Episode 35 - Fighting the Hunger of New Terra

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 35 of Beyond the Furthest Stars. Quick content warning. This episode contains discussions about cannibals, limb removal, and gratuitous cartoonishly silly violence. Listener discretion is advised.

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

As your flashlight shines on them, they all. turn their attention towards you and you could kind of hear some like laughter and some like snickering going on and from the corner a bigger dude emerges and just like well well well looks like we got some fresh meat boys and let's roll initiative… what did you get?

Caden/Bruce: I got two

Chris/Ollie: I got a 1, so yeah, with my modifier it's 3.

Zach/Zahn: I got a 5.

Bee/Polaris: I rolled a 7.

Avery/GM: Okay, so the captain rolled the highest. And, yeah, he's gonna open up with this big ol laser gun he's got on him. Uh, and he's gonna take aim at Ollie, who is the one that spoke.

Zach/Zahn: What bastard just looks at a dog that speaks and is just like, I'm gonna shoot it in the face.

Chris/Ollie: Probably tastes good.

Caden/Bruce: Does Ollie look like a robot dog, or does Ollie look like an actual dog?

Bee/Polaris: Looks like an actual dog. He's like a fur real friend.

Avery/GM: Until the mechanical arms come out, I've been under the impression that, yeah, he looks completely like a regular dog.

Chris/Ollie: Just very big. Bit talkative, too.

Avery/GM: How does an 18 hit?

Chris/Ollie: What was that?

Avery/GM: 18 to hit?

Chris/Ollie: My AC is 19.

Avery/GM: Holy damn, dude! Okay!

Chris/Ollie: I took Ironhide, so my innate armor class of 15 plus half the character level rounded up.

Zach/Zahn: Plus your dexterity modifier.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah. Oh no, then that's... Can it go over 20?

Bee/Polaris: Oh my god.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, so I'm at actually 21 AC.

Avery/GM: Holy shit.

Bee/Polaris: Ollie is unhittable.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, that's why I'm like, nope, I'm taking point. Let's go.

Zach/Zahn: 15 plus half level plus dex. So...

Chris/Ollie: I've boosted my strength dex and the other thing with a... Uh, Processing point to get that.

Zach/Zahn: Oh shit.

Chris/Ollie: So I got the plus two on Dex.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Uh, so this shot goes wide and it just blasts a hole in the wall behind y'all. And, uh, yeah, Bruce, you are, or not Bruce Polaris. You are up.

Bee/Polaris: Grenade. Get fucked.

Avery/GM: Okay. Where are you throwing this grenade?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I want to throw it in like the back corner. Like right there.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah, so roll to attack.

Bee/Polaris: plus dex? Okay. Uh, that's an 11. Thank God.

Avery/GM: Oh gosh. Yeah. Hit or miss the grenade then explodes for 2d6 damage to all targets within 5 meters. Okay, so let's get our little measuring tool here.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah! I would like to say that I don't want to hit Ollie. That is the goal.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, I'm going to be a okay.

Avery/GM: 5 meters is 15 feet.

Bee/Polaris: Son of a bitch, dude! Um...

Oh, okay. Thank goodness. Thank god. Okay.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Sick.

Avery/GM: Uh, you hit everybody. Go ahead and roll that damage.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah. Yeah, Polaris is gonna like, after the dude says that and tries to shoot Ollie, Polaris is gonna say, get fucked and throw a grenade. 2d6?

Avery/GM: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: That is... I'm so bad at math. 11 damage.

Avery/GM: 11 damage. Okay. A lot of these guys are not doing well.

Bee/Polaris: And I have another.

Avery/GM: And they're still, they're still alive. But they're not great.

Bee/Polaris: That's fine. That was my action. Aren't there, do I have a move action?

Avery/GM: You do. You have a move action. And then an on turn action. Which would be like to activate. A button, or, you know, draw an item, stuff like that.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, funnily enough, I have a thing that lets me do that for freezies, so. Uh, like getting readied actions, er, readied items. I can just nab that out of my bag or whatever. Anyway, I'm gonna turn on my laser blades and kinda...

Avery/GM: Little intimidation, maybe?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah! Yeah! Polaris is gonna step forward after throwing the grenade and turn on his laser blades. And then he's gonna put a skull and crossbones on his visor.

Avery/GM: Holy shit.

Zach/Zahn: What, um, what color are your laser blades?

Bee/Polaris: Blue and pink. Same color scheme as his outfit. Like a, like a light blue and a, a Hot pink.

Chris/Ollie: Cyberpunk AF.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah.

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll a charisma lead.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I'm ass at that.

Avery/GM: You are, but, um, I will give you a plus one.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, thank goodness. Still ass though.

Avery/GM: For the badassery.

Bee/Polaris: Still ass though. Eight?

Avery/GM: Yeah, you see these two here, uh, peel off and start trying to make a break for it down this way.

Chris/Ollie: That meat's a bit too spicy for them.

Bee/Polaris: I so want someone to go and hunt them down. No survivors. Okay, I'm done.

Avery/GM: No, you're fine. You're great. And then I will say also, after your grenade goes off, and this door right here gets damaged, you do hear from the other side of that door, like, Hey, watch what you're doing out there! Zahn, you recognize the voice as Amanda.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha.

Bee/Polaris: That's fine. We'll save her.

Chris/Ollie: Good thing you didn't put it right in that corner and it blows open the door.

Bee/Polaris: Kill Zahn's mentor. No.

Chris/Ollie: Right in front of him. Right when we get there.

Bee/Polaris: Sorry about your home. Sorry about your home. Oh God. Your mentor's alive. That's cool. Anyway.

Avery/GM: So yeah, I'm gonna remove these two from the initiative. So yeah, very good intimidation there. But now there's gonna be some ouchies.

Bee/Polaris: It's what I deserve.

Avery/GM: Uh, one of them's gonna run up on you. And one of them's gonna run up on Ollie. And one on Zahn.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's gonna just look at him and wag his tail. Oh, a new friend.

Avery/GM: Bruce is very cleverly in the back.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean, Polaris intentionally does not want Bruce up front.

Avery/GM: All right, let's roll some dice. So, that's all shit. Uh, a 10 to hit Polaris. A 5 to hit Ollie. And a 6 to hit Zahn. Yeah, they all swing at you and miss horribly.

Chris/Ollie: Remember kids, have a balanced breakfast with proper nutrition You'll be able to land your hits.

Zach/Zahn: That's what I was gonna say, They just got flashbanged by at least my light source, so.

Avery/GM: Zahn, you are up.

Zach/Zahn: It's a good thing I'm a close combatant. As I'm gonna shoot this one right in the face, the one right in front of me. Ten on shoot.

Avery/GM: That is a hit.

Zach/Zahn: Fuck's sake, I need to dial up the damage on my gun then.

So that's, uh, three.

Avery/GM: Okay. Olilie your turn.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, so this innocent... Adorable, large looking puppy dog. Uh, it's back just opens up and a couple tentacles come whipping out. And on the ends, laser swords. I don't know if this guy's gonna have time to react before they smack him in the face, but that's what's happening

Avery/GM: Well, that's that's what's happening. Go ahead and roll your attack. I believe you do a stab

Chris/Ollie: stab. All right

Avery/GM: Dex Dex stab

Chris/Ollie: It cancels out. So ten

Avery/GM: tens enough.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent.

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll your damage

Chris/Ollie: Three. I just, uh, you know, singed him a little bit.

Avery/GM: He has enough time to like bring his weapon up to try and stop this attack. And it doesn't quite stop it, but it basically cuts through his weapon and damages it. And also causes him some, some little, little burns on his arm.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, Ollie will, uh, just comment to himself. Oh, I've got to get these recalibrated.

Avery/GM: Uh, Bruce, you are up.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, goodness me. I am going to...

Avery/GM: Bruce's first combat.

Caden/Bruce: I know. Ollie is

Avery/GM: I mean, aside from when you smashed cake into a...

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, that doesn't count as combat though. Ollie is dog height?

Chris/Ollie: Uh, he's tall, figure like Great Dane, or Saint Renard's size.

Avery/GM: But not as tall as 9 foot tall Bruce.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, absolutely.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will pull out his own, uh, crude pistol and shoot at... One of the guards. I mean, if I can shoot at the main person, that is ideally what I would like to do, but I feel like the guards are in front of said main person.

Avery/GM: He has cover from the other two people being in front of him, but you can aim for him.

Caden/Bruce: And if I hit the other people, it's fine. Yeah, sure. Uh, that is a... Did we establish that as a d20? Or a... Dex?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Caden/Bruce: That's a 12. So still not great, but it's okay.

Avery/GM: No, but a 12 will hit one of the people in front of the big bad.

Caden/Bruce: Good.

Avery/GM: So yeah, go ahead and roll your damage.

Caden/Bruce: Well that's a 4 then.

Avery/GM: Okay. You pop this guy in the shoulder and it kind of goes limp and he's just like, he just screams out in pain. Uh, he's looking very, very not good. Okay, is that the end of your turn? Is there anything else you want to do, Bruce?

Caden/Bruce: I don't know if there is anything else I want to do.Yeah, probably that's the end of my turn. I'm not going to move. I like my little defense.

Avery/GM: These two clowns over here disappear further down the corridor. Somewhere and these two Make a dash this this one here actually dashes over jumps off of this guy's back And let's make a little exert check here oooo for a 12?

Chris/Ollie: Parkour cannibals?

Avery/GM: Yeah Freaking jumps off this guy's back and makes a dive for you Polaris Um, go ahead and make a, uh, evasion save.

Bee/Polaris: Easy peasy, I beat it. I rolled a 12, my evasion's 8.

Avery/GM: Hey, look at that. Uh, yeah, so you duck and he lands behind you. And is gonna take a swing at you instead. Oops, sorry, I moved you.

Bee/Polaris: What an asshole.

Avery/GM: Yep, a little bit. 20 unnatural. Uh, yeah,

Bee/Polaris: that hits me. Super hits me.

Avery/GM: Okay, and that's gonna be 9 damage. Um, as this weapon comes at you and, um, as it's coming at you, it electrifies and sticks into your stomach and gives you a little bit of a shock. To your belly and, uh, the person laughs and you can see they're kind of drooling a little bit.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is just going to beat the shit out of this guy.

Avery/GM: And the second guy is going to repeat this same trick, but on you, Ollie. So let me roll his exert check. Okay, that wasn't as good. Go ahead and roll your evasion save.

Chris/Ollie: Four, so you gotta beat it, right?

Avery/GM: You, you have to beat your evasion score on your character check.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, so I lose.

Avery/GM: Okay, um, so yeah, this cannibal jumps off of his friend and lands on top of you. And tries to bite into you, tries to bite into you, and, and, and maybe the logic just isn't sitting quite right here, but, uh, tries to bite into one of these, like, little tentacle arms that you have popped out, and does three damage to it, but mostly damages his own mouth, uh, for four damage to, to himself, so. He's not looking great, but you are, you do have someone on you now, so you're going to…

Chris/Ollie: it's saddlebags and a  rider and everything.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah. So this thing, it's not pinning you, but it is, it is on you. So, uh, there may be some difficulties in moving until you get this person off of you. And then we're back to the top with the captain. And the captain is going to turn his attention to Polaris, since... I'm sorry, Polaris, I'm not trying to pick on you, but you did throw a grenade.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Oh gosh, another unnatural 20.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, it hits

Avery/GM: okay, this is gonna hurt.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay, that's only 10 damage as this... This Gatling laser gun, uh, heats up and blasts some lasers at you, uh, Polaris, for 10 damage.

Bee/Polaris: Hey, guys, I'm full of holes.

Chris/Ollie: What's Dief's initiative? Where are those Lazarus patches?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah, where's my son? He's, he's in my backpack. Should I have rolled initiative for Dief?

Avery/GM: I was just gonna, if, if you have an action Deef is going to perform, it can just be on your turn. That's fine. Speaking of which, it is your turn now.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Well, I want to murder, so I, I am at 17 out of 35, but I do want to murder. Laser guy is probably, Captain guy is probably biggest threat, yeah?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, how's he looking after grenade?

Avery/GM: Surprisingly pretty well, he's got some pretty thick armor on.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is just gonna try and cut off his hand so he can't use the gun.

Avery/GM: Haha, I love it. I think that is actually going to be a special kind of attack called an execution attack I mean, it's not exactly an execution, but um, oh no disarming a foe

Bee/Polaris: Literally, haha, can I can I instead of Letting Can I attack the gun and do damage to the gun so he can't use it?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: That works.

Bee/Polaris: And, I'd be rolling d20 plus dex, plus my attack modifier. Okay. Does a 19 hit.

Avery/GM: Oh, so much. It hits, it hits so much. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: 9 damage to the gun.

Avery/GM: The gun's destroyed. Yeah. You cut the barrel off of this thing, ruining any effectiveness it would have as a weapon. Um, and the captain kind of snarls at you and throws it to the ground. Looks like he's ready to, like, physically manhandle you  at this point.

Bee/Polaris: That's fine. Again, I punch like a truck.

Avery/GM: Cool. Well, then these three are going to attack. Uh, So that's a 12 versus AC for Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: Nope.

Avery/GM: A 10 against Zahn.

Zach/Zahn: Nope.

Avery/GM: And a 12 against Bruce.

Caden/Bruce: Uh, nope.

Avery/GM: Ooh, yeah, y'all are dodging these little electric stick attacks.

Chris/Ollie: Do I only get one attack on me?

Avery/GM: Yeah, well, the other one is the one on top of you, and his turn is after Bruce. Zahn, you're up.

Zach/Zahn: Well, I'm gonna, I guess, shoot this guy in front of me again. Uh, 13.

Avery/GM: Yep, that'll do it.

Zach/Zahn: Heck yeah, brother. That's much better for seven damage.

Avery/GM: Okay. That blasts a hole in him. He's gone. Okay. Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: What debuff is this guy riding me given?

Avery/GM: Basically half move. You have half movement.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, but no, like, attack.

Avery/GM: No, there's no debuff on your attacks. Um, just, yeah. You're just not able to move very well.

Chris/Ollie: Well, in response to, uh, the angry biting, I feel, Ollie's head will rotate 180 degrees. To look at this guy sitting on his back And the tentacles will just turn around and start thrashing at him with the sword or swords.

Avery/GM: I love it. Okay. Roll to attack.

Chris/Ollie: Ten.

Avery/GM: Ten is just enough.

Chris/Ollie: I managed to get some hits in. Oh, and this one actually does damage. So that's 15.

Avery/GM: Yeah. This clown is shredded. Yeah. However, however you wanna do it. That's…

Chris/Ollie: it's the scene from Resonant Evil where the dude gets diced by the lasers

Avery/GM: Oh no, there's just a, A persons soup.

Zach/Zahn: Except it's with lasers, so there's no blood. 'cause it's all cauterized.

Chris/Ollie: They're pretty used to person soup. So .

Bee/Polaris: Oh my god. You made person boullion cubes.

Chris/Ollie: There, Maybe they'll leave us alone and take those guy, that guy eat him.

Bee/Polaris: Boy-yon cubes,

Chris/Ollie: Boy-yon!.

Avery/GM: Boy-Yon... took me a minute. Bruce, your turn. You've got one person in front of you that um, had attacked, they had attacked Polaris with their shocky stick.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, I'm gonna pull out my uh, little laser blade knife and uh, slashy slash.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Caden/Bruce: Would that be stab? I feel like that's stab.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, it's stab.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: That's a 15.

Avery/GM: Uh, either way, either way it hits.Yeah, you're, this guy's going to get ouched.

Caden/Bruce: Hopefully, I'm not good at rolling damage. Oh, actually, no, that's a six. I lied. That's not terrible.

Bee/Polaris: Plus your dex.

Caden/Bruce: Yes. It was a six plus my dex.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, gotcha, gotcha.

Avery/GM: Yeah, this person's not looking great. They're kind of holding on by a thread.

Caden/Bruce: And then, can I use my other action to like... Go and use a medkit on Polaris? Am I allowed to do that? Is that too many actions?

Bee/Polaris: I'm very all the way over here.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you'd have to move, you'd have to move past this person.

Caden/Bruce: And then they'd probably get an opportunity attack.

Bee/Polaris: I don't think opportunity attacks are a thing in this game.

Avery/GM: I don't think so either.

Caden/Bruce: Oh sweet! Then I will, I will, I, I'm gonna move closer to Polaris so that next turn I can help Polaris out.

Avery/GM: So your on turn action can be used to activate a simple device. And so the medkit is, is a pretty simple advice, device. You just kind of slap it on somebody and push a button. So I'll let you do that for your instant action if you want.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Cool. Polaris, go ahead and roll your d6 for your healing.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh, okay. So I'm gonna heal one HP every three minutes.

Avery/GM: Hell yeah. Okay, cool. Cool. Cool. That's Bruce's turn. Okay. So this Raider here, it's on top of Ollie. Oh wait, he's dead. Nevermind. Oh no, he's not dead. Is he?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. He got, he got Boy-Yon cubed. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You made boys soup. That's right.

Bee/Polaris: Boy soup. Ew.

Avery/GM: Ew. Ick. Sorry.

Bee/Polaris: you're fine!

Avery/GM: Phrasing. . Okay. It's the captain's turn instead, I guess. Uh, yeah, y'all are making short work. Um, he's gonna kind, let's see. Actually, I need to roll against his morale score, so

Bee/Polaris: he also doesn't have a gun.

Avery/GM: Yeah, um, he rolled below his morale score, so he is gonna chicken out. He's gonna take a look at the battlefield, and kinda just be like, Ugh, ugh, who are these guys? Um, come on, let's get out of here!

Bee/Polaris: Dammit, now I gotta look up execution.

Avery/GM: And he's gonna try and make a run for it, and he's ordering his other people to make a run for it, so that's what they're gonna do on their turn. Yeah, Polaris, your, your, your turn is up.

Bee/Polaris: I want this guy dead. Badly. How, how far is my move? Can I just chase after him and laser blade him?

Avery/GM: You could probably do that.

Bee/Polaris: So, I'm, I'm just going to melee attack him. If I can reach him. I can.

Avery/GM: You should be able to, yeah. His movement is going to be the same as yours. I'm not too concerned about... These maps aren't exactly to scale.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, 10 meters is the move distance.

Avery/GM: Yeah, so 30 feet. Yeah. So easily.

Bee/Polaris: Coolio. Can I attempt to just like, run, jump up, and put both laser blades in his shoulder to pin him on the ground?

Avery/GM: I like that. Go ahead and roll a dexterity exert.

Caden/Bruce: And you see, you see the wheels on. Bruce's brain's churning and he suddenly thinks of kebabs.

Bee/Polaris: Can I, it's, it, can I use stab instead of exert, please?

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, no, I'm sorry. You're right. Yeah, no, that's, I'm sorry

Bee/Polaris: no, you're good.

Avery/GM: I was thinking exert for the jump, but yeah. Um, stab, stab makes more sense.

Bee/Polaris: So I'm rolling an attack and adding stab and dex.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Does a 16 hit.

Avery/GM: It sure does.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Well, I guess I'd be taking the minus one, right? Cause I'm using both laser blades.

Avery/GM: You would.

Bee/Polaris: So, does a 15 hit?

Avery/GM: A 15 still hits, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Sick. Okay. So that's gonna be 10 damage.

Avery/GM: Not enough to kill him, but this guy is severely injured now.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I'm just trying to pin him to the ground. I'm not trying to kill him.

Avery/GM: And he's, and he's pinned. He's pinned. He's, he's screaming out in pain like, Ow! Why did you do that for?

Bee/Polaris: You shot me.  That's my turn.

Avery/GM: That's it? Okay. Yeah. His friends are going to try and escape. This one right here scoops up some Boy-Yon and makes a dash.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah, that's food.

Avery/GM: Yeah. And this one grabs some Boy-Yon and rushes past as well.

Zach/Zahn: Oh God.

Avery/GM: They're not completely out of danger yet, but they are, they are running away actively. Zahn. You are up.

Zach/Zahn: Uh, I'm going to move to about here, and I'm going to shoot this one.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah!

Avery/GM: Okie dokie.

Zach/Zahn: No survivors!

Avery/GM: No more resurrections.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, that's an 11.

Avery/GM: That still hits. They only have a 10, so. They only have a 10 for AC, so.

Zach/Zahn: Five damage.

Avery/GM: Okay, yeah, you pop him in his leg and he's limping. Barely, barely going, but he's still going. That's it?

Bee/Polaris: Well, he's at half speed.

Avery/GM: Is that it for you, Zahn?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, as far as I can see, that's, uh.

I, I did the move and I did the, the shoot.

Avery/GM: Okay, Ollie, it is your turn.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. What is this thing here exactly?

Avery/GM: Oh, that's a big giant holographic globe. Now that you brought attention to it, um, it looks like it's a projection of the planet that this station is orbiting and below it says Terra formation, 5 percent complete. Estimated time to completion, 400, 000 years.

Chris/Ollie: Hmm, okay. Um, can I pass through it or over it easily?

Avery/GM: Uh, yeah, I mean there's like a little projector on the floor and then it's just projecting this hologram so you can totally jump through the hologram. Sorry, there wasn't really a good way to represent that.

Chris/Ollie: Oh no, it's okay. So Ollie's gonna run and leap through the globe and strike this guy on his way out in a really cinematic and cool looking way. Like, burst through the planet. Laser swords.

Avery/GM: Are you biting or laser swording?

Chris/Ollie: Uh, laser sword.

Avery/GM: Okay, uh, yeah, roll to attack.

Zach/Zahn: We're all about our laser swords here.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, this is the future.

Um, oh wow, so that's gonna be... 17 to hit.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that hits. Uh, how do you get this guy?

Chris/Ollie: So, Ollie's gonna run, jump through this holographic globe. And as he bursts out the side, the tentacles are gonna, like, be swinging, like, decapitate him. If he dies. For 13 damage or 14?

Avery/GM: He's got two hit points. There's very little. Yeah, there's no way you couldn't have gotten it.

Chris/Ollie: So yeah, burst through the thing, decapitate him in one motion, and then land in front of this guy. And just say, your customer service has been most rude.

Bee/Polaris: That's terrifying.

Avery/GM: Okay, Bruce, you're up. You've got one raider running away that Ollie has kind of blocked, and you've got the captain dude that's pinned down.

Bee/Polaris: Don't kill him.

Caden/Bruce: So many options.

Bee/Polaris: Don't kill him.

Caden/Bruce: Okay. Well, does Polaris say that out loud?

Bee/Polaris: Uh, yeah, Polaris would say, Don't kill him. We need him for interrogation.

Caden/Bruce: Okay, in which case, Bruce is gonna pull out his, well, I guess he still has it out. He's gonna shoot his pistol at the, uh, one that, um, Ollie's blocking.

Avery/GM: Sure. Go ahead and roll to attack.

Caden/Bruce: And that's not great. That's an 11.

Avery/GM: Still enough to hit.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah. Also not great. That's a three.

Avery/GM: Uh, yeah, you, you, you pop him in the leg as well and he's limping, but again, nothing devastatingly, uh, damaging yet. Polaris, go ahead and make a strength exert check.

Bee/Polaris: Um, strength exert, that's going to be a… Why am I bad at… six? Sorry.

Avery/GM: A six? Okay, well, he rolled a nine minus two, uh, for a seven. So, he, he lands a kick kinda on your butt, actually.

Bee/Polaris: Ouch!

Avery/GM: Uh, a little bit.

Bee/Polaris: My butt!

Zach/Zahn: Talk about an ass whoopin

Avery/GM: And it's not, it's not super forceful. It's enough to, um, kind of jar your, your grip on these blades long enough.

Bee/Polaris: Sure. Um, I mean, they aren't in the ground.

Avery/GM: He's like...

Bee/Polaris: No?

Avery/GM: It's gonna hurt for him. I'm not, I'm not saying this isn't gonna hurt for him. Um... But it is enough for, for your grip to kind of loosen enough for him to try and like push up against it.

Bee/Polaris: Mm hmm. Okay.

Avery/GM: Um, and he is, he is now sitting prone with these blades sticking out of his shoulders, and he's gonna try and grab them, uh, out of his body.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no, my blades!

Avery/GM: Go ahead and... Go ahead and roll 3d8 damage.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. 3d8?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Oh god.

Avery/GM: Cause normally they're

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Avery/GM: Cause normally they're 2d8, right?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Jesus. Okay. Um. Does this guy really want to do this? Haha.

Avery/GM: Yeah, he wants out.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, 15 damage.

Avery/GM: Okay, he's still got 10 HP left. Uh, he screams in agony as he sits up and starts pulling these blades out of his shoulders. Um, and, uh, he, he sees the buttons on the handles, pushes them, and they deactivate, but he passes out from just the immense amount of agony and pain. Uh, that this put him through. Um, cause he failed his, uh, Mental saving throw.

Bee/Polaris: That just makes my job easier. I was gonna punch him.

Avery/GM: Nope, he's

Zach/Zahn: he's unconscious,

Avery/GM: but there's a chance he could have died. So

Bee/Polaris: yeah,

Avery/GM: that's kind of

Bee/Polaris: Can you punch a man to death? Is there non lethal damage in this game?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Oh sweet

Avery/GM: So yeah, so he's pulled out these blades, he's kind of slumped now against the wall right here. Um, it is your turn, Polaris. Ah,

Bee/Polaris: well, I just pick up, I just fucking let the magnets do their job, you know? Back to my hands! Would that be an instant action? Would it be picking up a weapon?

Avery/GM: Yeah, yeah, I'd say that's an instant action. Bringing them back to your hands.

Bee/Polaris: Oh wait, I think I have a thing where I can literally just that's just like a thing I can do for funsies.

Avery/GM: I think that's part of your armsman ability too. Being able to just ready a weapon for free.

Bee/Polaris: Um, well in that case, is the guy in front of Ollie still alive? I would like to, does he look good? Does he look bad?

Avery/GM: He's lim,,, yeah, I mean, he's, he's barely holding on.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, well, I'll just walk over to him and put the, uh, business side of my laser blade towards his back and then just turn it on.

Avery/GM: Oh, Jesus. Yeah, okay. Uh, roll to attack.

Bee/Polaris: I'm sorry. That's gonna be a 21.

Avery/GM: I mean, yeah, how do you, how do you get this guy gone. Just right through him?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean, Polaris just, yeah. Wordlessly.

Avery/GM: Just Star Wars execution style. Yeah, the cannibal person slumps to the floor and is gone, never getting to savor the taste of Boy-Yon.

Bee/Polaris: I'm so sorry, sir.

Avery/GM: And you are out of combat.

Zach/Zahn: Uh, Zahn is going to approach this guy and be like, There's no need for interrogations here. And then he just shoots him in the head.

Bee/Polaris: No! Oh no! He has the way out of the ship!

Zach/Zahn: So does Amanda!

Bee/Polaris: You're right! Oh, okay, well... When fucking Zahn shoots him in the head, Polaris like, puts his hands out towards the guy like, Oh no!

Avery/GM: Zahn, is there, is there any emotion behind it? Or are you sort of on like kind of autopilot mode at this point? Like what what's going through Zahn's head?

Zach/Zahn: Seeing these people being like this, he has, uh, gone robot mode. Where he's like, these aren't people anymore.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no!

Zach/Zahn: And then he's gonna come to the door and he's gonna do the shave and a haircut nock.

Avery/GM: The door opens. You come in and you see Amanda. She is older than you remember, but still very much the sort of brash and rough around the edges type of person that you remember. Uh, she walks right up to you, pats you, pats your shoulders like to like make sure like almost like checking to see if you're real.

Zach/Zahn: As she's doing that, Zahn flicks the switch and his helmet decompresses to show his face.

Avery/GM: She's like, holy hell, holy, it, it is. Zahn, what are you doing here? I thought I really lost my marbles back there for a minute.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, it seems like everybody else here has, so I wouldn't put it past you. Me and the peeps here, we need to get into the citadel.

