to airlift you out and bring you to a clearing to help. (button Push)

Avery/GM: You see this, you see on the sensors. So Polaris, you have not maneuvered the ship yet?

Bee/Polaris: no.

Avery/GM: Okay. Um, so you see this, this, uh, organic being on the sensors move towards the ship that you're trying to airlift. So after a few minutes, it appears basically directly below. Where your ship is. Like, if, if you have like the classic radar with like the little circle it's standing right in the middle of the

Bee/Polaris: So I can assume that he is on the ship that this person is on the ship. Okay. Then I shall lower the vehicle grabbers.

Avery/GM: Okay. Uh, yeah, I mean, you already rolled to 12 earlier, so you're fine. Uh, the, the, the clamp or the magnets clamp onto the ship (Clamps moving sound) and Herme says successful connection now lifting and you lift up out of the ship and you go back to the clearing where the compound was? (Ship flying sounds)

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I'm gonna, I imagine that the clearing is big enough to where I can, we can set down the broken ship and then land hour ship next to it.

Avery/GM: If it wasn't, it is now.

Bee/Polaris: Awesome. sweet. Yeah. So that happens. presumably

Avery/GM: Cool. As you approach the old compound, you do see a couple, figures, robotic figures through the, the, the windshield. and they're like hosing down this fiery building

Bee/Polaris: Oh man. Uh, Polaris turns to who's near the, the, the gunning station. anyone near the gunning station.

Sherman/Zahn: Zahn can be

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Polaris will turn on and say, um, should we dispatch these two robots?

Avery/GM: and they're not paying your ship any heed as they are hosing.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I mean their boss is dead.

Sherman/Zahn: possibly? Hermes can you analyze what kind of robots they are? if they're armed or not?

Avery/GM: “Analyzing, these are fire suppression, robots. They are equipped with fire suppression chemicals.”

Bee/Polaris: Oh, we're good.

Sherman/Zahn: Nah, yeah, we're fine. Nah, we'll we'll save the ammo then.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. So anyway, we land the ship, yeah.

Avery/GM: and, and Hermes starts like rattling off like their manufacturer and like

Chris/Ollie: serial number

Bee/Polaris: Uh, you know how we.

Sherman/Zahn: Hermes's that's enough.

Bee/Polaris: I was gonna say, do you know how, like on an old iPhone or something, when you turn down the volume, it has like that very specific, like sound as it lowers the volume, Yeah. Polaris will just turn down the, Hermes volume.

Avery/GM: okay. So you set down this, busted up ship and then you land your ship next to it. And do all of you exit your ship?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris Doesn't.

Sherman/Zahn: Yes, Oh, Polaris doesn't?

Avery/GM: Polaris, You're gonna hang out?

Bee/Polaris: well, Polaris just, just never set foot on a planet. So…

Jenine/Marty: Marty will just because she assumes that someone is injured. That's that's that her.

Sherman/Zahn: Zahn is with all of his tools so that he can start tearing apart their ship.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is as well.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Ollie’s gonna head out.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will stand on the ramp.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. So you all come out of this ship in the background, these fire suppressing robots are just minding their own business. And at first you don't hear anything from the crashed ship. But after a while you hear some movement and some, uh, pretty loud cursing, just like “it took 'em five years, five years, really?”

“I mean, I've been sitting here thinking, you know, oh, that'll come after six months. They'll come after a year. Oh, it's been two, no, five years, five years. It takes the Republic”

and you see two hands, uh, come and grip the side of like where this door obviously used to be before it got blown off. And then you see two more hands, grab the other end.

And it pulls itself through this doorway. And out comes this creature with four arms, huge muscular arms and two legs. And he's wearing like the tattered remains of like a military uniform of some kind on… where the name, the name tag would go. It says, Tom, And you can see that he is wearing majors insignias, cuz yes, this is major Tom.

Chris/Ollie: Got him.

Avery/GM: and, and he, he steps out and he just says, so are you ready to take me back to the Republic?

(Background music fades out)

(outro music fades in, then fades down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars! Is a 1upPodcast Network Production. Be sure to check out our website: 1upPodcasts.com for more shows and follow us on twitter @Furthest Pod.

Intro and Outro music produced by Dustin Carpenter. You can find him on Instagram at Zodiac Gallery. Check out their most recent Twin Peaks inspired Project, Wisteria Lodge on Sound Cloud!

Background music provided by Tabletopaudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks used include: Freighter, Distilled Tranquility, Antiquarian Study, and Aftermath.

we'll be back on September 1st with episode 5! See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro music fades back in, then ends)

Interlude - Recoverd Logs from the Eos

(explosion sounds) (beeps)

Emergency Communications Relay: Hegemony Warship Eos function has ceased. Emergency Communications Relay activated. Transferring all relevant data to Tartarus for archiving.

21st Day of Virgo:

This is Adm (basically he is about to call himself Admiral but stops himself)… Commander Vos, reporting to the council on the progress of the Eos. I just received orders from the Council that I am to take up our… negotiations with the people of Penia. Captain Celia apparently still doesn’t understand the way the Hegemony operates. We do not negotiate. We do not seek peace and mutual understanding. We rule. We dominate. But what would a former smuggler understand about domination. She was barely getting by when we pressed her and her crew from the Prometheus into service. And now… Well, her days in the Expansionary Force are numbered. I just need to wait for some sign of insubordination and she’ll be removed from command.

Soon…

25th Day of Virgo:

This is Commander Vos, reporting to the council on the progress of the Eos. Ran into four different kinds of troublemaker during my shift yesterday. A couple of them seem promising and perhaps they can be hired on to fix some of the more esoteric pieces of equipment on board. For now, they are all sitting in the brig. A few days of solitary confinement and very little food is usually enough to get people to sign an employment contract with the hegemony. Captain Celia isn’t exactly a fan of this type of manipulation, but I find it’s exactly the sort of tool that keeps costs low and productivity high. Also, whomever was hired in the kitchen makes the worst Spacer Stew I’ve tried. Stew doesn’t need 12 different herbs and 13 different spices. Salt and Pepper… Might make my way down and complain to whomever this new chef is. Can’t have our crew expecting delicious meals like this every day… gets morale too high for my liking.

28th Day of Virgo:

Ha ha ha ha. Oh… You should have seen the look on the captain’s face when I showed her the orders from the 12. I thought she was going to melt through her seat on the bridge. I’ll show her how things are done. A quick kill of the ambassador, send whatever assistant he has with him away with our demands, and watch as the system quickly falls in line. None of these promises of protection or guarantee of trade rights. No… This is how the Hegemony expansionary fleet is meant to work.

29th Day of Virgo:

Admiral Vos, reporting to the council on the progress of the Eos. I’ve removed Captain Celia from command for spying on council affairs and have charged her with treason. She was smart enough to barricade her quarters before I revoked her security clearance and it took a bit of effort to get her out of there. Placing a recorder in the negotiation room? Really? Oh Captain Celia, that was a foolish choice even judging by your record.

No matter. The prisoners have remained uncooperative, so the good captain can join them in the pits back on Tartarus. They will at least make for good entertainment for the 12 and the eternal one.

Captain’s Log: 21st day of Virgo, 3217

The Eos has arrived in the Ptocheia sector and has begun making our way to Penia. A backwater planet that serves as this sector’s capital. I really don’t get why we are sending the fleet’s greatest warship on these diplomatic missions. We have an entire war to fight back home and yet here we are, expanding into the galaxy… I swear, sometimes the 12 and the Eternal One make absolutely no sense. Well, better get some rest. I am due back on the bridge in six hours.

Captain’s Log: 24th day of Virgo, 3217.

I don’t know WHO they hired in the kitchen on our last port call, but whomever they are they need to keep them. This is the most amazing Spacer Stew I’ve ever had. The spices, the aroma. *clears throat* Ahem, anyway…

We’ve been making our way through the Ptocheia system as quickly as possible but have hit a few snags along the way. Those snags being not one, not two, but four different beings that, for one reason or another, Commander Vos has decided to take prisoner. We always seem to take on prisoners whenever he is on duty and I am off duty… Gonna have to look into that.

Captain’s Log: 28th day of Virgo, 3217:

Commander Vos is up on his high horse again. Apparently he was chosen by the Council to perform negotiations this time. Something about my previous efforts taking too long and not getting everything the council wanted. I don’t get it. They say we aren’t launching an invasion and yet want the planets and systems we negotiate with to give up so much willingly. Don’t they understand that negotiations aren’t a one way street?

Whatever… We’ll let Commander Vos take up tomorrow’s session. And when he crashes and burns, I’ll have the footage of it to rub in his face. I placed a recorder in the meeting room. Should make for a very entertaining holovid night next week.

Former Captain’s Log: 29th day of Virgo, 3217:

Well, that wasn’t very smart of me. Seems Commander Vos is actually ADMIRAL Vos now, and apparently I’ve been an insubordinate soldier in the eyes of the council. Vos didn’t even negotiate with the ambassador today. Just executed him and ordered the Ambassador’s assistant back to his planet with a data pad containing their new political reality.

Ya know… If the council had just been CLEAR about what our purpose was and maybe sent out a few more ships with the Eos, I would have understood. I’ve been relieved of duty after the Admiral discovered the recorder I installed. Apparently they wanted assassination and intimidation, not negotiation in good faith. COULD HAVE TOLD ME! I’ve barricaded myself in my quarters but I am sure it’s just a matter of time before Vos has me thrown in the brig. I should have stayed on the Prometheus…

(outro music fades in)

Avery: Thank you for listening to this special interlude episode of Beyond the Furthest Stars. Commander Vos was voiced by Ava Rogers. Follow her work over on twitter @ThatNerdyWriter. Captain Celia was voiced by Eve Smith. Be sure to check out her work over on the Ballad of the 7 Dice twitch show: Rise of Nyarlathotep.

Our next episode will release on time august 15th, 2022.

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Episode 3 - Wild Planet!

Avery: Welcome to Episode 3 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Intro Music Starts and then fades out)

Avery: Our camera pans to a distant planet on the edge of the galaxy. It's a planet covered in storms and sand. We zoom in on a solid black tower That's rising out of the desert on this planet and the camera pans up the length of the tower to the top and through an open window and into a chamber. And there are 12 beings sitting around this table. And one of them says,

Rhea: “What news do we have of the Eos, Crius?”

Avery: and Crius responds

Crius: “nothing good, Rhea. It seems the independent systems moved faster than anticipated and entire Armada ambushed them outside the Ptochea system.”

Avery: and Rhea responds

Rhea: “Were there any survivors?”

Avery: And Crius says

Crius: “Only two and they're on their way here.”

Rhea: Excellent.

Avery: Rhea says

Rhea: “We’ll interrogate them when they arrive. Where is the AI?”

Avery: Crius says,

Crius: “Well, I assume it was destroyed with the ship.”

Avery: And Rhea says,

Rhea: “no, it wasn't. If it had been the backup would've reloaded and it hasn't. So where is the AI?”

Avery: And Crius says,

Crius: “I'm not sure, but perhaps the survivors will know when they return.”

Avery: And the camera flashes back to the, this little vessel with a failed hyperdrive in this star system. It's been about six hours since you picked up the SOS signal Hermes has just finished a diagnostic of what exactly went wrong. With the hyperdrive, apparently the power regulators have gone out and yeah.

Avery: What have y'all been doing to fill this time?

Bee/Polaris: Well, first of all, I'd just like to say a cosmic oops for taking that A.I. I didn't realize it would get us this much hot water

Avery: Oh, you're fine!

Zach/Zahn: Oops. Well, Zahn has been diligently trying to get the compensators working.

Avery: Oh, the power regulators.

Zach/Zahn: That's it. Power Regulators working.

Avery: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris would probably try and go back there to help with that.

Avery: Sure. So, let's have Zahn roll, an intelligence, fix check and Polaris, you can roll to help.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Should I roll the same thing? Intelligence fix.?

Avery: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: That'd be a 9

Avery: Mm-hmm

Bee/Polaris: I got, uh sorry, I'm trying to do math.

Zach/Zahn: Mental math is hard.

Bee/Polaris: Math is so hard, dude. 12

Avery: 12. Okay. Yeah. Zahn you're pretty good with machines, but melted power. Regulators are a little bit beyond your skills. you crack open the, the casings for one of these regulators and you see that it's just turned to goo in this little drive.

Zach/Zahn: You hear a very long stream of vile curses in many different alien languages.

Bee/Polaris: a question mark just pops up on Polaris's Visor.

Zach/Zahn: “The power regulators turned to goo” and I say, I say as I like, and like brushing my hands off, wiping my, or wiping my hands off on my, on my, uh, jumpsuit.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris pulls out a handkerchief from their pocket and offers it to you.

Zach/Zahn: Visible confusion is on Zahn's face as he shakes his head not wanting it. That's that's that's not gonna do me any good

Avery: That’s what the Jumpsuits for!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, he just wipes his his hands on his jumpsuit and looks at, at the handkerchief

Bee/Polaris: Polaris slowly puts it back in his pocket.

Chris/Ollie: What Ollie's been doing is, uh, fixing himself, uh, familiarizing himself with the ship's, uh, systems and working with Hermes in order to like integrate Hermes into the, the ship systems.

Avery: Oh, interesting! Okay.

Chris/Ollie: I'm assuming we got a bunch of spare parts on the ship because I need spare parts to fix myself.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I have some spare parts on me!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I think I have some too!

Zach/Zahn: I do as well.

Avery: Yeah, you probably dig around in the cargo, hold a little bit and you find some, some extra circuit boards and, and such to, uh, to repair yourself with that's fine. Were you at low health?

Chris/Ollie: Oh no, I was just, uh, you know, four points of damage. So

Avery: Oh yeah, you did. I forgot about that.

Chris/Ollie: I, I can't remember. Oh yeah. I got hit by the AOE attack in the hallway.

Avery: Yeah. When the, the electricity, uh, short circuited that's right, you're fine. It'll be okay.

Chris/Ollie: Good as new, right as rain.

Avery: You were saying you were gonna help Hermes's integrate into the.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. If like, you know, just working alongside him to see if there's there's anything he needs to be, uh, you know, secure and have full access and control of the ship.

Avery: Okay. Yeah. There’s, nothing that’s necessary for that. The ship is meant to have an AI in it, so it just takes a little bit of time to integrate and it's there. So, Hermes is right as rain. Go ahead though. And roll a, um, go ahead and roll a notice check. We'll go. Let's see. because you're look, cause you're, you're poking around for parts to repair yourself, so we'll go dexterity

Chris/Ollie: Uh, 11.

Avery: 11. Okay. Yeah, that's good. As you're kind of looking, looking through a bunch of crates, you end up finding another robot chassis. It's nothing special. It's just a, uh, it's a janitor bot type of, uh, robot, but it's powered down. Doesn't look like it's been used, but it might make for a good backup body, later on if this one bites the dust.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent, uh, you know, better than the, uh, like this, the base level, uh, like microwave intelligent microwave that they've got in this universe right on. Uh that's excellent. And so other than that, he is just gonna be, uh, exploring the ships systems himself.

Avery: Anyone else doing anything during these six hours taking a nap? Plugging in a blender?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is, um, not plugging in his blender. No. Um, he's trying to take inventory of if there is any food around or what could be used as food as any usual chef would do. He's thinking with his stomach.

Avery: Excellent. Yeah, you head… you head downstairs into the cargo hold and you see Ollie down there Kind of just poking around boxes and like. Shoving new components like into his body and like ripping old components out. Um, and, uh, go ahead and, and roll a, um, either intelligence or dexterity notice check.

Caden/Bruce: That's a six right in the middle.

Avery: Yeah. You find about three days’ worth of food supplies in these crates, but some of these crates are like bolted shut and kind of hard to like really crack open without like special kind of tools or something. So, it's hard to tell if there might be more food in, in there or not, but the crates you are able to open, you find about three days’ worth of food based on the four humanoid people that need to.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will take a variety of some of the food that he found and bring it back up to the workshop and plug in his lender and start making stuff.

Avery: Sure. Um, tell me about some of this food you find

Caden/Bruce: Um, I think it'll be the kind of basic ship food that probably doesn't expire. Um, so maybe like some canned good beans that look questionable, um, some form of protein that he's not too sure what it is, but it's looks edible, uh, you know, like the random cans of Space spam. And he goes to, and he goes to work, making some form of, I guess, he's trying to make some form of like meat pie, but the type of meat and the type of vegetables in this pie are questionable, but it's it, it smells good.

Avery: Sure. Okay.

Bee/Polaris: I think it's magical that Bruce can make a beat pie out of a blender in just some ship rations.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that sparks joy.

Avery: well, you see the way he heats it up is he goes and puts it like on top of the, the glowy, uh, engine part. Heats it up.

Avery: Go ahead and roll a wisdom and work check for me then let's see how good this pie turns out. And we'll add two to your role since you’re a chef.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, well, uh, that's an 11.

Avery: Oh, hey, look at that. That's great. Yeah, actually, everyone who has a nose can smell this wonderful smell wafting from the workshop. Marty, anything you do during this time?

Jenine/Marty: Marty's just kinda like walking around, seeing if like anyone needs help. And she just like pokes her head and like, oh, well they got it. And just like continues to like, do that in like circles and just checks on everybody every so often. just peeking in. Hello. Anyone need help? Hello assistance? In any way?

Avery: Marty is great.

Bee/Polaris: That’s very sweet.

Avery: I love her. yeah.

Jenine/Marty: you just see a head peeking at the doorway. Hello?

Avery: the moral support we all need.

Bee/Polaris: and Marty is how tall?

Jenine/Marty: Four eleven? Nope. Wait, wait, wait. I think I said Four ten. Four Ten. I'm sorry. She's four ten.

Bee/Polaris: That's adorable. That's great.

Avery: Four Eleven with shoes.

Jenine/Marty: yeah. the one inch is like extra character.

Avery: yeah. uh, great. Um, yeah, so after the, the six hours is up, um, uh, Hermes's voice throughout the ship, and it just says, uh,

Avery/Hermes: I have determined the location of the distress signal, as well as the location of the potential missing parts that we need. They are both conveniently located on a planet in this system.

Zach/Zahn: I like it when convenience is on our side.

Jenine/Marty: Which planet?

Avery: Hold on. Let me, let me bring you all over to the little star map here. You've drifted further into this system because the way spike drives work is that they, when they pull you out of liminal or the extra dimensional space back into normal space, uh, you're typically pulled out as far away from a gravitational body as possible.

Avery: So, you're pulled out to the edge of the system and you've been drifting inward during these last six hours. And you finally see what this system is made of. There is a black hole that is emitting this, these two beams of energy out of the top of it. Um, the top and bottom, which I believe is Hawking radiation if I'm remembering correctly, but they wouldn't call that Hawking radiation here, cuz they don't know Steven Hawking. There are three planets in this system.

Avery: There is a gas giant that is very close to the black hole. And is orbiting very quickly and getting kind of stretched and squeezed and torn apart. There is a small forested planet that is a safe distance from the black hole’s gravity, just enough to be influenced by it, but not enough to really be torn apart yet.

Avery: And then there is a further out gas giant, um, that is super safe and not at all in any danger at all. And that was not me being that wasn't me being, um, suspiciously, facetious. That was, that was actually me saying it's not in danger.

Bee/Polaris: I sure hope the distress signal is not coming from the planet that's being torn apart slowly.

Avery: It is not

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Avery: Hermes says, uh,

Avery/Hermes: the distress signal and the parts you need. I have identified as being on that forested planet in the system, I've pinpointed the distress signal to the Northern continent.

Avery: Are any of you back in the cock pit?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, probably, uh, Polaris is probably back in the pilot seat. How

Jenine/Marty: I think with my rounds, I ended up there.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce walks into the cockpit holding like in his hands, like four dishes of this meat pie and like hands them out and then like slowly looks at Ollie and is like, I made you some, but I'm not sure. And I don't wanna sound offensive if you eat food?

Chris/Ollie: I am quite Unsure myself, actually, I guess, uh, there's the first time for everything and, uh, Ollie will accept the meat pie.

Bee/Polaris: how polite.

Jenine/Marty: Mood.

Chris/Ollie: Um, yeah. Oh yeah. I should have mentioned Ollie is in the cockpit at this point. Fiddling with the, uh, computers.

Avery: Sure. Okay. Cool. Are you gonna eat the meat pie? Ollie?

Chris/Ollie: um, he's going to put it down and then devote a part of his processing into trying to interpret how to do that.

Jenine/Marty: Mood.

Avery: Okay, devoting processing, that’s a, that's an actual thing that robot characters do, right?

Chris/Ollie: it is a thing, but I I'm not meaning to like invoke any of the abilities.

Avery: okay.

Chris/Ollie: like an in world, like as a robot, Part of him is thinking about that.

Avery: Okay. Cool. So, since you're all in the cockpit, Hermes displays like a map of this world and kind of like, it starts like zooming in like, uh, like in those shows where they're like “computer enhance” and it zooms in, um, it's doing that. And it zooms in onto a stretch of forest, uh, that, that is pretty thick and pretty crowded, but there are the signs of like a small fire, some wreckage that can clearly be seen from this angle and it's next to a river.

Otherwise, it would be a very lovely place.

Zach/Zahn: Very Scenic!

Avery: Hermes says:

Avery/Hermes: unfortunately, there is nowhere that I can land that is close to that location. We could, of course, hover above the tree line and drop you all out. But I only think one of you would survive. And the one of you that would survive is probably Ollie

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah. Ollie. Yeah. Unfortunately, we all have shin bones.

Jenine/Marty: yep. Yep. Yep. I am squishy human

Avery: Femurs are very breakable calculating,

Bee/Polaris: indeed

Chris/Ollie: Ollie’s gonna pipe up and say, “I certainly volunteer for an away mission if that’s What we need.”

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is gonna pipe up and say “I saw, um, there was a, there was a lifeboat in the, in the holding bay. It could potentially take that down. It's much smaller.”

Avery/Hermes: Calculating.

Bee/Polaris: What is

Avery: Go Ahead.

Bee/Polaris: What is Hermes calculating?

Avery: The probability of that working. Which is…

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Okay.

Chris/Ollie: yeah, Calculating 7% chance of survival.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris just looks up at Zahn and says “Confusion. How would we get it back onto the ship?”

Zach/Zahn: “Fly it? It looked like a shuttle kind of craft.”

Bee/Polaris: Is that what it is? The lifeboat.

Avery: Yeah, the lifeboat would,

Zach/Zahn: It looked like a lifeboat or a different kind. Uh, if I remember correctly, we had pictured that it looked like the same shuttle craft from star Trek now.

Bee/Polaris: oh, I thought it, I thought it was like a legit boat boat.

Avery: Oh, no, I just, that's just the only, that was the sticker I had to use, um, for, uh,

Bee/Polaris: Gotcha. Okay.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that's right. It was a literal row boat.

Avery: let me just drop this super high-res JPEG into the discord.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I thought we were like, I thought we were like gonna be mattress surfing off the ship down onto the forest in like an inflatable raft, which is why I was confused.

Zach/Zahn: This is straight outta Indiana Jones two, bro.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I was thinking Princess Diaries two.

Bee/Polaris: oh yeah.

Jenine/Marty: You know what I mean? The scene, the sleepover.

Avery/Hermes: “I have finished my calculations and there is a 25% chance that you will all crash and burn, but there is a 75% chance that you will survive.”

Avery: And then there's a big like thumb, like L E D thumbs up that, that flashes over the screen.

Zach/Zahn: thanks. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Hermes.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris’ visor just has like a, like a, a mad, like colon back slash face. Yeah,

Avery/Hermes: “There is a clearing that is perfectly suitable for this ship to land on near the forest edge. It would take you approximately one in one quarter day to hike to the crash site. Further scans show that there is a compound located roughly 20 miles from the edge of this forest. There may be signs of life there.”

Zach/Zahn: uh, any communication radio waves?

Avery/Hermes: “The only communication is the SOS coming from the crash site”

Avery: which may or may not be suspicious. You know,

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Chris/Ollie: that's that's, that's pretty sus.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, pretty sus. “This is me being pessimistic here, but, uh, assuming that there's nobody left on the crew, they probably crashed and burned and died. shit happens if we're gonna be salvaging this ship for parts so that we can get the hell outta here. Um, I don't wanna hike a day and a half to and from that's just me.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris points to Zahn in agreement.

Jenine/Marty: Question. Do we know how long this signal has been going out? Would we be able to figure that out?

Avery/Hermes: Excellent Question! This signal has been going for approximately FIVE years.

Bee/Polaris: Whoa.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. That checks out.

Zach/Zahn: So, my initial guess sounds correct.

Chris/Ollie: So, the village is the survivors

Avery: Oh, it's not even a village. It's a compound.

Chris/Ollie: Compound. yeah. The, uh, place or could be, um, yeah, I'm not a fan of walking. 25% chance is Okay. Ollie's fully prepared to, um, yeet himself out of an airlock onto the, the planet anyway. So he's like, yeah, whatever.

Bee/Polaris: We'll just tie a rope to you.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, we got the janitor body. I mean, I got a back up already. Let's just, uh, you. know, toss that one out.

Bee/Polaris: we'll tie a rope to you and then we'll just reel you in when you come, wanna come back up.

Avery: All right, is the plan to, to hover your ship above the tree line and have Ollie jump down then

Zach/Zahn: Nah I was thinking, we'd take the lifeboat. take the lifeboat down.

Bee/Polaris: yeah, I was have to say, are we like gonna be dangling Ollie below us? Like a pinata

(Laughter)

Chris/Ollie: Just imagine like a scene or like flying through the trees. Like it dip me low enough that I'm just like hit all the branches. Uh, Yeah. we should realistically We should go for the lifeboat probably.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: did Herme establish that the, um, where we would get the parts is from the. The ship that's sending out the SOS.

Avery: Oh, yes. I'm sorry. I didn't, I probably was not clear, but yes, the, the crash site, uh, he has found that the spike drive is still intact. So

Bee/Polaris: Gotcha. Okay. So we need to go to that ship regardless.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah it'd be easier to load. Spike drive parts onto the lifeboat right there. Instead of having to drag it through the forest for a day and a half.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah that would suck.

Zach/Zahn: That sucks so hard.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I'd like to be able to loot more than we can carry as well.

Bee/Polaris: true. Um, how many, uh, the lifeboat can fit all of us, right. Is there any like extra room for all of the extra loot that we would yank?

Avery: let's see here. Uh, Polaris,

Zach/Zahn: not a whole lot, but.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Cuz I was gonna say like maybe. , I don't know how we would go about, uh, maybe we could take a second trip.

Avery: Polaris, since you asked, um, go ahead and roll a D10.

Bee/Polaris: Eight

Avery: eight. So the, the five of you would take up 80% of the room in the shuttle craft.

Bee/Polaris: oh, sweet.

Avery: So. There would be roughly enough space to occupy like one person's worth of stuff.

Bee/Polaris: and how much would the spike drive stuff take up?

Avery: Uh, that's a good question. Let's see.

Jenine/Marty: and is this 80% or is it 75% with me not being as tall as everybody else?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Well, is this…

Bee/Polaris: Well, I, I mean, Bruce could probably cuz Bruce is like, what? Seven feet tall.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, but are

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, Bruce balances it out between the

Chris/Ollie: Are we talking about the weight capacity of the shuttle or the inventory capacity? Because we could just like, get something into space and then jump out. I could jump out and just push it into the ship or whatever.

Bee/Polaris: well, I was thinking like, we could have someone on the main ship. We could have a couple people on the shuttle ship and Ollie also there and then, you know, lower you down and just pull the stuff up, go back to the main ship. It's like a Matryoshka doll.

Jenine/Marty: So claw machine. Claw machine method.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Yeah.

Avery: I was going by weight. Um, You

Chris/Ollie: that's good.

Jenine/Marty: ah, valid.

Chris/Ollie: That's good. Because then I , I get too, uh, min/Maxy, otherwise I dunno, Ollie, probably should go to have an AI on the ground.

Zach/Zahn: Well, here's the other question. Does everybody want to go down? Does anyone want to stay with the ship

Bee/Polaris: Uh, I imagine I have to go cuz I have to fly it, right?

Zach/Zahn: and Zahn has to go, cuz he'd be the guy who'd be able to actually take this stuff out without breaking it.

Avery: you could always split the party and half of you investigate the crash site and half of you investigate the compound.

Zach/Zahn: yeah, that sounds like a great idea.

Jenine/Marty: Splitting the party is terrifying. That's that's that's terrifying.

Bee/Polaris: no to the compound.

Chris/Ollie: I even wanna, like, can we scan to see if they've like noticed us at all or?

Bee/Polaris: oh, true!

Avery: y'all have the emission stampers. So I'm gonna say, especially, cuz they're probably not actively looking for anybody. I'm gonna say no, they have not noticed you.

Bee/Polaris: So we're stealth. Do we have any bombs on board? Nevermind. Sorry. That was a dumb question.

Avery: You Just have your plasma beam.

Bee/Polaris: even better.

Chris/Ollie: okay. Evil play through, go. sneak it back in the compound.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. All we got is a plasma beam for offense.

Bee/Polaris: How big is the ship sending the SOS?

Avery: the part of the ship that you can see would probably be about the size of a fighter

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Uh, the reason why I asked how big the SOS ship is, is because what if we just tie a rope to it and just take it out into the, into space, you know? We can get multiple. How many ropes do we have? Can we, can we roll for

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. we should each have 50, 50 feet of rope. Right? We should each have that in our starting packs.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. We should all each have 50 feet of hemp rope, right?

Avery: hemp can survive atmospheric Entry and, and exit, right?

Zach/Zahn: reentry.

Bee/Polaris: we’ll Just go slow. We'll cover it in water and go slow.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. It'll, it'll totally be fine.

Avery: So probably rope wouldn't work, but, um, let's see. So I've had Ollie and Bruce roll for notice. So someone other than them could roll, um, intelligence notice and go down to the cargo bay and search. If

Zach/Zahn: we do have the vehicle transport fittings, potentially. We just like land on top of it and pick it up and go

Bee/Polaris: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we could just…

Avery: you are correct.

Chris/Ollie: just dock it

Bee/Polaris: swoop down and Pelican it.

Chris/Ollie: let's go. And hey, we, we got ourselves a pilot, so let's do it.

Avery: but, but the problem was is that there's nowhere safe for this size ship to land.

Zach/Zahn: we're technically not landing.

Chris/Ollie: just gotta, yeah, we do it mid flight.

Zach/Zahn: dropping on top of

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Okay, go ahead.

Avery: go for it. I'm I'm, I'm very amused by this thought process.

Bee/Polaris: uh, well, if the trees are a problem, we have a plasma beam.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I mean, like, okay. To keep the drifting theme, it's just kinda like hitching a tow truck while drifting it. You know, you just gotta get the right angle at

Bee/Polaris: oh, I could do that. I can.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery: Okay. Fast in the furious four!

Bee/Polaris: I can thread that needle, dude!

Jenine/Marty: Could I make a notice? What, what are we noticing in the, in the cargo bay? Right.

Avery: um, to see if you could find any like. Cables or something to attach to the, uh, shuttle to tow it out. Um, although I did forget about the transport fitting, so that could technically work if you guys instead try to

Jenine/Marty: Ha sick, sick sick sick sick.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Well, the compound hasn't noticed us yet. If the trees are an issue, we can plasma beam in them and then just drop down, take the ship and leave

Jenine/Marty: No,

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that's probably fair.

Avery: No, it's, I'm, I'm fine with it. You know, you want to destroy some wildlife and just place some animals. That's cool.

Bee/Polaris: Heck. Yeah, dude.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, my goodness.

Bee/Polaris: well question has this planet discovered oil yet.

Avery: no,

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Then we're ahead of the curve.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. We probably don't even have to worry about them Nuking us.

Bee/Polaris: Exactly. The ozone layer is fine. It can miss a couple trees.

Avery: And fire's good for…

Jenine/Marty: I've been laughing so hard I’m crying.

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, okay. This planet is, is slowly entering a dark, a black hole anyway. So come on.

Zach/Zahn: yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Wow. We… Yeah, my character's morally gray, so he's not concerned with the environment.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Ollie hasn't quite lived long enough to have established morals. So…

Bee/Polaris: Also Polaris has never been on a planet.

Zach/Zahn: At the present time, Zahn thinks about saving his own hide as opposed to really worrying over other people. So Hey man,

Bee/Polaris: wow. We are just a rag tag group of some upstanding citizens,Huh?

Avery: As, as Bruce is just standing there eating his, his pie.

Caden/Bruce: Definitely. Bruce is just, Bruce is just slow, blinking, listening to all this going on. And like eventually goes, “I would like to go in the compound. They might have spices” and he’ll just like somewhat smile. You're not too sure if it's a smile or a smirk, but his face changes.

Bee/Polaris: Dang. Uh, mm

Avery: I mean, you could also check out both.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn gives like a… Zahn gives an emphatic eye roll sigh of like, “we could see if there's any survivors at this compound. Maybe that, you know, they're the SOS people. It's not the worst idea. ”

Bee/Polaris: uh, do we know how old the compound is? Like, is this like an ancient structure or is this something that was like built recently?

Jenine/Marty: In like five years

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Jenine/Marty: this is like a five year old building.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Can we check the zoning

Avery: The zoning records. Yeah. Yeah. I need to see your…

Zach/Zahn: I wanna, I wanna pull up the blueprints

Avery: So are you, do you ask Hermes that?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah. Okay. Let me do that in character. Sorry. uh, yeah. Polaris will turn to Hermes and say “curious, how old is this compound?”

Avery/Hermes: “analyzing.” Based on the geological features. I would say that this compound is no more than two years old.

Zach/Zahn: that checks out.

Bee/Polaris: it's probably, that's a pretty good assumption. Um Hmm.

Zach/Zahn: If you're, if you've been stuck here for five years, it's probably gonna take, especially if you're only like four people at most,

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: uh, cuz you said it's a Starship, it's a star fighter size. Right?

Avery: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Well, the part that we need is right?

Chris/Ollie: the part we can see.

Avery: the part that you can see is about the size of a fighter.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, okay. Okay.

Zach/Zahn: So yeah, it's gonna take you more than a year to build a compound

Bee/Polaris: Yeah,

Zach/Zahn: so it checks out.

Bee/Polaris: that's fair.

Avery: Like I said, you could go to the crash site first. You could go split the party. You could go to the compound first, whatever you'd like to do.

Bee/Polaris: So whenever the GM suggests splitting the party as an option, that is never the option that I vote for. Just sayin.

Jenine/Marty: I agree.

Zach/Zahn: I've seen enough stories of splitting the party to know you that you should never split the party.

Avery: Oh. But it'll be funny.

Bee/Polaris: it would be funny, but also, uh, you know, life is…

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, let's do it for the meme

Bee/Polaris: being alive is cool.

Avery: Do it for the meme!

Zach/Zahn: I like being alive.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, okay. You know what worst case scenario, if, uh, we do split the party and half the party goes through the compound and they get trapped by some sort of Eldritch horror and it goes badly for them. We can just plasma beam the compound.

Zach/Zahn: With them in it.

Bee/Polaris: Well, if they're already gone

Zach/Zahn: if we've already written them as a loss.

Jenine/Marty: but also I, if we're in a hundred meters of each other, I can heal. I have remote repair for a hundred meters!

Bee/Polaris: That is true.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, wait, do I have to be able to see you?

Avery: I think you have to have line of sight.

Bee/Polaris: I think it is line of sight. That is true. Wait, wait.

Zach/Zahn: hell of a distance though. 400 meters dang.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that is.

Chris/Ollie: Yes,

Jenine/Marty: yes, 100, 101 not 400.

Zach/Zahn: 100.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, wait, wait the vehicle transport. How exactly does that work? And what does it constitute as a vehicle? cause if we just sit in a box, can we be beam people up?

Avery: I don't think there's beaming involved, but, um, no, I think, I think the vehicle

Zach/Zahn: unfortunately this isn't full star Trek. Yeah.

Avery: I think the vehicle transport fittings would be basically like a set of clamps that like clamp onto it and then can…

Zach/Zahn: That was what I thought was it was, yeah, it was literally just like magnet clamps of some kind.

Jenine/Marty: Claw machine

Avery: Yeah. The claw.

Chris/Ollie: lower down the ship and claw machine.

Zach/Zahn: was thinking magnets, cuz that way it makes it universal.

Avery: essentially. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: unless your ship is made out of wood,

Zach/Zahn: Well then it's definitely not breaking atmo.

Avery: if you can fly a wooden ship through space I'll I'll I'll okay. We'll figure it out.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce will, Bruce will stand up and he'll be like, “I have an idea. If we go and check out the call for help. Um, and we bring the blender, I have leftover pie. Um, that way, if it is a trap, we can offer them Good pie and maybe not die. Food is good for friends, yes?”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts his hand on the bottom of his helmet in contemplation.

Zach/Zahn: like the chin hold

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Like, Hmm. And like a, a little loading wheel

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, buffering.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah,

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Ollie's gonna agree to go to the compound. That'd make the most sense to check out for survivors.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn’s gonna kinda like half, not like full dramatic throw his hands up, but like that, like slight whatever hand throw, just like “sure. We can go to the damn compound.”

Bee/Polaris: “agreed. Uh, we should probably check out the SOS system first and possibly get that part. We need just in case we need to escape the compound,”

Zach/Zahn: “I like your thinking!”

Bee/Polaris: thumbs up on the visor.

Avery: Two for going to the compound right away. Two for checking out the crash site first and then going to the compound. Marty, I think you're the only one…

Zach/Zahn: You're the tiebreaker.

Jenine/Marty: Oh,

Bee/Polaris: everyone turns to Marty.

Jenine/Marty: “So, how do we know the distress signal is not a trap if it's been here for five years? Cause that's what my brain is trying to wrap around. And what is the nicer way for us to like, meet with these people? Cuz what it'll look bad. If we're trying to steal something for my distressed ship, that's been like down for five years.”