Avery/GM: That's, uh, hold back up. Who are these people that are with you? Why are you back here? What's, what's going on?

Zach/Zahn: Long story short of it is, uh, Somebody somewhere developed a virus that kills planets. So, somebody somewhere figured that with all the research here, uh, we would have the basically anti equation to that.

Avery/GM: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, old Terra had a whole bunch of nasty, uh, weapons for destroying planets and ruining their systems and stuff. I know...

Zach/Zahn: Hold the phone. How much about Old Terra do you know? And why didn't you tell me about it?

Avery/GM: I mean, it's just, it's in the history records. I've had 12 years to just sit in this room and do nothing but read.

Zach/Zahn: I'm gonna look to Ollie real quick and be like, Ollie, you should probably download those.

Chris/Ollie: He'll nod and make his way over to the computer. Um, I'm guessing also the guy I diced, his legs are probably just still, still sitting on his back riding.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my god. It's like a cartoon where all that's left are the shoes and socks.

Avery/GM: Jesus… And, and Zahn, kind of looking around, you realize, like, you see, like, like a bed cot kind of rolled up in the corner. You see, like, some plates and some dishes kind of off to the side. It looks like, somehow, Amanda has managed to live in this room since you left.

Bee/Polaris: 12 years in this tiny ass room.

Avery/GM: She's like, oh, well, uh, You remember how I have, like, You know, some medical conditions that require a very specific diet?

Zach/Zahn: Vaguely.

Avery/GM: Well, when shit hit the fan, I, uh, I started devising a, um, A little I was trying to come up with a way to provide food for the rest of the station. And I perfected a mini food replicator. And she points to a workbench area that has like a little tiny computer on it with like a tray next to it.

Avery/GM: And she's like, yeah, you can create about a day's worth of food for one person. But, uh, I was never able to really make it bigger, or make it more efficient enough to make more food, but I've been able to at least live off of it in here for these past 12 years. It's not the greatest stuff in the world, it mostly creates these flavorless bars.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris gasps and turns around because he was standing at the door like basically Security, like with his laser pistol, and he turns around with an exclamation point on his visor.

Chris/Ollie: Nutrient bars?

Bee/Polaris: And he pulls out one of his nutrient bars and holds it up.

Avery/GM: Yeah, yeah, kind of like that, actually. Uh, that's really creepy. Who's your friend with the exclamation point? Robot? Human? Alien?

Zach/Zahn: That's Polaris we, we don't pry into their backstory too much.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts a smiley face, like a colon, uh, like parentheses, uh, smiley face on his magazine. Is he covered in blood? No. Cause he used laser blades.

Avery/GM: Yeah, no, no. Cauterized, it's fine. Maybe some initial spray, but not, not much.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Well, he still has a little blood on him. He Smiley Faces

Chris/Ollie: um, it's like a Watchmen logo

Avery/GM: and, and she turns, she turns to Bruce and it's like, and, and your, your, your big friend is, is this your muscle?

Zach/Zahn: He's my chef.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will wave.

Zach/Zahn: Or I meant to say our chef. But he's, he's our chef.

Bee/Polaris: We, we are the shadiest group of people, except Bruce, who is a chef.

Avery/GM: And, and, and hearing the click clacking of coming from the direction where the dog walked over, she turns and sees Ollie with, do your tentacles come out? To do the hacking or, or what? How are, how are you hacking this computer in dog form?

Bee/Polaris: Your paws grow fingers?

Chris/Ollie: Um, so the way I think about it is like Ollie's chest and back will open up for the big tentacles, but around his collar he's got like some tentacles like hidden underneath the collar, some like small like You know, yeah, like for finer movements and then those do the, uh, the ghost in the shell meme where they like split open into a shit ton of fingers and just all over the keyboard.

Bee/Polaris: We are the most unnerving group of people, except Bruce, who is a chef.

Zach/Zahn: Hey, if we had Marty here, it would be, it would be a little more balanced and

Chris/Ollie: we would have a personable person to be like, Hey, they're all cool.

Caden/Bruce: They're all okay.

Chris/Ollie: Instead. We're all just like completely antisocial. Like, Hey,

Avery/GM: Amanda leans into you, like leans in close to his on and it's just like, what is wrong with this galaxy? Why? Why does that dog have little tentacle fingers?

Zach/Zahn: He's a robot.

Avery/GM: Oh, that, that makes a lot more sense. Oh, okay. I, you know, I don't get out much, so it's just been, it's been a bit weird. Okay. So you're, you're going to go down to the Citadel. Is that what, is that what I just heard you say?

Zach/Zahn: Pretty much. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. You know that that's a death trap, right? And you know, your dad's down there and he's gone a little off his rocker, right?

Zach/Zahn: Uh, I can only assume judging by whatever the fuck that party we just dealt with was.

Avery/GM: Oh, oh no. Those guys, those are just, they're always trying to get in here and eat me. It's fine.

Bee/Polaris: It's like a tuesday, like ritual, like, all right, we'll be back tomorrow.

Avery/GM: Did they run off again? Or, or I could see your dog still has some legs on it. So I'm assuming at least one of them died, but

Bee/Polaris: only three got away, but we can deal with that later.

Avery/GM: I don't know. They'll disappear into the walls. They'll, they'll come back some other time. It's fine.

Zach/Zahn: they live in the walls.

Avery/GM: They have a whole tunnel system worked out, it's really creepy. In fact, they actually, they damaged the reactor on this floor to try and force me out a few weeks ago. They're getting very clever. So, yeah, so the door down to the lower level won't open. So the only way to get down there is either reactivate the reactor or, uh, or crawl through their tunnels.

Bee/Polaris: Why would we, I mean, I feel like we all have a key here, and players hold up his laser blade.

Zach/Zahn: You know what? I didn't think of that!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we could just General Grievous our way through that door.

Avery/GM: Yeah, Amanda looks at us like, Oh, um, I guess that'll work. Is that, is that a, like a laser sword?

Bee/Polaris: He turns it on.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, this, this galaxy apparently has, uh, swords made of light. It's something I remember hearing, like, about in the old, like, fantasy stories as a kid, but like, dude, shit's real here.

Avery/GM: Yeah, I mean, our our old our old movies have a whole bunch of those kinds of things. That's just that's really cool. Well

Bee/Polaris: Would you like off of this space station?

Avery/GM: Yeah, more than anything, actually. That would be really great.

Bee/Polaris: You do not seem like you are in a fighting condition, correct?

Avery/GM: No, I haven't eaten in two weeks. Uh, with the reactor being down, my food replicator hasn't been working. So it's been a bit, been a bit rough.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris tosses her a nutrient bar.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce just stares at Polaris and then offers her one of the bento boxes. She has dietary restrictions!

Bee/Polaris: And she's used to the bars! Polaris! That's why Polaris even offered. Yeah, that's the only reason why Polaris offered because he knows that Bruce would have taken care of it otherwise.

Avery/GM: Polaris, she looks down at this bento box, looks up at you, and is just like, Is it gluten and dairy free?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce nods. Because rice is gluten free, yes? I think so.

Bee/Polaris: Well, yeah, rice is, yeah, rice is gluten free. You use rice flour a lot in, um, gluten free stuff.

Caden/Bruce: Pasta's not gluten free. So yeah, Bruce will nod.

Bee/Polaris: Well, what else is in the bento box?

Caden/Bruce: Well, whatever it is, it's now gluten and, uh...

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: I think you said there was some meat and some,

Caden/Bruce: yeah, there's some meat and there's some rice and there was, yeah, there's

Bee/Polaris: some veggies.

Caden/Bruce: There's no mention of glarier, glary, Dairy or gluten.

Avery/GM: You would be incredibly surprised how many things have gluten in them.

Caden/Bruce: That's true. Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: so, so many things.

Avery/GM: Yeah, she takes the bento box and just says, uh, thank, thank you? That's, wow, I haven't, um, okay, okay, calm down, Amanda.

Bee/Polaris: If you would like, you can wait on the shuttle we came on for us to return. If you do try to steal the ship, though, we have someone in the atmosphere that will destroy the ship. Polaris says as he types to Rho, like, Hey Rho if they leave and we're not on it, can you shut it down, please? Heart, smiley face.

Avery/GM: Um, I mean, it'll take me a little while. I got some things I need to gather in here and pack if I'm going to be leaving. And she turns to you, Zahn and kind of looks a little mournful towards you. And it's just like, Zahn, if, if you're going down to the Citadel, just, uh, just be careful, okay? It's, uh, it's not pretty down there at all.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna shrug. How much worse could it be?

Bee/Polaris: Smash cut to us looking down the hallway to the Citadel it's real bad.

Avery/GM: Is there anything else you want to ask her about before you head out of this room?

Zach/Zahn: No, I was going to say, after he says what he just said, he flicks on his helmet to deactivate and then he's going to leave. But if you've got more, what do you want to say?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, no, I was going to say, like, we can have this conversation afterwards because we're kind of on a time crunch now.

Chris/Ollie: We can give her a spare comm link too.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah. Do we have a spare one?

Avery/GM: You probably do.

Bee/Polaris: Wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't she have one?

Avery/GM: No, she could. Yeah, she would probably have one.

Zach/Zahn: Just pair it to the group chat.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, well, Polaris makes a new group chat called the New Terra Team. New Terra Team.

Avery/GM: NTT.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, the NTT chat. And then he'll add her to it, and everyone else. Minus Marty sad face.

Avery/GM: If you have any questions while you're down in the lower levels, just let me know. I haven't been down there for about a year, but last time I was down there, it wasn't looking great.

Zach/Zahn: Well, I guess I should ask then. Is there anyone else sane here or are they all crazy?

Avery/GM: I mean, crazy's not exactly the right

Bee/Polaris: Is there anyone else that isn't lost?

Avery/GM: Lost is probably better. They've all kind of succumbed to the sort of barbarism that is cannibalism.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn just nods.

Avery/GM: I, I, I really did try to help them, Zahn. I did. I, I, I tried to make the replicator work and it, it just, and you can kind of see like this is actually kind of a touchy subject for her. Like she really feels like this, like she failed. And that she's to blame for their current condition.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn just puts a hand on her shoulder and is like, there, there.

Caden/Bruce: How long has this been?

Avery/GM: Twelve, twelve years.

Caden/Bruce: I'm just curious how the, uh, population is still, uh, intact. And you can see Bruce kind of wince because he doesn't want to offend Zahn.

Avery/GM: I mean, aside from those eight people that were outside the door, there's really only a handful left. They've all been kind of split into different factions and eating each other. I will say there is... Some food on level 2, but don't eat it, Zahn. Do not eat what is on level 2.

Zach/Zahn: Why?

Avery/GM: It can't It It will not end well for anybody here. It's part of the reason for their Madness, I guess you could call it.

Bee/Polaris: Good to know. We have bento boxes.

Zach/Zahn: We have bento boxes! What's, uh, What's in the food?

Bee/Polaris: Probably worms or something.

Avery/GM: I mean, I haven't done like a detailed analysis. I just know that, you know, they turned to that food source at first. When I, when I failed to create the replicator, they turned to the food sources in the, in the botany lab and it just made them worse.

Avery/GM: And soon they stopped eating that food entirely and started turning on each other. Just slowly devolved into this society of cannibals. I really thought we could last a little longer than that before... Or, uh, you know, a little longer before turning to that, but it... I guess it wasn't. In the cards.

Bee/Polaris: Well, technology has advanced quite a bit. Maybe we can take a sample and develop some sort of cure later.

Avery/GM: Yeah, I guess that's, that's a possibility. Just like I said, just be careful down there. It's, it's dangerous.

Chris/Ollie: Have I been able to access any video footage on this computer?

Bee/Polaris: Reactors down right?

Avery/GM: No video. Yeah, so the reactor's down, this computer is kind of running on auxiliary power, and it's just like, you can get kind of basically like what's like local to this device, which is just like a few chapters of like old Earth history.

Chris/Ollie: Because I would have liked to put up a bunch of video footage feed of people just getting murdered, but... This seems dramatic enough.

Avery/GM: So yeah, so you can choose to turn on the radi the reactor here, or you can carve your way down.

Bee/Polaris: Sorry, sorry for defeating your door boss.

Avery/GM: No, you're fine. I knew you had laser blades, and I knew that was a possibility.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sick. Well, I also have grenades.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, the grenade was like, came in clutch.

Bee/Polaris: What a good, what a clutch impulse buy.

Chris/Ollie: No, that Cashier, he's like, nah, these grenades, they gotta go right on the counter today. Someone will need those.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna say to Amanda, get comfortable on the, on the ship. We'll be back.

Avery/GM: Yeah, sure, I'll pack my things and I'll wait for you there. After I eat this delicious lunch, by the way. And start st digging in

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna like, do the thing that you do when you're checking your corners. And he has his laser blade out, er, his laser pistol out. And he's gonna like, peek around the corner with his gun drawn. Gun first. Oh, how much time has passed?

Avery/GM: Probably like 30 minutes, you're probably halfway there.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie is also a melee boy, so he's like, gonna always try and stay in front, like, body blocking.

Avery/GM: Sure. This rat just scurries us across.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, wait, should we pick up some of the Boy-Yon cubes so that we can toss them as like a distractor?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, we just made cannibal bait. They're roasted too,

they're pre roasted.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris has , Polaris has no qualms with that. Polaris will pick up some Boy-Yon cube. .

Avery/GM: Oh my God. Okay. You pick up some Boy-Yon

Bee/Polaris: how many, how many Boy-Yon cubes do I have?

Avery/GM: Uh, probably like five or six.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Like you have like a small handful. You know? Enough for like a trap.

Zach/Zahn: You can do a little piece of candy. Ooh, piece of candy.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, exactly.

Zach/Zahn: the trail.

Bee/Polaris: That's exactly.

Avery/GM: So you wanna investigate this little machine here?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris just like peeking inside. I hope it's not a big gun.

Avery/GM: It's not. It actually looks almost similar to the mini food replicator that Amanda had.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, it's just a bigger version of work in progress.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's what it looks like.

Bee/Polaris: Is this something we can take on our shuttle when we leave?

Avery/GM: It is too big to fit into the shuttle. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Chris.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, no my bad. I was just saying, Polaris casually like Crit roles of success to fix this thing and get it running. Like, Oh yeah, that was no problem. Well, she's like mentally torn up about not getting it working.

Bee/Polaris: That would break Amanda.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Oh yeah. You just forgot to plug it in.

Bee/Polaris: Oh God!

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, you see, the power supply Is off.

Bee/Polaris: You plugged in the wrong cord.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah. It just takes USB C.

Bee/Polaris: Would this fit in our ship?

Avery/GM: But, um, to answer,

Zach/Zahn: no,

Avery/GM: no, it would not.

Zach/Zahn: that and the Ursa Major already has like a perfected version of this.

Chris/Ollie: I don't know, I think we should ask Bruce's opinion about bringing a food replicator onto the ship.

Caden/Bruce: I mean, I feel like Bruce is curious.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, you could probably modify it to make it not make nutrient bars.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, same dealio, gun drawn, looking in this room, while waiting for Ollie. cause Ollie's point dog.

Chris/Ollie: Meat shield point, well, I can't, a metal shield?

Bee/Polaris: Meat, meatless shield.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, meatless shield. Well that, that'll be the best.

Avery/GM: So these rats hear you coming and they scurry, one scurries down this way, and you hear a sizzle and a squeak.

Caden/Bruce: Anyone not a fan of these rats, or is that just me?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I'm also not a fan of these rats, cause they do look weird.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, they've got a lot of tails.

Bee/Polaris: Should we be murking these rats? We don't want them becoming like a rat king, or like a rat swarm.

Avery/GM: You can make a, you can make a shoot roll if you want.

Bee/Polaris: Can I just throw my laser blade?

Avery/GM: Sure, go ahead and roll an attack.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will turn his laser blade into a knife, and... 18 plus nu oh, I mean, without the pluses, it's 18. Will that hit, or should I

Avery/GM: Yeah, that hits, and you kill it. No, you hit it and kill it.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Polaris, uh, fuckin force... Force, force mag uh, like, gets his blade back.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, this is the perfect opportunity to use my brand new bioscanner.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, go check that out, give it a good sniff.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I'm gonna... See, exactly what the hell is wrong with this thing?

Avery/GM: Yeah, just looking at it, you see that it has, like, seven different tails sprouting out of the back end of it. And you see that its eyes are glazed over, indicating that it might be blind. But you also notice, when you initiate the bioscanner, uh, you notice that it has high levels of radiation throughout its body, and that several of its organs are... Several of the organs that should be inside of a rat are not there, but yet it is still alive.

Caden/Bruce: Which seven?

Avery/GM: Oh, several. Not, not seven, sorry.

Chris/Ollie: Exactly seven..

Bee/Polaris: He's missing a liver, a lung.

Chris/Ollie: Half of his spleen.

Avery/GM: No spleen, no kidney. No bladder.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no!

Avery/GM: Nothing too vital, just, you know.

Bee/Polaris: Nothing too vital? How is he gonna piss?

Chris/Ollie: Uh, examining this thing, he's gonna look up at Zahn and say, Are such creatures common in Terra?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's just gonna shake his head no, as he's just gonna look at this computer.

Avery/GM: It is powered down.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, okay.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, remember reactor not good. Can we just slap one of our batteries in that bad boy?

Avery/GM: Probably with a, with a good fix check, yeah.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, I'm assuming it's how we turn off these lasers.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, how come those are active with the reactors down?

Avery/GM: There is very little power, auxiliary power, that is running the holoprojector, the lasers, and basic power for Amanda's systems that she has jury rigged herself.

Bee/Polaris: Does anyone have a mirror?

Zach/Zahn: And the, I'm assuming, flickering lights.

Avery/GM: Yeah,

Zach/Zahn: no mirror.

Caden/Bruce: No, I don't think so.

Bee/Polaris: Wait! Wait, does Polaris have one of those fucking compact mirrors? Like, in the, in the dining episode with the Winstons. Did I?

Avery/GM: You did your makeup.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris takes his fucking make up compact mirror and, like, opens it so that he has a handle so he can, like, put the mirror in the laser, like, to see if it'll actually work in reflecting the laser. Polaris would like to deflect it into the other lasers, like the source of the lasers.

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll. A constitution exert check.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay, constitution's not bad. Oh, somebody exert, okay, well, it's just a flat roll then. And I rolled great, 11.

Avery/GM: Yeah, sure, you managed to knock out this middle section of laser and this laser here.

Bee/Polaris: Cool So we only have the, the last one then. Okay.

Avery/GM: Zahn, are you slapping a, are you, are you going to try and jury rig a power supply to this computer?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, I'm going to go do that.

Avery/GM: Okay. Go ahead and roll intelligence fix.

Zach/Zahn: 15.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, that's easily done. So you power on this computer in the corner of this room and you see that it has several different log entries that appear to have been made by Amanda.

Avery/GM: Detailing the first couple years after the civilization started to kind of break down here. There are notes about, you know, okay, we lost this wing of the space station when, you know, some, some cannibals detonated, you know, the reactor in this section and, you know, we lost a bunch of people, et cetera, et cetera, you know, you're kind of going through the last entry dated three years ago, just says:

Avery/GM: I've initiated E.L.I. On the fifth floor, and I'm going to retreat to my bunker to live out my final years, however many I have left. Whoever finds this, I am so sorry that I failed. Hopefully, the architects make use of E.L.I. And can at least save... Whatever's left of the station. And I think that's where we're going to end 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. Find more of our work at 1uppodcasts.com. Intro and Outro music produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by tabletopaudio.com and used under an attribution non commercial license from creative commons. The tracks used today include Docking Bay and Generation Ship. We'll be back on December 15th with our next episode. See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Episode 34 - Into Zahn's Past

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 34 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Intro plays, fades down, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: Okay. So where we left off. Y'all were in the hotel room debriefing after Rho and Hermes did some stupid shit. 

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, they fucked everything up. 

Avery/GM: Got Hermes captured.

Bee/Polaris: So bad.

Avery/GM: Zahn saved Rho from becoming a concrete hamburger, thing. And y'all evaded the military from swooping in and blaming you for the terrorist attack. That isn't actually a terrorist attack, but you know, that's what they were thinking. And then y'all asked the Winstons to send the shuttle early so you can take off sooner for...

Avery/GM: New Terra and Ollie has a drone attached to the ship carrying Hermes and Rhea to their destination. So y'all will know where they are at when the time comes. What's the play before the shuttle gets here? 

Bee/Polaris: Need gun, need medicine.

Caden/Bruce:  Leave note.  

Bee/Polaris: Oh, well, we can just text Marty.

Caden/Bruce: That's true. But I feel like also a note, just in case.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we can, we can all leave like a, like a Christmas card, but like a, be back soon, like a BRB card. And we all sign it. 

Avery/GM: Oh, for sure. I'm sure the concierge has something available. Oh man, but no. But no, if y'all, if y'all do... Perish on this trip. Marty is gonna be abandoned, but no. So Polaris, you are wanting to find yourself a new gun and some med kits.

Bee/Polaris: Well, Marty gave us like a med kit, but like what, what all does that, is it just like the med kit? Did Marty have a scanner? A scanner thingy? 

Avery/GM: I think Marty has a bioscanner on her, but I don't, I don't think she gave it to you guys. I think she just gave you guys one medkit with, which basically has enough pharmaceuticals to heal one character one time, so.

Zach/Zahn: Got it. 

Bee/Polaris: Can we just ask the Winstons to stock the shuttle that they're sending us with a bunch of medical supplies so we don't have to pay for it? 

Avery/GM: Millionaires and you're being cheap. No, I'm kidding.

Bee/Polaris:  We're not millionaires. I'm not at least. 

Zach/Zahn: Well, that's because you spent a whole bunch of money starting somebody else's business. I'm still a millionaire, single millionaire.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but not for long.

Avery/GM: Collective millionaires.

Bee/Polaris: Cause like as soon as we get to a, like a nice place with a lot of like cool robot-y stuff, you're going to buy them all up. 

Chris/Ollie: Same. I don't know. I think the quadrillionaires can fit the bill though. 

Avery/GM: No, thats fine. 

Zach/Zahn: I need to save all my money so that I can afford to upgrade all of our shit.

Avery/GM: Yeah, If you want to roll a charisma lead check to see if they'll honor that request. 

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Charisma is my worst skill. 

Chris/Ollie: I know. Where's Marty? 

Bee/Polaris: Charisma lead. Excellent, I have a minus one.

Zach/Zahn: Hey, at least it's only a minus one.

Bee/Polaris:  I don't think that's gonna do it, that's a four.

Avery/GM: Yeah. They say the shuttle's already on its way, we can't exactly have it pull over for stops. It's gonna be there in a minute. 

Chris/Ollie: Do we have time to even shop anything? Or are we just stuck with  like…

Avery/GM: I mean, once you have the shuttle, you have the shuttle and then, you know, you can do whatever you want.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, but we're like, super time crunched. 

Bee/Polaris: Oh shit, it's the middle of the night, too, isn't it? 

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's like 9 o'clock and there was a terrorist attack in the city, so. 

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna go online and see if there's any delivery services. They can get it to us instantly. 

Avery/GM: Yeah, I guess roll, if Polaris is doing this go ahead and roll an intelligence, I guess intelligence program, since you're using your computer skills?

Bee/Polaris: Can someone else smarter than me do this? 

Zach/Zahn: Zahn can try, I guess. 

Bee/Polaris: I'll still roll it. So that cancels that out. Seven. 

Avery/GM: Yeah, like there's a bunch of services, but they're all closed due to emergency. You do see one service open, and it's actually the hotel gift shop. Damn it, they don't have guns though.

Zach/Zahn: Do they though? 

Avery/GM: I will say, there are guns on the Cassiopeia. Yeah, 

Chris/Ollie: I mean, there's guns on there I'm pretty sure Zahn uh, I've got a bit of fix too. So, between us, I'm pretty sure we could whip up some makeshift weapons. 

Zach/Zahn: Zahn actually has a makeshift weapon in mind that he wants to build, so. 

Chris/Ollie: Oh, and you can have Ollie’s gun too, because he's going melee now, being a dog boy.

Bee/Polaris: I'm mostly melee as well. I your laser blade? Yeah, I, I mean, players dual wields with laser blades. I was just gonna, I just wanted a ranged weapon just in case. Cause I don't think I can, well, wait, actually I think I can throw it. Nevermind. 

Zach/Zahn: That's right. You want, last time you wanted me to put like some kind of magnets in your, in your gloves so you could Thor throw it.

Avery/GM: Which I'm sure you'll have enough travel time between here and New Terra to do that if you would wish. 

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah.

Caden/Bruce: I mean the hotel, the hotel gift shop probably has like The basic medicine supplies like I'm sure they do like Space type like Tylenol and gravel. 

Chris/Ollie: Well, there's a terrorist attack. The security forces are swarming all over the city, right? Could Ollie try to like hack into their network and get a supply drop? Here making them think this is like a platoon that needs medical and weapon supplies. I mean… with a high enough roll 

Avery/GM: Okay, this is high risk high. This is high risk high reward Chris. 

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah 

Avery/GM:I will let you do it. But there is there is a significant risk going on here. 

Zach/Zahn: That's okay The shuttle will be here in less than a minute.We can dance the fuck out of herein case somthing goes wrong.

Bee/Polaris: Well, who's paying for this room? Like whose name is on  this room?

Zach/Zahn: The Winstons.

Avery/GM: Machamps. 

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah, Machamps.

Caden/Bruce: Whoops.

Bee/Polaris: We don't want to do that to Machamp.

Chris/Ollie: I do not want to do that to Machamp. I'll just do a normal search for any businesses that might've been missed or any maybe underground businesses.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: 14.

Avery/GM: Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah, you find a, like you're, you're looking and you're looking and you're seeing a lot of like these, these like official businesses closed and stuff. But then you decide to check like, the kind of like, traffic scanners that are in place. And you see that while the central area of the city has been closed off, there is still a lot of traffic going on in the Southwest quadrant of this city.

And you zoom in on that, and there are several shops in this location that sell a variety of goods, and there's just a lot of traffic going on, probably some panic buying going on, because this city doesn't have explosions go on very often, so. 

Chris/Ollie: But they're, like, out of the quarantine zone. Okay. 

Avery/GM: Yeah and for you all, it would probably be, like, a ten minute shuttle ride. And since your hotel is just on the edge of the quarantine Zahn, you can easily avoid any run ins with, the military.

 Bee/Polaris: The law. 

Chris/Ollie: The law. I am the law. 

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Well, yeah, Ollie will relay that and say, ah, most fortuitously, in the southeast, there are still shops operating.

Avery/GM: And then pulling up to your window, you see a shuttle and you hear a little beep beep beep. 

Bee/Polaris: That's cute. Does, did we ever establish that the hotel gift shop has medical supplies?

Avery/GM: I mean, it was, it was like in the Google search. Like, you know, medicines was in the list of things they have. 

Bee/Polaris: I don't want to go back downstairs. I don't want to talk to the concierge guy. 

Chris/Ollie: Just wait until he's driving the shuttle.

Bee/Polaris: Oh! If he is! Oh my god I’m about to fuckin lose it.

Avery/GM: No, I wouldn't do that.

Bee/Polaris: That guy has a lot of jobs. Where does he find the time to do stand up? Okay, so what are we doing? Are we going shopping over there? Or are we getting in the shuttle and... skedaddling? 

Avery/GM: We can also handwave the shopping if you all have exactly what you wanted to buy in mind, we can just handwave it. 

Bee/Polaris: I just wanted to stock up on just like a shit ton of medpacks.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, just, just basic supplies. 

Bee/Polaris: Just, like, a stupid amount. 

Zach/Zahn: The necessaries, yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Just all the stuff that everyone else in the city is rushing into buy. 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, can we also panic buy?  

Avery/GM: Yeah! Cool. Anyway, so yeah, so y'all are in this shopping area. There's various different shops. There's lots of people kind of crowding around and stuff.

It's very busy right now. But y'all have time to grab some equipment. What do y'all grab? 