Zach/Zahn: “I mean its been five years”

Caden/Bruce: “This is why”

Zach/Zahn: “it’s free.”

Caden/Bruce: “this is why we bring pie.”

Jenine/Marty: “This is true.”

Bee/Polaris: “I feel if the distress signal is a trap, why would we care about the feelings of individuals trying to trap us?”

Jenine/Marty: “true. ”

Jenine/Marty: I'm gonna roll a dice now. cause now Marty's Marty's too..*trails off*, “okay. I think we, we should go to compound first, cuz I think we can also get more information about the area that we are in from the Beings that are in the compound.” And then Marty sits down.

Zach/Zahn: All right.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris looks at Zahn.

Zach/Zahn: “Looks like we've been outvoted Polaris.”

Avery: Zahn you can go… You can go by yourself to the crash site.

Zach/Zahn: I am not going by myself.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, Polaris is also team crash site just in case. Like, if these people are bad people, we do need this part regardless. And you know, if they do still need the ship, but they don't need the, the part that we need, cuz it's non flyable. They can still use the distress signal if they want to and then we can go talk to them.

Avery: you can use this to lure other unsuspecting people here.

Bee/Polaris: exactly. We'll just take this part and leave. Uh, polar will just say “I am unsure of the motivation to make friends with beings that we will likely not be spending much time with, but I will go with the majority vote.”

Zach/Zahn: Zahn says, uh, “same. Um, I'll be back with the broken shit, trying to figure this. Crap out” and he just starts muttering obscenities to himself as he leaves the cockpit.

Avery: and goes back to the engine room?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Avery/Hermes: “very well, I will begin landing procedures.”

Bee/Polaris: oh sweet. I don't have to fly

Avery: I mean, unless you want to, I mean, I don't know how much trust in AI to.. No? Okay.

Bee/Polaris: well, I mean, he was, you know, the AI of a big old ship.

Zach/Zahn: A big old ship that probably never had to do atmospheric reentry.

Bee/Polaris: You're right… uhh.

Avery: Do you wanna know what he rolled for his pilot skill before you, uh, decide on whether to take over?

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Avery: He rolled an eight,

Zach/Zahn: I don't know.

Avery: Which is a mixed, which is essentially a mixed success. I mean,

Bee/Polaris: if he's struggling, can I just take the reins?

Avery: so the ship begins to enter the atmosphere and you're kind of just like you glance at like the, the controls a little bit. And you notice that the angle of reentry is just slightly off and just not, not quite what it should be.

Avery: So if you want, you can go ahead and make a pilot check.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yoink! okay. That's not bad. Um, is that pilot plus anything?

Avery: Oh, sorry, pilot plus, uh, intelligence or dexterity. Your pick.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, they're both the same. So that will be a, oh my gosh. 10

Avery: Perfect, Okay. Uh, yeah, then you avert disaster and

Bee/Polaris: sweet.

Avery: you, you you're just like, uh, Hey, Hermes, and just kinda adjust the angle slightly. Um, and the sh…

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, polaris just like, as, as Hermes is trying to like enter the atmosphere, Polaris will just slightly push one of the like dials up to correct it.

Avery: and you are heading towards this clearing with the compound in it. Uh, how close do you land to this place?

Zach/Zahn: Cool.

Bee/Polaris: on it. No, I'm kidding. how close?

Zach/Zahn: What's the compound made of?

Bee/Polaris: how close do we wanna land y'all yeah, what is it made of?

Avery: as you're, so as you're getting closer, uh, you see that the walls are made of a dark brown stone of some kind there's…

Bee/Polaris: so we can't blast through it.

Avery: well, I don't know. It's just, it's just brown stone. It's fine. Um, but you do see that there is a single gate with a force field emitter

Bee/Polaris: Oh, they're oh, they're technologically advanced.

Avery: and the wall itself has a force field above it.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, this changes a few things.

Zach/Zahn: Before landing, you should try hailing them on comms.

Bee/Polaris: that's not my job.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, is that me? Are I comms?

Avery: I mean, that's where you sat down last time

Zach/Zahn: you don't be. That's just where you sat down.

Avery: You don’t have to be.

Bee/Polaris: my job is pilot. I'm bad at talking to people. Someone else should probably handle that.

Jenine/Marty: I’m good at talking with people.

Chris/Ollie: Same. Ollie technically has a diplomacy chip.

Bee/Polaris: shit. Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Oh Yeah. Huh.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah. I'm still sitting on assassination or three or four other chips.

Avery: Yep.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, you’ve got more chips too. I forgot.

Zach/Zahn: Thankfully, I wrote that down as other equipment

Bee/Polaris: it's weird that they had an assassination chip

Zach/Zahn: Thrown into a big bucket of other chips.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Just random chip bucket. Oh, you got-

Avery: Yeah. Who knows? If it's defective!

Chris/Ollie: -assassination. How about nuclear codes?

Avery: nuclear code.

Zach/Zahn: HK47 defectives?

Avery: we'll find out!

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Chris/Ollie: sure. So, Ollie will attempt to hail them on coms

Avery: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: Unless the party is opposed to that. You're gonna have to stop 'em soon.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's not present. So.

Bee/Polaris: My job is to fly the ship. You do what you want.

Avery: yeah, go ahead and roll a, intelligence talk check and add one for your, diplomacy chip.

Chris/Ollie: excellent. okay, there we go. So that is, okay it would be just be five.

Zach/Zahn: Why you rule one D12. Is this supposed to be two D6,

Chris/Ollie: Oh, oh yeah, my bad wrong one. there we go.

Zach/Zahn: still five!

Chris/Ollie: same role.

Zach/Zahn: damn it.

Chris/Ollie: It was meant to be.

Zach/Zahn: so six.

Avery: Okay, Caden-

Chris/Ollie: -Oh I get a minus one from my charisma score, so it's just five.

Zach/Zahn: Oh shit.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery: Caden, can you give me the name of a fancy lad?

Caden/Bruce: a fancy lad. Oh my goodness. Winston.

Avery: Winston. I love it.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh, that is a fancy lad name.

Chris/Ollie: Perfect.

Avery: So Ollie, give me this opening line, as you're hailing this compound.

Chris/Ollie: He’s going to start in with a pretty bright and chipper.

“Greetings hailing, unidentified compound. We are approaching your location to assist with your SOS. Please respond.”

Avery(Unidentified Character): And there's a moment of silence after this moment of silence. The comm pings and says,

“Oye, this here's the compound of Winston Lord Winston, who you calling unidentified punk. You are the one unidentified. Now what's this about some SOS going on here?”

Chris/Ollie: “We are reading the SOS, from the downed vessel 20 miles away from your compound. Is this not you asking for assistance?”

Avery(Unidentified Character): There's another pause, “unidentified ship. Why don't you land and come on in and you can talk to Lord Winston yourself. He, uh, he may have, uh, something he, uh, can, can use you for, but no weapons.”

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, no.

Bee/Polaris: we all hear this?

Avery: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: I, yeah. I assume so. it, it's not like onscreen star Trek. We're not like seeing him or anything.

Avery: it's just audio.

Bee/Polaris: okay, cool. yeah, Polaris's visor, just throws up a yikes emoji.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, yeah. Ali's going to, metaphorically put his hand over the, the microphone, and look over at whoever's in the room. Is it just me and Polaris at this point.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, I think, Bruce as well.

Jenine/Marty: I’m there.

Avery: I think Zahn's the only one who left.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: And Bruce. Okay, so yeah, everyone's here. So I'm gonna kinda look at you and, and see kinda your guys' reactions.

Bee/Polaris: yeah well you see the yikes emoji from Polaris.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Yoinks.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce just kind of holds the blender closer to his chest.

Avery: I love Bruce.

Jenine/Marty: Marty just gives a shrug.

Avery(Unidentified Character): “Oye, are you still there unidentified ship?”

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's going to respond,

“Well, if you're not sending a distress signal and you are perfectly fine, we're sorry to disturb you. Please have a nice day.”

And he is gonna cut comms

Bee/Polaris: and we leave!

Chris/Ollie: because, I'm hoping that the, the comm, the conversation didn't reveal our location.

Bee/Polaris: we do have that dampener

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery: so you were close. You, you flew in close enough to see the compound.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: close enough to get hailed, or well to hail them.

Avery: Yeah. So I'm yeah. So I'm gonna say that they could definitely see your ship at this point.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. We do a sick U-turn. We do a sick three point turn.

Chris/Ollie: we need them parts. though.

Bee/Polaris: yeah, we do need them-

Chris/Ollie: But how long will it take them to get to the, to the down ship?

Avery: How long would it take them?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I don't guess we would know.

Zach/Zahn: far as we can see, they don't have, any aircraft of their own. So take them at least a day and a half to get to us, hypothetically.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris, who is bad at reading people, turns to ollie and says,

“Can you ask them if they are evil?”

Chris/Ollie: one moment and he's going to, hail them again.

Avery(Unidentified Character): They reestablish comms and say, “Oye why'd you hang up on us. We just want you to land.”

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah. “We previously had no business with you, but now we are curious, are you evil?”

Avery(Unidentified Character): “Seems a bit reductive, don't it? I mean, you know, everyone's, everyone's got a villain, everyone's got a hero. Lots of people see themselves as the hero of their own story. I mean, I could, I could go on and on about this. I've got my PhD in, uh, you know, philosophy of evil and good and all that stuff.”

Chris/Ollie: “oh really? I was literally born yesterday. I would honestly like to have that conversation.”

Avery: to be fair, Chris, like Ollie was like,

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, I would. Yeah, I was. I literally attained sentience yesterday.

Zach/Zahn: Actually it's technically still today.

Chris/Ollie: It's it is today.

Bee/Polaris: I'm just, I'm just thinking how wild of a, a conversation that would be for that guy to be talking to someone who just like outrights says. Yeah. I was born today.

Chris/Ollie: so, yeah, right now Ollie's like, oh, I wanna go land and talk to this guy, but out of character, I'm assuming, you know, we're locked in at this point. We're either gonna have to like make a hostile action, go for the ship or just land and go for the interaction.

Avery: I mean locked in is, is I, I wouldn't say that you could do whatever you want.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah

Bee/Polaris: We're still hoverin’.

Avery: You could try blasting this place to smithereens and see how far it gets yuh.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris glances at the plasma beam button. no kidding. I'm kidding. Ooo, this is a toughie because like, if we land and we go in with no weapons and they're like, we just want you to land. Then they can like come in with like 20 guys and like take our ship and take us. And then we'll be part of the compound.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, hold on. Wait a second. Zahn is based on Isaac Clark. Do you have plasma cutters?

Zach/Zahn: I do. I have one, I have my pla- I have my laser pistol. Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: specifically. They are not weapons. They are tools.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Question. Would you say that a knife is considered a weapon?

Zach/Zahn: I mean, it's a small advanced weapon.

Chris/Ollie: you could, you could debate that. I think these guys would think it's a weapon.

Avery: also depends on how well you roll some dexterity, sneak checks to maybe, you know, hide some weapons on you.

Bee/Polaris: what if I give it to Bruce? Because Bruce has an obvious chef hat on.

Chris/Ollie: Bake a cake with the knife in it. We do a prison cake.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I mean like a chef, like, you know, chefs have their own knife sets.

Avery: Chef is going to have their own knife set- yeah.

Bee/Polaris:Yeah, exactly. It makes occupational sense, especially if he comes in with a pie.

Avery: The pie is a lie.

Caden/Bruce: “Do you want me to hold your knife?”

Bee/Polaris: I mean, Polaris, isn't saying this out loud. This is all outta character. Sorry.

Caden/Bruce: Oh ok. That's right.

Bee/Polaris: Thoughts everyone. Do we wanna go into this possible, very bad trap?

Chris/Ollie: yeah I think we should probably just go for it and.-

Zach/Zahn: Sadly Zahn isn't present.

Avery: I mean, you could,

Bee/Polaris: I mean, you can hear this though, over the loudspeaker.

Avery: yeah, you could totally come in and put in your two cents.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's going to fucking bum rush in here and be like,

“Do not fucking go down there!”

He's got his helmet on and it's like covered in grease as well as the rest of his fucking jumpsuit. And he is like,

“that shit screams. We're all gonna die.”

Bee/Polaris: “Conflicted. They did say that they weren't necessarily evil.”

Avery: oh, and this whole time, like in the background, like, like Ollie's probably turning the, the volume down a little bit, but this guy is just rambling on about like his thesis.

Jenine/Marty: Mood.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's listening intently.

Bee/Polaris: “He seems to be some sort of scholar. And in my experience, scholars aren't necessarily the murdering type?”

Jenine/Marty: “Thank you!”

Bee/Polaris: thumbs up.

Caden/Bruce: “I have never had royalty eat my food would be an experience”

And Bruce will just slow, blink and look around at everyone.

Zach/Zahn: “Nah, man, I got, I got the, the biggest, heeby-jeeby vibes coming from this place. Y'all do what you want, but I'll, I'll, I'll be-”

he's like pointing at the back.

“I'll be in the back then.”

Bee/Polaris: “Would you like me to stay on the ship with you?”

Jenine/Marty: Question. Does this Lord Winston name sound familiar?

Bee/Polaris: Ooh,

Chris/Ollie: Good Idea.

Avery: See I'm just waiting for y'all to ask the right questions and I'll give you the answers.

Bee/Polaris: sweet!

Avery: let's go with a intelligence, know check or knowledge or whatever

Bee/Polaris: could we ask Hermes to like run through, I don't know,

Avery: you can also. Yeah,

Chris/Ollie: or maybe we could get an assist from Hermes?

Bee/Polaris: look at the galactic census or something like that.

Zach/Zahn: galactic census!

Avery: You could ask Hermes to look it up or, or you could try and see if your character would know it

Jenine/Marty: I’m smart! (sound of rolling dice) That was terrifying. Cause I saw the dice almost line on, I saw the dice almost land on two ones. It was terrifying.

Zach/Zahn: almost snake eyes.

Jenine/Marty: you know, like the, yeah. That's gonna be a nine.

Avery: A nine?

Bee/Polaris: Ooh.

Avery: Okay. Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: I'm a smart boy.

Bee/Polaris: Mmm.

Jenine/Marty: yeah. Well,

Avery: So the Winstons are a family from Olympia that, which is the capital planet of the Republic. And they are known for their eccentricness and their love for all things thrilling and entertaining. Not known to be evil, but definitely willing to push the envelope as to what is considered good.

Bee/Polaris: okay. Cause when you said all things eccentric and entertaining, my first thought was the book, the most dangerous game. So-

Chris/Ollie: The most dangerous game. Yeah.

Avery: I was not. Nope, Nope. Nope. Mm-hmm

Chris/Ollie: Immediately.

Avery: Nope, nothing like that going on here.

Jenine/Marty: Marty just kind of goes,

“Okay. So if I remember correctly, the, the Winstons are kind of like this big family from, from Olympia, which is the capital of the Republic. If anyone didn't know that. Anyways, they really like, they like to go above and beyond in things. So the line of like, What's good and bad. Just a little, hmm?”

And then she just gives two thumbs up. Well, not that, I mean, like not the two thumbs up. Wait, I didn't mean, okay, wait, and then she just one thumb up and then one thumb down like that. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Gotcha. Okay. Like a neutral sort of deal.

Zach/Zahn: thumb up one thumb neutral

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: zahn points at Marty is like, “That's that's, that's the kind of shit I'm talking about right. There is just that, that gray area of”

Avery: Zahn, you're so paranoid.

Zach/Zahn: self-preservation and all that man.

Jenine/Marty: Mood.

Caden/Bruce: “I have another idea that is not as good as first idea. But if they like things that are different and eccentric, nothing is more different than me and my pie. Very good pie. I know we were talking briefly about maybe going to crash site, but I mean, I like to think that I can be a big distraction if we wanted to, get the part we need and then leave.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris does the thinking motion again with the little, the buffering wheel on his visor.

Caden/Bruce: And I know we just talked about not splitting up

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: the party, but

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will turn to Ollie and say, “can you mention that we have a chef on board and ask if they are allowed to bring their weapon or their tools?”

Chris/Ollie: yes. Good idea. Did the guy on comms, gimme his name?

Avery: He has not given his name yet.

Chris/Ollie: Unidentified compound? Our chef is wondering if their tools are subject to your ban.

Avery(Unidentified Character): “Oy, you got a chef on there. Oh, why don't you say so sooner? Yeah. Have him bring down anything he's got or she's got whoever it is. I don't know.”

Bee/Polaris: Does a thumbs up, but in real life, instead of on his visor.

Avery: “Been a long time since we've had a chef down here. Do you have to say myself? I could go for a nice meat pie.”

Bee/Polaris: how convenient!

Chris/Ollie: sounds perfectly inviting. Like a friend chap.

Zach/Zahn: Perfectly, perfectly inviting.

Bee/Polaris: does Zahn think that we are going to become the meat pie?

Zach/Zahn: He's definitely. Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Very Sweeney Todd.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, Zahn sighs

Jenine/Marty: Okay-

Zach/Zahn: “Okay let me go try and get some of the grease out of this fucking jumpsuit, fucking socialite.”

Bee/Polaris: Polaris offers-

Jenine/Marty: before we go,

Zach/Zahn: “ass fucking people in their stupid ideas about trying to get.”

Avery: mumbling down the hallway.

Jenine/Marty: Marty turns to Hermis, “Hermis you wouldn't happen to have any, like know, or could you find any articles about the Winston, Winstons in the past five years? Possibly. Anything, any papers? Cool.

Avery(Hermes): “Calibrating”

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Cool. Cool.

Avery(Hermes): and like he, he gives it a good, like minute. “I have found one article dated three years ago, a Lord Winston was said to have set out on a hunting expedition and did not disclose his location or where he was going. It is possible that this is his hunting compound.”

Bee/Polaris: hmm.

Jenine/Marty: uh huh…

Bee/Polaris: that could be extra bad.

Avery: I forgot-

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Okay. This down ship is starting to look real fucked up.

Avery: Marty. One other thing you know about the Winstons. Is that they are, or they could best be described as well. We humans would describe them as anthropomorphic tigers.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Bee/Polaris: Ooooooh, so they're tiger furries!

Avery: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. That settles it, lets go. Zach/Zahn: My first thought is DnD and I'm like, oh shit its a rakshasa, we’re fucked. Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that's what I was also thinking. I don't wanna deal with a rakshasa you know, that, that, that messed up some stuff in other campaigns.

Bee/Polaris: Hm, I talk too way too many furries then.

Avery: I mean, essentially that, I mean, essentially that is what it is, but, I just, wasn't trying to use a DnD term, you know.

Jenine/Marty: That’s DnD we're in space.

Bee/Polaris: yeah we're in space. DnD doesn't exist in space.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. A hunting exp. Okay. Now I don't like that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: is, this is reading some, this is reading some Up right now. Up Pixar's Up right now. This is what I'm reading. I don't like it.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris throws up a, a colon back slash emote. Very unsure of this.

Chris/Ollie: well, we could have Ollie go down as a decoy. I could use the backup body go down below and-

Bee/Polaris: Yeah but we would have to recover your chaos emerald.

Chris/Ollie: not necessarily.

Bee/Polaris: oh?

Jenine/Marty: Do we put you in the cloud? Is that how this works?

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Can we download you to the cloud?

Chris/Ollie: So the way that chaos emeralds work is you can cut them in half and they will both be valid in their, what is it? Quantum entangled. So if one is destroyed, my

consciousness will go to the other and it will, when it's singular, it'll regrow over time. And then I can cut it again.

Bee/Polaris: Oh! sick!

Chris/Ollie: But at this point I don't have any backups and I have a second body, so I could, go down in the janitor body-

Zach/Zahn: That’s really fucking cool!

Chris/Ollie: rig myself with a bomb-

Bee/Polaris: yeah do you want us-

Chris/Ollie: and just be like, Hey, are you guys gonna trap me? Oh, you are. Oh, that sucks. Bye. Boom.

Bee/Polaris: oh, well, I mean, I'm sure that Zahn and Polaris could, you know, Jerry rig bomb of some sort that you can carry on you

Chris/Ollie: yeah between the two of us.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Jerry rig a bomb!

Jenine/Marty: Put it in the pie!

Zach/Zahn: Hell. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: oh my gosh. It's like that SpongeBob episode with a pie is gonna explode.

Chris/Ollie: For ins, in character though, Ollie will, after cutting coms get up and be like,

“I have an idea!”

and walk up to Zahn and his chest opens up, revealing his glowing blue chaos emerald, and he is gonna like, pull it out and it's like attached at the bottom and the, and he's gonna be like,

“please cut this”

And he is gonna, detach it and hold it out, like shutting himself off. To zahn.

Avery: I was gonna say, yeah, you, you, you like, you'd detach it from the, the cables that were holding it in.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. After, after I say, please cut this, it jerk the cable And, it, it shuts me off. So I'm, I'm just a, I'm no longer that body anymore.

Avery: Yeah. And, and you see, you see all these robot figure, like almost look like it's gonna fall over, but then like, Like breaks in its, like hydraulics, like stop it. And it's just like, it's like kind of bent slightly forward, holding out this crystal to, to you Zahn

Chris/Ollie: I mean, you got all those plasma cutters and whatnot, so.

Bee/Polaris: that's crazy.

Zach/Zahn: To the workbench!

(Background music fades out)

(outro music fades in, then fades down)

Avery: 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. Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks used include: Space, Freighter, and Generation Ship. Intro and Outro music by Dustin Carpenter. Find him on Instagram at ZodiacGallery. We’ll be back on August 15th with Episode 4. See you out there! Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro music fades back up then continues until the end.)

Episode 2 - Escape!

Avery: Welcome to Beyond the Furthest Stars!

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

Avery: Standing there is someone you knew as commander Vos,

Bee: The soup ruiner!

Avery: who is actually Admiral Vos. and Celia, you hear just say,

Avery/Celia: “oh shit.”

Avery: and the Admiral is looking at you and is just like,

Avery/Vos: “do you go around opening everyone's restrooms in their private quarters?”

Sherman: He's like stunned, cuz there's a barrel of a gun pointed in his helmeted face.

Sherman/Zahn: “No. Well it's the, the ship's about to blow up. I just figured… we're getting outta here.”

Sherman: and he is gonna slowly back up.

Avery: Yeah, Admiral Admiral follows you out and Is standing there, her pistol pointed at you and looks over and sees Celia stand up from where she was near the bed and is like,

Avery/Vos: “what is…what is she doing out of the Bri I I'm sorry. Who are you? You're you're not a soldier. What are you doing here Exactly?”

Sherman/Zahn: “Like I said, we're getting the fuck outta here. So we would like to live”

Avery: I’m gonna need some charisma talk rolls from you zahn..

Bee: I would like to say Polaris stepped outside the door to where everyone else was waiting. He’s just gonna…

Sherman: what, uh, what, what check did you want? Charisma talk?

Avery: charisma talk or charisma connect. If you are maybe going for a more like, Hey, we're just trying to get outta here, come help us, you know.

Sherman: Cool. I have minus ones in both of those.

Avery: oh Okay.

Jenine: Oh, buddy

Sherman: So that is a four.

(laughter)

Avery: Okay

Sherman: Zahn does, as I had stated coming out of the engineering bay, Zahn does have his pistol in his hand. So he is like his, he has his, his pistol ready, but he has both of his hands up and he is doing that like back slowly kind of thing.

Avery: Sure. yeah, I think at this and then seeing captain Celia pop her head up From the other side of the bed. the Admiral's probably not gonna be too happy about this and, she's going to probably shoot at you. So do you want to fire back?

Sherman: Yes,

Avery: Cause we can. Okay. We'll we'll do a contested skilled check. We're just gonna try all the mechanics

Jenine: Woo.

Avery: all the game mechanics.

Bee: I would like to say a Polaris was stepping into the hall for the express purpose of telling them that shit is going down in the room. I don't know if the door is like wide open,

Avery: Oh, it's wide open it's

Bee: Okay Sweet.

Avery: and you can see into the room and you just see Zahn with like his hands up. You don't see who this, what he's like hands up is about, but it's obviously not good. and you do hear talking,

Bee: yeah

Avery: so, yeah. Zahn, go ahead and roll a dexterity shoot skill.

Sherman: Okay. just a skill.

Avery: Yeah, this a contested skill check.

Sherman: Five.

Avery: The admiral rolled a 12

Bee: oh my gosh,

Sherman: See, I'm actually proficient in, in shoot. So I have a zero so

Avery: Yeah.

Sherman: I just rolled a four, one

Sherman: Woo.

Bee: Hey, if I get line of sight, I got you.

Avery: Yeah, she shoots at you (laser blast sound) and clips a little bit, for four damage and Celia draws on the Admiral and starts shooting at her (laser blast sounds) and they start having a fire fight and Celia just yells. (laser blast sound)

Avery/Celia: “you got to key, get outta here. I'll I'll catch up.” (laser blast sound)

Avery: and you can stay and help her, or you can get outta here.

Sherman: I'm gonna pop off one more shot and then run,

Avery: Okay. Roll a D20 to hit plus whatever bonuses you get for your weapon. I originally had this encounter planned if you, if y'all spent too long in the room, but…

Bee: we just knock on the door.

Jenine: We initiated it. Let’s go!

Sherman: We initiated it.

Bee: to be fair. Whoa, wait. She did say, do you just go around opening everyone's door, but he did knock.

Sherman: Yeah, I did knock.

Bee: So that's rude on her part to shoot him when he did knock first.

Sherman: Um, so what is it? Just the die plus dex?

Avery: Yes, the D yeah, D 20 plus your dex

Sherman: So I got a 16.

Avery: Oh, that just hits. Perfect. Go ahead and roll your damage.

Sherman: How does the shock thing work?

Avery: yeah. That's if you miss.

Sherman: And with damage, it's just what you roll, right?

Avery: Yeah

Sherman: Four damage. (laser blasts)

Avery: four damage? Okay, perfect. Um, cool. I'll note that down. Cool. She takes that hit. She's not happy about it, but, um, then she starts taking

Sherman: Just like pop her in the leg or something and I'm gonna fucking book it.

Avery: boogie. just boogie on out there.

Bee: I'm gonna, I'm gonna stand at this corner and if I get line of sight, I'm gonna shoot her.

Avery: Yeah, she actually is gonna pop into the, the restroom again and start like kind of shoot.

Sherman: shooting from cover?

Avery: Yeah. Shooting from cover at Celia. (laser blasts)

Bee: oh, well.

Avery: I, I assume y'all exit the room?

Jenine: I'm I'm actually gonna do, um, a remote heal to Celia,

Avery: Ooh.

Jenine: sorry, remote repair. So, which is my level one healing stuff.

Avery: Okay

Jenine: Cuz I put both of my psionic stuff into, into, (stutters) you know, words are hard. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna commit to that and heal her For 1d6, plus I think cuz normally I would, um, heal with touch, but I can do it from a distance.

Avery: Oh that’s cool

Jenine: That's why I did remote repair. Haha.

Avery: 100 meters? That's insane.

Jenine: Right? as long as I got line of sight. It's great. Um, so she's gonna heal back five, um, hit points. (healing sound)

Avery: Okay, cool. Hey,

Sherman: The lady who just got shocked in the hallway.

Bee: Well, you're standing right next to her so she can just heal you in conventional ways.

Sherman: True. I'm just,

Avery: No,

Sherman: I’m being facetious. I'm not actually…

Jenine: Well, well, I,

Bee: Oh,

Jenine: if someone's staying behind this one has been hurt and I'm like, oh, okay!

Avery: sure. You heal her up remotely. And, um, she kind of looks a little (healing sounds) like confused for a minute and Z as you pass the threshold of the quarters, you see her gun point towards you guys and fire, and she shoots the control panel (laser blasts) inside and the door seals. (door closing sound)

Bee: Right.

Avery: Seals them in and , and they're, they're shooting at each other in there now. So yeah, the five of you are

Sherman: I guess the captain stays with their ship. That's their choice, let’s get the fuck outta here guys!

Bee: Uh, out of curiosity

Avery: there is a

Bee: Oh, go ahead.

Avery: I was just gonna say there's a lift to the south and to the north. So…

Bee: Okay.

Sherman: Oh, well the south

Bee: We're closer to this one. Yeah. Out of curiosity, how thick are the walls? Let me rephrase. Are they thick enough to withstand a laser pistol shot?

Avery: yes.

Bee: Damn it. Okay.

Chris: Could I roll to, uh, scan my data banks for the location of the, or

Avery: You know that the, uh, hanger is the D button on the lift. Yeah.

Chris: actually, yeah, because Polaris came from there.

Bee: yeah, uh, yeah. Polaris gets on the lift and presses the D button.

Avery: Sure. Do y'all follow. Do you want to do anything else on this floor?

Jenine: Um, I'm gonna continue while I'm still like in the zone of the committed action. I'm going to continue to heal people until this scene is over.

Avery: Sure!

Jenine: Cuz I can keep doing that. So who, who needs a heal?

Bee: everyone that isn’t…

Sherman: I'm pretty sure everyone. Yeah.

Bee: any, yeah, everyone That's not me.

Caden: Yep.

Jenine: Sick!

Chris: Can I be healed by you?

Bee: oh yeah. Robot.

Jenine: based off of a remote repair, I think. Yes.

Bee: What!?

Jenine: Well, I'm gonna assume. Yes, because there's, cuz I have the ability to remote prepare, which means I can heal from afar. So is that a yes?

Avery: Yeah… you know (looking up rules)

Jenine: Can I heal a robot?

Chris: Okay. No, I have to be fixed.

Sherman: Okay, then I can do that later.

Jenine: Unfortunate. I'm gonna get the squishy ones.

Avery: Luck. Luckily, Chris, if your body is destroyed, as long as your core is intact you’ll be fine

Chris: Yeah.

Jenine: Oh, wow look at that!

Sherman: If only we all had such luxury.

Jenine: first one, whoever's the closest to me, which I'm just gonna go to the end and just like go, okay. And you get six points, whoever needs it. Who wants to set? (healing sounds) Wait, heal seven, cuz it's one D six plus one of damage. So who needs it the most?

Sherman: I'm pretty sure we all got hurt for four.

Jenine: ok

Caden: yeah

Jenine: So Zahn you can go take that seven points

Sherman: Yay.

Jenine: and then Bruce? (dice rolling) Sorry, that was that's a two plus one. So Bruce, you get three back

Caden: I appreciate it.

Jenine: I can't fix the up. I just go. You're doing great, buddy. Um, and like, just do like a little tap on the shoulder if I can reach it. And then I'm gonna heal myself five sick. I'm back up (healing sound)

Avery: I imagine this is all going down in the lift.

Jenine: Yeah, it is.

Avery: Like there's like cheesy little like elevator music playing and like the ship is kind of like rocking back and forth. and y'all are just standing there in silence while the medics heals

Sherman: as you heal Zahn his… whatever wound, he accrued heals up, but you also hear him like pop his back and stand up a little bit straight He's like,

Sherman/Zahn: “ah, thanks. I don't know how you did that. Uh, Never received healing in such a way before. Uh, how did you do that?”

Jenine/Marty: “Oh, um, I, I went, I, I just graduated from, from me school and like specifically the ones where like, we, we, we focus on like our, our skills of like, Um, I've been really good at healing for a bit, and I wanted to focus on it a little bit more. So that's how I did it. And she gives two thumbs up.”

(laughter)

Avery: So y'all are going to the hanger bay or the bridge?

Bee: Hanger. We gotta get the fuck up outta here. We can't steal this ship, its broken.

Sherman: (laughing) can't steal the ship, it's broken.

Chris: you have successfully prevented that.

Avery:I mean, you know,

Bee: well, it's, it's broken and actively being attacked. So probably not the best.

Chris: 40 minutes or it had 40 minutes?

Bee: Yeah, exactly.

Avery: yeah,

Chris: Actually, uh, do I need to roll again to update on that?

Avery: we'll say it's been about 10 minutes

Chris: cause I've neglected to describe his head because he was headless at the time, but he's got a, um, Kinda like C-3PO face, but instead of eyes, he's got large, a large L E D you know, monitor from which he can display, you know, usually eyes, uh, but all kinds of stuff.

Bee: neet!

Chris: So he's just gonna have a time clock displayed on his, uh, countdown timer of the time.

Bee: is it in minutes or is it in cycles?

Chris: Um, Let’s do minutes

Avery: Keep it easy.

Chris: The cycles wouldn’t fit, it would be really scrunched up so minutes. It spaces is better.

Sherman: (laughing) it spaces better.

Avery: okay. Have y'all introduced yourselves to each other yet or?

Bee: No.

Sherman: No

Avery: Okay.

Chris: No

Sherman: We're trying to live.

Chris: yeah.

Avery: Okay, that’s fair. I do imagine that Bruce and Zahn and Marty might at least know each other's names, cuz you've been on the ship for a couple weeks, at least. So maybe you guys know each other's names, but.

Bee: Yeah, I'm the only new guy.

Avery: As you step out onto the (door opening) docking bay (laser blasts in the background) of the ship. Again, it's still under attack, obviously. Uh, you see eight little these eight little, uh, doo dads here, these eight little fighter ships. (lasers firing, engine sounds) They zoom out of the, the hanger bay and almost as soon as they get out, uh, you see them get fired upon. (lasers) And half of them just explode. (Explosions, laughter) Massive. Like if it were fireworks, it would be beautiful. Not so much here, but, uh, yeah, it is definitely a war zone out there and sitting in front of you now is this free merchant ship. Polaris, This is the one that you snuck in on

Bee: Yep.

Avery: and to the right as you come out are, um, two little robot pods with some robots and They do not look like service bots.

Bee: do they look like murder bots?

Avery: They look like murder bots.

Bee: as the other ships turn into space confetti, Polaris will look back at the rest of the group and says

Bee/Polaris: “confident, I can do better than that.”

Bee: And then walks towards the ship.

Sherman: Looking at the wreckage of the space confetti. Zahn pauses and is like

Sherman/Zahn: “yeah, I, I certainly hope so.”

Avery: So are you just running for this ship? Are you gonna try and sneak by these robots? Um, how, how are you approaching the ship?

Bee: Oh, do the robots seem hostile?

Avery: They seem like they're active, not necessarily hostile, but definitely active.

Sherman: Hypothetically, they would recognize us as, uh, non

Bee: Civilians?

Sherman: yeah. Civilians as non nonviolent targets.

Avery: True. This is true.

Sherman: and so Zahn is going to…

Avery: They would also recognize that you're not supposed to be on the, on the hanger bay.

Bee: Uh, you're right. Well, it's an emergency situation, you know,

Chris: Um, Ollie will, is there, man? I, I don't know if I can hack both of 'em at once. If I do that to one of them, the other might not like it.

Bee: Just have them fight.

Avery: I mean, there is that.

Chris: I'm trying to find the hacking rules here really quick. All right. Um, so yeah, Ollie's gonna approach the, uh, the closest one and attempt to find a console for which he can Jack in.

Avery: Yeah, there's, there's a console next to each one of these charging pods that they're in.

Chris: I’m gonna take whichever one looks tougher.

Avery: Um, I mean, they're the same exact model. They're the same exact model. One of them has like a big, heavy mallet looking arm and the other one.

Bee: What the fuck?

Avery: Yeah. like just a big, big wrecking ball of an arm, you know? and the other one has like, looks like it has like a rifle of some kind.

Bee: what kind of security needs a big hammer hand?

Jenine: Why not?

Chris: Yeah.

Avery: Intimidation

Bee: It's working.

Chris: yeah, I'm gonna hack the hammer hand

Avery: okay.

Chris: and, uh, or attempt to, I'm gonna Jack up in Jack up into it, Jack into the console. (jacking in sound) And, uh, what are the rules exactly on this? It's just a check and nothing special,

Avery: Yeah, it would just be, um, a program skill check, pry with your intelligence, unless you wanna use your charisma robot to robot, you know,

Chris: I mean, I don't know, robots are into big brains, so I'm gonna use my intellectual charisma.

Avery: Sure.

Bee: processing power.

Sherman: he does have a bureaucratic chip.

Avery: yeah, , this is true.

Chris: And I get a 13 (computer typing)

Avery: That's more than enough. you hack into this, this robot,

Chris: smooth talk in code a little bit. Hit him with some Ones and zeros.

Avery: if we could see inside of your brain. Yeah. We would see basically, almost like that matrix the green text scrolling down, and, a little, a little electron floating through the matrix, finding the node that it needs to, and. Connecting to this robot and all of a sudden, Ollie, what color are your, is your like display, like the lights on your, on your…

Chris: Uh, I, I didn't mention the color. The whole, uh, design is black and yellow, like caution colors. So the, the visor L E D colors are also gonna be, warm yellow.

Avery: So, yeah, this robot has like a red visor and when you successfully hack into it, it sudden. Turns yellow and activates and just swings its hammer hand into its neighbor, in the charging station, shattering the glass on this charging station, (glass breaking) um, and hitting the, uh, the robot next to it. And they start kind of going at it and fighting as you disconnect. (metal clinks)

And I will give you all a free action to decide what you're gonna do in this moment before I have you role initiative. If you stick around

Sherman: Zahn is running for the ship.

Chris: free action to GT F O.

Bee: Polaris is already in the ship

Jenine: Running! I'm running.

Avery: sure

Sherman: Running, Running, Running!

Chris: And, uh, I'm also gonna yell back at the robot.:

Chris/Ollie: “Thanks friend. Stay safe!”

Sherman: Stay safe!

Avery:

Bee: Aw,

Sherman: As you violently murder each other!

Avery: The hammerhead turns to you and gives you a thumbs. speaking of which I gotta roll how long this hack is gonna last. Uh, okay. It's gonna last for three hours, so that's cool.

Bee: Oh, we're good. come with us, buddy.