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna write down a big list because these things are very cheap compared to our current funding. Absolutely going to get a handful of bioscanners because I want one installed on Ollie's chassis. 

Avery/GM: Oh, that's the other thing I was going to ask. Ollie, are you staying as a dog for this trip to New Terra? 

Bee/Polaris: Yes. Let's go! Oh my gosh, Ollie, you're an attack dog!

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, nope. Ollie's the attack dog. I got Ironhide as my recent foci. Hell yeah. I got... I'm gonna have my two laser blades dual wield him. 

Avery/GM: Get in there.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, did someone write who wrote down that they have Marty's medical pack?

Caden/Bruce: I do, recently.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, then I have a medical pack that I didn't know about. 

Zach/Zahn: So what we want to do is get a bunch of Lazarus patches. 

Bee/Polaris: Don't those cause system strain if you use them though? 

Avery/GM: Yeah, but death causes permanent system strain if you think about it. 

Caden/Bruce: Yikes!

Bee/Polaris: Hey, thanks, GM. I'm going to get a few Lazarus patches then.

Avery/GM: Sorry, that was too real. 

No, I mean, you're totally right. But I just thought is my special little thingy because I'm a weird special boy my healing, does that make it, if I roll a bad, will the healing not last as long? 

Avery/GM: Yeah, let me, I, I need to pull that up actually, so Bee, the yeah, the one, so if you roll a one on your d6 for your healing basically your wounds cause your body to go into shock, and so your medical enhancements don't help at all, so it's just whatever the normal effect is, is what happens.

Everything else basically either accelerates, or everything else accelerates your healing. So.

Bee/Polaris: Ok.

Avery/GM: Yeah. 01 is just basically like, you're just like everybody else in this moment. 

Bee/Polaris: Sick. 

Chris/Ollie: Okay, is this just a medical shop? Or, like, what kind of stuff is available here? 

Avery/GM: There's I'm just saying there's all kinds, there's all kinds of stores around here. So there's tools, medical stuff. There's weapons stores, communication supplies. 

Chris/Ollie: I'm looking at these computing gear on this equipment list. And a lot of it says it's illegal. And even the stuff that doesn't say it's illegal says it's, it's, it's used for sussy stuff. So like what on this list is available around here?

Avery/GM: That's a good, that's a good point. I think, yeah, I'd say probably the data slab. The storage unit and maybe, maybe a remote link unit you could probably find, but the remote link unit is going to be inflated in price. 

Chris/Ollie: How inflated? Because my pocket is incredibly inflated. 

Avery/GM: I mean, look, it's, I'm only gonna, I'm gonna say it's probably three times as expensive as it's listed in the book. So. 

Chris/Ollie: Done. That's 750. Yeah. Got it. All right. I'll probably... We probably have storage units and data slabs out the wazoo. Actually, I don't know, I'll grab a, like... 

Zach/Zahn: Holy crap, they're only 30 bucks. 

Chris/Ollie: Yeah no, that's what I'm saying. Like, we're stocking up a shuttle, so... For a mission, I don't know if we should be getting, like, hundreds of these things.

Zach/Zahn: I'm just gonna get like 10. I’m gonna drop 300 and just get 10.

Bee/Polaris: 10 Lazarus patches? 

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, for future adventures, you know? 

Bee/Polaris: Fair enough. Oh, can I get a laser pistol? 

Avery/GM: Yeah, easily. 

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah. 

Chris/Ollie: All right. Am I gonna be able to acquire solar rechargers, telekinetic generators, and low light goggles.

Avery/GM: Yes to all of them, I don't know why you would need goggles, but sure.

Chris/Ollie: I mean... It's always good to be prepared. They're cheap.

Avery/GM: Unless you're, unless you're gonna, unless you're gonna like Frankenstein them into your own system. 

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, all the technical stuff I'm buying, I'm buying an extra to integrate into my chassis. 

Avery/GM: I figured. The most terrifying space dog ever. Oh, and Chris, before we leave the planet, I do need you to roll a percentage dice.

 

Zach/Zahn: Alright, cause this thing is growing. 

Avery/GM: What? 

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought, I thought it was gonna be to spot the drone that he put on the ship and then they're gonna destroy it. 

Avery/GM: Oh no, no. 

Bee/Polaris: But I mean even then we can still track Herbie's because we have the coil cube. 

Chris/Ollie: 97. This is a hopefully good, high is good situation.

Avery/GM: No, it is because that's the percentage of how much your crystal grows back. So yeah, so I don't know, I don't know what kind of freak... 

Chris/Ollie: It's just back? 

Avery/GM: Freak accident occurred. But yeah, your, your crystal grows. By 97%. 

Zach/Zahn: Holy shit. 

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Because, if I remember, I shaved off the tiniest sliver to stick into this dog body.

Avery/GM: Yeah. 

Chris/Ollie: So it was like nothing, and now it's boop, okay. Go Chaos Emeralds. 

Avery/GM: Go Chaos Emeralds. That's why they're Chaos Emeralds, you never know. They're quantumly entangled. And if there's one thing you know about sci fi, it's just, you just stick the word quantum in front of it, and it makes sense. Alright, are we done shopping? anything else anyone needs before we...  

Zach/Zahn: I would just like you to give me a base amount of money needed to spend to build the weapon that I wanted to build. For parts.

Avery/GM: Oh, the thing, the thing?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. 

Bee/Polaris: You're building the thing? 

The thing! 

Zach/Zahn: A thing. 

Avery/GM: Wait, are we talking about the…

Zach/Zahn: compressed air bulkhead spike thrower, yes.

Avery/GM: Oh, that thingy, that thingy. For all the raw material parts, I'd say 1200. 

Zach/Zahn: That's fine. Okay. 

Bee/Polaris: Wait, can I buy one grenade? Sorry.

Caden/Bruce: Just a singular grenade!

Avery/GM: It's a very impulsive purchase, but sure. 

Bee/Polaris: I was, because I was like, wait, are there any other weapons that I would like? And I saw the grenade and I was like, hell yeah!

Chris/Ollie: The impulse buy, I imagine, like, at the cashier's stand, there's a grenade on the shelf. 

Bee/Polaris: It's like next to the candy bars.

Chris/Ollie: I need this grenade. 

Avery/GM: Yep, exactly. 

Caden/Bruce: Actually, I think I'll buy Bruce a regular size. Laser pist… like laser knife thing. Cause he only has one that makes toast. He should probably have one that's actually also a weapon.

Avery/GM: No, I mean, it is, it is regular size. It's, it's adjustable.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, cool cool cool. Nevermind then. We're good. We're good here. 

Avery/GM: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: I'll buy four grenades. 

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah, the shopkeeper's just like, You know, they're buy two get two free. 

Bee/Polaris: Are you serious? I'm actually just gonna spend fifty instead of the hundred. 

Chris/Ollie: Boto. 

Bee/Polaris:Buy two get two free.Hell yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. That's what they do with the candy bars at the store, right? 

Bee/Polaris: And that's what they do with the grenades.

Avery/GM: Cool. Okay, y'all stock up on your stuff. It takes maybe an hour to get everything you needed and you're back on the shuttle. Is Rho coming with you or did you leave Rho in the hotel room to think about what she did?

Bee/Polaris: we’re not, we can't leave her.

Caden/Bruce: We're not bringing, no…

Bee/Polaris: Wait, wait, we're leaving her alone?

Caden/Bruce: I don't know. Okay. I guess we could like put her on like ship arrest. 

Zach/Zahn: I was going to say, we need to, we need to bring her with.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Cause also, she'll also, since she speaks Terran, she'll know some of the old stuff that's on the station.

Bee/Polaris: Ooo, true.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, fair.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, plus 

Bee/Polaris: if there's I mean also the last time we left her alone, you know, 

Chris/Ollie: yeah, and if there's any more concrete info about getting back It'll be there. But yeah, I don't think we can leave her. She needs to be watched 

Avery/GM: Yeah, so y'all make your way up to the Cassiopeia. It has not been discovered in orbit. Y'all did a very good job of hiding it, so kudos to you wasn't even noticed by the hegemony When they passed by it, so excellent. And yes, I, I did roll for all those things.

Bee/Polaris: Oh shit. Yeah. Hell yeah. We hit it real good. 

Avery/GM:  You make it on to the Cassiopeia. You don't have an AI to help you pilot this ship, but Polaris, are you up to the task? or do you want Rho to take her station in the Precognitive navigation chamber.

Zach/Zahn:  Does she want to go back into that? 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, does she want, I don't think she wants to go back.

Avery/GM: I mean, you can ask her but if you're, if you know, you all kind of come onto the bridge and 

Bee/Polaris: now I do have a question. Can Polaris even fly the Cassiopeia? 

Avery/GM: You've flown it, yeah. Oh, sick! You flew it with the help of Hermes last time, but yeah. 

Bee/Polaris: Son of a bitch! Okay. 

Avery/GM: I'm presenting you with some options, basically. Essentially, you could plug in the AI you currently have... into it. 

Bee/Polaris: No. Absolutely not. Isn't that Coil?

Avery/GM: Yes. 

Bee/Polaris: No. 

Avery/GM: Utilize your own skills or, or, or ask Rho to take her station.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie could probably also navigate. He put his Chaos Emerald in the ship for the trip. 

Bee/Polaris: Does Ollie have any navigation programs or anything like that though?

Chris/Ollie: No. But he could try.

Bee/Polaris: I love that. Thank you. Well. Oh yeah, I did fly it here. What am I ta… Anyway, okay I think, like, just getting out of the current system that we're in, players will fly it, but if there's an autopilot like setting, players will do that because we're essentially putting in coordinates and going to one location.

And then if anything happens, Polaris will grab the controls, but I do need to make Ollie his, his little, his little bags. 

Avery/GM: Okay. So you're taking the pilot station? 

Bee/Polaris: Indeed. Yup

Avery/GM: Rho looks at you, Polaris, and just says, do you want me to go back in the chamber? And you can tell she kind of looks scared.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just says, no, you don't have to. You've been in there long enough.

Avery/GM: Okay I'll just, I'll sit here for now, but I'm not like taking command or anything like that. 

Bee/Polaris: Aye, aye, Cap'n.

Avery/GM:  She blushes. Like nervous, like, oh gosh, no. Not me. Cool. Okay. Go ahead and roll your pilot check. 

Bee/Polaris: Oh, shit, you're right.That is the thing I huh. So,  I get to roll three because I have a specialist, and I rolled two sixes and a five, so in total is it just dex piloting? 

Avery/GM: Yeah. 

Bee/Polaris: Okay. In total, it’s

Avery/GM: Or intelligence, but yeah. 

Bee/Polaris: That's all the same. So, 12 plus, that's 16. 

Avery/GM: Damn. 

Bee/Polaris: I pilot this shit out of this ship, dude. 

Avery/GM: You pilot this shit out of this. In fact, you shave an extra, you shave an extra 12 hours off of your, your flight path. You calculate a better flight path than the one that the Winstons gave you. 

Zach/Zahn: Oh, shit.

Bee/Polaris:  Fuck yeah. Players won't rub it in. But he will send over, like, Hey, this is a better flight path if you guys ever need to use this in the future.

Caden/Bruce: Just rub it in.

Zach/Zahn: I'm not gonna rub it in, I'm just gonna rub it in.

Chris/Ollie: Just put some passive aggressive, like, you know, I'm not sure who figured this out, but... 

Bee/Polaris: No, no, no, Felis is just trying to be helpful. He sends a heart and a smiley face. 

Avery/GM: Very good. So, you jump into... Liminal space and you have a little bit of extra time before you arrive.

Does anyone do anything before you arrive at the space station or are y'all just gearing up and getting ready? 

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is going to be putting some stuff together. 

Caden/Bruce: Yeah. Bruce is also going to be like making little bento boxes for everyone. 

Zach/Zahn: Bento boxes.

Avery/GM: I love it. 

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is making Ollie’s little little baggies, but also Polaris would ask Zahn about the magnet and the gloves… if he has the time.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah, he'll do that too.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Okay. So Zahn, roll a dexterity or intelligence fixed check and Polaris and Bruce go ahead and roll either intelligence or dexterity work checks. 

Bee/Polaris: That's going to be a five.

Caden/Bruce:  That's going to be a 10. 

Zach/Zahn: I got an 11 on my fix check.

Avery/GM: Okay. Polaris, you are able to finish one saddlebag. By the time you get to the Maybe it's just a new pattern that you're working with. You know? sOmething like that. But you're able to at least finish one saddlebag. So, it might take some, like, awkward attaching to Ollie 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris can just make him like a little satchel, and then like, Later, he could just make, like, a, a cargo bag.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Zahn, you are able to put together everything that you wanted to put together? Your new weapon? 

Zach/Zahn:Heck yeah. 

Avery/GM: You come over real quick. Like, the, the magnets for Polaris gloves and his laser blade. It's, like, super simple. Like, you kinda just walk up while, while he's sewing. You're like, I need your hand real quick. Take the hand, put the magnet, like, do a couple screws, take the, the laser blade, do the same. 

Bee/Polaris: You screwed directly into Polaris's hand. 

Avery/GM: No, you have like gloves, right? 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I have gloves on, but screws are long.

Zach/Zahn: No, no, no, instead I'm like uh, as you're sewing, I'm like, glove me. 

Bee/Polaris: Polaris takes off his glove. 

Zach/Zahn: And the magnets are segmented so you can actually, you know, still like, move your palm and they're riveted into place. 

Avery/GM: There you go. Even better. 

Bee/Polaris: Polaris, thanks, son.

Avery/GM: You get a thumbs up. And Bruce, you make these bento boxes that are just, they smell so good. They've got these cute little, little segments inside of them for each little thing. You've got, you know, some roasted vegetables and I'll let you describe it. You, you describe how, how good these look. 

Caden/Bruce: So he made like little like the kind of thing that you use for cookie cutters, exception for it's like, you know, star shaped rice with like these freshly sauteed vegetables and just a whole bunch of food that's like nutritious and good for you, but also like, Light to carry, but will also feed you up, like, fill you up pretty well, and he's made one for everyone on the team.

It's just like, packed them into like, cute little lunchboxes, and then there's like, sharpied on the name of each team member, and like, a smiley face, and like, inside the box, it's like, written in little note, like, Look at you go! You've done so well! Like, little inspirational quotes and such like that. 

Bee/Polaris: My heart!

Avery/GM: For when you're deep in the bowels of the space dungeon and you're just like, I'm gonna eat something. 

Caden/Bruce: Yeah! And then you open it up and it's just like, you've done so good, keep going! You know? 

Bee/Polaris: Aww! That's so sweet! 

Avery/GM: And, yeah. You, you've all... Done these things to prepare and the spike jump ends and you are a lot closer to the inner system than you normally are when you jump.

And that's because this system is very small compared to the other planetary systems you've visited. It just takes probably about an hour to drift in close enough to actually see the space station. And Zahn, are you on the bridge when you come into view? 

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. 

Avery/GM: Yeah. You see a sight that you haven't seen in 12 years?

Zach/Zahn: Approximately.

Avery/GM: Yeah, approximately 12 years. Except it's a lot worse off than when you left. New Terra Station is a station that is essentially, when these people came to this galaxy a few generations ago, it was actually a fleet of ships, and those ships were able to interlock together to form this space station.

And so there were whole wings of this space station that could house... A colony core of people in cryostasis and an entire wing dedicated to physics experiments and technology research and just all kinds of different areas. And when you come to your former home, you see that most of it has been reduced to rubble and pieces and debris.

A lot of the wings have been shattered or maybe exploded. And they, they are no longer functioning. There is a core of about five ships still linked together with all this debris kind of floating around it, uh, floating above the space station. And as you get into communications range, you get an automated signal warning you away.

And it says, do not approach station under lockdown. civilization collapsed possible biological contamination do not approach, and it just repeats over and over and after a few moments of this you actually Bruce, you're sitting at the communication station and you see a notification that you're getting an actual channel request being sent to you.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce will look at Zahn and just be like, do you want me to answer this?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn will approach and be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it. 

Caden/Bruce: And Bruce will accept the call.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you accept this call and, Zahn, you immediately hear a voice you haven't heard in 12 years. And this person says Hey, are your communications relays working properly or something, unidentified ship?

The beacon says don't approach, get the hell out of here. Do not dock with the station if you value your limbs and your lives. And Zahn, you recognize this voice as the voice of Amanda Ripley, one of your mentors from your time back on the station. Surprisingly, she is still alive. 

Zach/Zahn: Surprisingly, indeed. Zahn's gonna lean over Bruce's shoulder and hit the push to talk button. Hi, Amanda.

Avery/GM: I'm sorry, who, who is that? That... That sounds, your voice sounds awfully familiar. How do you, how do you know my name? 

Zach/Zahn: Doesn't matter. We're here on important business and we need stuff from the architects. 

Avery/GM: Well, if you know who I am, you probably know where the docking bay is, I guess, but God, that voice sounds so familiar.

Avery/GM: Zahn? Zahn, is that you? 

Zach/Zahn: The one and only. 

Avery/GM: Ah shit, why'd you, what are you doing here? I told you to get out of here twelve years ago, and I told you to never come back. 

Zach/Zahn: And I would have upheld that, if the entire rest of the galaxy wasn't in trouble. 

Avery/GM: What are you, oh god, okay, well I'm kinda dealing with some shit right now, so, uh, just be careful when you come out of the docking bay, there's some troublemakers outside. Just be careful. 

Zach/Zahn:10-4. 

Avery/GM: And the communication ends. Zahn, you know where the docking bay is? It's basically just like a little airlock that you essentially link up to and, and come through. It's not like this place was really designed for, you know, a multi ship transportation hub or anything like that. Do you guide Polaris in or? 

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, I basically. Like pull up a screen and I enhance and then circle around where the, like the docking tube or whatever is. 

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will send a thumbs up in chat and also a hug emote. Cause this must be rough. 

Zach/Zahn: Zahn just puts the shrug emote.

Bee/Polaris: Gonna dock this bad boy. Well, not the cast. Not gonna dock the cast. We're getting on the shuttle. Probably should not expose the cast to whatever the fuck is on this. 

Chris/Ollie: Good idea. 

Bee/Polaris: Also, do we want Rho to come with us, or do we want her to stay on the cast and she can just watch our live streams and translate stuff for us?

Zach/Zahn: We should ask Rho what she wants. 

Chris/Ollie: We should ask what she wants, but I don't think we should leave her alone. 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, the last time that happened didn't do didn't go too well. 

Caden/Bruce: Didn't go very well at all. 

Bee/Polaris: Well, what does Rho want to do?

Avery/GM: I don't know, you'll have to ask her. 

Bee/Polaris: Hey, good point. Polaris will just turn to Rho and say, Do you want to come with us, or do you want to stay on the ship?

Avery/GM: Well, I wasn't planning on going on board. I was, I was thinking maybe I could stay here and pilot the ship in case you need like a quick evac. I could like blast a hole in that thing and, you know, give you guys like a quick way out.

But if you, if you really feel like you need me there, you know, I, I understand that you probably don't. Trust me as much, you know, leaving me alone because of what happened with Hermes, but… 

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts a hand on her shoulder and says, I don't think you'll leave us behind. But if you do, we will just hunt you down. 

Avery/GM: Nervous laughter. No, I, I only, I, I only helped Hermes out because he asked me. 

Bee/Polaris: You don't have to explain yourself. Just don't leave us behind. 

Avery/GM: No, I would never. Besides, you're my, you're my only way home at this point. That'd be kind of shitty. 

Bee/Polaris: I mean, not really. We gave you the coordinates, didn't we? 

Chris/Ollie: I mean, I think it was just coordinates though.

Bee/Polaris:Cause Blair said the coordinates in chat.

Avery/GM: I know, but she was also unconscious. 

Bee/Polaris: Oh, right. Well, is Rho in the chat?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, does she have like what is it? Chat history permissions?

Avery/GM: Yeah, I don't think Rho is in chat at the time, but probably has been added to chat at some point, yes.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, she'd probably scroll back up.

Avery/GM: Yeah. She pulls out like a little wristwatch and scrolls up. Oh, I see, I do have the coordinates. Well.

Chris/Ollie:  Oh, I can go home right now. Bye. 

Caden/Bruce: Bye! 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris says, don't leave us behind. I'm so serious. Don't leave us behind. 

Avery/GM: She salutes. 

Bee/Polaris: Polaris does like the double pat on the side of the arm and then just like goes to the shuttle.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah, y'all board the shuttle. And, uh, pilot it up to the little airlock here and you know, it's a quick little wait time while you wait for everything to finish docking. And then suddenly it opens up and you are in the airlock. The red light above this door here is flashing, and you feel the pressure equalize in this room, and suddenly it flashes to green, and there's a little button on the side of the wall that says open.

Oh, and you, and from, from the other side of the wall, you do hear some banging going on somewhere in the other room. Oh 

Bee/Polaris: yeah, definitely gonna have to do a murder. Also Polaris will, like, send his live stream feed to the comm station on the cast so that Rho can watch, just in case we need translations. And he'll, he will text her as such.

Avery/GM: Sure. Makes sense. 

Zach/Zahn: So Zahn has a spike shooter on his back, attached to his backpack, but he's got his laser pistol in hand.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: As everything equalizes, he activates his helmet and it builds up in the awesome, awesome way. And then, with a sigh, he Pushes the open button.

Avery/GM: Okay. 

Bee/Polaris: Before he pushes it, players will say, I take left. You take right. 

Zach/Zahn: Get a nod.

Avery/GM: Okay. You come into the corridor here. 

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God. That's so cool. Zahn activates the flashlight on the side of his helmet. 

Avery/GM: Okay. You hear the banging coming from to, to, to your left and Zahn as you illuminate that area with your. Flashlight, you see several beings banging against a door. 

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's gonna like, take point in front of everyone else.

Avery/GM: Okay. Okay. And as, as your flashlight shines on them, they all turn to you. Turn their attention towards you and you can kind of hear some like, laughter and some like, snickering going on.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will... As they turn to him, say, Greetings, new friends. Can you point us to the nearest service station? 

Avery/GM: And from the corner, a bigger dude emerges and is just like, Well, well, well, looks like we got some fresh meat, boys. And let's roll initiative.

(outro plays and 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 content at 1upPodcasts.com. 

Intro and Outro Music Produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution non-commercial license from creative commons. The tracks used today include Mega City Slums, Starship Bridge, Star Freighter, and Secret Facility. 

We’ll be back on December 1st with our next episode.

See you out there! Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro fades up and plays out)

 

Episode 33 - Complications with the Plan

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 33 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Intro plays, fades out, ambience fades in followed by 3 explosions)

Avery/GM: This figure is plummeting to the ground after an explosion in this Capitol building that you now recognize as the one that Bruce pointed out Rhea had entered.

Bee/Polaris: Is this, is this person still falling? Or, they've hit the ground?

Avery/GM: We're kind of in bullet time. So, yeah, this person is still falling, it's kind of all slow mo. So I'm giving y'all a chance to react to this.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: You do see a hint of silver hair...

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: On this person.

Zach/Zahn: So, Zahn is gonna put all of his power into his jet boots and try and catch them.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was gonna also. Well, me as Bee, my knee jerk reaction was to say, Ollie, fetch! But…

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Cause Ollie's a robot and has super strength and probably won't get crushed by it. Uh, like, you know, the impact. Um, but Polaris is also, without thinking, running to go catch this person.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, that's, you know, also what I'm thinking is just, Ollie is gonna try and jump under him, cause there's nothing else I can do as a dog. So just, okay, I'll be the fluffy surface.

Bee/Polaris: You're not fluffy though, you're full of metal!

Chris/Ollie: I'm fluffy on the outside.

Avery/GM: You do have those weird robot arms that pop out of the back of your body though. Zahn, go ahead and roll a dexterity...

Bee/Polaris: Exert?

Avery/GM: Exert. Thank you. Yes.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, good. I have a 1 in exert. Oh, that's good. That is a 10.

Avery/GM: Okay. You avoid most of the shrapnel and glass that is falling from this building after this explosion. You do get a few pieces of glass kinda lodged in your armor.

Zach/Zahn: Eh, that's fine.

Avery/GM: Nothing too bad. Yeah. As you close in on this person who is falling, you realize that it is Ro, and she looks to be unconscious. Yes. Um, as she is falling.

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna say as we, like, connect, and I, like, grab her, uh, you hear me, like, you hear an audible WHAT THE FUCK, and then I start falling down.

Avery/GM: Wait. Falling down, or, or rocketing down?

Zach/Zahn: Oh, rocketing down.

Avery/GM: Okay. I was like, uh...

Zach/Zahn: There would be a short period where it's like, my force meets her momentum, and I go back down a bit, but then, you know, stabilize and shit.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah, you're able to catch her and bring her safely to the ground as this glass Starts to rain down on the rest of the party who is rushed underneath. Um, I do need evasion saves from everybody.

Caden/Bruce: Minus the one smart boy who did not move.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Bruce didn't move.

Avery/GM: This is true.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is probably standing there, going through his apron, and just like pulling out random Like, even though this is a brand new fancy ass apron, pulling out random ingredients from like the pate he was making, and then eventually finding the first aid kit that Marty handed him.

Bee/Polaris: Cool. Now that's a stupid question. Okay, what am I rolling? evasion save?

Avery/GM: Uh, yes. D20? Yes, D20, and it has to beat your skill. Uh, let me know what number you get, though.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: A 19.

Avery/GM: Holy shit.

Chris/Ollie: Got some lucky rolls.

Bee/Polaris: I got a 10, but I still make it.

Avery/GM: What's your, what's your skill?

Bee/Polaris: What's my, what do you mean?

Avery/GM: I mean, what's, what's your, to beat?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, 8.

Avery/GM: Okay, yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Mine's 10.

Avery/GM: Yep, that's perfect then. Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: I rolled an 18.

Avery/GM: I was doing a minus one penalty just because some of this glass is falling very fast.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet.

Avery/GM: But, nope. Y'all succeed and dodge the glass. Uh, you know, kinda like shield your, your vital organs and stuff. Um, or, you know, it bounces off of Ollie.

Bee/Polaris: I pick up Ollie, use him as an umbrella. I'm, I'm kidding.

Avery/GM: and Zahn touches down with Rho in his arms and you hear kind of the shouts of, um, security personnel from inside the building and around this area. You know, sirens and emergency vehicles kind of descending on this point. What do y'all do?

Bee/Polaris: We don't have a fucking car. Let's get outta here. Let's fucking skedaddle dudes.

Zach/Zahn: Let's book it.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Fuckin through the alleys.

Avery/GM: Sure. I need a dexterity exert check from everybody. Or strength, if your strength is better.

Caden/Bruce: I got an eight.

Bee/Polaris: I got a nine.

Zach/Zahn: I got a seven.

Chris/Ollie: That is a three.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, I mean, also, Ollie, you're a dog. Dogs don't do crime.

Chris/Ollie: Fancy dogs in fitted suits do crime, though.

Bee/Polaris: Shit!

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh. Bruce, you rolled an 8?

Caden/Bruce: I did. Aw, man.

Chris/Ollie: All of us is bad.

Caden/Bruce: But I'm also... Yeah, we all rolled bad.

Bee/Polaris: I got a 9.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: That just means you leave us all in the dust.

Avery/GM: Bruce and Polaris, you two start running and quickly lose track of your fellow party members. You make it back to the hotel lobby and realize that your friends are not behind you and Schrodinger pops up from the desk and just says…

Bee/Polaris: Son of a bitch.

Avery/GM: Hello, valued guests. How can I help you today?

Bee/Polaris: Shouldn't you be at a stand up show?

Avery/GM: Oh, my shift is not over for another two hours. Can I be of assistance?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris walks out the door. He's like, he's live streaming, so he's gonna see if Zahn and Ollie are live streaming.

Avery/GM: Zahn and Ollie. You two take off in the same direction, with Zahn carrying Rho. Zahn, you see the wet cement coming and you jump over it and you get a little bit on your shoes but not much. Ollie, you're just still full speed ahead running and, uh, get a bunch of this, uh, cement on your paws and you're running and running and then eventually, like, it just kinda locks up your, your foot joints. And Zahn, you notice that Ollie is no longer behind you. And a few minutes later, from where you were, you hear, Hey, there's this strange dog robot here, uh, we better take it downtown, see if we can get any data off of it.

Zach/Zahn: For fuck's sake! I don't know why I went... an accent with that, but...

Caden/Bruce: I was gonna say, full Scottish!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I thought that was one of the officers at first.

Avery/GM: Yeah, so, Ollie, you can still talk, but you're, uh... You can't really move because your leg joints are just all locked up due to the cement. Do you try and, like, laser your way out? Do you have any kind of tools that you might be able to use? Or are you gonna get taken by these, uh, street patrol people?

Chris/Ollie: How close are they to me?

Avery/GM: Uh, they are, like, just getting out of a, uh, hover car, probably about ten yards from you.

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if I can go full thing and start running on my little robo tentacles. Just reach in below me and start, like, spider skittering across the alley.

Avery/GM: Sure, I'll give you another, uh, dexterity exert.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, hopefully I can actually roll this time. That is... Eight.

Avery/GM: Eight? Okay. You pop up on your little spider legs, um, so you're now kind of like upside down with like your cemented paws kind of sticking up in the air. And so like, from like your, your vantage point, everything is upside down, but your little robot, tentacle arms from like your back are like skittering across the ground and you hear kind of a, what the fuck is that? From these, these guards as you, uh, skitter past and, uh, start catching up to Zahn.

Caden/Bruce: What the Subotic hell is that bulb doing?

Bee/Polaris: Caden.

Chris/Ollie: Can I, like, play? Some, like, scary shriek sound effect as I run by them in order to, like, scare them off. A literally, like, something from the thing, like a sound clip from the thing.

Avery/GM: Sure, what would that be?

Caden/Bruce: A horror movie.

Avery/GM: No, I mean...

Bee/Polaris: Perform?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, perform for stats, yeah. That would be perform.

Avery/GM: I think perform, yeah. Yeah, let's use a charisma perform. Which might give you a little bit of an advantage, because you should have a charisma boost for that dog body.

Bee/Polaris: Also horrifying. Additionally, just like cops to see our random strange looking dog and say, let's get him down town!

Chris/Ollie: let's get him. Book ‘em boys! That is a seven.

Avery/GM: It, it, it doesn't…

Chris/Ollie: it just comes out as an ooga booga.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it, it sounds a little too, um, like from like a carnival, like a carnival ride or something, like it just sounds a little too fake and they just kind of like look at each other strangely and they're like, do we chase it? And they decide not to, because that's just. Weird, but you're, you've definitely garnered some weird rumors about this strange robot dog.

Bee/Polaris: We're going to have to change your chassis.

Avery/GM: Zahn, you are in the opposite direction of your hotel. You do hear the skittering of Ollie coming up behind you. What do you do as you kind of realize that the sirens are sort of all around you at this point? Not visible to you, but you can kind of, like, based on the sounds, like, you can kind of hear, like, a lot of the streets around you are kind of closed off. Or, or, or you'll, you'll have to find some way to evade these authorities.  

Zach/Zahn: what kind of, like, buildings are around us? Like, are we in a

Avery/GM: A lot of, like, office buildings and, like, business buildings. You, you ran towards the business district.

Zach/Zahn: What kind of businesses are around us? What's up the nondescript?

Avery/GM: Yeah, so you see like, uh, Pursuit Bank, and you see...

Bee/Polaris: Topical.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Instead of Chase Bank, you know.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Well, I mean, topical is they're being pursued by the cops.

Avery/GM: Right, yeah. Yeah, so you see like a bank building, you see some, uh, buildings of like, um, different company like brands and stuff like that. You see an Assembles Singles corporate building. And they're all kinda darkened for the night, um, and whatnot.

Bee/Polaris: Is Zahn livestreaming?

Avery/GM: Is Zahn livestreaming?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, same with Ollie.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. So Polaris would see where you guys are.

Avery/GM: Somewhat. And you do have communication. You can also communicate with your party and, you know.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris would send a message to the two of them. Need a pickup?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn’s gonna say in the group chat, yes, uh, meet at Assemble Singles building. He's gonna head for the Assemble Singles building.

Bee/Polaris: Can I look up an address?

Avery/GM: Yeah, sure.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Is there any sort of vehicle I can steal around?

Avery/GM: Yeah, so you're with Bruce, so you'll need something that can at least accommodate the two of you, plus your friends.

Caden/Bruce: We're in the hotel, though.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean, can't Bruce stay here? So that we can minimize the amount of people that get copped by the cops?

Caden/Bruce: Yeah.

Avery/GM: I'm just saying, I just didn't want to say Bruce can't go if, if, if Bruce wants to. Polaris, you see several vehicle options available. One of them is like a sort of like delivery van, almost, of like a, like a box truck kind of thing, doesn't have a company logo on it at all.

Bee/Polaris: What the fuck? That's sketch alright, cool.

Avery/GM: Very nondescript. You see a couple of hover bikes, you see a Ooh! And you see a military vehicle that has like a little soldier kind of standing nearby and they are, they are parked across the street.

Bee/Polaris: Absolutely not. Um, I'm not stealing from the military, so that we can get into more hot water. Absolutely not. Um, this is the future. Can I just, like, call an instant cab? Like, does the hotel have, like, cars on standby in the garage that you can purchase for use?

Avery/GM: Uh, you can ask the bellhop.

Bee/Polaris: I go back inside and walk over to Schrodinger and I say, Do you have anything fast on? For purchase. For use.

Avery/GM: Oh, certainly, we can add it to your bill. There is a, there are several different vehicles down in the, in the garage. I would recommend taking the, the, Oh shit.

Caden/Bruce: The minivan.

Avery/GM: No, um, I don't know. He offers, I'll come up with it later, but I recommend taking the insert car here.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, are you thinking of like cars to say?

Avery/GM: Or like vehicles, yeah, like a vehicle name.

Caden/Bruce: Like a minivan? Cause it would be funny.

Bee/Polaris: No, I'm not gonna I can't drift a minivan!

Zach/Zahn: No, it's gotta be a station wagon.

Caden/Bruce:  Oh, you can if you try hard enough!

Zach/Zahn: You're gonna go with the Griswold Station Wagon!

Bee/Polaris: no, no, or it will just roll. No, no, no, that'll roll.

Avery/GM: No, no, no, okay. I would recommend the mini hover van down below. That is probably our fastest vehicle… and he smiles.

Bee/Polaris: Are you serious?

Avery/GM: Yes! Of course I am!

Bee/Polaris: If this is stand up, I'm actually going to file a complaint.

Avery/GM: Oh. Yeah. That was just me being funny.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I don't have time for that. I'm sorry.

Avery/GM: Oh, okay. Uh, actually, you, you probably do just want to go with like, probably one of the, uh...

Bee/Polaris: Do I need a key from you, or do I just, do I, do I need a key from you, or do I just go down there and pay for it and get in?

Avery/GM: Oh, yeah, here, here you go. Here's the key, and he hands you the key, and it has like a little, like, logo of like a cyclone on it.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Polaris leaves. I hate that guy! He's hilarious!

Caden/Bruce: Oh wait, is it a Like a Mercedes, but with star.

Chris/Ollie: Mer-star-deez?

Avery/GM: Mer-star-deez?

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah, can I get a convertible?

Avery/GM: I love it.

Bee/Polaris: Can I get a Mer-star-deez convertible?

Avery/GM: Yeah, sure. Yes. I recommend the Mer-star-deez convertible.

Bee/Polaris: Thanks. Bye. Polaris goes.

Avery/GM: Bye. I'm going to cease to exist when you leave the hotel…

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yeah, I get it. Fuckin… He slams the door as he walks out.

Avery/GM: Bruce, are you still in the lobby or are you going upstairs?

Caden/Bruce: Oh, Bruce is in the hotel, uh, is walking up the stairs to the room as, like, as, as typing this, like, a seriously long essay about why real cheese is better than assembled singles And just like listing, like, there's Brie and Camembert and like, just going off. But like, all that the group can see is just like, Bruce is typing. That's like, that's all, that's all you see.

Chris/Ollie: The masterpiece is in the works.

Avery/GM: Hell yeah. So, we're gonna, we're gonna have this really awesome rescue scene, hopefully.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris is gonna gun it out of the garage.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you find this, uh, this, uh, Mer-star-deez, and, uh, luckily it has enough room for three other people. You gun it out of here. Let's roll a, uh, dexterity pilot check.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah, that's my whole jam. That's my, oh shit, that is my whole jam. I rolled two sixes. Plus four.

Avery/GM: Holy sh. Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: 16, 16.

Avery/GM: Yeah. 16. Yeah. You burst out of this garage. You don't even wait for the, the, the door to finish raising up. You, you have enough room. You gun it. You speed out into the street. You're hovering above the, the streets here, and you're gunning it towards the sounds of these sirens and stuff.

Avery/GM: You see the skylanes are kind of blocked a little bit, you know, they're trying to block off traffic from this, uh, explosion that has happened. You know, they're, they're responding as if this might be a terrorist attack, right?

Bee/Polaris: Mm hmm.

Avery/GM: And you see an opening in the hole and you just, you are getting communications from them to, ordering you to stop and halt and whatnot. And you just barrel through.

Bee/Polaris: Headlights are off, by the way.

Avery/GM: Yeah, totally. You barrel through this thing and get past this wall of, uh, of squad cars and they start to try and pursue you, but they're no match for, for Polaris's skills as a pilot. You lose them easily in the vastness of the city. And you bring your car down in front of the Assembled Singles building.

Avery/GM: Zahn, you've been kinda, you know, under the cover of the, kinda like, overhang of this, of this Assembled Singles entranceway. Only for a few minutes when you see this car pull up. Polaris rolls down the window and says...

Bee/Polaris: Get in, losers.

Avery/GM: And Ollie, you're skittering up to the building just as, uh, as Zahn kind of comes up to the window. Do you, do you hop in or grab on or what?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, it is a, just a, like a normal sized car. It's not like a...

Zach/Zahn: It's a convertible car, right?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, a convertible.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's like an open top convertible.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Well, I mean, the top's closed.

Avery/GM: Oh, you got the top closed? Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I don't want the cops to see me.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, uh, I'll just hop inside.

Zach/Zahn: Well, lower it so I can throw Rho in the back.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. Well, fine, yeah. Okay, I'll lower it

Chris/Ollie: you gotta drift in while it's lowering and be like, as soon as you stop, get in, losers. And then Ollie's gonna come running and just belly flop into the back.

Bee/Polaris: And the car fucking, the, because of the weight of all of it.

Chris/Ollie: The suspension instantly maxes out and the, and you're just low riding.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Jesus Christ, y'all. Okay, well.

Avery/GM: Y'all are heavy.

Bee/Polaris: This is the first time Polaris has driven a car.

Chris/Ollie: I couldn't tell. Rollin a 16.

Zach/Zahn: Right?

Chris/Ollie: I wish I was that good my first time.

Bee/Polaris: He's just good at vehicles.

Avery/GM: And with a 16, I'm going to say you make it back to the hotel the same flashy way, just no one's able to pursue you or catch you, or they can't even see the license plate on the thing.

Caden/Bruce: As soon as Polaris parks the car, the group chat just gets this ding notification of a message from Bruce, and it's just like, a wall of text.

Zach/Zahn: Of anti-Assembles Singles propaganda.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Polaris Types can't read driving. Even though he just parked.

Avery/GM: Bruce, you come into the hotel room first, before anyone else, right?

Caden/Bruce: I do.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You see Deif, the little uh, tin can Rho robot, that Polaris has been calling his son. You see it kind of like, like poking and prodding at the robot that... Hermes had been put in earlier, when y'all were here, before he left with Ro, and this robot is not moving.

Caden/Bruce: Uh oh.

Avery/GM: And Deif is kinda making some sad noises.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, my boy.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will walk up to Deif and like, the shoulder equivalent, and like, kneel down and just be like, What's... Is, is there anything I can do? D does... Does it need charging?

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's gonna see this and instantly, like, rush forward and, uh, connect. His, uh, little cape.

Bee/Polaris: Are we there?

Chris/Ollie: Oh no, yeah, we're not there. My bad. I thought we were

Avery/GM: You're still coming up the stairs or the elevator.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: You've arrived in the garage of the hotel.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, quick question.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Can I wipe the driving history on this car?

Avery/GM: Sure. Roll an intelligence program check.

Bee/Polaris: Can I ask Zahn

Zach/Zahn: Yeah Zahn can do it.

to wipe the

Avery/GM: That's Or Zahn or Ollie, I guess. Yeah, I mean, either way.

Bee/Polaris: On the way here.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie is like, built for program checks, so.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, just on the way here, please. We'll just ask them to wipe the history of this car.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, I also have it to where Zahn gets to roll 3d6 now, so, for program.

Bee/Polaris: Sick.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn’s also in the front seat. Concrete ankles.

Avery/GM: Sure. Go ahead and roll.

Bee/Polaris: Sorry for the interruption. I just didn't want this to blow up in our faces again.

Zach/Zahn: I rolled a 10.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go.

Avery/GM: A 10. Yeah. It's, it's just driving history. Yeah. You erase the history for the past week.

Zach/Zahn: Ain't nobody use this car.

Avery/GM: Just to be on the safe side. And do you return the key to the front desk, Polaris?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Avery/GM: Schrodinger’s just like, wow, that was really fast. Are you some kind of racer?

Bee/Polaris: No.

Avery/GM: Oh. Well, please let me know if you need anything else! The player just walks away.

Chris/Ollie: No, I'm a death racer.

Avery/GM: And he just keeps smiling at you and looking at you until you eventually are out of his sight.

Bee/Polaris: That's so weird. Is he a robot?

Avery/GM: You haven't asked. He looks human.

Bee/Polaris: That's so unsettling.

Chris/Ollie: I imagine he doesn't blink either.

Avery/GM: He has not blinked once, yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, so he's a robot.

Avery/GM: You also haven't had very long conversations with him, I don't know.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, well, yeah, Polaris doesn't want to.

Avery/GM: Bruce, you were talking to Deif as, uh, it's standing here next to, um, this little robot body that Hermes was in. And it projects a little hologram as you, and you recognize the hologram of being a recording of Rho taking Hermes’ crystal out of this robot and putting it in her pocket and then leaving the room. And before she closes the door, she looks at Deif and just says, don't worry, we'll be back soon. And then closes the door. And then Deif just makes kind of like that sad. Like, whirring, whine.

Caden/Bruce: Oh shit, uh, Bruce will just be like, it's, it's okay, Deif, they'll be back shortly. And Bruce will stand up and like, look for a note, I guess? Like, is there a message left anywhere for us?

Avery/GM: There's a data pad on the table and it just says, be back soon. Love Hermes.

Bee/Polaris: Love Hermes.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce in the chat will just be like, guys, we have a problem.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris types back, ya think?

Avery/GM: You get that ding and you enter the room and there's Deeth standing next to Hermes's body. So yeah, you're, you're in this room. Bruce, you have discovered that Hermes may not any more be in this room. And then you see Rho obviously, but yeah, Rho is still completely knocked out.

Zach/Zahn: So Zahn is going to lay Rho on the, on the couch And I'm like, what's the problem? What's the problem now?

Caden/Bruce: Uh, Bruce will point and be like, Well, there's a video of her putting Hermes’ crystal in her pocket and leaving? And telling Deif that they'd be back shortly.

Zach/Zahn: What in the actual shit?

Avery/GM: And Deif rolls up to you, Polaris, and just makes sad noises at you.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris… Polaris was reaching for his laser blade because he's so mad, but then his son rolls up to him, so he just picks him up and holds his son. You... Rho... Deif saved you!

Zach/Zahn: You wouldn't kill an unconscious person.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is morally gray.

Avery/GM: You wouldn't kill a person who just got blown up inside of a building, would ya?

Bee/Polaris: You wouldn't laser blade a guy with glasses, would ya?

Zach/Zahn: So now Zahn’s gonna be like, What the fuck? And then he's gonna pat her down. Check her pocket.

Avery/GM: You find no crystal.

Bee/Polaris: Son. Of. A. Bitch. Did we already say fuck this episode?

Zach/Zahn: Yes, we've said, I've, I've definitely said it.

Avery/GM: Probably. It's okay.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. Uh, well, then this is the additional fuck. Fuck.

Chris/Ollie: The additional three.

Avery/GM: Polaris just went on a fuck parade.

Bee/Polaris: No! No, not that!

Avery/GM: No, verbally. Verbally, not.

Chris/Ollie: All right. I guess, since we don't have our resident medic, Ollie will grab... do we have like a tricorder or some kind of like medical scanner kind of thing, or am I gonna have to do it the old fashioned way?

Avery/GM: Bruce would have that in, in his med pack that, uh, Marty gave to him.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I mean, we could just do this the movie way.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery/GM: slap someone until they wake up?

Bee/Polaris: Yup.

Chris/Ollie: Well,

Avery/GM: bucket of water.

Chris/Ollie: Visually, how's she looking?

Avery/GM: Cut up. Little bit of burns. Um. You know.

Bee/Polaris: We can't slap.

Avery/GM: Damaged.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we can't slap.

Avery/GM: Damaged much more than she was when y'all fought her.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my god. Okay, so we can't slap a hurt person.

Avery/GM: So whatever hit her was more powerful than her psychic abilities.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh… She fucking, she fucking, uh, fought Rhea, probably. Well, we still have another, we have, we still have two AI cause we have the cable, uh, cube, coil cube.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah. Coil. Yep.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. We have the coil cube. I'm so mad. So angry. Yeah, how do we get, how do we get her awake?

Avery/GM: Bruce, you have your med kit. Do you want to roll a intelligence heal or do you want to let someone else try and heal?

Caden/Bruce: Well, I don't have a great heal. Um... Yeah. Being totally honest here, but I feel like it's something that Bruce like After seeing, like, the fact that she's injured, would, like, take out the med kit that he probably honestly didn't put away and, like, go beside her and, like, I'll try. It's not gonna go well. But we'll try… We'll try. Uh, you said heal and what else was it?

Avery/GM: Intelligence.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will assist. With, uh, where is...

Caden/Bruce: Cause right now that's a nine.

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna commit processing to increase my intelligence… Four. Big rolls.

Avery/GM: So, Bruce, you take out this, uh, medical scanner to scan Ro, and her heartbeat is fine. She seems to be fine. It, it looks like it's probably just like a, a concussion slash, slash being knocked unconscious, uh, from the force, but the force of the blast, but she's not in any immediate danger that you can read. And you figure that probably what she needs is just a full night's rest and then she'll be able to wake up.

Caden/Bruce: Well, uh, according to this device that Marty gave me, it suggests a full night's rest and then she'll be okay? But I don't know if we exactly have time to allow for that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Ollie, is there any way that you can get the camera footage from inside that building? That Rho was in?

Chris/Ollie: That's what I'm thinking, um, Ollie will attempt to, if I can, hack into either the security feed there, or any, like, Police Scanner traffic going on about the incident.

Avery/GM: Sure, go ahead and roll an intelligence program check. Yeah, you're able to connect to kind of like the local internet connection, so, yeah.

Chris/Ollie: That is... what is that? Ten. Yeah, I got some shitty rolls. Thankfully I can roll twice, uh, er, three and drop one, so. Otherwise I would be screwed.

Avery/GM: You're not able to hack into like any like computer or, uh, police scanners or, or footage or anything. You are able to access the, the feed from the floors of the building um, that they were in.

Avery/GM: You see Rho enter the building with this little floating eye robot and, uh, you see her kinda wave her hand at this person and they nod their head and allow her to walk through. Uh, there's no audio. I think that's, that's the penalty I'm going to give for the not quite meeting the threshold is that there's no audio here.

Avery/GM: You see Rho enter the elevator, uh, you switch perspectives. You see both of them in the elevator. You see the eye Robot kind of turn and like move as if it's talking to her. And uh, you see Rho talking back and you, you're reading her lips and it looks like she's saying, are you sure about this? Like over and over, like she keeps asking the same question and the eye-Bot keeps like nodding up and down.

Avery/GM: You see Rho coming to the top floor of this building and, and her and this eye robot float over to the window, look inside, and then run to the end of the hallway and hide behind a corner. You see this large being that is covered in like goat like fur with goat like horns, but otherwise anthropomorphic. And he's wearing a very fancy business suit and has a cadre of guards follow him out of this room that they were in and go down the elevator.

Avery/GM: After they leave, Rho and this eye robot float down the hallway, back to the window, and after a few moments, they walk inside, the camera perspective shifts to inside this room, you see a conversation going on between the eye robot, Rho, and this person, and something happens with… this being that is talking to Rho, um, has pure white flowing hair, and light purple skin, Um, and is very, has kind of almost like a skeletal, uh, look about them.

Avery/GM: Like their skin is just very tight to their, to their bone structure. And after a few moments of talking, this person just reaches out their hand and lifts Rho into the air and throws her toward the window. And then her guards open fire on Rho and you see the explosion happen, you see the cameras short out and go to static as the last thing that you see in this room was this person walking towards the floating eye bot.

Chris/Ollie: And the eye bot, eye bot didn't have a reaction, I'm guessing.

Avery/GM: The eye bot was trying to like float around but couldn't, yeah. No, like there was some movement but there wasn't

Chris/Ollie: like a terrified running away or...Physically attacking, or...

Avery/GM: No. Like, like, literally think, like, the rope, the little I bots from Fallout.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. So, Ollie's going to upload this to the chat, and while that's happening, he's gonna say, I'm assuming the eye bot is a chassis they've acquired, procured for Hermes. She seems to be asking it whether it wants to do something or other. It must have happened at Hermes direction.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris takes a deep breath in. And then a deep breath and just like breathes out and then says, we literally almost died keeping Hermes away from being captured. And Hermes still got captured. Ollie, is there any way you can delete this footage from their systems?

Chris/Ollie: Already done.

Avery/GM: Not with a 10.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, not with a 10. Okay.

Avery/GM: You got view access only.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: Sorry.

Chris/Ollie: No, it's all good. That's what I get for, uh, not having the proper dice on hand.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I mean, I, we, she, Flares is at a loss, he just kind of looks around the room.

Chris/Ollie: So, do we know anything about this skeletal figure?

Caden/Bruce: I believe that's Rhea, who I don't know much about, but from my time away, she seems to be a very powerful individual With the hegemony.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris goes and pours himself a glass of champagne.

Avery/GM: Does he actually drink it this time?

Bee/Polaris: No.

Zach/Zahn: No.

Bee/Polaris: He puts his hands in his... Like, hands on his visor, and just like, puts his elbows on the table, and just sits down. Just like, not sure what to do. This couldn't have gotten worse! We left for one night!

Chris/Ollie: Not even the night. Yeah, just for dinner.

Avery/GM: Not even, a few hours.

Chris/Ollie: We went out, we went out to dinner and we come back and the kids have destroyed the house.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my fucking god. You lost your brother?!

Zach/Zahn: Well, we obviously have to just go in and break in.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I mean, Hermes is top priority.

Zach/Zahn: And we have to do it tonight, because the Winstons are going to be giving us a ship to leave tomorrow.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just groans. Just like, God fucking dammit. And then he like, stands up and he says, She fucking threw Rho out the window. And Rho almost killed all of us back on the Ursa Major. I don't think we're any sort of match for someone like Rhea.

Caden/Bruce: I mean... We don't go in. I still have my janitor's outfit. They can go basically anywhere. People don't expect very much from the common janitor.

Bee/Polaris: That's messed up, but also, we can't let you go in alone. Marty isn't here, and we already lost Hermes. Rho is unconscious. We can't let you go in alone.

Avery/GM: By the way, if anyone else wants to try and revive Rho, you can.

Bee/Polaris: I have nothing, I will probably accidentally murder her.

Chris/Ollie: Same. As a robot dog. He'd probably be like, alright, defibrillator. Zap. Oh, uh oh. Uh oh.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was gonna

Zach/Zahn: I was about to suggest doing that, actually.

Bee/Polaris: My fucking first thought was adrenaline needle.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, how about Does anyone have any of those really powerful smelling salts?

Caden/Bruce: Probably. I'd imagine so. Or like, what's the, what's the fruit that smells, like, really, really strong?

Bee/Polaris: Jackfruit? Durium?

Caden/Bruce: Durium, I think is what I'm thinking of.

Bee/Polaris: We just need something really stinky. Let's go get that guy, he can do bad stand up for us. Haha, nice. Haha, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for ragging on your NPC.

Avery/GM: Nah, I mean, you do have a hotel concierge, you, you, they might have resources available.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my god, we can ask him for fucking smelling salts. Ugh, I don't want to talk to him again!

Avery/GM: May I ask what rubs you so wrong about him?

Bee/Polaris: No, he's hilarious. I just, on principle, don't want to talk to him again. Because Polaris is annoyed by him, but he's still But because of his job, he has to keep going to talk to him. And Polaris main reason for being annoyed by him is he caused Marty distress. With his stand up.

Avery/GM: It makes sense.

Bee/Polaris: No, he's great. I love him. Me, Bee, I love him. Polaris, like, looks over at Rho and says, can someone go talk to the concierge and ask him for smelling salts or something?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, I'll, I'll frickin do it. I'll go over to the door and, like, hit the command or whatever to summon him.

Avery/GM: Oh, you're gonna summon him up to your room?

Zach/Zahn: I feel like that would be faster, cause he could just spontaneously appear, right?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, he's not, he's not manifested right now, so he could just show up outside the door.

Avery/GM: Five seconds later, you hear a knock at your door.

Bee/Polaris: Jesus Christ! Polaris actually jump, Polaris like physically flinches.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn opens the door.

Avery/GM: He lifts his little red hat and says, I thought you'd be calling for me soon, so I already started my way up here. How can I help you?

Bee/Polaris: What a weirdo!

Zach/Zahn: We, we need smelling salts. Our friend is unconscious.

Avery/GM: He looks through the door. Can he see through the door where Rho is laying?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is actively trying to block the door.

Avery/GM: What do you need smelling salts for? Has someone fainted? I can call for first aid.

Zach/Zahn: That much won't be necessary. Just smelling salts.

Avery/GM: Oh, okay. I will be right back. And he's just looking at you.

Zach/Zahn: I close the door.

Chris/Ollie: Immediate knock.

Avery/GM: About a minute later, knock, knock, knock.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn opens the door.

Bee/Polaris: Before Zahn opens the door, Polaris says, okay, that guy's freaking me out.

Avery/GM: Sorry, it took a little while. I had to go down to the corner store to get these. But here you are. In a minute? Yes, I'm very fast.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn accepts the smelling salts.

Avery/GM: Thanks. Anytime! And he lifts his hat again and is just smiling and staring at you. I close the door again.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie just mentions idly, I fear the tip we are going to have to leave him.

Bee/Polaris: Well, we're definitely going to have to leave him a stay silent tip. We did request quite a bit of odd things right in the middle of a lockdown due to a terrorist attack.

Avery/GM: Zahn, go ahead and roll an intelligence heal check, but add plus two for the smelling salts.

Zach/Zahn: Aw man, my plus one intelligence cancels out my minus one heal. Let's do this. Eight. Oh, plus, I guess plus two, ten for the smelling salts.

Avery/GM: There you go. Okay. Yeah. You kind of waft this into, into her nostrils and she bolts up real quick and at first holds out her hand to like grab you telekinetically and is like, wait, no, you're, you're fine. You're Zahn. You're good. She's like, what? What happened? Where's, where's Hermes? Is he okay?

Chris/Ollie: We were going to ask you the same thing.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, exactly.

Avery/GM: No, no, no, he, he was right here in my Oh wait, no, I put him in the

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah, you did.

Avery/GM: The robot.

Bee/Polaris: You did.