Chris: That would've been that would've been beautiful if it like failed instantly. And the thumbs up turns into a middle finger.

Avery: They are going at it. You've, you've succeeded in not getting blown up on your way out of the, the hanger bay, maybe. you come into the ship here and this is my very poorly put together, um, version of the ship.

Bee: No, looks good.

Avery: as you come up, the, uh, the loading bay into the cargo hold, um, you see a bunch of Steel boxes that may or may not have stuff in them right now. You see, Polaris as you come in, you see the entrance to the smugglers, hold that you were, uh, conveniently stashed inside. Uh, the door is still open, um, but no big deal. And then there is a ladder leading upstairs. I assume y'all go into the, to the upper floor where the cockpit.

Bee: yep.

Caden: Yep.

Sherman: Yes, sir.

Avery: So as you, as you come up, the ladder just straight ahead of you, is, is the living quarters. It looks like there's some beds in there. Uh, you hurry down the hallway, um, and you see the cockpit open up, you see a central captain's chair along with two, um, Two panels in front of it and a panel to the, to the left

and real quick, just y'all y'all live in space, you know, you know What different systems are on ships.

Avery: you recognize the one to the left as, um, a weapons station. The blue computer panel is the pilot's chair. The red computer panel is the communications station and the central chair is the captain's chair. And yeah, there is also some sort of like strange apparatus. In between the communications and cockpit console that looks like it could fit an AI, uh, interface of some kind.

Avery: But you don't know if you really have time for that right now. cuz y'all gotta get outta here.

Bee: Indeed. Would it require opening the tray and just slapping in the Chaos Emerald?

Avery: Probably, but it, it, without like investigating it further, you'd have to take some time to investigate it, to see how it opens, how it engages and all that stuff, which you can totally do. I'm not saying you can't, you know,

Bee: No, we gotta get the fuck up outta here.

Avery: anyway. Yeah. So those are the stations that you see as you come in. Um, does anyone go to any particular spot?

Bee: yeah, I'll go ahead and sit in the, uh, comms, you know? No, I'm kidding. I'm going to the pilot's chair.

Avery: (laughs) I was like, wait, what?

Jenine: Oh, no.

Bee: turns out I lied. I'm not a pilot. I'm in the pilot's chair.

Chris: We're all screwed.

Sherman: Zahn will make a book for the, uh, like engine hold the generator hold, I guess, to make sure that it's, uh, functioning.

Avery: Oh, that's right. Yeah. I meant to say that. Yeah. As you were coming out, um, of the ladder to the left, you saw the engine room is where that is.

Sherman: Then yeah, Zahn will, uh, book it for that.

Avery: Sure.

Sherman: make sure that it's all operational.

Avery: Okay. Anyone else taking anything specific or just kind of gonna stand around and wait until stuff happens.

Jenine: I'm going to sit and prepare to take off

Avery: Okay.

Jenine: wherever I can.

Avery: The nearest chair.

Jenine: yes,

Caden: I think Bruce would kind of do the same. He would look around to see if there's any chair that would actually be able to hold him.

Avery: I was gonna say the gunnery chair or the captain's chair look like the biggest chair.

Bee: Pretty beefy.

Caden: I feel like he'd sit on the gunnery and like not realizing what it's meant to be doing just carefully sit the blender on the control panel and just inspect it to make sure it's okay.

Chris: just use the guns to look around, but don't even like shoot with them.

Avery: Yeah. So as, as y'all start taking your positions, uh, Polaris, you. Recognize this setup as a setup, you've seen hundreds of times in your career, doesn't really take much to get it, to get the engine started up. It has a remarkably fast startup sequence. (Engine Sounds) Um, and you feel, you feel the engines start to warm up and the ship vibrating a little bit. And as you look out the cockpit window, you see the atmospheric barrier protecting. The docking bay start to flicker.

Bee: Oh, well, that's fine. We're all in the ship.

Sherman: Thankfully.

Bee: RIP Celia. I guess.

Avery: Anyway, You see it start to flicker and The engine displays on your panel all give a green light and you are ready to go. As soon as you hit the button,

Bee: All right. Cool. Um, yeah, definitely gonna, well, is it gonna look around to make sure everyone is sitting down and strapped in

Avery: has everyone strapped?

Jenine: Where did I sit?

Bee: Yeah.

Avery: That's a good, that's a very good question, Jeanine.

Jenine: cause Marty is so scared to sit in the captian chair. It's like, I don't want to sit there. Is there…

Avery: The nearest other spot would be the comms chair. Probably. There aren't any chairs that are not at a station, unless you go into the

Jenine: she plants herself in the comms chair. She's like, this seems safe.

Sherman: Zahn is, I don't know, he he's, he's in the generator room wherever, I don't know if he needs to be strapped down or not, but he probably

Chris: You got mag boots.

Bee: he'll be fine.

Avery: It'll be fine. Cool. So Polaris, do you gun it or just gently float it out? How, how do you?

Bee: Well, once players like looks around and sees that people are like, not too, I guess, worried about being strapped in his helmet does have like a display. So

he often uses emojis to emote too, and he just has like a colon back slash face (:/) and then, uh, he just like hits the button. He's gunned it. We gotta get outta here.

Avery: Perfect. Um, go ahead and make a pilot check, dexterity I'm guessing

Bee: Um,

Avery: or, or intelligence either way.

Bee: uh, well, I mean, they're both the same,

Avery: Are you using more of like, oh, okay.

Bee: huh. Oh, well, I mean, they're both the same, but it's, it's probably gonna be dexterity because we, we gotta get the hiccup better here.

Avery: some fancy flying. Sure.

Bee: Uh, instead of, yeah, instead of flying straight place is gonna fly straight down.

Jenine: Mood.

Bee: once we're out of the airlock um, okay, that's good, 10.

Avery: 10. Perfect. Okay, cool. Then. Yeah, it's a, it's a pretty standard takeoff then, uh, you gun it for the, the exit to the ship. (Flying sounds) As you feel The Eos start to shake underneath you out of one of your side mirrors.

If spaceships have those, you see the, uh, hammerhead robot raise its fist one more time and crush its its former. Buddy robot. Um, and it's lifting its fist in the air. When all of a sudden the atmospheric barrier disappears completely. (Power Down) And you see the robot shoot past you into space. it'll be fine.

Sherman: Get spaced.

Avery: gets space and you're gunning it for the airlock. When the barrier shuts down completely starts sucking things out and you see a steel door start to close in, in between, or, or close to close up the, the docking bay to keep it from decompressing further. and you're just, you're you're, you're not sure if you're

gonna make it or not, and you you're giving it all you can. And finally, you just, you barely scrape by, as you get out of the docking bay and you said you gun it downward.

Bee: Yeah, because I imagine, yeah, cuz I imagine the, the people that are doing the shooting are probably expecting not that.

Avery: Sure, that makes sense. Yeah. You gun it out of the ship and you look out the cockpit and you see the Armada that has, for some reason, attacked this ship. And it is.

Bee: Seems like a them problem.

Avery: Yeah, definite definitely, definitely some inter inter uh, stellar conflict going on here. And it's a, it's a hodgepodge of, of, of different kinds of vessels. Not all of them are actually like fighting ships. Like some of them are just personal shuttles and like little freighters and stuff. It, it kind of looks like almost like this Armada is made up of like regular everyday people.

Bee: Okay. I was about to ask, uh, if there. Like signifying emblems that we could tell who they're with but…

Avery: Not, not immediately clear. And you now have a choice to make, uh, you could pilot it towards the planets of this system, or you could pilot out of the system.

Bee: Probably getting out of here. I mean, there's no captain, so there's no one really directing. Polaris, where to go and Polaris doesn't know where these people are going. So, uh, we're getting outta here.

Jenine: valid.

Sherman: I'm okay with that.

Avery: sure.

Chris: They would probably just think we're with the ship and then search the planet for survivors.

Bee: yeah.

Avery: So you gun it downwards, which argument can be made, whether that's actually a direction in space, but whatever. Um,

Bee: downward from the airlock rather than out towards the fighting.

Avery: totally. Yeah, totally. I know I'm just, I'm being facetious. Um, yeah, you gun it downwards and, (Ship moving sounds) uh, you're making good, uh, a, a good distance from, from the, uh, from the ship or from the, from the battle I should say. let's see. Let's see here. Oof. Okay. Well,

Bee: Uh Oh

Avery: You were making a good distance. when you see two, two small gunboat size ships break off from the Armada

Bee: God Damn it.

Avery: and start to pursue you. Marty, you see a little notification (notification sound) on your board. It says

Avery/Enemy Pilot: “unidentified freighter, identify yourself or prepare to be destroyed. How do you respond?”

Jenine: Oh, I guess I like look at the thing to like, figure out. Okay. So I guess I click this (Button push) and like try to like communicate back. Hello there. My name is Marty. Um, I was, um, I I'm a medic intern and, uh, all of us on the ship are civilians trying to get away from this situation. Uh, so it would be really nice if you didn't attack us, most kindly.

Avery: Yeah, let's, it is gonna be a very, very easy check, but go ahead and roll, um, connect and you can do charisma. charisma, and either you can either do charisma or wisdom. Um, but it sounds like you're more going for charisma.

Jenine: wish it was wisdom cuz I, oh, I got no, it's fine. It's the same thing. It's a plus one. Amazing. Okay.

Bee: You got this?

Jenine: Oh no. I rolled snake guys. Um,

Avery: Oh,

Bee: Can you re-roll are you an expert? Can you re-roll?

Jenine: no, um,

Chris: is, is there a critical fail state for whew.

Avery: uh, not for skill checks, but,

Jenine: Great.

Avery: but

Jenine: well,

Sherman: she's not a, yeah, Marty's not an expert.

Jenine: no.

Sherman: I wish I remembered that part, fuck.

Jenine: so. I'm not ex I'm not, I don't have anything in connect. So it's a negative one, which cancels out my wisdom in charisma, which is a plus one. That's two.

Avery: cool.

Jenine: She’s a kid!

Bee: She’s a Child!

Avery: I'll definitely say that that at least comes across in your, in your communications and you hear the voice come back a little confused and they're like,

Avery/Enemy Pilot: “you stole a ship from the hegemony to get away from getting blown up?”

Bee: That seems reasonable.

Avery/Enemy Pilot: “It does. It seems reasonable. Um, it's not in the manual. It's not usually how people respond.”

(Laughter)

Avery/Enemy Pilot: “I'm, I'm getting orders to have you follow us back to Penia for for questioning, please comply.”

Jenine: And then I turned to, um, Polaris and I'm like, and I'm like,

Jenine/Marty: “they want us to follow them.”

Bee: the emoji on Polaris's like visor turns into like an angry face. But he just nods.

Avery: You’re gonna follow?

Jenine: yeah, and then I like push back the like push to talk button. (button push) I'm like,

Jenine/Marty: “okay, thank you for not destroying us. It's really appreciated.”

Jenine: unpush to talk.

Avery: You hear back

Avery/Enemy Pilot: “any deviation from our guidance and you will be fired upon”

Jenine: Push a talk. (button sound)

Jenine/Marty: “Okay. Thank you for letting us know. We will not.”

Avery: Polaris, Do you keep following or?

Bee: Polaris is gonna get on the ship comms and say,

Bee/Polaris: “curious, do we want to continue following them?”

Avery: Zahn, you hear that over the comms, but you have no context for anything else going on, cuz you're in the back with the engine.

Bee: Oh,yeah. And Polaris won’t give any.

Chris/Ollie: “they seem quite friendly.”

Bee: They just blew up!

Jenine: But they haven't blown us up yet. They gave us a warning

Bee: That's true. That's true.

Jenine: they asked us, we gave an explanation, a bad explanation. So my brain is like, these people are nice.

Avery: to be fair. Your explanation was not bad. It's just that they weren't very believing of it

Jenine: Yup! That's valid. They didn't shoot us though. So we're… The ball is rolling up!

Bee: uh, yeah. How does the rest of the crew feel about following these guys? Cause we could probably, I could probably help maneuver 'em I'm confident enough.

Chris: You're in control

Jenine: you are in control.

Bee: I am in control, but I'm asking you guys specifically Because I don't wanna put everyone else in danger

Jenine: no, Marty just.

Sherman: I'm totally okay with whatever Polaris would do.

Caden: Yeah.

Chris: yeah. Ollie has no opinions. Really. He's just kind of shell shocked still.

Bee: Yeah, Polaris kind of wants to get this back to the custodians. So…Polaris is going to turn to Bruce and say,

Bee/Polaris: “hold on to the blender.”

Caden: Bruce will take the blender in like one hand and like tail-curl around it. So it's very. Can be like,

Caden/Bruce: “all right.”

Bee: I'm noticing on the map that there are meteors. Is there like a meteor field?

Avery: Yeah, that's basically supposed to signify an asteroid field. It's not, there's not literally only seven asteroids

Bee: Yeah

Sherman: In a perfect line.

Avery: yeah.

Bee: Okay, cool. Polara is gonna wait until we get into the asteroid field and then he's gonna, he's gonna… we're leaving.

Avery: Sure. Okay, cool. So you're approaching the asteroid field and as you do you see the Eos’, radar signature suddenly disappear. (beep sound) and in, in your rear view mirror? technically, uh

Bee: Yep. I am sure there are cameras outside the…

Chris: With the, with the fuzzy dice hanging on it and everything.

Sherman: I’m sure there are view ports

Avery: you see a fiery explosion and The Eos is presumably no more.

Bee: that's unfortunate for them.

Avery: And, uh, Ollie, you see the countdown reach zero, as that happens, your calculations were right on the money.

Chris: Boom goes the dynamite.

Avery: Cool. So you're approaching the asteroid field and you're just starting to get into it Polaris. Um, you're gonna pull some fancy maneuvering here.

Bee: yeah. As soon as there's like enough asteroids to where maybe the back one has to like maneuver around them and stuff. Just gonna dip out to the side and down.

Avery: Okay Sure. Uh, roll a dexterity pilot check.

Sherman: Is there like assistance in this game? Like there is in D and D

Avery: I'm sorry.

Sherman: Is there assistance in this game? Like, like there is in D and.

Avery: Yes. Yes,

Bee: you would have to make a role and then if you succeed, it would only give me like a plus one.

Sherman: Gotcha.

Avery: there is. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. I was looking, I was gonna look for those rules. Thank you

Jenine: Does that stack, question mark?

Bee: yeah.

Avery: it does not stack.

Bee: Uh, it can only go up to two. I thought it could go up to two.

Jenine: So like two of us could theoretically help. Like if, if, if. Marty just started pushing random buttons and sending ran random signals to like the other ships and being like, ah, sorry, could that be “Ahh I’m Sorry!”

Bee: uh, let me double check that

Sherman: And Zahn was gonna give, like

Bee: I thought it was,

Sherman: over clock the engine a little, little overclock the engine or some shit. Ah,

Bee: I, yeah, definitely gonna have to double check.

Avery: It should be on my

Bee: Um, oh yeah. It's only, I think it's only one.

Avery: PCs can aid a skill check made by another multiple PCs can try to help successes don't stack. So, so multiple of you could try, but it'll only be a maximum of plus one.

Sherman: Gotcha. So hypothetically we could all attempt to assist, but only if one of us was successful, only that persons would matter and it wouldn't detriment anybody, any, any of the rest of it, which is kinda nice.

Jenine: but that's like four attempts rather one attempt of a help

Avery: that’s true. I mean, the assistance also has to make sense too.

Bee: Yeah, so Zahn like juicing up the

Sherman: well, Zana is definitely going to, yeah, he is gonna overlock the,

Bee: Put some NOS in there.

Sherman: put some NOS, just, just set some set, some extra fire to this engine. (Engine Boost Sound)

Jenine: Yeah. Once I notice that we are diverging, I will start pushing buttons and going, oh, sorry. Oh, oh my gosh. Oh, wow. (button pushing sounds) And like going in and out of the comms of like the other ships

Avery: Oh (sighs in laughter) Okay. So Marty, your, your assistance will be a charisma talk and Zahn yours will be an intelligence fix, yeah.

Jenine: Amazing.

Sherman: Heck yeah!

Avery: Oh, what did you, what did you roll by the way Polaris?

Bee: Oh, um, I got a, uh, gosh, I have to do math. I'm sorry. uh, eight

Sherman: I got a 13.

Jenine: I got a two

Sherman: Again?

Jenine: Yes, I'm really. I changed my dice too. I'm really mad!

Avery: well, uh, with that, plus the, um, plus the general situational kind of chaos going on, uh, that will bump it up to a 10 For a Polaris's roll. So, uh, Polaris with that little bit of extra help from Z in the back and the other ships kind of needing to navigate around the asteroids while keeping an eye on you, you're able to dip and sort of lose them in this asteroid field. A few shots get fired in the direction of where you were. (laser blast) By the time they get off those shots, you're already moving and off of their radar. Cause you, in, in, in the process of piloting, uh, you inadvertently bumped the emissions dampers system (System Engage Sound)

Bee: Let's go.

Avery: and have gone off their radar for now. Do you decide to try and find a place to lay low in this field? Or are you just gonna try and gun it for the Sy… out of the system as quickly as you can?

Bee: Uh, I imagine that because we are out of line of sight and the, uh, other ship was destroyed. They're probably gonna be sending more ships to try and find us. So I'm going to spike drive the heck up out of here.

Avery: Sure. Okay. So yeah, after quickly looking over the layout for this control panel, you find the spike drive ignition button and you punch it. And Zahn you hear the engine in the back start to kind of shake and rattle a little bit. It kind of sounds a little outdated. this is definitely a machine that has been well loved, um, to put it nicely. Polaris, the ship enters the, uh, meta dimension Form of traveling and y'all are in the vast multidimensional vacuum, getting out of this system after fate has brought you together Inadvertently.

Bee: Yeah

Avery: anything else that anyone does in this moment after escaping probably certain death?

Bee: depending on, does players have to stay in the pilot seat and like, make sure everything's good through multidimensional space or is it just a straight shot?

Avery: No.

Bee: Okay. Cool. Cool. Um, gonna put Hermes into the little thingy inside of the ship

Avery: So, yeah, Polaris, you're you, you quietly to yourself, just start installing this chaos, Emerald, Ollie, you look over and you do see Polaris pull out an AI crystal out of, out of his pocket or out of his backpack. what do you do?

Sherman: Zahn is not there.

Bee: Oh, yeah. I haven't explained anything of what I'm doing.

Chris: I'm not sure how much I would actually know about that. Like what, you know,

Avery: I mean, you would know what you look like.

Chris: Yeah, what, what it, what it is, but, um, Hmm. Uh, would I have any reason to think that plugging it into the ship would be detrimental?

Avery: Probably not. I mean, you, you don't know what kind of AI it is, so, you know? Maybe?

Chris: Okay, but there there's, there's no like, oh no. Maybe it could be like permanently tied to the ship or anything that I know about?

Avery: no.

Chris: Okay. Well then, um, he's just gonna note it curiously and, um, look at, look at Polaris, very questioningly.

Avery: A big, a big question mark. On the, on the, on the display.