Avery/GM: And then he

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, you did that. I didn't want to. So why didn't you not do it?

Avery/GM: He gave a very compelling reason for wanting to go visit his mother.

Zach/Zahn: His what now?

Bee/Polaris: Which was?

Avery/GM: Polaris is just like, glossing over that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris does it like, okay, cool. What was the reason?

Avery/GM: He... And she's like rubbing her eyes, like trying to like, you know, kind of get the fog out of her head, you know?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: From almost being exploded?

Zach/Zahn: Well, she WAS exploded, it's just she survived the explosion.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, via Zahn.

Avery/GM: And she's just kind of, she shakes her head, she's like, He, he thought he could reason with her and protect what he called his new family. He said that Rhea would listen to logic and... And reason, and would respect his wishes, and

Zach/Zahn: Wait.

Caden/Bruce: Rhea's his mother?

Avery/GM: Uh, apparently, yeah, they do some weird stuff with AI over in the hegemony, um, I mean, even you guys all having your AIs inside of these crystals is kind of weird for me, but um, yeah, he said something about Rhea being his mother, and he said we'd be safe. He said that she couldn't afford to reveal her identity on this planet, and so she wouldn't act hostile or anything.

Zach/Zahn: Well, he was clearly wrong about that.

Bee/Polaris: I just, help me out here. You are a person from a system, not from here. You're not from the system, and you thought that an AI that tells you he's going to go see his mother, who he thinks is safe, was a good idea to do without us.

Avery/GM: He specifically told me not to tell you.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, and so that was just like an extra good idea on top of the good idea cake?

Avery/GM: Yeah, I'm just full of those, I guess. No, he said that you all would try and get involved and try and, and stop him and that he didn't want to risk your lives just to keep him safe anymore.

Bee/Polaris: And that wasn't a red flag of any sort?

Avery/GM: I mean, of course it was a red flag, but... You know, Hermes has, you know, been very kind to me, and I wanted to, you know, respect his wishes, you know, if you wanted secrecy, you know. I felt I owed him at least that much. In hindsight, not a great idea. I, I agree.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I mean, you think? Also, couldn't he just email his mom? I mean, he has a whole email. It's Hermes, what, at shipai.biz?

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's true. He does have that email. Also, kind of weird that y'all call it email here, too, but that's beside the point.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I mean, half the, like, one third, I don't know what the fraction is. Two fifths of the plan… of the crew is technically from Terra.

Avery/GM: Rho... It begins pacing, you know, trying to like, she's just trying to like orient herself, you know, after being knocked out, she's like, okay, okay. So Hermes was in the robot. Where is that rope? Did that robot fall out of the window with me or?

Bee/Polaris: No, Rhea has him. As far as we know, the cameras cut out after the explosion.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah. That sounds about right. Well, okay. Wait, where's, where's Marty? Is Marty okay?

Bee/Polaris: Marty's fine. Marty's with the nerd. Oh, wait, you don't know who the nerd is. Marty's with a nerd.

Avery/GM: Oh, no, I met the nerd when we were leaving that facility.

Bee/Polaris: Right, right.

Avery/GM: The weirdo?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yeah. Marty's with the nerd.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Doing lab stuff.

Avery/GM: Okay, so she's, she's safe. Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but you do know who isn't safe?

Avery/GM: Yeah, Hermes. I know, I know.

Bee/Polaris: No, no, no, no, no, no. You. You were caught on video.

Avery/GM: Yeah?

Bee/Polaris: They put the area on a lockdown because they thought it was a terrorist attack. If Rhea sees fit, she could take that video footage and label you a terrorist.

Chris/Ollie: We were unable to delete it.

Avery/GM: Oh, I really put you all in a, in a bad spot, huh?

Zach/Zahn: It’s pretty bad.

Bee/Polaris: It's pretty bad. I mean, well, honestly, this isn't... I mean, we just got out of a situation where we were being chased by powerful entities. This seems pretty par for the course.

Avery/GM: Okay, I'm gonna make this right.

Bee/Polaris: No. You're, you're gonna lay down. And you're gonna take some time to heal. Cause Marty's not here.

Zach/Zahn: I don't know, I was definitely thinking that they're gonna help us out. We, we need the next person.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, for sure. Well, uh, yeah, but we also need to figure out what exactly we're doing, and Rho can't just run off right now Cause we have to figure out what we're doing before we go, so we don't also end up outside a window with no second Zahn to catch us.

Zach/Zahn: If anyone goes out the window, it would be me and I could catch myself, we're fine.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, good for you.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, no more, no more defenestration, please.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we need to figure out what we're doing and we need to figure out before morning because guess what? We have a job that we should, we're supposed to be doing that is time sensitive.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: god dammit. Polaris goes and sits down and still doesn’t drink the champagne. But does pour himself more.

Chris/Ollie: It's just overflowing over the top.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Yeah Sure.

Avery/GM: I know, I've given y'all some hard choices, huh?

Bee/Polaris: Got us into a real pickle. Well, we are gonna have to do this night heist.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah cause Rho could take us in the same way she got in last time. Or we could say screw it and get the custodians to help us out.

Bee/Polaris: They are so far away, they will not be able to get here in time. It took us, what, like two days to get here?

Something like that.

Avery/GM: Yeah, they're at least a couple days out.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Even at maximum speed.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna, do we have Avi's contact information? Do we have either of their contact information?

Avery/GM: Yeah, you would have exchanged that, definitely.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Polaris is gonna ask them how time sensitive the mission is and if we can get, like, an extra day And we'll just have to speed run New Terra.

Avery/GM: Uh, go ahead and roll a... Charisma Connect check.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, my worst stat!

Avery/GM: This is what happens if you speak up, right?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yeah, damn it, yeah, damn it!

Zach/Zahn: We could just ask Marty for it, but they're not here.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, our people person is not here.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Seven.

Chris/Ollie: I don't think a puppy's gonna work over the phone.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: No.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I didn't think so. Wait, I can re roll! I'm an expert! Yay!

Avery/GM: Okay. Re roll.

Bee/Polaris: Snake eyes. Never mind.

Chris/Ollie: Is there a crit fail? Is snake eyes, like, a critical fail? Or is it just... DM discretion.

Avery/GM: There's not really a critical fail in this game. You know, the, the, it's kind of at the GM's discretion. Yeah, so Avi replies back and says, unfortunately, with the travel time between here and New Terra and then New Terra to Ithaca, the, the timeframe is already really short.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris will type, okay, thanks.

Avery/GM: Okay, thanks, bye! If you would like, I can give y'all several options, or y'all can devise this yourselves. It's up to you.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I'm just not sure where to start. Really, the only thing we have to go on is to go back.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I mean, can we get a layout Okay, well, can we get a layout of the building first of all?

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, good call, good call.

Bee/Polaris: The cameras on that floor were destroyed, but not the cameras on, like, the other floors, so can we track where Rhea went? Um, there was a car outside, so can we see if that car has left, and if so, can we follow the street cameras to follow that car?

Avery/GM: If that's what Ollie would like to do, or, or Zahn, either way.

Chris/Ollie:  Also, I'd like to keep an eye on current activity in the building.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie:  Is it, if it's like, filling with police and security on what floors?

Bee/Polaris: you can put multiple Ollies on that, right?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah. Yeah, let me just split myself into 10,000 Ollies, BRB.

Zach/Zahn: But I can either like assist or, or something in, in doing all this.

Chris/Ollie: do we wanna keep my old role or just go with the, get a new one?

Avery/GM: No, no, no. I was gonna have you roll a new intelligence program and Sonya, you can assist if you'd like. You hop over to the little, the little terminal right over here.

Zach/Zahn: I rolled a 13.

Chris/Ollie: So 15.

Avery/GM: Holy crap. Yeah. Yeah. Between the two of you. Yeah. You're able to pull up the current feed on, uh, Zahn's terminal over here, which you could easily link to any of your headsets.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Gonna do that.

Avery/GM: Ollie, you pick up the feed where you left off, but on one of the lower, on, on the lobby floor, a few minutes after the explosion, you see Rhea coming out of the, uh, The hallway holding the now powered down eye bot in one hand and a bluish crystal in the other. And she hands the eye bot to, um, one of her guards and, uh, she just says, Dispose of this.

Avery/GM: The guard crushes the  eye bot and throws it to the ground. As they all head outside and get into this vehicle, um, And start heading through the city towards a, towards like a docking port on the outskirts of the city.

Zach/Zahn: Son of a bitch.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I, I mean we could get the fucking, uh, Mercedes, wait, Mer-Star-Deez convertible And, uh, try and fucking catch him, I guess. And then... v

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, how long has it been since this car left?

Avery/GM: Uh, it's been about an hour.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, so they're... They're probably there.

Bee/Polaris: You said that they were at like a, a, like a ship docking bay?

Avery/GM: Mm hmm. Yeah, they were heading towards the, basically the way the, the street cameras that are following this, this vehicle recording, it appears that they're heading towards the, the ship port where takeoffs and landings would occur.

Chris/Ollie: So I believe I left my drones floating about above the Winston, uh, place. Can I take the... Uh, I can't remember what they're called.

Bee/Polaris: Voidhawks?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, the Voidhawk, specifically. Have the Voidhawk run over to the port that we think they're heading towards, and uh, see if there's any ships still there.

Avery/GM: Sure. Yeah, your Voidhawk comes into this docking bay, and there's several different ships here that are parked. You know, some that are obviously like merchant freighters, some that look like they might be like starfighters for like the Republic military, and then there's one that is starting its engines currently, and it has the symbol of the hegemony emblazoned all over it, which is very blatant. For the, considering the planet that you're on.

Chris/Ollie: It's kind of like Star Wars when you're walking through and they're all just like junk garbage ships and there's one that's just like stainless chrome all over the place.

Avery/GM: It's very fancy, yeah. It's, yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Maybe, maybe it's that one. So, the Voidhawk has, uh, observation suite, sensor transparency, and environmental power. So, I want to attempt to sneak it onto the hull of the ship as it's taking off and just kind of like Tag along.

Avery/GM: Sure, I think with those specific fittings on it, I think you just do it.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent.

Avery/GM: So...

Bee/Polaris: Is Ollie telling us this stuff? Keeping us updated or livestreaming it?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I mean, Ollie is always livestreaming, but I guess I'll also just additionally livestream whatever is coming from... So you're not watching just one... You're watching a livestream of Ollie looking at the wall? And another livestream of the drone footage.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent. Polaris is going to shoot a message back to... Is it Avi or Lapis that we're messaging? Doesn't matter? Both? Group chat?

Avery/GM: Both. Group chat.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna put in the group chat, uh, new plan. Can we get that ship and fast? And or can we get a faster ship? We, we can leave right now. And Polaris is like, updating the rest of the crew on this.

Avery/GM: Sure. They reply back and say, sure, I'll have a ship over in about 10 minutes.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, perfect. Thank you.

Avery/GM: And Ollie, as your drone latches onto this hegemony ship, it lifts off from the surface of Olympia, potentially carrying Hermes back into possession of the hegemony.

(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. Be sure to find more of our work at 1upPodcasts.com.

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, Car Chase, and Mega City Slums.

We’ll be back on November 15th with our next episode.

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(outro fades up then plays out)

Episode 32 - A Very Awkward Dinner Party

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 32 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

(Intro plays then fades down, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: So we're back in Avi Winston's private office/quarters. Y'all have only seen the office area and the waiting area. It's all very done up, very, you know… Make it look… makes it look like she may be some sort of diplomat or something. Anyway, she has just projected an image of a space station, which looks like several different ships that are all linked together onto this Holo-projector board and has asked Zahn specifically to go home.

Zach/Zahn: So Zahn like slowly starts like walking towards the projector and is like staring at the projection of New Terra. And he's like, he taps the side of his helmet and it like decompresses or whatever, and it actually shows his face. And he is like, pale, like more pale than he normally is. He's like seeing a ghost pale and he turns to Avi and he's like, that is the worst possible idea in the entire formation of the universe. Why the hell would you want to go to New Terror?

Avery/GM: Oh, it's not that bad. It's improved quite a bit since you left. And then she smiles. Sarcastically.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, I only kept up on news about New Terror for obvious reasons, as the entire society collapsed, and anyone who goes into that sector doesn't come out. There's a reason why it's been blacklisted. Like, there's nothing there.

Avery/GM: That's true. There's no resources there, and the people there probably can't offer any actual... material support in a lot of ways, but that vessel came from the same galaxy that the IASO program comes from. It stands to reason that there might be some sort of countermeasure on board.

Avery/GM: And Lapis pipes up and says, in fact, I've, I've seen it. I know exactly what it's called.

Zach/Zahn: Seen what?

Avery/GM: In a vision. I, I know what the program is called. The program is called the Epios And it can act as a neutralizing agent against the IASO program. I don't know all of the details, but it seems that this program has been being developed in the core of this space station for the past Several years by some of the scientists that have still survived and if you bring it I think we can use it to defend Ithaca and any other systems that the hegemony decide to target.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris kind of looks at Lapis and Avi and then looks over at Zahn and says if you don't want to go there I mean this program is important in all but we can talk to the custodians about the IASO program and it's an origin and possibly come up with a copy To counteract it, I mean.

Avery/GM: Oh, you may be able to do that. I don't, that is a factor I hadn't seen in any of the visions that we had been given. But, I suppose it's always possible. Where are these custodians? Space.

 

Zach/Zahn: Space. Zahn puts his hands on his hips and he looks down, and he looks like this. He like, glances at the, the hologram again, and he's like, No, if anyone is to be able to come up with literally a planet life saver program, it would be there.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like holds up his glass, like waves it back and forth and says, yay.

Avery/GM: Well, y'all don't have to give an answer yet why don't you come on down to the dinner hall? Dinner is about to be served. I did invite you for a meal, and it would be very rude of me to not actually hold up that end of the bargain.

Bee/Polaris: Is it not customary to have the meal first and then drop the bad news?

Avery/GM: Oh no, business first and then fun. That's the Winston Way.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, sure. Polaris looks over at Bruce and asks, Bruce, do you know anything about this?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will shrug and just be like, If Zahn wants to. I mean, I'm not too sure what we get out of this, other than, what, what do we get out of this? I thought me helping you repaid our miscalculation of accidentally killing Winston.

Avery/GM: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't misunderstand. This is not a demand. This is not me giving you an order, you can walk away anytime, no questions asked. I'm actually offering to hire you for this job. As your friend, Ollie knows I have quite a bit of money available. So name your price.

Bee/Polaris: Name your price. Give us the mansion. Give us the Winston fortune!

Chris/Ollie: Space mansion.

Zach/Zahn: Put down a lot of zeros.

Chris/Ollie: We did want a space station.

Caden/Bruce:

Bee/Polaris: we can drift the space station!

Zach/Zahn: We were going to steal a space station.

Bee/Polaris: We were going to steal a space station. We were going to work our way up. It's kind of like grinding XP.

Avery/GM: And you may not want this space station.

Bee/Polaris: ooo, Yeah, we don't want this space station.

Zach/Zahn: It's like 200 year old plus.

Bee/Polaris: That's a pretty old space station. Well, I mean, in terms of space, it's not really that old. Time is relative.

Zach/Zahn: True, I don't know how old it is in Milky Way years, but it arrived here 200 years ago.

Avery/GM: Wibbly wobbly timey wimey, it's fine.

Chris/Ollie: But when you say it's like an amalgamation of ships, is it like old and busted, like obviously like duct taped together? Or is it like, oh no, this is professionally done, you know?

Avery/GM: We're talking like the Zords.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: Like Power Rangers Zords, like, linking together.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, like Voltron

Avery/GM:  well Except instead of a fighting robot, it's a space station.

Chris/Ollie: Or it's like

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Or it's like the Ro It's just RoboMaid from Spaceballs?

Zach/Zahn: It's docked together by, like, like The, the docking tubes that come off of ships to like dock with like other ships. So it's just tubes together.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, it kind of looks like a McDonald's Playhouse.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah!

Avery/GM: But Polaris has, has presented an alternate opportunity.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah I still haven’t talked to my Robot parents. After storming out.

Chris/Ollie: We probably should, even if we're gonna go to New Terror.

Avery/GM: Lapis says, well, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go downstairs and check on the progress of the meal. You know, feel free to join us, Avi, and the rest of you whenever you're ready. And Lapis leaves the room.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris, when, when she says, Name your price, Polaris is like, oh, like, actually…. And it would just be like a smartass. Yeah, just fund everything that we do.  

Avery/GM: A line of, a line of credit?

Chris/Ollie: Just get sponsored to have a big Winston, like, decal on the side of the ship.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah!

Bee/Polaris: Oh my god, and then when Violet finds us.

Chris/Ollie: We're like, hey! Some, some funny things happened.

Bee/Polaris: It wasn't us. These are not the people you're looking for.

Caden/Bruce: This all being said, what if we did name a price as in money, but then also named the price of getting them to make sure that Violet backs off of us? That would solve two problems. Well, it would solve the main problem, but then also give us more money.

Bee/Polaris: Are you saying this in character?

Caden/Bruce: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts his hand on his chin and the loading emoji comes up on his visor. He looks over at Avi, who is still in the room?

Avery/GM: Mm hmm. And she's just looking at you with a smile on her face. And in response to what Bruce said, she is just like, I think that could be arranged… Yeah, and she starts typing away at like a little computer that's at her desk and she flips the monitor around to show a picture of the ship model that you have. She's like, this is your ship model, right?

Bee/Polaris: No, there's a dent on the wing right there and he like points at the screen.

Avery/GM: Oh, thank you. Yeah. Okay. We'll, we'll get that checked out. Yeah, let me just do, do, do, do, and she's typing away, typing away and ordered. Okay. A duplicate of your ship will be… will be delivered here shortly. And we'll arrange for Violet to have her vengeance.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, have her vengeance. Wait a minute. Does that mean that they're going to put like people in the ship so that she finds bodies?

Avery/GM: Are you asking that in character?

Bee/Polaris: No, Polaris wouldn't care. And our moral backbone is not here to say.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Wouldn't even cross Ollie's mind.

Caden/Bruce: I was gonna say, it wouldn't cross Bruce's mind either.

Avery/GM: I think Marty would say something like that. She'd be like No, I, are you going to Put people on that ship for her to blow up and Avi is just like oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, I wouldn't do that We'll just show her the ship. We'll put some fake lifeline readings aboard and yeah, bing bang boom She'll get her revenge and… and all will be well again, and she has a big smile on her face And she says, I'm sorry, my, my, my, my features sometimes make my smiles look more devious than they are. This is not me being devious.

Bee/Polaris: I was just about to say, Polaris is unsure how to take the fact that a tiger is smiling at him.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, such uncomfort, much wow.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, if there's anything he learned from animal planet, it's that's not a good thing to see Then I think I mean that's good so we got the ship well us being hunted sort of covered

Zach/Zahn: no instead… Instead of animal planet for us. It's fauna galaxy

Chris/Ollie: Fauna Galaxy.

Bee/Polaris: Fauna Galaxy. Yeah, Fauna Galaxy.

Avery/GM: Eh, the custodians came from the same galaxy as Earth. They might have had some bootleg copies, you never know.

Bee/Polaris: Alioth does not care for human entertainment, so no. Oh, you know what? The ship was meant for... anyway.

Chris/Ollie: I can just imagine Bear like in the back though just like watching just tons of old movies.

Avery/GM: Avi stands up and says, well, if that is your price, then I guess our negotiations are done and we can move on to the meal.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris holds up his hand and said, no, no, Bruce said money as well as that.

Avery/GM: Oh… My mistake. Sure. How much would you like to earn from this little adventure?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will look at Polaris because Bruce does not know at all what to say.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris looks at Zahn and asks, How much would you say emotional distress is worth?

Zach/Zahn: A lot of zeros.

Bee/Polaris: Like, hypothetically, how many?

Zach/Zahn: Five billion.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. 50 billion.

Zach/Zahn: Adds one more zero.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris turns over to Avi and says. 50 billion credits, please.

Avery/GM: Oh, that's cute. You know, I'm not going to spend that much money on this mission.

Zach/Zahn: We'll, we'll take away two zeros. Five hundred million.

Bee/Polaris: Ten million.

Avery/GM: I did just spend a lot of money on a ship to blow up.

Bee/Polaris: We didn't ask you to buy a ship. You could have falsified information that Violet has

Avery/GM: no Violet is Way too clever for that. She has the whole of the Republic military at her disposal.

Bee/Polaris: Isn't that nepotism?.

Avery/GM: Oh, certainly

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Zach/Zahn: Okay, cool.

Bee/Polaris: I mean. Do we know how much the Winston fortune is worth?

Avery/GM: You do not. I Google it. Well, no, y'all did Google. They are worth trillions of credits across their various business enterprises, assets and cash on hand. Trillions.

Chris/Ollie: Exactly. Like she didn't laugh outright. She said, I'm not going to spend that much money on this mission. So it's like…

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Let's go with this. I will pay you all 100 million credits for this job. Final Offer.

Caden/Bruce: 100 million credits to complete a job? I mean… I’m okay with that.

Bee/Polaris: Fine… Deal.

Avery/GM: Now, Come on, let's go have dinner. My, my uncles are excited to meet you.

Bee/Polaris: Whaaat?

Avery/GM: No, I told them I was having friends over and I never bring friends by so, you know, they just, they get excited about that. Don't worry, they don't know about you and Bryson. All that stuff, so it's gonna be okay.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah we’ve been calling him…

Zach/Zahn: Lord Winston.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we didn't call it

Avery/GM: Yeah, because I mixed up the names in the first couple sessions, so. Yeah. Officially, his name is Bryson Winston. Avi starts walking out of her office.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will follow after everyone else leaves the room, but also type in chat, do we really want to meet more Winstons so they know what we look like? In case we run into any other Winston involved shenanigans.

Chris/Ollie: Oli doesn't really care.  But while this has been going on, Oli's been kind of trolling the internet for anything available related to New Terra, or New Terror. How much is there?

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll a Intelligence know check.

Chris/Ollie: And my Int is still boosted That is… What is that? 17.

Avery/GM: Holy shiza.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, the int boost is so strong. It lasts for like the thing is It's really weird because everything in this game goes by scene, but that lasts for the day Which is really oddly specific, but okay.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's fine. So, a lot of the information is redacted, or is at first, like, behind, like, security features. As it's all located in, like, Republic Military Archives and stuff like that. But, with that high of a knowledge roll, I'm gonna actually give it to you and say that you... easily find a backdoor way to access these archives, and you learn that a incident occurred on the space station, the details of which are unknown, but that the entire space station's society split into several different factions and eventually resorted to cannibalism when their food replicators stopped working.

Avery/GM: You know that they have been hostile to any Outside presence that tries to enter the system or the station and that because of that the entire region within like three light years A three light year radius around the station has been designated as off limits for all travel routes. Spike Drive pilots are told to avoid this area by any means.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, so I was getting the idea that it was abandoned, but it's like Raiders, pretty much.

Avery/GM: Yeah, some... Some mean, mean cannibals.

Chris/Ollie: What's the, what's the estimated casualty rate?

Zach/Zahn: Heheheheh, all.

Chris/Ollie: All… 99.9%

Avery/GM: Unknown, because there wasn't a census taken of the station by these outside parties. But it is believed that about 90 percent of the population has perished.

Bee/Polaris: You're telling me, you're telling me a bunch of angry cannibals didn't want to take a census?

Avery/GM: Not really big on paperwork.

Zach/Zahn: How do you feel about your government? Take the census.

Avery/GM: Can you, hi, I'm a census worker. Oh God, my arm.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. I was going to post all of that in the chat and say, what a fun adventure this is going to be. And is… get a little, his tail wag and his little happy face on.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will type in chat. Why didn't anyone send help?

Avery/GM: That is not listed. In any of these reports, yeah. So Avi teleports and the rest of you teleport into this hallway and y'all come into this very fancy dining hall. And yeah, as you're coming in through the doorway, you do hear Marty's communicator watch beep.

Avery/GM: And it's weird. Cause you know, normally y'all are just chatting with each other, but this is an outside. communication and she takes a look at it and scrolls through and just says I'm sorry guys Oswald has an emergency back at the Institute is actually asking for my help which is you know interesting do you mind if I go help out real quick and then I'll meet you back as soon as I can

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is conflicted because normally he would go with to escort but And also Bully Nerd, but because this is Marty's not here and we need to get her out of the scene, please just thumbs up.

Avery/GM: Okay, thanks. He'll be here shortly, so I'm gonna go wait out front for him, okay?

Chris/Ollie: Okay. I'll save some food for you.

Avery/GM: Thumbs up on visor.

Bee/Polaris: By eating it and storing it in your tiny little stomach?

Chris/Ollie: Yup.

Avery/GM: And Bruce, she turns to you before leaving, hands you a medpack and says, In case you need it, here's a medpack. You know how to use this, right?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will nod, even though he has... Well, no, I think he would have some sort of knowledge on how to do medpacks. He worked in a kitchen.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, especially traveling all by yourself all the time.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, definitely.

Avery/GM: You gotta know how to take care of yourself.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, he'll, he'll, he'll nod. And like, put it in his fancy apron.

Avery/GM: And then Marty rushes out and down the hall. And then turns around the corner again and just yells, Sorry Avi for dipping out on the dinner party, it looks lovely, bye! But anyway, y'all are entering this dinner hall, and there are several fancy looking waiters in each corner. They look like they're holding clipboards on the map, but they're actually holding like, order forms, you know, to see what you'd like. This is a club after all, so they have all kinds of food available. And there are some robot attendants kind of walking around, dusting and cleaning and stuff like that. Probably not dusting, because you don't want to get dust on your food. And Avi just says Well that was certainly exciting. Does, does she do that often, or is that Kind of a new thing?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Avery/GM: Well, please feel free to sit wherever you'd like. Food shall be served shortly. And she goes to sit next to her uncles. And her uncles, Shin and Nobu Winston, are sitting at the end of the table. They're kind of holding hands and kind of talking, you know, at a low volume. You know, whispering to each other and stuff like that. Lapis is, is sitting next to, to Nobu. Just, you know, smiling and having just a good time. She's always, you know, sort of excited to be invited. Ollie, do you take a seat at the table or, or do you find a spot next to this cozy little fire right here?

Chris/Ollie: Ollie takes a seat at the table.

Bee/Polaris: Takes a seat at the head of the table.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, hops up and sits down nice and proper.

Bee/Polaris: Grabs his little napkin, puts it on his little doggy paws. As the, as the new head Winston.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, sure, I mean, I am by far the fanciest looking of us. So, I'm going to definitely take my seat at the head of the table.

Zach/Zahn: He is also the one who directly murdered Winston, so. And you know what you do? You keep what you keep what you kill!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, I did make the bomb though.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, yeah, but I pulled the trigger.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, but Ollie's the one that pulled the trigger.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but you also did put the bomb in Ollie.

Avery/GM: Ollie, while eating, just never breaks eye contact with any of the Winstons.

Chris/Ollie: Yes, hmm, let me regale you with a funny tale of how I suicide bombed myself and killed this rapscallion.

Bee/Polaris: No, any story but that.  

Chris/Ollie: Is there food on the table already? Or is it?

Avery/GM: not yet. It'll be served.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, well then, Ollie. Around, like, the neck, his, like, collar of his suit where he's got his, like, dog collar. He's just gonna, like, come out on the sides, like, two thin flexible robo arms, kinda like, you know, benders arms And he's just gonna, like, start sorting his napkin, you know, put arrange his silverware and whatnot.

Avery/GM: Yeah, Shin at the head of the table kinda clears his throat, and he's just like, So Avi, please introduce your… Your friends to us. You never, you never bring company over. So it's, it's very, it's a very welcome sign that you're out there making friends.

Bee/Polaris: Oh shit. Is she going to say our names?

Avery/GM: Avi just says, Oh, these are just some fellows I met back at the racetracks, you know, over, over at Bragos. They actually won first place in the, the pendulum death race over there And Nobu says, they like to live dangerously. Great. Great. Yes. Yes. I once raced in the death races many times and it was always a very fun experience for me. He's trying to kind of like lighten the mood because Shin is obviously like still upset about the bad business deal. And Nobu claps, claps his hands twice just, and the waiters kind of move in With their little pads and start like asking like what would you like to order and all that stuff So the world is your oyster What do y'all order

Zach/Zahn: probably just something super simple

Bee/Polaris: a cheeseburger with fries

Avery/GM: Some club food, yeah bar food technically If y'all don't want to roleplay this scene, we don't have to we can just hand wave it.

Bee/Polaris: I'm looking up the most expensive dish you can make

Caden/Bruce: I'm glad that we're on the same page here.

Zach/Zahn: Get that thousand dollar ice cream sundae.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, no, what's that gold… gold encrusted steak called?

Avery/GM: What?

Bee/Polaris: Why are people crusting things in gold? It doesn't do anything. And you can't even digest it. Doesn't it just come out as gold as well?

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, it's salt bae's steak.

Bee/Polaris: Oh.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Salt bae.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will say, I'll have your... Your finest Wagyu A5 filet mignon, crusted in gold, of course.

Avery/GM: One of the waiters kind of gives you like an eyebrow raise and then just writes it down. It's like, okay, I guess this dog is going to eat.

Chris/Ollie: No, this dog is going to eat good.

Avery/GM: This dog can talk.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, what would Marty want? Because you have to eat that too.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah. We'll send Ollie, er, Marty a quick message in the chat, ask what they want.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will set down his glass of champagne that he's been holding this entire time onto the table and then ask for another glass of champagne.

Zach/Zahn: That he hasn't drank yet.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah, he'll ask for another glass of champagne. And anything Bruce would like to try.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will order some scallops and lobster and then look at them and be like, Do you happen to have the bugs from the restaurant that's located on the far Western planets. Oh, I can't remember the name of the solar system. The bugs themselves are... Well, they don't really have a name that most people can pronounce. But they're quite rare, and they taste like nuts.

Avery/GM: Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we got that. I think they might be frozen, though. I don't think we've gotten a fresh shipment in for a while. So, but yeah, some of our, some of our employees really like those ones.

Caden/Bruce: That's okay. I'll, I'll, I'll have some of those too.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay. Yep. Mm hmm. And if people need more time to think, we can switch over to Rho and Hermes.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah!

Zach/Zahn: we can do that.

Bee/Polaris: Let's hear what they're going for.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Avery/GM: So we flashback to Ro and Hermes. They are currently out on the city streets of Ambrosia. Well, we see Rho. We don't see Hermes yet. Rho is, at a small counter of what looks like a, an electronics vendor of some sort on the street here. And the man is standing there and he looks a bit dazed and kind of like in a stupor a little bit. And Rho is fiddling with some tools and a small little device. And she's like, okay, so I install that here, flip this switch there.

Avery/GM: And the little Eye-Bot that she was working on lights up with a blue glow. And Hermes voice can be heard from the Eye-Bot and he says, Thank you, Rho. All systems functioning as normal. And he turns to this, look at this confused salesperson and says, Thank you for your cooperation. A deposit of 1,000 credits will appear in your account momentarily.

Avery/GM: Rho, why does this organic being look like he is asleep? And Rho's just like, Oh, you know, long day, long day, lots of customers, probably just tired. Come on, let's go, Hermes. And grabs the little Eye-Bot and starts running down the street. She's just like, Okay, Hermes, we got you a temporary body. Are you sure this is the right call?

Avery/GM: And Hermes says, yes, we should be fine. My mother cannot afford to reveal her identity on this planet, so we should be fairly safe. And Ro says, okay lead the way and we'll, we'll go see your mother. And as they are walking, they enter a very fancy looking government building.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Avery/GM: And then we flash back to the dinner party.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Two things. One, oh no. Two, where did Hermes get the thousand credits?

Avery/GM: There is no thousand credits.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my god, they fucking, they fucking...

Chris/Ollie: That man is dead.

Bee/Polaris: They killed him!?  

Avery/GM: No, they didn't. No, no, no, no

Caden/Bruce: I assumed Rho put him to sleep.

Bee/Polaris: I thought, I thought Rho used her mind powers. Yeah

Caden/Bruce: yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Rho used her mind powers, but no, did not kill him. Just looks very,

Chris/Ollie: so, very much like, so being asleep was in a euphemism. Okay.

Avery/GM: No, no, no, no. Just like he's standing there just like blaahh you know?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Okay. I thought, I thought that was the case. And the… so they just cross lied to each other?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Nice. Zahn is ready for his order. He is going to order a Northern bovine pizza with savory fruit on top of it.

Avery/GM: Very nice, very nice.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will, like, raise his hand to catch the waiter before he goes and says actually, I'll have two glasses, thank you.

Avery/GM: Any food for ya?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just stares at him.

Avery/GM: Oh, oh, oh, okay. Just slowly walks backwards.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just keeps staring and then slowly turns his head back to the table.

Avery/GM: Okay, and they all disappear into the kitchen to go get your orders. So as you order your food and the waiters are off Shin says so what do you all do for a living you merchants traders Daredevils?

Bee/Polaris: one could say all of those things.

Zach/Zahn: I don't think we've traded anything yet Zahn actually pipes up and says.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah

Zach/Zahn: we've done some of the other stuff though.

Chris/Ollie: We've sold stuff and bought other stuff.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we did trade.

Avery/GM: Yeah, we had that whole scene where you sold stuff.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we traded your stuff.

Zach/Zahn: We traded your stuff.

Avery/GM: That's right. That's right.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah that’s why Polaris said You can say we're all of those things.

Avery/GM: Well, y'all are engaging in probably fairly friendly conversation for a little while.

Bee/Polaris: No.

Avery/GM: Or not.

Bee/Polaris: No.

Chris/Ollie: probably… This is really awkward.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Police's goal is to be as cryptic and, like, off putting as possible, but in a way that doesn't get the call to security on him.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay. As this dinner party is going, all of your food arrives, and it all looks very tasty, and Bruce, the flies, are...Perfectly prepared they even gave you, like, little toothpicks for each one, so you don't have to pick them up with your hands if you don't want to. Why they gave you one toothpick per fly is a little wasteful, but, you know, whatever. Polaris, both glasses of champagne arrived next to the one you already have, so, you know, you've got three glasses of sparkling bubbly drink in front of you.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, except one's room temp.

Avery/GM: Except one’s room temp, exactly. Ollie, this golden crusted steak appears on your plate with some very lovely looking roasted potatoes and garlic and butter green beans next to it. And it looks phenomenal.

Bee/Polaris: Are dogs allergic to garlic?

Chris/Ollie: I don't know.

Avery/GM: Are they?

Bee/Polaris: I know cats are for sure.

Avery/GM: Okay, I guess I should make sure.

Caden/Bruce: He's also a robot.

Chris/Ollie: I wouldn't be surprised though.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yeah, but he also ordered food. They should know this!

Chris/Ollie: I Don't know.  I'm I'm probably pretty obviously Like yeah, like yeah, the way I see it is he looks kind of like The the cat, the robot cat from Buzz Lightyear, he's got like, obvious robotic joints.

Bee/Polaris: I was just saying that for you to be able to make a big stink about it even though you're a robot dog.

Chris/Ollie: yeah. Well, I mean, they don't apparently they're not into feeding gold steak to dogs. So, I might just have to ask for seconds.

Bee/Polaris: That is true, they are very mean to dogs.

Chris/Ollie: I know, what? What kind of cruel bastard doesn't feed a gold steak to a dog?

Avery/GM: No, it's gold.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah, but he

Bee/Polaris: They were very rude like…

Chris/Ollie: was kind of sussed about it.

Avery/GM: Oh, yeah, it's just, you know, it's like, oh, that's kind of a weird thing to ask for your first meal here.

Bee/Polaris: He really said the audacity.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, I'm merely ordering food that befits my obvious, station in life.

Avery/GM: Yeah, stature. Yeah. So y'all dig in and eat. Do you guys have any questions for the Winstons that you want answered or anything, any information you'd like to try and pry out of them?

Chris/Ollie: I would like the little overview of who exactly Shin and Nobu are and what they like do in the organization.

Avery/GM: Okay, sure. Yeah. How do you How do you approach that topic?

Chris/Ollie: Well, after he, they asked us to introduce ourselves after that's concluded, I'll just return. And what about yourselves? What labors do you busy yourself with during these long days?

Avery/GM: Nobu speaks up and is just like, Oh, well, you know, my husband and I oversee this club and you know, all the daily operations that, that go into running such an organization, you know, hiring the DJs, paying the staff, making sure the food's ordered, all that.

Avery/GM: You know, mundane stuff for the day. But it keeps the patrons happy and keeps people interested in our business. Shin also oversees a lot of our trade activities and Nobu kind of gives kind of a knowing smile when he says trade and Shin speaks up and is just like, We don't have to play games with them.

Avery/GM: I'm sure Avi has informed them of our business activities. Yes, yes, we sometimes hire, you know, pirates and, and other smugglers to, to get products from some of the more exotic worlds that are located in the hegemony or independent systems that don't… don't trade with the Republic. And yeah, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

Avery/GM: I just got word that a pirate crew that I hired to hunt down some very rare gems has gone missing. So… I'm out several million from that deal and Nobu kind of rubs his hand just like it's it's all right We'll we'll find another crew. I'm sure it's like yes, but you don't understand Pirates are so… good Pirates are so hard to come by these days.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris shares a look what's on Ollie and Bruce.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Out of character, little non player knowledge, is are those our pirates he's talking about?

Avery/GM: I don't know.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris asks, We may be familiar with some pirates. Who did you hire?

Avery/GM: Oh, this, this squad of pirates based out of the junkyard.

Bee/Polaris: No! Sorry, I meant to be muted…

Avery/GM: The… crimson something or other. The captain recently had a very bad loss, and didn't take it too well at first, and I, you know, said he could take our mission on after he got his revenge, and I haven't heard hide nor hair of him since, and then he just downs his, his glass of, of wine that was in front of him, just in one gulp.

Zach/Zahn: It's cause he can't, the captain hasn't gotten his revenge yet. Oh,

Chris/Ollie: okay. So he didn't go missing on the mission. He just didn't show up for it.

Avery/GM: Wasn't able to take the mission. He hasn't heard, yeah, he hasn't heard back from him in regards to taking the mission yet.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Jesus Christ, thank God.

Chris/Ollie:  I was thinking,

Bee/Polaris: I was about to be very sad.

Chris/Ollie:  Yeah, that they had gone to take the mission.

Avery/GM: But has not been able to make contact at all either.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, shit.

Avery/GM: Like has tried to make contact and cannot.

Bee/Polaris: Do we have their, they have our email. Do we have their email?

Avery/GM: Yeah, yeah, y'all have exchanged information before.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna…

Avery/GM: Cause they were gonna invite you to a party.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that's true. Polaris is going to shoot them an email and say, Y'all good? Question mark?

Avery/GM: I mean, it might take a little while to get a response.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that's fine. I just wanted to, just wanted to check in on our boys.

Chris/Ollie: Our bad, we were in a system with no signal.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris types in the group chat. Is this something that we want to pursue? We, I mean, after New Terra, we could, we could squeeze more money out of the Winstons.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Especially, no, look at it this way. These are the heads of those, like, smuggling operation. We could probably get any item we want from these guys. They could find pretty much anything.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah, I was gonna ask, do, would they, well, I guess I would have to ask them, huh? If, if they knew the custodians, because the custodians, they do illegal stuff. For funsies.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you'd probably have to ask them directly.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, after sending that message in chat Polaris will ask are there any other reliable groups that you could possibly hire?

Avery/GM: I mean, there are several groups out there in the galaxy that I have heard whispers of, but Captain Blitz has been my most reliable tr transportation partner these past few years. I worked with a couple, you know, strange alien crews once before, you know, a few human crews here and there, but never really found anyone too reliable.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I hope all is well with Captain Blitz, he seems to be a good man.

Avery/GM: Oh, are you familiar with him?

Bee/Polaris: No.  Just knee jerk.

Avery/GM: Oh, how sad. I was hoping you might. Maybe you might know his whereabouts, but never mind. Food's here. Why don't we all enjoy our meal and we can go about our night.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's helmet only, like, it shifts up. Instead of down, so it just reveals, like, his mouth.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Amazing.

Zach/Zahn: But otherwise, he keeps his helmet on.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris can't do that with his helmet. Because it's like a Daft Punk style helmet.

Avery/GM: Yup.

Bee/Polaris: So he just occasionally puts the glasses he made up to his mouth, tips it, but not to touch his helmet, and then puts it back down.

Avery/GM: as he sneaks one of his nutrient bars underneath.

Bee/Polaris: No, no, no, he's not even, he's not even, he's not even eating anything. He trusts, he doesn't trust the Winstons at all. There's no way in hell he's eating anything from this house. But out of character, do we actually wanna, if the Crimson Chaos Pirates don't respond, do we actually wanna snatch that job from them?

Zach/Zahn: Potentially. I mean, we'd finally steal something in this game.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we'd finally do something illegal.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like it would be more in character to try and figure out what happened to them than just steal their job, though.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Chris/Ollie: Yeah I think it's more in character for us to find them and get them here so they can take the job.

Yeah, I mean, to be fair I was thinking like we do the job, give them the stuff because they’re in mourning they’re probably not going to be doing any jobs any time soon. It’s kind of like bringing over a casserole but instead its doing your job and having you get paid for it.

Avery/GM: Anything else during this meal time that y'all want to do or, or, or explore at all?

Chris/Ollie: What else was I going to ask them?

Zach/Zahn: No I’m just gonna take their free food and their money and then leave.

Bee/Polaris: I can't think of anything to ask these two specifically. And I don't want to tell them about the custodians who do mad illegal stuff because they clearly don't know them.

Avery/GM: Yeah, okay. Well, as the dinner kind of wraps up Shin and Nobu excuse themselves From the dining table and you're just left with Lapis and Avi and some of these waiters flitting about here and there.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris kind of leans in to the table and whispers so the waiters, can't hear, We totally know the Crimson Chaos Pirates… To Avi and Lapis.

Avery/GM: Avi’s like, well, why didn't you say anything? You probably would have been a big help.

Bee/Polaris: I'm sure. I panicked. I did, I did send them an email asking if they were all right.

Avery/GM: Oh, well, hopefully they respond back soon. Sounds like you're on pretty good terms with them to have their Contact information.

Bee/Polaris: Something like that.

Caden/Bruce: I made them a cake.

Bee/Polaris: Bruce made them a cake.

Avery/GM: Avi raises her eyebrows like, What kind of cake?

Caden/Bruce: I think it was lemon. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's not what I meant by what kind of cake.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, just a normal one.

Avery/GM: Oh, okay. Not one that violently levels a...

Bee/Polaris: No, no, no. We only do that to people that hunt animals to extinction.

Caden/Bruce: And that was in a pie, not a cake.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Oh, fair, fair.

Chris/Ollie: It wasn't even in the pie.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, it was in the ollie.

Zach/Zahn: It was in the ollie.

Bee/Polaris: It's kind of like a can of peanuts, but that, is that when you open it, it's snakes, but instead it's a bomb. We should do that. We should, we should make that.

Avery/GM: You should. Just booby traps.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Anyway, yeah, Polaris just says that, and then once again raises his champagne glass to pretend drink it.

Avery/GM: Avi stands up and is just like, well, I'll see you all out then. And if you're wanting to take the job, I'll have a, is, is your ship operational or do you need transport?

Bee/Polaris: Is, is this something that needs to happen now?

Avery/GM: I mean, we, we had time for dinner, but we do need y'all to leave like first thing tomorrow morning.

Bee/Polaris: Is our ship operational, Avery?

Avery/GM: No, it was going to be like a week.

Bee/Polaris: Dammit! We're going to need a new ship.

Avery/GM: Very well… you do have the Cassiopeia in orbit.

Bee/Polaris: We do. But we don't want to take that. Do we actually? Do we want to take that?

Zach/Zahn: I mean, taking similar technology to similar technology, it's not a bad idea.

Chris/Ollie: Not a bad idea. It could be beneficial. How busted up is the Cassiopeia?

Bee/Polaris: Not very. Didn't, yeah, fixed it.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: Yeah, y'all had like that week long break when you were in the custodian system where y'all repaired it.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: 100 percent and then y'all left it in orbit to take your normal ship down.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Avery/GM: to the planet

Bee/Polaris: Anyway, Polaris still ask for a ship.

Avery/GM: Sure, we can provide you with a small armored shuttle. we'll make sure that you have a ship that is protective enough to reach the station and, and get you where you need to go. I'll arrange for it to be taken to your hotel room tonight, or first thing in the morning.

Bee/Polaris: Can our…

Avery/GM: Not literally in your hotel room.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was Oh Well, I, I kind of imagined it hovering outside of our hotel window, just parked there.

Zach/Zahn: Are we allowed to jump?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah, Polaris thumbs up on the visor. Or, no, he raises his champagne glass as a confirmation. Anyway, we're leaving, right? We're skedaddling?

Avery/GM: Sure, y'all wanna skedaddle? Yeah, y'all exit the club Bruce on your way out, one of those Scaph bodyguards is at the door and they just nod at you and, you know, kinda give you a knowing look.

Bee/Polaris: They're also part of the Overseers.

Avery/GM: Oh, the Oracles?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah, the Oracles.

Avery/GM: I don't know, you could ask.

Bee/Polaris: Can we? Can we just stop and ask that?

Chris/Ollie: They didn't mention, like, Hey, don't mention us to anyone. Don't talk about us.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, well, didn't they mention that they're a secret behind the scenes sort of organization?

Chris/Ollie: They did say that, but they didn't hold us to any kind of secrecy.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that is true,

Bee/Polaris: I didn't sign an NDA.

Avery/GM: You did not sign an NDA, this is correct. Yeah, in one of, in one of the recordings, one of the people that Rhea was speaking to did mention that like, there are rumors and stories about a group called the Oracles, but… Y'all are walking down the street.

Avery/GM: You happen to cross down or cross through that kind of busy marketplace that Bruce Polaris and Marty had gone through previously.

Caden/Bruce: How's our business doing?

Avery/GM: Everything's kind of shut down. It's kind of late at night

Caden/Bruce: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: it's about 930 or so and the business district has kind of quieted down, you know There's people kind of cleaning up, you know some Street stalls and things like that, but you know, no one's no one's had time to move in yet so but as you're passing in front of the capital building here, you hear an explosion from the top floor, followed by shattering glass. And you see a figure plummeting to the ground below.

Bee/Polaris: Jesus tap dancing Christ.

(Ambience Fades out, Outro Plays then fades down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a one up 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 were Covert Ops, Generation Ship, and Cyberpunk City. We'll be back on November 1st with our next episode. See you out there, beyond the furthest stars.

Episode 31 - Into the Tiger's Den

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 31 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

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

Avery/GM: All right, let's get into the action today. So we ended last session with y'all doing a very good deed, getting some good karma points and buying a shop for this nice farming family right next to the soon to come Big Fred's Anime Emporium.

Zach/Zahn: That we also helped fund.

Avery/GM: Yeah, Inadvertently, yeah. And Ollie and Zahn were back at the hotel getting stuff fixed up and repaired when Lapis showed up and invited you all to a nice fancy dinner tonight with Avi and Lapis at the Winston Estate and Lapis knows all of your names somehow.

Zach/Zahn: Which is concerning to Zahn.

Avery/GM: Yeah, just a little bit and then as Bruce and Polaris and Rho and Marty were coming out of the real estate office across a busy street, Bruce, you spotted a being that you have only encountered once before when you were doing some spy work.

Avery/GM: You see Rhea getting out of a fancy limo, surrounded by guards and walking into a government building. So yeah, so we will start with our happy people over in the street. You see this being getting out of the vehicle. Bruce, Rhea is an unnaturally tall being. She almost towers over you in height. She's at least 10 feet tall. She is thin with no appearance of like large muscles or fat. Her skin seems to almost be like gripping right against her skeletal structure.

Zach/Zahn: Damn, she taller than Lady Dimetrescu.

Avery/GM: She is…

Zach/Zahn: She’s taller than Vampire Mommy.

Bee/Polaris: Heart eyes.

Avery/GM: She has faded purple skin and purple white hair that flows down her back. Her eyes shine with a golden hue. And she is wearing a black and silver dress that is clearly very expensive. And she walks in a very poised and determined manner right into the building followed closely by these three red alien guards that look pretty intense.

Bee/Polaris: Can we romance villains? (laughter) I’m kidding.

Jenine/Marty: What's the morale score that we have to beat to romance a villain?

Bee/Polaris: I am actually kidding.

Avery/GM: What did I put for the romance score? No, I'm kidding. Bruce, you see her, do you mention anything to your friends or do you just, uh, go about your business?

Caden/Bruce: No, I think Bruce will kinda, like, with his tail kinda, like, side bump, like, Polaris and kinda, like, point with his tail and just be, like, She's a very important figure. I met her in one of my encounters when I was working with Lazuli and I think, I don't know what she's doing here but I don't think it can be any good.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris, like, looks up from looking at the garlic cheesy bread he got last episode and you did mention it was hot so there's, like, steam on his visor on his helmet and he looks over and clearly can't actually see her and he just nods and says, noted, shall I prepare a bomb?

Caden/Bruce: No, I don't… I don't think. That's the best course of action, but neither do I think following her is a good course of action either. Perhaps checking in with the others and seeing if they've noticed anything weird or suspicious here would be a good idea.

Bee/Polaris: Understandable. Is she not the one that sent Coil after us?

Caden/Bruce: Was she, Avery? Would Bruce know that?

Avery/GM: Yes. In your transmission, one of the things that was transmitted was that she was going to send an AI hunter to get Hermes back.

Caden/Bruce: Okay, so Bruce would be able to put two and two together.

Avery/GM: Totally.

Caden/Bruce: He'll nod.

Bee/Polaris: And you said not to prepare a bomb, correct?

Caden/Bruce: I can't say that that building wouldn't have some innocent civilians inside of it.

Bee/Polaris: But her vehicle does not.

Jenine/Marty: you just see Marty Face Palm.

Caden/Bruce: You see Bruce kind of like, tilt his head and blink, like, very much considering this.

Zach/Zahn: Are you guys just openly talking about terrorist activities in front of potential witnesses?

Bee/Polaris: I mean, we're in a busy city. If you walk by a busy city, like, you don't really pay attention to the conversations people are having.

Jenine/Marty: And maybe you hear one murder attempt. You hear one murder attempt maybe every, like, what, 15 days?

Zach/Zahn: If, if I heard somebody say Bob while I'm walking past them, I'm gonna perk up. I'm just saying.

Bee/Polaris: Well.

Chris/Ollie: Maybe They got some kind of like.

Bee/Polaris: Maybe you're built

Chris/Ollie: different. Comtacs that can automatically pick up on people in the vicinity saying things like Bob and.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I could be talking about this delicious garlic bread that I have.

Chris/Ollie: The garlic bread is da bomb.

Avery/GM: Polaris, Rho puts a hand on your shoulder. And Marty, you hear in her voice kind of like that tone that kind of indicates that she's accessing a vision of some kind with her precognitive powers.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, she's scanning my brain?

Avery/GM: No, no, no.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: No, don't, don't use any bombs here. This isn't the right place.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I was, I don't have bombs on me. I was saying, should I prepare in anticipation for possible use of said bomb?

Avery/GM: Oh, oh, okay. Yeah, I, maybe. I'm not I just, I, I was just peeking into the possibility of, of that happening and it would not end well for any of us here.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, that's fair. I, I'm not as reckless as I have nevermind. Let's go.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, cause uh, last time Zahn put in chat that he needed to talk to you guys and didn't want to Put the invitation out on open comm.

Yeah. Polaris is like, Zahn has important news and this cheesy bread is getting cold.

Avery/GM: Okay. You returned to the hotel. Zahn, Ollie, what have you been doing since Lapis’ visit?

Zach/Zahn: So before Lapis’ visit, Zon was taking a nap. Yeah, he hasn't gone back to that.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah, Ollie opened the door.

Zach/Zahn: At this point, Zahn is probably around like 85 to 95 percent done repairing his own armor.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: Probably like working on the last bits of making his helmet, being able to collapse and re form again. As everybody comes in, Zahn's gonna like neck snap to the door. And he's gonna put his helmet down. He's gonna be like, Oh good, you guys are, uh, finally here. We've got a concerning situation.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris hands you the cheesy bread.

Zach/Zahn: The concern melts a little. Like, his wrinkles fade a little bit.

Bee/Polaris: It's still hot.

Avery/GM: Yeah, they put it in like a little insulated, like, hot and ready box or something.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris’ visor is like steamed up and he holds it up for you.

Jenine/Marty: Wait, so... Question, we still have your laser blades?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Right?

Avery/GM: Yes. In fact, they're actually probably repaired by now.

Jenine/Marty: Second qu… second question, if we cut the bread with the laser blade, does it become toast?

Avery/GM: It sure does. That's why Bruce got one.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: I love that so much.

Avery/GM: If I remember correctly.

Bee/Polaris: Because it can turn into a knife

Zach/Zahn: it makes the perfect toast.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my gosh, I love it.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh, we can make Creme Brule so easily. Anyway, Zahn was saying important things.

Zach/Zahn: Upon receiving this garlic bread, he paused for a moment and he's like, Thanks, but this is not going to be nearly enough to straight away the stress of the Winstons have invited us to dinner.

Bee/Polaris: No.

Zach/Zahn: And they know all of our names, including mine, which I Don't even begin to know how they know that.

Bee/Polaris: I am also confused considering I believe most… my name is not on any government documents. Polaris looks over at Bruce.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce looks back at Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: You spent the most time with the Winstons. Do you have any idea how they would know our names?

Caden/Bruce: They were all on the tablet, weren't they, Avery?

Avery/GM: Yes. Yes, they were.

Caden/Bruce: I don't know how they got the information, but the tablet that I gave to Zahn that I got after doing my job had all that information on it. I Didn't exactly ask how they got that information, and maybe I should have.

Bee/Polaris: No, it's fine. I just was wondering if you knew.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce shakes his head now, but then like, looks over at like, the stove and stuff in the kitchen and is just like, Well, if we're going to accept the dinner invitation, I can always make something to bring with us.

Bee/Polaris: To kill them?

Caden/Bruce: I mean...

Zach/Zahn: I I'd rather not have any more meat. Pie bombs, if I'm going to be in the building.

Bee/Polaris: To be fair, the meat pie was not a bomb. It was a meat pie. Ollie was the bomb. I was thinking poison… Based on the response from the room, I'm going to gather that murder is not the event of the hour.

Zach/Zahn: I feel like that would cause more problems than solve.

Bee/Polaris: Noted.

Jenine/Marty: So what, like, is this like, did they just come in and go: Dinner party and then like say our name and then just leave or was it like this is a whole event with the entire family Is it like an intimate? Is this a big thing? Situation…

Zach/Zahn: This one was… it was lapis that came to us, right? Or was it Lazuli?

Avery/GM: Yes. It was

Zach/Zahn: Lapis came to the door. I didn't We let them in, and they basically gave the spiel, namedropped us, and left. Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: did… did she give us a time for when we should arrive?

 Jenine/Marty: Do we need to bring anything?

Avery/GM: They did not give a time, but that's my mistake. They would have given you a time. We'll say 7.

Bee/Polaris: Ah, what time is it now?

Avery/GM: Like, it's 5 30.

Bee/Polaris: Oh.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, shit.

Bee/Polaris: Absolutely no time to sew anything.

Chris/Ollie: I don't have enough time to get ready.

Avery/GM: Actually, as you start to worry about what you would wear, there is a knock at the door.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. Polaris says not it.

Jenine/Marty: I got it. I got it. I got it.

Chris/Ollie: Results were bad last time I opened the door.

Jenine/Marty: I got it. I got it. I got it. It's okay. I got this, guys.