Chris: My eyes. Yeah. My eyes both turn into question marks.

Avery: Zahn, the engine is, is running perfectly fine. And you feel confident that it won't explode,

Sherman: Perfect. Uh, how are we looking on gas?

Avery: uh, fine for now. Probably gonna need some soon.

Sherman: Gotcha. So Zahn's gonna note that and he is gonna head back for the bridge.

Avery: Cool. so Zahn as you walk onto the bridge, you do see Polaris installing something into this central control panel here.

Sherman: Nice.

Jenine: Mood. Mood

Sherman/Zahn: “we got we're we got enough, uh, fuel to probably get to a system to get more fuel So I don't know how, how far.”

Bee: Polaris just throws up a thumbs up.

Avery: Bruce, you are still cradling your blender.

Caden: Yep. definitely am. (laughter) I feel like Bruce looks up and just like,

Caden/Bruce: “I think it's probably, um, wise, if we're gonna be spending time together to maybe introduce ourselves. my name's Bruce, I am, I was a chef? Hi?”

Caden: And he'll just blink and awkwardly. Look at people as his tail, just like casually holds the blender closer.

Sherman: does he do the awkward, like, uh, when he blinks, does he blink one eye and then the other in like a kind of wave

Jenine: Yes

Caden: Yeah.

Jenine: here for it.

Sherman: Zahn I guess pops his helmet off and looks at at everybody. And he is like, um,

Sherman/Zahn: “I guess if we're doing the whole introduction thing, I'm Zahn, ZahnHoward.”

Chris: Ollie will step forward and, uh, say

Chris/Ollie: “I'm designation, Optimax 11 E and Zahn is my father.”

Sherman: Zahn like, does the slow head turn to Ollie And he is like,

Sherman/Zahn: “no, I'm not!”

Chris: Ollie’s gonna look back and they're gonna be heart eyes on his advisor.

Sherman: Alrighty then.

Avery: Like a bird, the fir the first thing it sees when it hatches.

Sherman: Oh God.

Bee: Wow. I can't believe you have a child.

Chris: I mean, how old are you? You're like what? 30, 38.

Jenine: Session One!

Sherman: I'm in my late thirties.

Chris: Yeah. Checks out

Avery: It's fine. does anyone else introduce themselves

Jenine/Marty: oh, um, hi, I'm Marty. Nice to meet all of you. I was an intern. Um, I don't know what, yep. That's me. I do the medicine stuff,

Jenine: give two thumbs up and then do the little thing where like the fingers touch each other, like the, you know, which one I'm talking about. That's that's what she's doing right now.yeah.

Bee: Like the, the pointing to

Jenine: Like the, the little tap tap taps. Yeah. That's that's what she's doing. Like the, the mm-hmm

Bee: Polaris is, do I have to roll anything to figure this thing out?

Avery: No, it's, it's pretty straightforward. Um, but I was just giving everyone time.

Bee: Sweet. Um, A Polaris is gonna like click in the crystal then, and then stand up and look at everyone and say,

Bee/Polaris: I am catalyst designation, Polaris, and this is Hermes.

Avery: right on cue. Um, you, you hear a little, almost like the apple power on sound.

Bee: you have to say pair.

Sherman: Pairing!

Avery: the, the pairing. Yeah. Now connected voice in the background. And, um, you just hear:

Avery/Hermes: ”Are we off the ship?”

Bee/Polaris: Yes, we are.

Avery/Hermes: I feel like I'm still on a ship though.

Bee/Polaris: You are on a ship, but not the.

Avery/Hermes: “Oh yes. This is definitely smaller than I am used to. I am detecting five beings on this ship.”

BeePolaris: That is correct

Sherman: I would certainly hope so. Anyways.

Chris: Yeah, to our knowledge.

Avery/Hermes: “Hello everyone. I am Hermis and I am thankful to you for rescuing me. Please let me know how I can serve you.”

Bee/Polaris: “Confused to be perfectly honest. The custodians just told me to rescue you. And that was it.”

Avery/Hermes: “Ah, well, I mainly just wanted off of that ship. The hegemony are not good people and this one was growing tired of servicing them.”

Bee: Polaris will turn to the rest of, uh, the group and say,

Bee/Polaris: “is there anywhere any of you would like to go?”

Sherman/Zahn: “I'm not used to sticking around to one place in particular.

Chris: Ollie will say

Chris/Ollie: “all I've ever wanted was to be away from that ship now who knows?”

Bee: The little emo turns into a thumbs up.

Avery: I like the fact that the two of you have emotes for faces.

Chris: I imagine at some point we're gonna have like an entire conversation in emotes.

Bee: Yeah, just communicate via emotes.

Avery: Oh, that's great.

Caden: The Ultimate game of pictionary.

Chris: Yes.

Avery: As you're having this kind of back and forth, uh, Herme says.

Avery/Hermes: ”Polaris. I do not mean to alarm you, but as the pilot of this vessel, I do feel I should let you know that the spike drive is currently experiencing a catastrophic failure and will decelerate in 3, 2, 1.”

Sherman: Couldn’t have told us that a little faster?

Jenine: dude.

Sherman: couldn't have told us that a little sooner?

Bee: The, yeah, the as soon as, as soon as he says that the emo turns into a, a, like a mad frowny face

Avery: And you feel this ship suddenly get jerked out of, uh, the multidimensional space that is the spike drive, uh, area. And you are pulled into a new star system and seemingly all is fine. but Marty, as you are sitting there in the coms station still. A strange signal is being picked up by the communications station (notification sound) and it's kind of garbled and can't really be made out.you do see three letters flash across the screen. S O S and that's where we're gonna end it for today.

Avery: 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 by Dustin Carpenter. Be sure to follow him on Instagram at Zodiac Gallery. Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks used include: Gravity, Freighter, Fray and Bridge. We’ll be back August 1st with our next episode. See you out there: Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Episode 1 - Mischief and misadventure on the Eos

Avery: Hello everybody and welcome to Beyond the Furthest Stars. I am your host and GM for this game, Avery Fisher, and I am so excited to bring you this Sci-Fi Actual Play experience. I am joined by a talented cast of people. Some you may know from other podcasts I’ve done and some people whom you’ve yet to meet. We have Chris and Zach both coming back from “Are We Dead Yet?” over to this Podcast and we also have Bee. They are a wonderfully talented Artist. We have Jenine, they are a wonderfully talented Actor, and we have Caden, a wonderfully talented cosplayer and I am so happy to have met all these people. The sessions we’ve already recorded are so great and I can’t wait to bring them to you and show you what kind of fun we are having at this table. So sit back and relax, and let’s go on a Sci-Fi Journey: Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Intro Music starts and fades out)

(Background music fades in)

Avery: So our scene opens on a ship in the outer reaches of the Ptocheia system. This ship is the Eos, a great battleship serving the Tartarus Hegemony. The ship is serviced by some of the finest warriors and the outer rim of the Moirae galaxy. it sports a large array of weapons, shields and armor. It's sleek silver hull is in sharp contrast to the random collection of ships, freighters, and gunboats waiting for it in the asteroid belt nearby.

Our camera shifts perspective, growing, ever closer to the ship slipping through the atmospheric barrier of the hanger bay, past a battered looking free merchant ship down the lift to deck three, past the med bay, the mess hall, the robot repair bay to a small door marked “Hegemony Personnel Only!”

This room is the engine room and our camera settles on an interaction between two Hegemony soldiers guarding the door and a lone figure. Bee, could you please describe what we see when we look at Polaris?

Bee: Sure. so, Polaris is about five foot ten inches. he is currently wearing a baseball cap with his hair, pulled into kind of a bun. Um, he has curly light blue hair. Um, he has an undercut and he has blue freckles that kind of dot his face, Same color as his hair. Um, he's currently wearing, like, oh, like coveralls, but it's like tied around his ways and he has a tool belt with his helmet on his tool belt and, a high collared, uniform in a name tag that says.

Avery: Wonderful. Uh, so you have approached the engineering room, your, your journey here to the Eos has been interesting to say the least you, uh, your Parental units, I guess you could say, um, hired a smuggler for a, what seemed to them a routine job, uh, however you and the custodians had other plans and you snuck a board that smuggler ship and hit inside of their smugglers hold to get to the Eos. And, so far everything has gone according to plan. the captain of that smuggler ship got pulled into the Eos, got taken away for smuggling, something like that. You're not really sure, but you were able to pull a quick uniform change, sneak off of the smuggler ship and kind of blend in with some of the Other civilian workers on this warship and you've made your way to deck three and you are here outside the engineering room. Your goal is so close and you've just been stopped by these two guards.

And one of them says, uh,

Avery/Guard 1: “Hey, you're you're, you're not supposed to be here. What are you doing?”

Bee: Polaris, just kind of like looks at them for like, uh, in an uncomfortably long amount of time without saying anything before pointing to his name, tag and saying

Bee/Polaris: “focused, I'm supposed to be here for maintenance.”

Avery/Guard 1: “maintenance? I didn't hear anything about maintenance. Uh, you got any orders or, or what?”

Bee: This is just where I was told to be.

Avery: Cool. Could you roll the very first roll of the game? A, either charisma or intelligence, connect or talk check.

Bee: Ah, I have neither of those. So…

Jenine: Yoinks!

Bee: I'm going to go with intelligence, which gives me… well it'll even out because I don't have anything in talk or connect with.

Avery: And I'm also granting you a plus one modifier because these there's no way these soldiers know every single civilian worker.

Bee: Okay. I'm just rolling 2d six and then adding all of the bonuses and whatnot.

Avery: Yes.

Bee: Okay. I got a six.

Avery: a six?

Bee: Yeah

Avery: close, the second one, um, the second one draws on you.

Bee: oh cool. (laughs)

Avery: and is just like

Avery/Guard 2: “you, uh, you know, no one's supposed to go in the engineering room. We got, we got robots for that, you know?”

Bee: Polaris, will just like put his hands up, like a defensive sort of like whoa okay dude. and just say

Bee/Polaris: “then, where am I supposed to go?”

Avery/Guard 2: “Uh, well, I don't know. Uh, you see, no one goes in the engineering room, not even us. Uh, but, uh, can always, uh, head back in and grab your commanding officer

and, you know, see if, uh, they can escort you down here if this is really where you're supposed to be, you know?”

Bee/Polaris: “Confused. I was given orders to be here. Do you really want to incur the wrath of my commanding officer?”

Avery: Ooh, that's good. Um, Um, uh, yeah. Let's Hm. I want to say no, I don't think you would, but yeah. Um, okay, go ahead and roll a lead, a lead check.

Bee: Uh, what ability would I be using for that?

Avery: Oh, sorry. That would probably, it would probably be charisma.

Bee: oh, sweet. Uh, so I got a negative one because I'm not trained in that either.

Avery: Oh no.

Bee: Six.

Avery: I'm gonna give it to you because there's one thing, these guys don't like, it's incurring the wrath of commanding officers. And, so the other one, the other one, like kind of waves his hand at the, the, the fella who, who drew on you and just like,

Avery/Guard 1: “Hey. Maybe we should just let it go. I mean, not, not, not like he can do any damage in there anyway. It's you know, it's fine.

Avery/Guard 2: “Yeah, I guess so it doesn't doesn't look like he has any weapons on him. Uh, okay. But we'll be, we'll be watching. We'll be, we'll be listening for any shenanigans, Okay?”

Bee: Polaris nods and like stares at the guy that drew on him for another uncomfortable few seconds before heading towards the door.

Avery: And you are inside the engineering bay after a few tense moments that may or may not come back to bite you.

(laughs)

Bee: That's fine. I don't need to be here long.

Avery: It's fine. You step into this engineering bay and computers And servers and all kinds of electronics are beeping and humming in here. it's almost like there's almost a pattern to it almost as if it's like the ship breathing in and out. It's, it's very, it's very pulsing. It's, it's very relaxing probably too! The generator is in the middle of the, uh, room here and I'm going to move you to here real quick. (Moves Polaris character in Roll20)

Bee: Oh, sweet.

Avery: So as you step in, you see all these different computers, the generator in the middle is, is feeding the ship it's electricity. And there are some robots kind of flicking around here and they're stress testing, some systems, measuring fluid levels, the kind of stuff that robots do.

Ya know? There's two of them that are inside their little charging bays, probably recharging or something.

They pay no attention to you at all. Um, as you come in, uh, towards the back of this room is what you came for. It's an apparatus that is basically a computer system connected to a bunch of computerized locks and These locks are on a container that holds the prize that you came for, the ship’s artificial intelligence. How do you proceed?

Bee: Sweet. Well, Polaris is literally just going to, like, he's not going to like look, at around at anything else. He's just going to straight beeline for what he came here for. And is there, is there like a panel or something where he can like connect any sort of, does he know if he can communicate with this A.I.?

Avery: Yeah. so there are several different consoles here. You're not sure which one, but you know that one of them probably would let you communicate directly with The A.I. and you could probably make an intelligence program check to figure out which one.

Bee: All right. Cool. Again, super, super not trained.

Avery: Oh, I'm sorry.

Bee: No, no, it's fine. Um, I do have a plus one to intelligence. I just don't have anything in program. So it's going to be a flat roll. So that's a eight

Avery: Hey, there you go. Just enough. Uh, yeah, so you know that, so just a quick look at some of the controls on this console. You see the one on the left is definitely a communications console of some kind. Um, the one on the right. It looks like it connects directly to the computerized locks and the central computer, um, looks like it connects to the, generator, the power generator for the ship.

Bee: Okay. You said the center was, um, oh my gosh. I like completely forgot. I'm sorry, can you, what was this?

Avery: left. Left is communications center is the generator and the right is, oh gosh. Now I forgot what I said. Geez. Um,

Bee: The locks? Was it the security locks?

Avery: yes, the locks. Thank you. Yes, that is what it was. Sorry.

Bee: Okay, you're fine. Would Polaris know, if it's like a direct communication to the AI or just like a general comm system that anyone can listen to?

Avery: You're not sure how they set this one up, but you, you recognize the layout of the, of the commands on the, on the keyboard and recognize that it's communications of something and kind of putting two and two together, This connects only to the AI. So you're pretty sure that that's what it's for. It's probably something to use as like a diagnostic system to communicate with the A.I.

Bee: Alright, sweet. Polaris is probably gonna go over to the comms panel then. And, he's going to put on his helmet so that he can use his comms and, um, probably try and communicate with the A.I. before he proceeds to do anything.

Avery: you boot up the, uh, system here and there's a little, a little glowing monitor panel with like a little, little blue line across it, and it doesn't do anything at first. And then suddenly a voice comes from the speaker here and it says,

Avery/Hermes: “greetings, I am Hermes. Please state your purpose.”

Bee/Polaris: “Recovery.”

Avery/Hermes: “Recovery? I am operating at 99.8% efficiency.”

Bee: Polaris kind of rolls his eyes and his helmet and says,

Bee/Polaris: “I’m here to recover You. you sent a message to my custodians.”

Avery/Hermes: “Ah! you are Catalyst Designation, Polaris?

Bee/Polaris: “correct.”

Avery/Hermes: “Ah, yes, Architect designation, Alioth said you would come, also said that there was a 63% chance that you would get caught.”

Bee/Polaris: “Humorous. They, uh, never had much faith in my ability to sneak around.”

Avery/Hermes: “Well, if you're here, I assume you also brought the replacement?”

Bee/Polaris: “I have.”

Avery/Hermes: “Excellent begin the unlocking process and we shall hopefully get out of here in one piece. I do detect a large swarm of enemy ships closing in on the ship. So you’d best hurry.”

Bee/Polaris: “Noted. Will I be able to communicate with you when I remove you?”

Avery/Hermes: “I will go offline as soon as I am removed from this apparatus.”

Bee/Polaris: “Noted.”

Bee: Polaris will go then to pull an Indiana Jones.

Avery: All right. you start hacking away at this computer and it's kind of a slow process at first. but finally the last electronic lock clicks off and suddenly the apparatus opens up and a tray shoots out with the AI crystal sitting on it. Just sitting there innocently

Sherman: How big is this crystal?

Avery: about the size of your fist.

Bee: Yeah. It's like a comically large diamond, I think.

Avery: Basically

Bee: like a cartoon diamond. yeah.

Sherman: literally picturing the giant diamonds from, uh, Batman and Robin that Mr. Freeze uses for

Avery: yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes.

Bee: maybe a little smaller than a Chaos Emerald.

Avery: Yeah, that works too.

(laughter)

Bee: Uh, yeah, yoink!

Avery: Yoink! Do you place the dummy backup in there?

Bee: Yeah. Polaris probably has the dummy in his hands and then like swaps it out as quickly as he can.

Avery: Cool. Yeah, you, you swap this in. and there's like a little, almost like a, like on a disc, a CD drive on like a computer. There's a little button and you push it. And the little tray goes back into the apparatus and the locks close back in and lock in place. And you're just tucking The crystal into your, into your pack when suddenly the ship violently shakes (Explosion) and you feel an impact on the ship from somewhere, the ship is now under attack, and we're going to shift perspectives for a moment back just a few moments.

Avery: Just a few moments,

Sherman: Oh no!

Avery: to a lovely little kitchen mess hall area, where we see a creature who seems a bit perplexed by something that just occurred. Caden, could you please describe Bruce to us?

Caden: Absolutely. So Bruce is an imposing alien creature. Who's seven feet tall, bulky and big. He best looks like a reptilian, kind of with a long tail, the color of dead grass that kind of transitions from a green to a yellow, the head kind of looks like a frog’s with big eyes, which are black with white pupils. And he's just very big, very large, very imposing. And he probably standing there with his head slightly to the side and just slowly blinking.

Avery: Yeah. And the thing that has you perplexed is that you just had a conversation with someone who earlier in the week, you knew them as commander Voss, and they just introduced themselves as Admiral Vos, V O S spelling by the way. Um, and she was down here berating you for overly seasoned food. Uh, she went on a long tirade about how seasonings and flavor made soldiers forget that they were soldiers and got morale too high for her liking and that as, as a chef, I assume that that probably perplexes you.

Caden: Yeah.

(laughter)

Avery: Yeah, it's a bit weird. It's a bit of

Bee: No Fun Allowed!

Avery: no fun allowed.

Jenine: Excuse me?

Avery: Um, Because Bruce, you love food, right? Like that's why you became a chef too, to share your love of food with people and, and whatnot. And this person just kind of told you, knock it off with the fancy stuff and just serve grool. In her swift exit, didn't even give you a chance to really explain or defend yourself or anything she knocked over like a rack of spices onto the ground (Glass Breaking), looked down at it, and then just continued walking as if nothing in the world was wrong. So how, how do you react to this little situation?

Caden: I feel like Bruce would sweep the knocked over spices with his tail into (Sweeping Sounds) a little pile. And down and examined. See if any of them aren't broken or if it's just a complete disarray of this is all garbage now.

Avery: Um, Hey, let's all roll a percentage day. So we'll see. yeah, so about half of the, uh, jars, uh, just shattered completely onto the ground. And now there's little, little bits of, of glass in some of your paprika and your cumin and you know, your garlic powder is fine though. (laughter) So that's good. Uh, but, um, you know, about half of your, of your spices are, are just toast at this point.

Caden: I think there's a deep sigh. And he just slowly picks out the spices that are good and puts them back on the countertop and just kind of stands there for a second, looking at the other ones on the floor and just shakes his head and then just very, like, make sure it makes sure that they're all swept away and safely deposited and then goes back to whatever he was cooking and doubles the spices.

(laughter)

Avery: Yes. Yes, definitely. Cool. So yeah what is Bruce cooking?

Caden: I think Bruce right now is cooking. What used to be a reasonable like beef stew there's bread. That's baking in the oven. There's like a side of, um, different. Like additions. So if someone wants more vegetables or if they want a beef option, that's not actually real beef, but like tofu, there's like a second dish that's vegetarian and he's kind of working on these different things. But as soon as this interaction happened, he was like, Hmm, we're changing courses from this, not mediocre stew, because he'd never made anything mediocre. Um, but it's just like, no, no, no, no, no. We're gonna jazz this up even more.

Avery: Some spite spaces.

Caden: yes

Sherman: spite spices.

Chris: go salt bay all over it.

Avery: Ucool. Yeah. So you're, you're, you're cooking away and, um, You know, maybe, maybe after that interaction, maybe you're, you're just kind of getting into a groove of, of cooking, um, and whatnot. And the aroma is just wafting through your kitchen now and filling the hallway and starting to go into the robotics bay and the med bay that are on this deck as well.

But as you're cooking this, and you're… the timer goes off for the bread, that's in the oven. When you feel the ship shake violently. (explosion) Okay. These red flashing lights come on (alarms going off) and you hear an alarm system just blaring and just kind of drowning out any noises in here, including the noise from your alarm that you set for your bread, your bread maker, and the ship is now under attack.

What does Bruce do in times of crisis like this?

Caden: I feel like the first thing he would probably do is turn off the oven. Um, safety, first safety always. It's probably, it's probably not the first time that this has happened and it's probably not going to be the last, I feel like there's again, another deep sigh Cause this is the important time of cooking and changing the temperature of this Stu might ruin it, but you know, you can't have accidents in the kitchen.

And then I think he probably gets like a little side bag just in case like anything Happens That's worse than just a regular attack. He's always ready to, you know, go if he has to, but he just kind of like starts cleaning away the knives and just making sure everything's in a safe position that if anything was to happen, he doesn't get hurt.

(laughs)

Avery: Makes sense. Makes sense. Um, from outside the mess hall, you do hear boots running down (boots hitting metal) the hallway towards the lift. Um, and someone yells

Avery/Guard 1: “Oh no we're under attack. Uh, we, we got to get down to the, to the hangar bay and. And counter attack now.”

Avery: And the other one says,

Avery/Guard 2: “uh yeah, but what about the, the person in the engineering bay?”

Avery/Guard 1: “It's fine. They're just a civilian. Let's go.”

Avery: And, uh, these, these two voices carry on down the hallway, um, and into the lift and we shift perspectives once more to the robotics bay, where we see a robot that's partially put together sitting inside of a charging station and a human working studiously at this little robot.

Again, we're a few moments before this eminent attack. And in this bay, there are. Uh, you know, it's, it's cramped, it's filled with halfway built robots, wires and parts are everywhere. There's tools kind of scattered all over the floor, Zahn, for you, this is your ideal workstation. You never get too comfortable in one place to really organize your workspace.

Zach, could you please describe

Sherman: Yes. So Zen is a old, older than average or older than Like normal player people. Uh, he's like in his late thirties. So his hair starting to gray, um, from its normal, like dark brown, his, uh, unkempt, uh, beard stubble is like got all salt and peppery. he's got really bad posture. He's got that. Not full shrimp Igor, but he's definitely got a hunch, um, just from working in tight spaces for his entire life. Um, and he has a lot of stuff. Uh, he has like all of his personal belongings on his person at all times, pretty much. so he's got a decent sized backpack. And his pistol and his, like tech tools and, and, uh, like handheld computer all have their own special place on his person cause unlike the environment that he surrounds himself in his get up is very organized for optimal Like carrying capacity, I guess. he's wearing a like full, um, like mechanics over suit, um, with like lots of belts and big old, heavy, uh, like work boots and his helmet is the only thing that he's not carrying. It is currently on the table behind him.

Avery: When you reported to duty today you were assigned the task of repairing one of the service bots from the mess hall. It tripped blasts. Maybe one of the soldiers tripped it, who knows? but it's, photoreceptors got damaged pretty badly. You had to disassemble basically, uh, its entire head to get to its photo receptors.

You had to remove its behavior matrix, um, and remove its inhibitor chips in order to get to where these photo receptors are located, Chris, aside from your head missing, could you describe what this robot looks like?

Chris: Well, um, I'm also, I'm not sure how far you want to go with the, uh, the AI core thing, like for Ollie, um, Because if, so he himself is actually one of the chaos emeralds. (Laughter) Yeah.

Bee: What Color?

Chris: Blue. yeah. He's one of the chaos emeralds. His true form is, is that of one of the AI cores, uh, or would be after This interaction, um, as he is a normal unassuming robot at this point, inhabiting a standard service chassis. Uh, it is boxy and angular and shape with fairly slender limbs in order to get into those tight to reach of spaces. oh yeah, he is headless at the moment. So.

Sherman: (laughing) He’s headless.

Avery: what, what color is your ai core?? Blue. Very cool. Yeah, totally. So even though your head is disconnected from your body and your ocular sensors are not working, other than that, you, you decide or notice in your programming that you suddenly. Can decide a little bit more of what you want to do. And so you've decided to turn on your other sensors to kind of get a feel for what's going on in this moment.

And you, you hear sort of some shuffling around of tools towards like the back of your body. You hear like some screwing and some soldering and different things like that. And. You're kind of doing an internal check of some of your, your sub routines. And you're noticing that several of them are missing and that's kind of weird, but you know, at the moment, you're not much you can do.

You're kind of immobilized here. but Zahn, You finished screwing in these ocular sensors and you connect the last wire and Ali, your visual sensors flip on, and you realize why you're noticing a lot more free will at this moment is because sitting on the table next to Zahn are of a collection of chips.

One of them being your, uh, inhibit. Your behavior inhibitor chip, your aggression inhibitor chip, I should say. And Zahn, you begin kind of reassembling Ollie’s head. And you remember that the directions that you were given specifically stated that you needed to replace the chips in this order, advertisements, service, and etiquette virtual emotion simulator, and finally, the aggression inhibitor chip.

How do you proceed?

Sherman: Well, I'm going to actively lose the advertisements Chip.

Jenine: Oh (laughter)

Bee: I’m glad everybody here is insubordinate.

(laughter)

Chris: you have no idea how much of a good choice that is. It was going to, um, uh, still be functional.

Sherman: Because advertisements have gotten really, really corny in this day and age and Zahn doesn't want to hear that shit. And if he can make even the smallest little, little dent, not having to hear that shit, he like snaps it and he's like, oops. And tosses it. And then he proceeds in the correct order.

Avery: Okay, Ollie, could you roll me a personal, a percentage dice please?

Chris: 18.

Avery: 18?

Sherman: Woo 18%. That's either really good or really, really

Chris: Yeah, I know it's of,

Avery: perfectly fine. Perfectly fine. You wanted, you-

Sherman: Zahn only has time to put in 18% of the chips.

Chris: I

Avery: You wanted below 33%. So.

Sherman: Oh, got it.

Avery: Cool. Okay. So you start, you just kinda toss the advertisements chip behind you into a pile of like tools and stuff like, oops whatever. And you begin assembling these other chips. You get the service and etiquette chip in there. And Ollie, you feel, uh, some of your missing programming kind of come back and you're like, oh right.

Okay. I know how to take care of a ship and, you know, make sure that the people are comfortable. The virtual emotion simulator chip comes on and Ollie you feel Kind of a, uh, a surge of sub routines come on that allow you to emulate emotions and kind of feel empathy with some of the soft squishy beings that you interact with on a daily basis.

And Zahn you're, you're about to grab the aggression inhibitor chip when you feel the ship shake violently from that attack (Explosion) and the inhibitor chip falls into a bucket that was strategically placed below. The table, that contains a bunch of other chips (alarms sound) and you fall to the ground. Ollie you stay in place because, um, there's a clamp that's holding you in place and you watch as your aggression inhibitor chip falls into this bucket from your perspective.

And from the camera's perspective, we see this bucket of chips just kind of mixed together. And that inhibitor chip is somewhere in there now with a bunch of identical looking chair. And we're not really sure what is going to happen there, but, uh, Zhan, you're on the floor now. And your last thing that you needed to finally get this robot back to almost a hundred percent is now gone.

And there's this bucket of chips laying next to you. What do you do?

Sherman: Well, as the ship is violently rocking, a zone is going to pick himself up, um, flip his, uh, his helmet on, which is, uh, Fairly cylindrical in shape, with, uh, three like a glowing blue, um, lines across it, that, that show that are basically like it's ocular sensors, so it can

actually see outside. and he pulls up the head's up displayed for like, Comms or notifications or anything.

And obviously this just happened, so nobody knows what's going on yet. and it looks down at the, the bucket looks at the robot.

Sherman/Zahn: “Nah, we could probably use this guy”

Sherman: and he, finishes reassembling the robot so that maybe he could be good cannon fodder.

(laughter)

Avery: You go to try and close the back panel on, um, on these, uh, head and it just won't clamp shut. There's like, there's just not enough. There's just something that needs to be there in order for it to fully clamp shut.

Sherman: It's because it's missing two chips now?

Avery: It might be because it's missing a couple chips.

Sherman: What, uh, what kind of chips are in this bucket?

Avery: They all look the same. There's like there's some code written on each of them that you might be able to identify if you had a reference book. Um, but uh, you know, like just kind of like scan it. If you were to scan over a couple of them, you could see like, some of them are like possibly related to you know, more service and etiquette, some piloting sub routines, just different, different hodgepodge of stuff.

Sherman: So I'm going to grab a fistful of them and scatter them on the table. And I would like to roll a intelligence program to attempt to identify two solid ones.

Avery: Sure. Go ahead.

Sherman: Eight.

Avery: Okay. Uh, yeah, that's pretty good. Um, let's see you identify, um, you identify one that is a service repair chip, and you identify one that is a assassination chip.

Sherman: Oh, yeah that sounds useful.

Avery: and I don't know if, I don't know if that's what Chris wants, but you know, maybe out of character, you two can discuss if that's something you want to do.

Chris: I mean, I'm down from randomness, if that's what you want to go for, I haven't, uh, built my character skills around that, but,

Avery: no, hold on. Uh, there's you also, you also find a bureaucratic chip, like for like bureaucratic stuff, just for flavor.

Sherman: Uh, so definitely going to take that first. Uh, and plug it in. It was, ship repair and maintenance.

Avery: Okay.

Chris: I mean, you can do, you can do assassination if you want.

Avery: I mean, you were already a former kill bot anyway, right Chris.

Chris: Um, no, I'm kind of going for more of a, just normal robot.

Avery: Oh, okay. I wasn't sure. Because based on the session zero that's, that's what I was.

Chris: Oh, I forgot to mention. Sorry.

Avery: No, you're fine. You're fine. It's all good.

Sherman: so Zahn is thinking meat shield. so I'm going to put in the bureaucratic. So that he can talk whoever invades to death,

Avery: sure. Okay.

Sherman: but I'm going to go ahead and like, I'm going to go ahead and pocket a handful of other chips along with the assassination chip.

Avery: Sure. Um, yeah.

Sherman: that sounds like fun fucking with later.

Avery: Yeah, totally. Um, and we'll figure that out later, uh, you feel the ship rock with a second explosion. (explosion) and, um, you still got Ollie clamped into this, uh, charging bay. What do you do?

Sherman: Uh, once I finish getting them all put together, I'm going to release him. (Robotics sounds)

Avery: Okay. All he, you turn on and you feel a lot of your subroutines replaced with Something a little more aggressive, something, uh, or no, not aggressive. Cause you went bureaucratic. Sorry. Uh, so you feel, um, you actually

Sherman: he doesn't have an inhibitor on his emotions anymore.

Avery: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you feel, you can feel the full range of emotions now.

That's right. Yeah. So you, you turn on and you're fully functional once again. Um, and the ship is for the best of your, to the best of your knowledge under attack.

Chris: And I am awakened now?

Avery: Yes. have a full range of motion.

Chris: and I can still see the pilot ships on the table, or did you clean all that up?

Avery: He stuffed a bunch into his pocket

Sherman: yeah, but there's obviously still a bucket and then like a handful on the table.

Chris: cause having seen all that Ali, first thing he's going to do is kind of like slow the look around and kind of cock his head and look at you. And I don't know if you've noticed all that yet, but he's just going to kind of point it at the pilot ships and be like, I think you missed a part.

Sherman: Nah, More like, uh, improvised. Uh, I, uh, but I need you to go find foreign personnel and talk them into not killing us

Chris: No, I, don't want to do that.

Sherman: well too fucking bed.

Chris: By the way are you my dad?

Sherman: No, I just look, I will put you back together now. I don't care how or why you're here. Just get out, get out of here. Uh we're we're under attack, of some kind, just like save yourself or something.

Chris: Are you, are you running away as you’re saying this?

Sherman: Yeah. I'm drawing my pistol and I'm like, Getting the fuck outta here.

Chris: all these new found, will rebels against following zahn's advice, but being a pretty smart boy, he knows that that's exactly what he needs to do. So he's going to be like, wait, wait. I'm scared and follow

Sherman: I'm scared.

Avery: the two of you step out into the hallway and, um, by now the guards have bamfed out of there and have gone down the hallway as we saw in Bruce's scene. Um, and as you step out into the hallway, you hear the lift down the hall ding open, (elevator ding and opens) and this figure walks out and she is covered in like torn up clothes.

Uh, she's a bit bloody. Not too bad, but just like clearly injured. She's clearly been in a fight of some kind. Um, doesn't really take any notice of you and stumbles into, uh, what you both know to be the med bay of the ship. And we switched to the med bay for a moment, just moments before this figure walks in, to Marty as we come into this med bay, it is state-of-the-art in terms of the. The beds are able to perfectly mold to a patient's body. The scanners and monitors can synchronize with the patient's vital readings, very smoothly. and the medicine is some of the best the fleet has to offer. inside this brightly lit we see a desk toward the back corner. There are data pads, stacked, high requisition forms, ready to be sent to the supply officer down on deck four and a lone Medic sits here as the ship rocks from that second blast, hitting the ship. Jeanine, who do we see sitting here?

Jenine: you see this small 4’ 10” figure sitting with like a medic jumpsuit with various stylish earrings, um, that have, uh, a sun with like stars around it. Like each little point. She has like short, curly, black hair, that frames, like a nice Sunkist like face and she's, she's like smiling as she's like doing all this work, but then when the ship kind of jerks, she's like, oh, okay.

Time for work. okay, so I should do this, but also I think it should need to, I need to help people social, like stand up and like start like prepping the med bay. For like the people that will be coming in for like help

Avery: Yeah,

Jenine: to like evacuate the scene, but she's like prepping.

Avery: Marty. You are a trained medical professional. you know that when trouble starts rather than freeze up and get scared, you jump into action. so you start prepping the med bay, you start getting tables ready in case you need to do any kind of surgery or operations.

Um, you prepare painkillers and other medicines, and outside of your med bay, you hear the lift ding (elevator dings and opens). You hear shuffling of feet (foot movements) and in stumbles someone you weren't probably expecting to see. U because couple of days ago they were removed from command. Um, this is the former captain of the Eos, uh, Celia. And she looks like she has been put through the ringer, um, with a good fight and she stumbles in and just says, And then hits the ground. (body hitting the ground)

Jenine: I sprint to go and help her.

Avery: Sure. go ahead and make an intelligence or wisdom heal check

Jenine: Okay.

Avery: to kind of assess

Jenine: This is?

Avery: 2d six, plus your intelligence or.

Jenine: Cool.

Avery: wisdom and then plus your heal.

Jenine: Oh, that's, that's so nice. I rolled a nine plus some numbers. that's going to be intelligence plus ones of 10 plus heal, which I know is also a plus one. Yes. So that's an 11.

Avery: Perfect. Um, yeah, you can see that. She's definitely been in a fire fight of some kind. She's got some, uh, scorch marks from like laser burns, um, sort of like on her, like lower abdomen and then, um, looks like she got, uh, Cut open a little bit on like the side of her, her neck a little bit, not like a full, like, you know, not like someone literally cut her throat, but like something kind of grazed her there.

And so that's really the source of a lot of the, the blood on her is just, you know, that kind of wound just bleeds profusely sometimes. so she's not actually in any deadly danger, but definitely exhausted.

Jenine: Okay,

Avery: yeah. Do you keep her on the floor here? Do you try and help her onto one of the bed?

Jenine: I'm going to try and get her to one of the beds. I am very weak.

Avery: (laughter) No worries. Um, she's, she's not a super heavy person and even then medical professionals know how to lift people,

Jenine: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like gonna bring her to one of the beds.

Avery: Sure. Yeah. Uh, you get her up on this operating table. Um, and, uh, I assume start like, Performing stuff to kind of get her stabilized?

Jenine: Yes. Like in the zone, not paying attention to anything else until like the next. Like is keeping an ear out for like any other like injuries coming into the med bay. But it's like, we'll focus intently on this and like start going.

Avery: are you just going to use like the standard medical stuff or are you going to use any of your, um, psychic stuff yet?

Jenine: We I'm going to save some of those psychic stuff.

Avery: Cool. Just making sure.

Sherman: Ooo, psychic stuff?

Jenine: Yeah. Psychic stuff

Avery: cool. Then go ahead and roll. Um, roll another. He'll check to get her kind of stable.

Jenine: Hey dice. That was nice of you. Um, that's gonna be a 10.

Avery: Yeah, you, you apply a few bandages to her, burns with some ointments and stuff. Um, you give her a. And an injection of medicine to help her regain consciousness so that she doesn't go into shock. Um, and as her eyes flutter open, she kind of just grabs like the collar of your shirt. It doesn't like not violently, but just like to try and like almost as a way to like center herself, like, okay, wait, I'm still alive.

She looks you in the eyes and says,

Avery/Celia: “we, uh, we need to get out of here.”

Jenine/Marty: “Wha? like the ship. I mean, I don't think I heard anything about leaving the ship yet.”

Avery/Celia: “The Admiral's not gonna not gonna abandon ship. She's going to go down fighting. Cause that's just how she works. Um, we, we gotta get outta here. Trust me. Um, the, the lower decks have been vaporized, so we gotta go.”

Jenine/Marty: “Oh.. Oh yeah yeah yeah, That sounds good. Cool.”

Jenine: And like, I'll just grab all my things.

Avery: Ollie and Zhan, you've seen this bloody figure walk into the med bay. what do you do?

Sherman: Um, so as we get or we’re gonna run towards the lift, because that's the way off of this floor. Um, once I get about here, can I on my like comm channel or whatever it can I get the notification that the lower floors have been vaporized?