Avery/GM: Marty, you open the door, and there is, um, the hotel concierge, uh, He is standing there wearing a cute little red hat and red suit with little gold buttons on it. Hello there, miss. Uh, I do have a, uh, note from the noble Lapis Winston, who left instructions that you were to be provided with the best clothes in Ambrosia for the party this evening. I do have directions to the nearest Insta-Tailor, if you would like to avail yourselves of those, uh... Accommodations. And Lapis also stated, you can put it all on the Winston tab.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing. Thank you so much for delivering this message and you are?

Avery/GM: Oh, just the hotel concierge, uh, just a, a, a faceless nobody who will disappear as soon as you close this store.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, well, everybody's a somebody.

Avery/GM: Oh, no, my life ends as soon as you stop perceiving me.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, my God.

Avery/GM: I'm just kidding. I also do some stand up comedy at a local club.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, my God.

Jenine/Marty: In that moment, you see Marty's just face drop. And then she smiles and just goes, Oh, okay.

Zach/Zahn: I was expecting him to be like a hologram with that, that description.

Jenine/Marty: Awesome. Thank you so much. This is much appreciated. Um, we would love to see your standup act with that introduction at some point. Um,

Bee/Polaris: as Marty's saying that in the background, Polaris is shaking his head no.

Jenine/Marty: I like, you know how like they just like start closing the door a little bit more so you don't see the people behind you? That’s what Marty does… and she can't block anyone because everyone's taller than her, so she tries her best.

Jenine/Marty: thank you so much, Have… We will, we will definitely get to this. Um, thank you. Oh, oh wait, before, before you leave. Oh, so the Winstons, do they normally just have like, is this like a normal thing that they do, like big dinner parties or is this like a small kind of situation?

Avery/GM: Oh, the Winstons are known for their lavish parties and their absolutely wonderful world class hospitality.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, yes, definitely. Cool. Thank you. And I just closed the door as I like, Wave. Oh, wait. Um, oh, yeah. Wait, I do like what's the correct tipping in this situation?

Bee/Polaris: $5,000

Jenine/Marty: I’ll do like Ten credits.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Jenine/Marty: Thank you. Bye! and I close the door? And then could I…

Avery/GM: You just hear outside, Oh my god, I'm dying!

Bee/Polaris: What a terrible comedian.

Jenine/Marty: Could I Research, like a Winston party?

Avery/GM: Sure. You can do that.

Jenine/Marty: I'm smart, right? I'm smart. I am smart. Yes, I am.

Bee/Polaris: You go on space YouTube and you find a video of one of the Winston's doing a keg stand.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: So, uh, Zahn. If we do go, is either going to just buy, like, a tuxedo to look like a tuxedo, but he is not, not wearing his stuff.

Jenine/Marty: What does the note say that he handed us?

Avery/GM: Oh, it's just a little data pad and it just says, uh, it's just instructions to the InstaTailor down the street. And then it has a note to the tailor that just says, uh, please bill the Winston Estate for all purchases from this party.

Jenine/Marty: Cute.

Caden/Bruce: You said that we had half an hour to get ready?

Avery/GM: Uh, no, hour and a half.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, perfect. Bruce is in the kitchen and like, he's pulled out some of the groceries that he bought and he's starting to make pâté.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris says, Bruce, while you're making that, I assume we're going to go get clothes. Do you want me to take your measurements and get you something?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will like, Be whisking stuff with his tail and like, look over his shoulder and just be like, Sure, do I get to wear my chef hat or no?

Bee/Polaris: Up to you.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will smile and just be like, I trust you to make a better decision than me.

Bee/Polaris: And Polaris nods and like In his visor where no one else can see, unless, unless Ollie is still somehow jacked into his helmet. Uh, Polaris is just looking up fancy chef, uh, outfits.

Jenine/Marty: I'm rolling for, for research.

Avery/GM: Intelligence, know. Sorry, I was, I was getting to that, Marty.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, cool. That's sad. That's a seven.

Avery/GM: Well, looking up party footage isn't that hard. So, we'll say you pass. You look up a few articles about the Winstons throwing some parties and stuff, and generally they're well received, they're usually big community events, sometimes they will throw the parties as a way to brag about their most recent, you know, philanthropic, you know, You know, deed that they've done for the city or for the community.

Avery/GM: Sometimes it'll just be in celebration of a business deal that they've made. And there's usually a lot of like champagne and a lot of like fancy foods. And well, I guess it wouldn't be champagne because it's France doesn't exist in this galaxy, but you know what I mean?

Bee/Polaris: Thank God for that.

Avery/GM: There is footage of like animal shows going on in their club. You know, animals doing tricks and stuff like that. So it's a little dubious. Not as bad as hunting them to extinction, but still, you know, jugglers and all kinds of fun stuff going on.

Bee/Polaris: It’s a circus?

Avery/GM: They have circus elements.

Jenine/Marty: Cute!

Caden/Bruce: I mean, they're walking, talking tigers. Of course it's a circus.

Jenine/Marty: Is there like an announcement for a big party happening tonight?

Avery/GM: No.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, it's a private party.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, okay, cute, cute, cute, cute. Great. Okay. Okay. Must be intimate tonight. That's cool.

Caden/Bruce: As soon as everyone leaves, you just hear music starting to play and Bruce just starts like having a little mini party as he's just baking different pâtés.

Bee/Polaris: As Zahn and Bruce were talking, Polaris was taking Bruce's measurements.

Avery/GM: Cool! Are you heading to the Insta Taylor?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah!

Jenine/Marty: Shopping episode!

Avery/GM: Cool. Okay, so you head on down to the Insta Taylor, uh, you pass by the, the welcome desk and, and... Bill, the concierge, just tips his hat and says, I'm not really dead, I promise. Ha ha ha.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris stops and stares at him for an uncomfortably long amount of time before continuing to walk with his friends.

Jenine/Marty: Well, when that's happening, I do kind of like do the thing where you just kind of try to push, but because Marty's very small, it's just kind of like the thing where you're just like... Feet are dragging, and it's not working.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Sick, sick, sick, sick.

Avery/GM: I don't expect y'all to love every NPC I make. They can't all be winners.

Bee/Polaris: No, he's great.

Chris/Ollie: We should have bought him his own hotel.

Bee/Polaris: You know what? Good idea!

Chris/Ollie: Just every single NPC. Hey, we got extra money, what's up?

Bee/Polaris: I mean, what are we gonna do with it? We'll just steal more.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, we'll eventually just own the whole town, and then we can just get hella money and kickbacks.

Avery/GM: Y'all come into this Insta Taylor shop, and it's not like, it's not horrible, but it's, it, it, you know, it, it, it is what it is, it's like fast fashion kind of stuff, there's these, like, six or seven robots that are kind of just zipping around the shop. Folding clothes, measuring out clothes, cutting cloth, things like that. One of them perks up and just says, ah, welcome valued customer. How may I serve you today?

Jenine/Marty: I show the data pad.

Avery/GM: Oh, thank you… Analyzing… understood. The Winston's will be billed for whatever you purchased today.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent. We'll take the whole store.

Avery/GM: What is the occasion?

Jenine/Marty: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not. We're not, we're not . Um,

Chris/Ollie: we're the owners now.

Jenine/Marty: We own it now. Mwa ha ha

Bee/Polaris: Polaris has like a, an evil like cat face on his visor.

Jenine/Marty: occasion is dinner party.

Avery/GM: Oh, you are attending a fancy dinner party at the Winston estate. We will be more than happy to equip you with what you need. Please step this way. And he sort of gestures toward, or this robot sort of gestures towards like this huge selection of fancy gowns and fancy suits and everything in between. So if y'all want to custom out yourselves, feel free.

Jenine/Marty: Beautiful, wonderful.

Avery/GM: Zahn, you notice on this little display case in front of you, A little holoboard, um, and it's advertising a little, a little plug in USB device. And it says, all new holodrobe. Need to spruce up your combat armor for a fancy party? Just plug the holodrobe in, select the appropriate attire, and presto, a fancy new suit, perfectly formed with your armor. And there's an asterisk that says, no refunds.

Chris/Ollie: Mm. Permanent change.

Jenine/Marty: I think it's a great deal.

Zach/Zahn: Hypothetically you just unplug it and it will be okay.

Jenine/Marty: Hypothetically.

Zach/Zahn: Hypothetically. But I've got a, I get a. Roll 3D6 now for programming so I can uninstall if need hopefully.

Bee/Polaris: It binds to your suit and says, I am in control now, Zahn.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, what's that movie, Upgrade?

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Have not seen.

Chris/Ollie: Which is, it's essentially just Venom.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay.

Zach/Zahn: But yeah, Zahn is gonna like, snap his fingers and point at it and be like, ooh, ooh, shiny. That looks like a lot more simple of a version of what I was thinking anyways. Let's go with that.

Avery/GM: one of the robots gives you a thumbs up and just saysit's very fun to use. I have seen many people enjoy it.

Zach/Zahn: Are there any like reported setbacks with it?

Avery/GM: The device has been known to overheat and melt after about a year of use. No damage is done to the armor that it's plugged into, but it does have a limited lifespan.

Zach/Zahn: Eh, that's fine. I'm not planning on wearing this suit for a year, so.

Bee/Polaris: Why not? Just go into combat with a full suit.

Avery/GM: So this is your, your guys opportunity to, yeah, fashion show it out or whatever, you know? Like…

Bee/Polaris: now I know I was the one

Avery/GM: if you have any ideas….

Bee/Polaris: I know I was the one that brought this up, but I actually have no idea

Jenine/Marty: I got it. I know what Marty's wearing.

Bee/Polaris: I'm, seriously scrolling through Pinterest.

Jenine/Marty: I got this. I got this. Marty is wearing like this from like it's like a satin skirt that goes up into like a red lace bodice and then in the shoulders there, like, I need to find a picture of them. Wssentially she's wearing… it's called a bolero in Filipino culture and it's very pretty. and I love it.  She's cute. Oh wait, no, I think it's called a Filipiniana. but essentially these like little… the most important part is that the shoulders are like these round arches. I'm really bad at describing what it is, but like, it would be those like little shoulder pads, but like, it'd be like a completely red dress.

And, um, lace bodice and like a satin skirt with like those shoulders also being lacy. Yeah, and then she's also in black heels because she wants to be just a little taller. and the bag stays with… and her medical bag stays with her.

Bee/Polaris: Heck yeah.

Avery/GM: Not a bad move.

Jenine/Marty: Sick, cool.

Avery/GM: Yeah, they spin it up for you and it's, it looks beautiful and very fancy and yeah, you are definitely going to fit the part at this party.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will approach the measuring stand in front of the tri mirrors and just step on it and look at the, uh, the tailor and, and say, one classic black tux.

Bee/Polaris: Yes, a little dog tux, yes!

Jenine/Marty: With a little bow tie!

Avery/GM: With a little an uwu face at you. And then, uh…

Chris/Ollie: Even charming robots.

Avery/GM: And then, yeah, just whips up a super cute doggy tux. And then also offers you a top hat to go with it.

Chris/Ollie: Aha, excellent.

Bee/Polaris: Yes, that's so cute.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will say, oh, that was surprisingly not as much trouble as I thought. Do you often get dog customers?

Avery/GM: We are prepared to serve any combination of humanoid or anthropomorphic need.

Chris/Ollie: My friends will hear about you. And he's going to turn around and tell everyone, hey, this tailor shop is pretty great. They even serve dogs.

Bee/Polaris: Do you need a little, like, dog bag to carry anything important?

Chris/Ollie: His torso will just open up and say, No, I got that covered.

Bee/Polaris: Ah, yes, excellent.

Avery/GM: Oh, goodness.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will just get a really nice jacket. Like a bomber jacket. And just put it where he's already wearing.

Avery/GM: That's great.

Jenine/Marty: Marty does ask for a bowtie for Polaris.

Avery/GM: You're walking up to the club and just like, put this on, come on.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will get the bowtie, but put it on his helmet. Like, like a hair, like a hair bow

Jenine/Marty: Yes!

Avery/GM: That's glorious. Bruce still needs a fancy chef suit.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris is like, putting in, like, the measurements and everything he took from Bruce into, I guess, like, a terminal or something for them to, to whip up a fancy chef suit.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Bruce, do you have any preference on what this looks like?

Caden/Bruce: Well, we're in a fancy galaxy world, so it can look like anything.

Avery/GM: Exactly.

Caden/Bruce: So, this... This fancy chef suit is gonna be like, half white, but not like 50 50, but like, kinda thing where it's just like, the majority of it is like a white normal chef suit, but then the other half of it is this really fancy, like, gold, um, Gold, green, and black, like, designs that just cover the other half of it in, like, tiny little, like, when you look closer to it, you realize they're, like, little geckos that are kind of, like, going up and down the shirt, but from far away, it looks like one of those fancy, like, embroidered, like, fabric, like, carpet designs, and then just the pants are just, like, a regular white chef's, like, jacket pants, but then you realize, like, the little tail has, like, a little attachment, which is also, like, a little tiny bow tie.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah!

Avery/GM: I love it. This is great.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Polaris will get boots with the fur too.

Avery/GM: Boots with the fur? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Like sleek black boots with like, that are fur lined. And the bomber jacket is also fur lined.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my god.

Avery/GM: Zahn, do you activate your thing here? Or are you waiting until you get to the party?

Zach/Zahn: I'll, I'll test it out here. Just gonna come out as a, a three piece like midnight black suit with kind of like oily blue and black tie And then his helmet is actually going to just remain the same style.

Jenine/Marty: Valid!

Zach/Zahn: but it's going to be, it's going to be like a glossy black.

Bee/Polaris: Nice

Avery/GM: Very cool.

Zach/Zahn: Just cause Zahn still doesn't really like showing up his face.

Avery/GM: Totally. Cool. Yeah. Y'all leave the tailor, they, they give a friendly goodbye and just say, please feel free to shop again And you're back at your hotel, ready to get, or you're already suited up, or did you get dressed at the, at the tailor or are you taking it back and then getting dressed?

Jenine/Marty: Taking back and then getting dressed

Bee/Polaris: Oh, taking it back and then.

Avery/GM: Okay!

Bee/Polaris: You don't want to get it dirty. Right. Okay, cool.

Jenine/Marty: Gotta do my hair and makeup. I gotta do my hair.

Avery/GM: Cool. is there anything anyone else wants to do aside from getting your hair and makeup ready before you head out to the party? Bruce, what are you cooking?

Caden/Bruce: So Bruce has made three different types of pate. One is duck. One is this, um, bug meat that doesn't exist in our human world, but exists in space world, um, where I kind of see them as like giant shelled beetles that, like, you can just, like, kind of get the inside of the meat from, and he's made pate out of that. And then the third one is, like, this mixture of just beef and, um, chicken. And he's made these just and they're very fancy and they smell very nice but there’s no poison in them.

Bee/Polaris: How do you eat oh, how do you do you, like, eat pate with, like, a cracker or something?

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, usually, like, you cut it and then spread it on a cracker. So, like, he's cut up some of like the nice warm fresh things of bread but then he's also like just kind of I think they bought some crackers so I think he just has like a plate of crackers as well but he also just doesn't know if the Winstons will just eat it as it is because he's not sure if they eat

Bee/Polaris: yeah

Caden/Bruce: bread or crackers or if they're just carnivores like

Bee/Polaris: well they well uh he ate the meat pie and that has crust

Avery/GM: that's true and veggies there were Seeds for different vegetables and fruits at the Winston, this, uh, compound on that little planet.

Caden/Bruce: But that could have been for the, uh, butler.

Avery/GM: Oh, fair. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: I feel so bad for stealing his cake.

Caden/Bruce: But yes, that is what Bruce has made.

Avery/GM: Wonderful. Cool. Well, if y'all don't have anything else to do, then you get dressed. Uh, Rho elects to stay behind with Hermes.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris took the longest for hair and makeup to make them fashionably late and then puts his helmet on.

Zach/Zahn: It's just for him.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Sometimes you can look nice just for you And that's good.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, um, really quick, Ali definitely prepared and brought his drones, not, uh, you know, with us, but they're going to be, uh, like stalkers are going to be parked like at their maximum range. And then the, uh, void hawk, I'm going to have float above the compound cloaked or well sensor cloaked.

Jenine/Marty: And I'll also say that Marty is committing. Uh, for the day for precognition just for safety

Avery/GM: sure

Jenine/Marty: just because

Bee/Polaris: do we have to have ollie on a leash

Chris/Ollie: i yeah i've been waiting for someone to uh raise an alarm but i've got the tux on so

Avery/GM: yeah no one is gonna ask such a fancy boy to put on a leash

Bee/Polaris: okay good because i was gonna say we're gonna have to get a diamond studded leash

Avery/GM: So the Winston estate is part of a very posh area of the business district. It is a four story megaplex that never seems to be lacking in traffic, both foot and air. There are hover vehicles that seem to be landing on the top of the roof and then depart shortly after and that kind of thing, the bottom floor, you can hear. Just a lot of music coming from, as it appears to be sort of a, a nightclub. There's no shortage of groupies, dancers, and patrons vying for a chance to gain entrance and perhaps gain favor with this most prestigious family. Approaching the door, you see two anthropomorphic jackal like beings wearing very fine clothing. They each wear sunglasses over their eyes and are checking a list on some sort of data pad And one of them looks up at you as you approach and is just like, Names? Are you on the list?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Yes. Yes, we were invited by the Winstons. I, uh, Marty and Party.

Bee/Polaris: The Marty Party.

Avery/GM: The Marty Party.

Jenine/Marty: I thought it would be easier, cause you know, like, I don't know what their names be known, and like, Marty's name is like plastered everywhere, so that's why she said it. She didn't mean to Rhyme Yeah. Marty and Company.

Avery/GM: Yeah, this, uh, anthropomorphic jackal checks the list and says, uh, Oh, yep. Uh huh. I see. Yeah. Uh, hang on in. If you have anything you want to check at the door, feel free. No pressure though. Uh, welcome to the Winston Estate. And you hear a bunch of like groans from the crowd of like, Aw, they get to go in. They just got here. You know, that kind of stuff. And yeah, so you're coming inside the club and there is the coat check desk to your right. And standing in front of you is this blue tiger person, Lapis. They are wearing a very smart looking business suit. The jacket is half black, half white with matching pants of the same style. They are wearing a black dress shirt and a white tie. They are dressed impeccably. The music is bumping and vibrating louder as you walk in, kind of vibrating almost to your bones, except for you, Ollie.

Bee/Polaris: Cause you don't have bones.

Avery/GM: Right. And Lapis just says, Oh, welcome. I'm so glad that you all showed up. Avi is waiting for you in her quarters. Um, we'll need to head that way. Fair warning. One of my dads, uh, Shin Winston is kind of in a foul mood after a business deal went south this morning. So if you see him out there in the, on the club floor, just don't, don't antagonize him. Okay? I know you have a lot of questions. All of them will be answered. I promise you. And don't worry, Zahn, Myself and Avi are the only ones who know your name. And she gives you a big smile.

Zach/Zahn: The, uh, the lights on Zahn's visor squint.

Avery/GM: Do you follow them out?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: No, I leave.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we follow them out.

Zach/Zahn: I just leave.

Avery/GM: Deuces.

Zach/Zahn: Peace.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like motions to put on glasses and then has like aviators appear on his visor.

Avery/GM: And yeah, Lapis leads you through into the dance floor. there's a variety of beings here dancing and grooving. There's a DJ up here spinning some sick beats. You know, you got all kinds of weird characters going on here.

Bee/Polaris: There's a shadow guy.

Avery/GM: There's a shadow guy.

Chris/Ollie: yeah. There's a nerd, drowning his sorrows.

Bee/Polaris: Another one? Oh boy.

Jenine/Marty: Is it the nerd that we know?

Avery/GM: That's not actually the nerd. That's just a token I used.

Jenine/Marty: Would the nerd be invited to this?

Avery/GM: No.

Bee/Polaris: No.

Jenine/Marty: I don't think he's cool enough to get in.

Bee/Polaris: He's not.

Chris/Ollie: Especially not after that fiasco.

Jenine/Marty: Ha ha, loser.

Bee/Polaris: We did embarrass him.

Avery/GM: And yeah, and Lapis seems to be leading you out onto the dance floor. They stop real quick and there's a little bar here and they're just like, if any of you would like a refreshment, please feel free to take one. We have a variety of drinks available. And they are playing the very, a very convincing role of a good host.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is busy holding, like, his, like, I think he probably put them in boxes, like, three boxes of his pate, but he'll grab, like, a champagne glass with his tail.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will also grab a champagne glass.

Jenine/Marty: I grabbed the equivalent of a Shirley Temple.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will grab, um... A glass of water for Ollie. Yeah, Polaris will ask for a dog bowl.

Avery/GM: They hand you a dog bowl. No problem.

Bee/Polaris: Cool. Polaris pours the champagne in there and then grabs another champagne glass.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie’ s gonna just hop up on the counter and start lapping away.

Avery/GM: Oh Gosh!

Chris/Ollie: This substance is intriguing. It is so bubbly.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, you have taste receptors. I forgot I gave you saliva and taste receptors.

Bee/Polaris: Oh gosh. Wait, does that mean he can’t drink alcohol?

Avery/GM: No, he doesn't have dog biology. He just has the taste receptors. So he just has sensors that can interpret taste.

Zach/Zahn: Off the counter. Ollie, off the counter.

Avery/GM: And, yeah, you're, you're walking across the dance floor, you see all these various patrons. Lapis leads you towards a raised platform where a red tiger person sits in a throne like seat… their head is in one hand, they look quite sullen. He eyes you as you approach, but doesn't really say anything. Bruce, you notice, flanking just behind this, Tiger person are two other Scaph, which you haven't really seen a lot of in your travels recently And it's, you know, it's probably a bit weird to see them having a regular job, so to speak. But yeah, they're, they're kind of holding some weapons and, you know, obviously doing some sort of bodyguard work here. They kind of cock their head to like one side looking at you and then go back to like analyzing the crowd. And they are an orange and yellow color palette.

Avery/GM: And Lapis leads you to this little teleportation pattern. It's just like Avi is waiting up in her quarters. Please step on through and We will hopefully get this dinner underway.

Zach/Zahn: You first, Lapis.

Avery/GM: Oh, of course. They touch a little device on their wrist to like, program the pad and then step on and disappear.

Zach/Zahn: Visor still squinted, Zahn will go on first.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will go on second. Gotta make sure room's secure.

Jenine/Marty: I'll go next.

Caden/Bruce: I think Bruce will indicate for, um, Dog Ollie to go next.

Chris/Ollie: Did we know That was the head of the Winston family, or was he just one of the heads?

Avery/GM: He's just one of the heads.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: And Marty's research probably would have pointed that out at some point. Because Marty has done a lot of research on the, uh, Winstons.

Jenine/Marty: My favorite enemy.

Zach/Zahn: My favorite enemy!

Avery/GM: As you arrive in Avi's quarters, uh, you realize that the area you are in is more of an… Office or like a reception type area. The space is laid out as if you would kind of wait here to be allowed in to see Avi. Lapis leads you through these doors here, or inside, there is some seating to your right. There is a fancy desk to your left and straight ahead in front of you is a balcony overlooking the sprawling metropolis of Ambrosia. The lights and sounds of the city create kind of a living kaleidoscope of colors and noise.

Avery/GM: Standing on the balcony, looking out over the city, a glass of red wine in her hand is Avi, dressed elegantly. She wears a long, flowing, high necked black gown, and she takes a sip of her wine and turns to you and just says, Oh, my guests, my friends, my gambling partners. How are you?

Bee/Polaris: Only one of us gambled.

Avery/GM: Come now. Do you really expect me to believe that Ollie didn't let you know what was going on?

Bee/Polaris: Actually, yes.

Chris/Ollie: Initiative is a new experience for me and I took advantage of it.

Avery/GM: Avi kind of like takes a step, not back, but just kind of like puts, puts her hand up to her chest. Like, Ollie, you're looking different. Is that Ollie? That sounds like Olly.

Chris/Ollie: It is I. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a scrape earlier and I had to

Zach/Zahn: improvise,

Chris/Ollie: improvise. Thank you.

Avery/GM: Avi goes and sets her glass down on her desk and turns back to you and is just like, well, thank you for coming on such short notice. I try not to send out invitations the day of, but this really couldn't wait. I'm actually hoping to hire you all for a job.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris motions to take off his fake, uh, aviators and then like underneath the, the image of the aviators, his eyes are squinting.

Avery/GM: I know, I know, you have no reason to trust the Winston family. After all, my cousin Violet does technically want to kill you. But I can assure you that I have no taste for revenge, at least not for Bryson Winston's death. He had it coming.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, he was kind of a terrible person.

Avery/GM: Oh yes, hunting animals to extinction just for the fun of it? That's...

Bee/Polaris: Well, I mean also the implied wanting to hunt us.

Avery/GM: Oh, oh, uh, yeah, definitely not the kind of attitude we like to have towards other beings, you know, very inappropriate behavior for sure.

Zach/Zahn: So how do you know all of us? Some of us are either pretty private people and others have Almost no document, paper trail.

Avery/GM: My cousin Lapis can fill you in more on the details if you'd like, but let's just say that nothing is outside the sight of the oracles.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, oh, this, okay. This again. Hey, Bruce, those are your friends, right? The oracles.

Zach/Zahn: The fuck are the oracles?

Bee/Polaris: Didn't Bruce mention that to us?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Caden/Bruce: I wouldn't say friends.

Zach/Zahn: In that case, Zahn Because I don't remember Zahn having gone into questioning about it. He'll He'll put different emphasis on The fuck are the oracles, then?Like, head swing glancing at Bruce over his shoulder.

Caden/Bruce: Was the Oracles the group I was working for?

Avery/GM: Yeah, that was Lazuli's group.

Caden/Bruce: I mean, I briefly worked for them, from what I could kind of gather. I mean, I wouldn't say cause chaos, but try to, um, keep everything equal in the galaxy.

Zach/Zahn: That's just great.

Avery/GM: Lapis speaks up and says, uh, yes, we try to keep everyone on the same level playing field, you know, we try not to let the hegemony get too powerful or the Republic get too corrupt, but recently our efforts have been hampered by...

Zach/Zahn: It's gonna say you're doing a wonderful job on that one, letting your cousin just kind of run rampant with Republic resources.

Avery/GM: Oh, no, that's very standard Republic corruption. We, we go after the bigger fish. A Winston getting a generalship and misusing her resources, that's, that happens every day. That's fine. No. We're talking about the people who make the big decisions. We keep them from becoming too corrupt, but recently our efforts have been hampered

Bee/Polaris: By?

Avery/GM: Well, it all stems from your friend Rho, who I see you didn't bring with you today.

Bee/Polaris: She didn't want to come. Also, was she even invited?

Avery/GM: Oh, yes, she should have been included on the invitation. We knew she was there.

Bee/Polaris: Eye squints. Do we have a comms link with Rho?

Avery/GM: You would have it through Hermes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Polaris would be streaming, like, everything that's been happening up until now. Sure. So that Rho can stay informed.

Avery/GM: Yeah, definitely. Avi says, but what the oracles are is really of no consequence to the job that we are asking you to do. There is, as you know, the Hegemony has come into the possession of a certain program, the IASO program. I don't know if you've deduced exactly what it can do, but it is capable of pretty much destroying any artificial intelligence that it comes in contact with.

Zach/Zahn: How did the hegemony get this?

Avery/GM: That is beyond our sight. I know I said nothing is beyond our sight, but actually that is one of the few things that has been…

Jenine/Marty: Okay, that’s not sus.

Avery/GM: It's actually been kind of embarrassing, not gonna lie.

Zach/Zahn: Got it… that's a hole you should probably look into filling.

Bee/Polaris: Does Polaris know anything about the custodians of the IASO program? Or was that, is that something that Blairs would have to talk to the constituents about? Or what they were going to explain to him?