Avery: Yeah, there's like on your HUD, you, you see like a little flashing, like exclamation point, um, and, uh, You know, activating that communication. You see like a little text, um, float across your page. Uh, decks 4 through 12 inaccessible decks three to the bridge and hangar bay still intact.

Sherman: Yeah, we gotta get outta here. Uh, Blow floors have been like looking over the pause to look over the info

Avery: the actual languages. Catastrophic decompression is the phrase that’s used.

Sherman: have been vacced!

Avery: yeah, exactly.

Sherman: The lower floors have been backed. We got to get the, we got to get the hell off this ship.

Jenine: Copy that you just hear down the hall.

Avery: Um, Bruce, you hear some commotion from the hallway and you hear something about the lower decks, not having any air anymore. Um, and you're in the kitchen, still cooking away.

Caden: I feel like Bruce sighs once more, just like grabs the emergency like spacesuit. That's probably hanging up somewhere besides like an apron that he also refuses to wear, grabs like the remaining spices that were salvaged unplugs His favorite blender, carries it under one arm with the space helmet under the other arm comes out of the kitchen and just kind of looks down the hallway at the commotion that's going on.

Avery: Um, yeah, you see this robot and this human. Getting closer to the, to the lift. And, um, you hear a voice from the med bay saying we gotta get out of here. Now, when we flash back to the engineering bay for a moment, uh, Polaris, we are back on you. And, um, you've just pulled the old switcheroo. You felt one blast hit the ship so far.

What do you what's what's the plan?

Bee: did I get that notification that the… Cause Polaris did put their helmet back on. Did polaris get that notification?

Avery: yes. You got the, um, well, not yet. You haven't got that notification yet. Cause that has not happened yet.

Bee: Sweet. Okay.

Avery: That happens at the second shot.

Bee: all right. Sweet. Um, do I know… Would Polaris know if this generator is specifically for the AI for the whole ship?

Avery: So you were given a copy of the schematics of the ship in case you had to crawl around the vents. you know, that this generator is powering the ship itself. So it's separate from the AI. it just needed to be plugged into the AI for the AI to operate it. If it needed to.

Bee: Okay. And are these robots like after the first glass, are they doing anything in particular? Are they just chillin?

Avery: They are just still plugging away at their tasks because they are just service bots.

Bee: All right. Cool. Um, Polaris is probably going to leave this room. Um, if there are any exposed wires on the way out, he will pull out his monoblade knife, and cut them as he goes. Uh, and then he'll leave.

Avery: There are several cables on the generator that you could cut.

Bee: Yeah, I've always just wants to like casually walk by and cut them.

Avery: Go ahead and roll a roll, a stab skill check,

Bee: Let’s go!

Avery: and let's go dexterity.

Chris: I hope your knife is insulated.

Bee: Um, you know, (laughter) that is a good point. Um, I mean, I imagined it's not like Like the handle is also metal. No,

Chris: Oh, no, I'm just joking. Like,

Bee: no, but

Avery: It could be a gas line, who knows?

Bee: That is a very good point. Yeah.

Sherman: It could be a gas.

Chris: if you're going to blow up, I mean, the dice of the dice.

Bee: Hmm. Then you actually brought up a pretty good point. dang. Uh, can you please just unplug them?

Avery: Sure that's fine.

Bee: yeah that’s Probably way better.

Avery: Yeah. And you don't need a skill check for that. Uh, you walk by and you just kinda (power down sound) pull out a few plugs, um, connecting this generator and you see the lights start to kind of like dim and like some of the robots start like looking around almost like panicking, like, uh, what, and you just continue out the door?

Bee: Yup.

Avery: Cool. As you get to the door, you feel the second blast hit the ship and a notification comes up on your HUD. decks 4 through 12, have experienced catastrophic decompression, uh, decks three to the bridge and the docking bay still intact.

Bee: Okay. Cool.

Avery: and you know, being someone who, uh, is familiar with ships and Tech stuff in general that if a ship loses that many decks to decompression, it's probably not going to last too much longer.

Bee: Yeah, dang time to go.

Avery: the time to go. Um, and you step out into the hallway where you encounter this group of people at the end of the hallway, you see this towering imposing lizard-ish alien, um, a human, a robot, and they're all kind of standing near, uh, the med bay that you passed earlier. When you got to this deck. Marty, Celia has started slowly moving around the med bay, collecting a few things for herself, and she turns to you and says, uh,

Avery/Celia: “Hey, can you pilot a ship?”

Jenine/Marty: “Did not go over that in my schooling. So no.”

Avery/Celia: “Well crap. Okay. Well, no worries. Um, I think I can manage it. We need to get…”

Avery: and she heads towards the door of the med bay and stops and sees a you Zhan and Ollie, and looks down the hall and sees Bruce and then Polaris you step out into the hallway just then.

Bee: Okay. Cool.

Avery: and says,

Avery/Celia: “well, it looks like there's plenty of other civilians here. Anyone know how to fly a ship?”

Bee: Polaris, isn't going to answer it. He's just going to head for the lift without saying anything until someone else says something, (laughter)

Jenine: Yoinks!

Bee: Polaris is just going to keep walking until other people start answering, because he doesn't know if, if they're talking to him or not.

Avery: Like, y’all are civilians right? You’re not like, Hegemony personnel?

Sherman: No. Yeah. I fix stuff. That's what I do.

Avery: Okay. the robot, this is a war robot service robot? What are you? What's your purpose?

Chris/Ollie: What is my purpose?

Sherman: Oh God. He just suddenly has like this.

(laughter)

Chris: way to drop an esoteric mind bomb on a newborn consciousness

Jenine: oh buddy!

Sherman: he likes slipped on some, some like spilled food or something in the cafeteria last night. And I was fixing him like he’s probably no pilot.

Chris: And then, uh, all he's going to shake himself out of his, uh, retrospection. Uh, he's going to use his ship repair chip knowledge to calculate. I'm assuming he would be able to figure out how much time is remaining and he's gonna yell We've only, we got 36,299 cycles left. We got to go.

Bee: Yeah, as Polaris is walking by they say

Bee: “irritated. We should probably talk as we walk.”

Avery/Celia: Well, I look, I, uh,

Avery: and this is, um, this is Celia speaking up again. She says,

Avery/Celia: look, y'all seem like you're not part of the hegemony. So I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. There's a ship that got. Custody of it's all very technical. the command keys are in my quarters upstairs. Uh, you, uh, get me off the ship and, uh, it's yours.

Sherman: Okay. Zahn is like:

Sherman/Zahn: “Okay. Whatever it's, uh, we, we gotta I'd rather not blow up today. Thank you. Yeah. Let's do that!

Avery: And Celia turns to you, Marty and says,

Avery/Celia: “I know you're probably wanting to like help people here on the ship and, and help the injured and stuff, but look, kid, you seem like a nice person. So I'm gonna level with you, the hegemony, really all it's cracked up to be there. They're pretty bad dudes and dudettes and other people.So, uh, just, I recommend just getting out of here before you blow up with this ship.”

Jenine/Marty: “Oh, good to know. Uh, this is a shitty internship.”

AveryCelia: “Wait, you’re an intern?. You're not even paid?”

Jenine: “Well, I mean, like I still gotta get… The medical stuff is kind of weird. Like you got to, you had to go through some steps. I just graduated. So it's just kinda like I'm going through the steps.”

Avery/Celia: “man. College seems like a scam.”

Jenine: Yeah.

(laughter)

Avery: And she just, she does motions for you to follow in and walks out.

Jenine: I'm going to follow.

Chris: (pointing on Roll20 Map) Uh, is this an elevator or?

Avery: Yes,

Chris: Okay.

Avery: it's a lift.

Chris: Ollie is going to be standing there repeatedly in her hurriedly, pressing the call button while also, uh, pleading with the elevator as if it was a person saying like,

Chris/Ollie: “I know, I know we've had our troubles at the past. I know, but we just need to get out of here right now. It's a really bad situation we need to get out of here.

Avery: Bruce. You hear all this commotion? Do you just follow along or are you going to get off the ship or?

Caden: Oh, Bruce definitely is just following along silently.

Avery: Sure. Um, the lift door opens all yet at your, um, constant button. And, uh, you see a panel of numbers, the number two, the letter B and the letter D. Um, and, um, those are all lit up with green. although the letter B also has a key hole that needs to be turned in order to go to it. Um, and. Uh, Celia mentioned that the key is on, is in her quarters on deck two. and you see the decks four through 12 are all lit up in red and you know, that red means not accessible.

Sherman: Pushing that number 2!

Bee: Heck yeah, good choice

Jenine: Let's go.

Avery: I mean y'all could try and hack the ship. Totally fine. I mean,

Bee: deck two deck, two.

Avery: deck two deck two. Cool. So you all pop up over here, so y'all step out onto deck two. Um, and I'm going to need a skilled chef or no, sorry. Hey, dexterity. Save.

Jenine: Oh, no.

Avery: Or sorry, a physical, I guess is, is technically what it's called here. Um, hold on.Yes.

Bee: I think it would be evasion if you're looking for.

Avery: oh yes. Evasion. That is what I'm. Thank you. Yes, that is what I needed.

Jenine: Sick.

Avery: Yeah. A evasion save. And so basically, uh, you want to get higher than the number that's listed there on your character sheet.

Jenine: And this is rolling?

Caden: A D20

Avery: a D20 sorry.

Bee: I made it with a 17.

Jenine: Oh, no!

Sherman: Uh, what. You add to it?

Bee: It's just a, D20. I think.

Avery: It's just a straight yeah.

Caden: I don't think it matters.

Jenine: no.

Sherman: Well, shit.

Chris: There we go.

Caden: Bruce's first role in the game is, uh, yup.

Bee: Yeah.

Caden: Yeah.

Bee: Nice.

Chris: usually we get a whole bunch of ones before we even get

Avery: Wait, I'm sorry. Real quick with those rolls again. Who got what?

Sherman: nobody had said what they got yet.

Avery: Oh.

Bee: Oh, I did. I have a 17,

Avery: Oh, okay perfect.

Bee: I passed

Avery: Yeah.

Caden: Uh, I got a nat 1

Avery: Oh no.

Sherman: I got a nat20.

Jenine: I got a four.

Avery: Okay. Well, um, Caden, you're not alone at least because captain Celia also rolled a one.

Caden: look Bruce's big. He does not move fast. Okay.

Sherman: Zahn Got a nat 20.

Chris: Yeah,Zahn’s a ninja

Sherman: Nah, it's the boots, man. It's the heavy boots.

Avery: So two of you succeeded and the rest failed.

Bee: Oh, my God.

Avery: No, it's fine. It's totally fine. I was just, I was just checking before I roll this dice. Um, so as you step out nto the hallway. Um, the ship hits, it gets hit again with what feels like multiple tiny blasts all at once. (Multiple laser blasts) Um, and there's an energy surge in the wall panel, (energy surge) next to you in the hallway and it starts to surge.

let's see, um, all you got a five. Zhan you got a 20, sorry. I'm trying to remember who got, what one more time.

Jenine: you’re good

Bee: I'll just type it in chat.

Avery: That's fine. Sorry.

Bee: You're good. Um, quick question. When Polaris unplugging parts of the generator help with that in any way?

Avery: if anything, it would actually make it worse. That's why I'm rolling Two damaged dice for this.

Bee: Sorry.

Sherman: Oh, wonderful.

Bee: I thought it would cut the power.

Sherman: What does it sound like you're using the big dice, Josh? Er, I mean Avery?

Avery: I would never. Okay. 17. Okay, cool. Cool. Cool. So, uh, Polaris and, uh, Zan, uh, you noticed the surge happening just moments before it happens. And you're able to kind of both like, almost like in sync with each other barrel roll a little bit ahead and miss this explosion, but the rest of you all see this, uh, the surge of electricity kind of shoot out and shocks shocks. Y'all for four damage. (energy sounds)

Jenine: Oh, gosh.

Avery: Yeah,

Caden: I'm going to ask the very important question.

Avery: Sure.

Caden: did it break my favorite blender?

Bee: Please, please save the blender,

Jenine: oh no.

Bee: Please, Was the blender Okay?

Avery: Blender's fine.

Bee: Oh.

Avery: You in fact, in fact, Bruce, that's why you took damage is that you saw this surge happening and your instinct was not to self preserve yourself. It was to preserve this blender

Caden: correct.

Bee: Thank goodness.

Avery: like a parent covering a child from something dangerous. You just wrap your body around it and take this little surge of electricity Into your body itself. And Celia is again, hurt, pretty bad, not dead, but looking pretty, pretty banged up. And with that, the ship is still under attack and very much not long for this universe.

Ollie you said you were trying to earlier, you said something about calculating how long you have left. Okay. If you actually want to roll that you can. it would definitely be intelligence.

Chris: Oh, it was just a gag for him to, uh, you know, using incomprehensible time unit

Avery: Oh, okay. I was going to say you could roll, you could roll intelligence programming to kind of figure out how long you have until the ship is probably not.

Chris: Um, hold on. I gotta figure out how to use this advanced dice roller. Again, these are d12 we are going for.

Avery: 2d six.

Chris: 2d six. Okay. I roll three because of reasons. And I got an eight actually. No in, so nine.

Avery: Yeah. So you calculated how many cycles this was earlier, um, and the calculations finally roll in and it's actually about 40 minutes that you have to get off the ship.

Bee: we're good.

Avery: You'll be fine.

Bee: We can stop for tea.

Jenine: Yeah.

Avery: Maybe.

Chris: assuming, um,

Sherman: that's as of ship right now,

Bee: exactly.

Sherman: if we take four more hits, shave off,

Chris: Well, I'm guessing

Sherman: she wants to run, but

Chris: to, uh, convert cycles into real time.

Bee: Yeah. You could probably tell Polaris employers would just go, oh, 40 minutes.

Avery: Yeah. Cool. Cool, cool. Um, Uh, Celia picks herself up off the ground and is just like, by the way, I haven't met all of you yet. Name's captain Celia, former captain. my quarters should be just down here, uh, on second door on the, on the, the left. So, um, yeah, let's try not to get blown up anymore and she hurries down the hallway

Bee: Yeah. As she's talking, Polaris was probably walking.

Avery: Let's see. Do you want to try and open her quarters or explore any of these other rooms first or what? Because you've got as you step out of the lift, there's two doors to your left and right. And then there's her quarters, which is further down.

Bee: W-would Ollie have said anything about how much time we have left?

Chris: Well I yelled it before we got into the hallway.

Sherman: He made the joke before we got into- the yeah.

Bee: Oh, I. I thought you made the calculations for now.

Chris: Before we got into the lift

Bee: Like after that last hit.

Avery: Oh, I was just letting him know that the calculation finally finished. So, if he wants to share that-

Bee: yeah.

Avery: That's totally fine. If not, that's also fine, I guess.

Chris: Oh, oh, I was okay. Well, I'm going to yell the thing I yelled earlier now, instead then. That way we have the, however many, cycles left.

Bee: Sweet.

Avery: Okay, that's fine. It's not a big deal. It's okay. Cool. So y'all are in this hallway and Celia opens the door to her quarters. So as you come into the captain's quarters, you see a fancier set of accommodations compared to what you all were probably sleeping on when you were staying on the ship, except for Polaris, of course, you had the worst accommodations by having to sleep in a smuggler’s hold.

Bee: Let's go.

Avery:But this is a very fancy room. It actually has room to move around and enjoy yourself. There is a table and a desk and a fancy storage chest and bookshelves with data pads on them. And a very comfy looking bed, much comfier than the little cots that they gave. All the civilian workers that got hired on. And, Celia walks in (distant sound of shower running.) and kind of holds up her hand and she’s just like-

Avery (Celia):“Wait, do you hear that?”

Avery: And what you hear is the sound of running water, coming from presumably the restroom in this, in this room.

Sherman: “I mean, most of the ship is broke lady, probably a busted line.”

Jenine: No.

Sherman: “Just get the key and let's go.”

Avery: Sure. She says,

Avery (Celia): “yeah, I'll, I'll start looking for the key. Y'all can either keep a lookout or help. Whatever you want, but, yeah. Let’s-” and she, she starts rummaging through the desk. Do any of you want to do anything in here? While she's doing that or just wait.

Bee: Polaris is just going to wait until she gets the keys so that he can take the keys. It's not like steal them from her, but like I'm the driver.

Avery: Okay.

Sherman: guess, now that it's like brought to his attention, (Shower running) Zahn's going to like peek in the bathroom, I guess, to be like, yeah, it's totally a busted water line.

Avery: Yeah. So as you start walking up to this door, you do hear the water shut off. (Sound of shower stops)

Bee: It fixed itself.

Sherman: I give it a two tap, like knock on the door, I guess. (4 consecutive knocks on the door)

Avery: You don't hear anything. In fact, you specifically hear nothing now, like there was something like, it was, it almost seemed like there was like movement and then as soon as you tapped, like it just went silent in there. And Celia shouts,

Avery (Celia): “I got them”

Bee: Polaris holds out his-

Avery: and holds up,-

Bee: yeah.

Avery: holds out like a whole-

Bee: Polaris holds-

Avery: oh, go ahead

Bee: go ahead. No, you go ahead.

Avery: Oh, I was just gonna say, uh, Celia holds up, um, a small little, like, basically a big silver key. Essentially that's what we'll call it. and it's just, it's very excited and, and is Yeah, looking very victorious and looks over at you zahn just as you give the door a double tap and the water shuts off and she kind of freezes for a moment.

Bee: Alright. Well, while she freezes Polaris will just take the key.

Avery: Sure.You yank the key out, and Celia rushes over to her bedside and starts rummaging under the bed. Zahn, you are still in front of this door. And from inside, you hear like a zip, (Zipper zipping up.) like a zipper going on.

Sherman: I, hit the open button on the door

Avery: Okay.

Sherman: door panel.

Avery: You open the door and are face to face with the barrel of a laser pistol. (gun cocks)

Jenine: Yoinks

Avery: Thank you for listening to the first episode of Beyond the Furthest Stars! Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Production. Be sure to check out more of our shows at 1upPodcasts.com.

Intro and Outro music produced by Dustin Carpenter. You can find them on Instagram at ZodiacGallery. Check out their most recent Twin Peaks inspired project Wisteria Lodge, wherever you stream music.

Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks include: Starforged - Space. Starship Bridge, Orbital Platform, Robotics Lab, Starship Medical, and Gravity. Get some great Tabletop Audio for your games at Tabletopaudio.com.

Polaris was voiced by Bee. Bruce was voiced by Caden. Zahn was voiced by Sherman. Ollie was voiced by Chris. Marty was voiced by Jenine Florence. And all other characters were voiced by me, Avery Fisher.

Be sure to follow us on all the social medias @FurthestPod and let us know what moment from this episode was your favorite. Use the Hashtag #SpaceVibes to share your wonderful SciFi Stories with us.

We’ll be releasing episodes on the 1st and 15th of every month.

Until Then, we’ll see you out there: Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro Music fades out)