Avery/GM: That was part of the thing that Alioth was going to explain at some point.

Bee/Polaris: Dope.

Jenine/Marty: How does one, how does one spell this?

Avery/GM: I A S O

Jenine/Marty: Yes! Okay, cool.

Bee/Polaris: When Avi says… or when Lapis says that it's a hole that they're trying to fill and it's so embarrassing and everything, uh, Blairs does say, Uh, I believe I may be able to find that out.

Avery/GM: Oh, that would be most helpful. Yes. Usually we're quite good at finding things that try to hide from us, but it has not been very fruitful this time.

Zach/Zahn: So Zahn's gonna cross his arms and he's going to be like, get to the point. What do you want us for?

Avery/GM: Well, the IASO program. Poses a grave threat to all of us, because as you know, almost any world in this galaxy is governed by numerous AIs controlling clean water, environmental configurations, everything that makes modern life livable, and we can't allow One side, like the Hegemony to have all of that power. What we need to do is find a way to destroy the IASO program and eliminate any trace of its coding from the galaxy. And I believe there is a space station that may hold some clues as to the origin of the IASO program, and that's where we need you to go.

Avery/GM: Avi pushes a button on a little remote that she picked up from her desk. And over on this little table, a holo… hologram pops up and Zahn, you see a site you have not seen in many, many years. It is your home, New Terra Station. She says, Zahn, I need you to go home.

Avery/GM: And we cut away from that scene.

Zach/Zahn: Noooooooooooooooooooooooo

Avery/GM: Back to your hotel room.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Avery/GM: Rho and Hermes are sitting in the room and Hermes speaks up, having heard what has been streamed to them both, and looks up at, uh, Rho and just says, Rho, I need a favor of you. I need you to take me to see my mother. And that's where we're going to end it.

Bee/Polaris: What? Hermes has a mom?

Jenine/Marty: I'm screaming.

Bee/Polaris: Also, I'm sad that Herbie's didn't trust us enough to bring him to his mom.

Caden/Bruce: Right?

Bee/Polaris: We let him fire guns.

Caden/Bruce: We let you almost kill people, Hermes. Come on.

(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 Destin Carpenter. Background music provided by TabletopAudio. com and used under an attribution, non commercial license from Creative Commons. Tracks used today were Mega City Slums, Cyberpunk Bar, and Dark Matter.

Additional background music licensed from Q Up Arts Sounds. We'll be back on October 15th with our next episode. See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars.

Episode 30 - Invest in the Business of Friendship and Community!

Ad Copy: Hey I’m Drea Silvertooth and I’m a GM. You should absolutely come listen to our podcast because I have the BEST heroes. They’re hunting curses for the queen of Viare and it’s going great! “I got hit points!” “I have a plan” “Is it to write my eulogy?” They make REALLY good choices. “Oh god, Why’d I do that?” “(laughter)” It’s all according to plan, textbook success! “She did fall 45 feet in full armor though!” “Oh!” (Record Scratch) Fine, they are BAD HEROES! I have four very BAD HEROES on my podcast. But they are hilarious. Come check us out at BadHeroesCast.com or find Bad Heroes where ever you get your podcasts. “I haven’t been playing my bard correctly, so now I am going to!” “Hold up, you mean trying to summon an electric guitar so you could use the auxiliary cord was NOT doing it correctly?” “Oh no, that was definitely Correct!”

(Ad fades out)

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 30 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

(Intro plays, fades down, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: Y'all boarded these… This little transport and start heading towards the city of Ambrosia. Uh, it's a pretty sizable metropolis. There's lots of traffic going on, you know, lots of big, tall skyscrapers going all the way up to the sky and y'all are transported to a branch of the Ornate Dreams Hotel featuring the Sapphire Tree Restaurant.

Bee/Polaris: That sounds familiar, what was the other restaurant called?

Avery/GM: That was the Hotel on Bragos.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's just a chain.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sick.

Avery/GM: It's nothing special.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay, cool.

Zach/Zahn: I keep picturing... Olympia to be Coruscant when in reality it looks more like Alderaan.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's very much, uh, it's not all one giant city for sure.

Zach/Zahn: No, which is nice.

Avery/GM: This is the, yeah, just don't go to the desert.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Oh yeah, the Desert of Exile, that's it, that sounds like a tourist trap if I've ever heard it.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you are shown to a very nice suite of rooms, you know, everyone will have their own individual room. Even Ollie, you have a whole bed all to yourself.

Bee/Polaris: Aw, I'm glad they gave my dog a room.

Jenine/Marty: Yes!

Avery/GM: The Colonel that... Walks you into the hotel, just says, uh, to bill it to Fort Zeus, which they will do. And yeah, y'all are in this hotel room for the next few days. Is there anything anyone wants to do while you're in this city? Any shopping, any activities, anything you're looking to accomplish while you wait for your ship to be repaired?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is gonna be very preoccupied with fixing.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, just fix all of our broken shit. Players are probably gonna go to Zana's room to help fix all the broken shit.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie as well!

Avery/GM: Okay

Jenine/Marty: I send a postcard home.

Zach/Zahn: Awww.

Caden/Bruce: Awww.

Avery/GM: Is this, is this Marty's first time in, in, in this big of a city?

Jenine/Marty: Yes. It's like, you know those shirts that say like, my, my daughter went to this place and all they got me was this shirt. I want that, but in like, a postcard form.

Avery/GM: I love it. I love it.

Zach/Zahn: My daughter was on Olympia and all she sent me was this postcard.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, and then like, I write in the message just like, So I might've done a medical research thing and I'm really excited. And like other things that happen, but like, that's what I make and send it to them.

Avery/GM: Sure. Is this like a classic postcard? Like you have to send it in the mail and

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: It's going to get like shipped interstellarly. Okay, cool. Anyone can send an email.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Speaking of sending an email, it should probably send one to the Custodians so they don't blow up Olympus or Olympia.

Zach/Zahn: They're already in hyperspace on the way here.

Bee/Polaris: It's like when the Death Star enters atmosphere.

Avery/GM: Bruce, what are you doing?

Caden/Bruce: I would like to go food shopping, please.

Avery/GM: Okay, sounds good.

Jenine/Marty: Could I join in on that trip? Because I feel like that's me going out to also get a postcard. And I also want to help with shopping.

Caden/Bruce: Absolutely.

Jenine/Marty: Shopping episode for food, yay!

Avery/GM: Sounds good.

Zach/Zahn: As you guys are leaving, Zahn's like, Bring me back something good, please.

Avery/GM: Like Bruce would bring back anything bad.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. As they're leaving, Polaris, like, considers going with them. Because, up until now, he's been taking, like, the security role. Where he makes sure that no one gets murdered.

Zach/Zahn: Me and Ollie got this if, uh, if Polaris wants to take off.

Bee/Polaris: But, the thing is, his helmet's not fixed and so, going into a big, crowded city, with a lot of noise and lights and different stuff.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, gosh.

Bee/Polaris: Cause this is his first time planet side, really. Like, with a, with a big city.

Zach/Zahn: Like legit planet side, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, Ollie's been working on the helmet. Can I, uh, roll to see if it's a dunzo?

Avery/GM: Yeah, go ahead and roll, um, intelligence fix.

Chris/Ollie: That is...10

Avery/GM: A 10? Okay. Yeah, Polaris, you're kind of eyeing the door as you're seeing Bruce and Marty, uh, start to slip out. And you just hear Ollie coming up behind you, holding your helmet in his mouth.

Bee/Polaris: Is his tail wagging?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yes. Ollie, uh, is gonna approach with, Once again, my sincerest apologies. I did not estimate the effect that losing this would have on you.

Bee/Polaris: It's… I mean, it's alright. You saved our lives. So, I think it's a pretty fair trade off.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's holding it in his mouth. He's gonna hand it over and say, Unfortunately, I was unable to keep it slobber free.

Bee/Polaris: Why do you, your, how did you have...

Chris/Ollie: He just held it by like, the lip on the bottom.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is like,

Avery/GM: oh my gosh

Bee/Polaris: He like, looks at the slobber confused, cause you're a dog. Like, you're a robot dog. Why would you need slobber, but, yeah. Does that mean you have to replace your like, slobber tanks?

Chris/Ollie: I probably just absorb, absorb moisture out of the air.

Avery/GM: Moisture from the air, yep. Condenses it into...

Bee/Polaris: And looks at it, and it like, looks at the slobber and he's just like, thanks. And like, he starts wiping it off. Well, Polaris pats Ollie on the head. Hopefully he has like, pet sensors that makes him happy.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah.

Bee/Polaris: When he gets pet.

Chris/Ollie: The tail starts going double time.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris says, thanks. Uh, do you need anything while we're out?

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will say, I am having an intense craving for a bone right now.

Bee/Polaris: Consider it done. Employees will go follow the other two. Leaving Dief so that Dief can help too.

Avery/GM: Sure. Cool. So... Bruce and Marty, you shut the door and then as soon as you shut the door, uh, the door opens again and Polaris is standing there helmet back on?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, and he throws a thumbs up on the visor.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will throw a thumbs up in real life.

Jenine/Marty: Marty will also throw two thumbs up.

Avery/GM: And y'all continue into this. City of Ambrosia. You get some nice directions to a good little nearby shopping district from the front desk and y'all head out. Polaris, as you turn on your helmet and it reboots its systems, you have a just flurry of messages from your custodians and they're all a variety of like, at first, like, okay, I get that you're upset, but please don't turn your helmet off just to make us worry and like, you know, at first like, okay, stop joking.

Avery/GM: You know, we're like, Hey, can we talk about this? And they're just getting like, progressively, like more worried, which, you know, these robots aren't known for like their feelings or anything.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: but it's definitely like there is some concern going on.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Players will text back. He'll just say he'll give like a short summary of the situation that happens, like with coil and the EMP and stuff like that, and apologize for that.

Avery/GM: Bear replies back, understandable, researching EMP counter defenses.

Bee/Polaris: Yay! Once we get that, uh, players will send that over to Zahn.

Avery/GM: And, um, Alioth says, are you ready to have our chat?

Bee/Polaris: Not quite yet. Have to do shopping.

Chris/Ollie: Busy shopping.

Avery/GM: You get a thumbs up… Okay, and back in the room with Zahn and Oli and Deif, uh, go ahead and roll. Some intelligence fix checks to see kind of how this day goes…

Zach/Zahn: how many you want?

Avery/GM: two from each of you for right now Polaris if you want to roll Dief’s Intelligence fix go ahead

Bee/Polaris: Two intelligence fix for Dief?

Avery/GM: Yeah, and it would be plus two plus two to fix and plus one to intelligence

Chris/Ollie: there we go I'm gonna use Processing to use augmented cognition to make my intelligence 18, so I can get those…

Zach/Zahn: God, you're so naturally good at everything… So I rolled a 7 and then a 9.

Avery/GM: Okay. Polaris?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, for dief I got a 9 and a 6.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: And I got a 12 and a... 13.

So Ollie just fixes all of it.

Avery/GM: I was going to say, so Zahn, you're working closely with Deef to kind of fix some of these, like you're fixing the laser blades up real quick, you know, trying to get them working again and all that stuff. And it's kind of a Slow process. There's lots of really tiny parts there that you know, are just hard to work with.

Avery/GM: And you hear just like a bunch of mechanical sounds coming from behind you and you turn around and you see there's like four arms sticking out of like the back end of, um, or like the, like there's like the opening in like the middle of like this dog chassis of Ollie's and Ollie is just like sorting and like fixing a whole bunch of like multiple items all at once really fast and just kind of like outpacing both of you.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is concluding that he is very tired. Should probably nap before tackling this some more.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: If he's getting outpaced by a tiny little.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay. Let's go over to Polaris, Marty and Bruce. You arrive in this kind of shopping area and it's probably about midafternoon or like three o'clock or so. And it's a pretty busy. Pretty busy shopping day. There's lots of people coming and going. There's just a huge variety of different shops here. Unlike our last shopping trip, which was kind of more limited in the selection of what was there, pretty much anything you can find in the book is something you could purchase if you needed to.

Avery/GM: There's a big grocery store, Bruce, that you notice called Cosmo’s, and it's, it's a pretty popular chain. You know, nothing too crazy. There's a computer hardware store and cybernetic augmentation facility called Tech: No-Logic. There's a ship and ship upgrade shop called Blastoff! There's a shop that is very familiar.

Avery/GM: It's called Doc's Dox, Vox, and Pox and it's designed to look kind of like a front porch with a big tent in front of it. And an old man in a rocking chair is selling his products there.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, what?

Avery/GM: So, at Bragos,

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Avery/GM: at Bragos, there was a, there was this shop, Dox's Dox, Vox, and Pox.

Bee/Polaris: No, yeah, I'm confused as to why he's here. Like, uh,

Avery/GM: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, is it,

Jenine/Marty: is it a chain?

Bee/Polaris: Is it the same dude?

Jenine/Marty: Is it a chain? Is it a chain?

Avery/GM: It looks, it looks exactly like the same dude, Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: What the?

Jenine/Marty: It's the Cabbage Man. It's the Cabbage Man.Is this the Cabbage Man from Avatar The Last Airbender? Is it that kind of situation?

Avery/GM: Not exactly, but close.

Bee/Polaris: Does he have some wheat in his mouth too?

Avery/GM: Yep. He's got some wheat. He's chewing on it.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is so confused.

Avery/GM: And the… there is also a big billboard in this area. That just says, coming soon, Big Phred's Anime Shop.

Bee/Polaris: Yay!

Jenine/Marty: Yay!

Avery/GM: And it gives an address.

Zach/Zahn: Aww.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, that's so exciting! Look at him go!

Zach/Zahn: Big Fred took the, he, he took, we let him keep the prize money, right?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. we gave him the money.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: And we got a real life anime girl right here with us.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no!

Avery/GM: Oh no!

Bee/Polaris: Wait Are you talking about Miku?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Oh, and I assume Rho probably came with you, Marty, just to stay out of the way of the Repairs going on. But yeah, so where would y'all like to go first?

Caden/Bruce: Not to ruin your beautifully described scene, but is there like a more local like bakery or like a smaller brand, like local, like fruits and vegetable market? Like Bruce isn’t against big…

Bee/Polaris: Like a farmers market?

Caden/Bruce: yeah.

Avery/GM: No you’re totally fine!

Caden/Bruce: Bruce isn’t against like big stores, but it's the kind of thing where it's just like, instead of going to like

Bee/Polaris: Walmart?

Avery/GM: Yeah

Caden/Bruce: the Walmart

Avery/GM: Yeah

Caden/Bruce: he wants to see if there's anything more local.

Avery/GM: Yeah, totally fine. Um, yeah, of course. Go ahead and roll a, a constitution notice check.

Caden/Bruce: That's a nine.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you. And I only did notice, or I only did constitution because I'm like, okay, you're kind of using your senses. You catch a whiff of some, like, very fresh produce coming from just a couple streets away. Like, there is like some very pungent, like, very pungent something. coming from over there, along with like some very like strong mint scents coming and you start to wander a couple streets down and you see this kind of medium sized tented area with a variety of like vegetables and fruits on it and there's like some like clearly like freshly made homemade bread

Caden/Bruce: Perfect!

Avery/GM: here as well and it's being tended by um they're not a small but a a family of of probably three or four beings.

Caden/Bruce: I love it. Bruce is going to go shopping there, please.

Avery/GM: Yeah, totally.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah.

Avery/GM: Marty and Polaris, uh, are you following along or are you going your own different ways?

Jenine/Marty: 100%

Bee/Polaris: I follow Bruce.

Jenine/Marty: 100%. Are you kidding me? I'm here. Listen, we're at a cool new place. We're trying cool new food. Let's go.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Definitely.

Bee/Polaris: Do they have like different types of like breads? Like do they have like stuffed breads and herb bread and stuff like that?

Avery/GM: Oh, yeah, totally. It's it's the whole the whole gamut. There's you know, you got your your cheesy garlic bread Your olive focaccia's all kinds of good stuff.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is getting cheesy garlic bread for Zahn and Ollie.

Zach/Zahn: Awww

Avery/GM: Awesome, you you tented off area and there's a young teen, probably like 12 or 13 years old. And they're just like, um, uh, thank you for shopping with us today. Is there anything you're looking for in particular?

Caden/Bruce: Oh, absolutely. And Bruce is gonna get probably, like, one or two of everything.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, let's I'm gonna leave a tip!

Jenine/Marty: Let's go!

Caden/Bruce: Like, like, he's just he's just going for it. Like, he sees these different vegetables and he's just like, Okay, this would make a really good root vegetable stew. Like, okay, we can make, like, a curry one night. We can make a stir fry another. Like, he's just He's going to town and then he sees the bread and he's just like, oh, they don't have like Kraft singles cheese. They have real cheese here. And he's like, okay, I'm going to make Zahn like a proper grilled cheese sandwich. Like he's just, he's going to town.

Bee/Polaris: My motivation behind the cheesy garlic bread was that it's a real cheese.

Caden/Bruce: Real cheese.

Avery/GM: You start like filling up, like they have like little baskets that you can kind of fill up and take, you know, and you start filling this thing up. And this person this this kid's eyes just kind of get wider like the more stuff you put in there

Caden/Bruce: Oh Bruce has like one in each hand and one in his tail like he is He is multitasking.

Jenine/Marty: I also, I'm also following behind with a basket.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is also helping with the basket.

Avery/GM: Yeah, y'all are piling stuff into these baskets and one of the adults comes over and is just like, are you sure you, you need that much stuff? I, I mean, that's, that's a lot of stuff.

Caden/Bruce: Yes. Don't worry about it. I've been away from for a while and I uh, I need to stockpile some food in the ship just in case that ever happens again because I can never let Polaris eat what you considered food beforehand. No offense.

Bee/Polaris: As, as they were walking down the street, Polaris pulled one of those out and was gonna eat one and then Bruce started going towards the stand and Polaris slowly put it back in his pocket.

Avery/GM: You finish filling up these baskets, let's see, you've got 5 baskets of fruits and vegetables and breads.

Caden/Bruce: I do, I do want to be clear, I'm not buying them out. I still want them to have, you know, stuff.

Avery/GM: No, totally

Caden/Bruce: I just.

Bee/Polaris: One of everything.

Caden/Bruce: One of everything.

Avery/GM: Yeah, You're doing a good, yeah. You're doing a, you're getting a good amount of food. And the child is ringing up your baskets and is just like, that'll be 300 credits please.

Caden/Bruce: That's it?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris will throw in like a hundred extra credits.

Avery/GM: The… one of the adults speaks up and is just like we can't afford to sell on the main street So we have to you know kind of sell at bargain prices back here and just hope that someone finds their way down here once in a while.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris throws in…It's 300 total?

Avery/GM: Yeah

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna throw in an extra 300

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, Bruce is just gonna be like saying I mean like is there any place in Ambrosia that does? advertising I mean I'm sure if more locals knew that they would probably support you instead of the bigger brand stores.

Avery/GM: Yeah, the bigger brands kind of have a chokehold on the, the local advertising and, uh, you know, they, they get the most premium spots and they get the, you know, kind of the best traffic and stuff. So we just kind of have to make do with what we get. But it's not bad, we have a nice little farm outside the city.

Caden/Bruce: What's the name of, what's the name of this store?

Avery/GM: Red River Farms.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is going to look at them and be like, Do you sell Chef Jamie's beans?

Avery/GM: Oh no, we only, we only sell what we grow and what we make.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah, love these guys.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will smile and like, just, I, I mean, I don't I, I, I know like we have a lot of money, but Bruce is like, what, you're just going to give them a thousand credits and just be like,

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah. So they have 1300 credits cause we're playing this game of 3300.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah. And just be like, and just, and just, and just like look at them and just be like… I'll be back.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Their, their eyes get really big and they're like, are you sure? This is a lot of, of credits. We, we can't really sell… Like we don't have enough to really sell you, you know, to, to make up for that.

Bee/Polaris: It's fine.

Caden/Bruce: Trust me, this is probably, honestly, what I have bought is worth

Avery/GM: one of the other adults comes over from, they were like, kind of like making like a, a small bouquet of like flowers, uh, to kind of display and they come over and, and, and pat this person on the back and they're just like, honey, just. Just take the money. It's fine. They're doing something nice. Just let them do it. And, uh, this other person's like, Yeah, I know, I just, it's hard to take charity and, you know. And they start, like, kind of having, like, their own private conversation as, as, uh, you sort of leave this scene.

Caden/Bruce: I was gonna say, that is our cue to get out of there.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we skedaddle.

Caden/Bruce: But, like, as Bruce is walking back, he's gonna look at both Polaris and Marty and be like… I know it's not our life mission to, you know, take down corporate businesses and bring up those that are local. But, um, I really have a thing for local farms and I would like to try and help them as much as I can.

Jenine/Marty: As you're saying this, you see Marty, I hope her data, her tablet's not working. Is there... Oh wait, for her to search on the webs for open retail space, slash if I know where a potential

Bee/Polaris: Oh, can we buy them a spot?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, if we know a certain chef that we don't like is trying to buy a spot, can we buy it before a certain chef? Or if they do, can we buy them out? Smiley face.

Avery/GM: Y'all don't seem like you would foolishly go out and not be able to communicate with each other. Maybe that's giving you too much credit, I don't know.

Bee/Polaris: No, for sure.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, yeah, we got some smarts!

Avery/GM: Yeah. Y'all are smart. Um, so yeah, so you, you could definitely search up some real estate on Ambrosia. Um, go ahead and roll an intelligence-know check.

Jenine/Marty: I got a seven.

Avery/GM: Okay. I will give you this. You don't find anything like pending for like coming soon Jamie's beans or anything like that. But you do find a, like, you remember the address on that billboard advertising Big Fred's Anime Shop and you do find a adjacent building that is actually a pretty good bargain right now. It's only 100, 000 credits for a 5 year lease.

Bee/Polaris: You said it was 100,000 to lease for five years?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: How much is it to buy it?

Avery/GM: There's no sale price listed, but in the posting that you find, Marty, you do see property for sale based on negotiations.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go. Let’s go!

Jenine/Marty: Because I have a thing that I have not used yet, but I'd love to use.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah! Let's go do some bureaucracy!

Jenine/Marty: Because I have... Well, I have the Authority, uh, Fo… Foci? Foci. Yeah, I have the Authority Foci, which I gain lead as a bonus. Once per day, you can make a request from an NPC who is not openly hostile to you, rolling Charisma or Lead, Skill, Difficulty, uh, at the difficulty of the NPC's morale score. If you succeed, they will comply with the request, provided it is not harmful or extremely uncharacteristic. So, I would like to utilize this skill if I can to bargain either price or owning this building for this group.

Avery/GM: That sounds like a perfect use of that skill, so let's get to that scene. While I think up a voice and a personality for this real estate agent, let's go back to the hotel room. Y'all are plugging away at fixing your stuff.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, Zahn is napping. He's power napping.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, Zahn, you're napping, that's right. Ollie, there is a knock at the door.

Chris/Ollie: Well, yeah, Ollie doesn't really have any much reason to be suspicious right now…

Avery/GM: You can have whatever reasons to be suspicious if you want. It's totally fine. , you did just almost get ambushed by a…

Chris/Ollie:

Well yeah, I’m just thinking whether Ollie Ollie would wake Zan or just go for the door.

Avery/GM: Oh, I got ya

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is a light sleeper, so he probably heard the knocking.

Chris/Ollie: Then, uh, Ollie will look to Zahn, make eye contact with him, and, uh, turn towards the door and move towards it. I mean, he's gonna attempt to like, open it with one of his Robo arms sticking out of his back and like, retract it super quick so he looks like a normal dog. Just open it. Door opens on dog. Hi.

Avery/GM: Sure, just roll like a straight dexterity, uh, check.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is going to push the, uh, manual release button on his, uh, leg holster and have the, his gun pop out.

Avery/GM: Just ready in case?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Are you, are you like pretending to be asleep?

Zach/Zahn: No.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: He's sitting on the edge of the bed.

Chris/Ollie: I got an eight.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you, you do it then. That's fine. I wasn't making it too hard. Yeah. You open the door real quick and it opens and standing in front of you is a blue and black striped tiger furry.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Jenine/Marty: No!

Avery/GM: You recognize them as,

Zach/Zahn: Oh, is it lapis or lazuli?

Avery/GM: Not Lazuli. You recognize them as Lapis from,

Chris/Ollie: Was Lapis also they?

Avery/GM: Yes, and Lapis was the one in the booth with you at the race and they just say oh, I'm sorry I'm looking for Ollie. I'm here on behalf of my cousin Avi

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna glance at the dog And then he's gonna say, Oh, sorry, uh, Ollie's currently undergoing, um, required maintenance.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, um, Uh, my chassis should be in the room. My old one. Just like, busted up, laying against the corner.

Avery/GM: Just slumped, slumped to one side.

Bee/Polaris: Does Ollie say bark? Like the word bark?

Chris/Ollie: Uh, no, Ollie's just keeping silent for now.

Zach/Zahn: Just sitting there panting?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Well, may I come in? I have something I needed to speak with him about, but if he'll be around later, I can leave the message with you, if that's okay.

Zach/Zahn: You can give me the message from the doorway there.

Avery/GM: Oh. What's the matters on? Are you afraid I'm going to bite? And they, they smile a little bit at you.

Zach/Zahn: His hand grips. The, the handle of his handle a little tighter. It's like, well, since you know my name without introduction, yes, actually.

Avery/GM: Well, if you could tell Ollie that Avi was hoping that he would join her at the Winston estate tonight for dinner, we would be… most appreciative of his presence and you… and all of your other friends Polaris and Marty and Even… even Bruce. I hear Bruce is back with you all can all join us too

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's Brow furrows even more than it already has and he asks Why would any of us want to come within spitting distance of your estate, given our obvious history?

Avery/GM: There's only one way to find out, and they turn around and leave your doorway.

Zach/Zahn: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: So while we're still in the hotel room, though, the thing that Ollie's been working on was like a little, um, dummy body that I can plug, uh, Hermes Crystal into. Uh, if that's done, I would like to plug him in and run full diagnostics.

Avery/GM: Yeah, with your big ol rolls earlier, that's easily done. You pop Hermes into this body. And, Hermes says, Oh, thank goodness. I need to warn the others that there is a bounty hunter after the ship. Wait, what is going on? Why am I in a body? Excuse me, who are you? Uh, looking at you, Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will, uh, respond with a big long lick right up whatever constitutes this, uh, junk pile's face. And just say excitedly, Oh, I'm so glad you're okay. I was so worried. Ah. While he's wagging and licking.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, he's gonna say in response to the question, uh, if you run like a simple diagnostic of the dog in front of you, you'd probably pick up that it was, uh, it was, it's Ollie.

Avery/GM: Oh, thank you.

Chris/Ollie: I died.

Jenine/Marty: I died.

Avery/GM: You died?

Chris/Ollie: The other me died. And I'm gonna look over at the chassis, all slumped over and, uh, electrically burnt.

Avery/GM: Oh, I see. You activated the kill switch.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, yes. The bounty hunter never knew what hit him.

Avery/GM: Excellent. I apologize for not being able to alert you all sooner. They put some sort of communication jammer on the ship. I was unable to communicate with anyone. It was so lonely.

Chris/Ollie: The only thing that matters is that you are okay.

Avery/GM: Does this body have a gun?

Chris/Ollie: Not yet.

Zach/Zahn: Not in its hands.

Avery/GM: That is disappointing. Will we be on the ship soon? I do not like being in a body.

Zach/Zahn: It's gonna probably be at least a day or two. Ollie's kill switch, he like, glares at the body and then Ollie,

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will just wag his tail happily at you.

Zach/Zahn: His kill switch burnt out pretty much every bit of electrical wiring in both the ship and a lot of our personal equipment. And all that's getting fixed, uh, at Machamp's expense.

Avery/GM: Oh, that is very helpful. I considered self destructing. And blowing up the ship, but realized that both Bruce and Polaris had ordered me not to self destruct. So I implicitly obeyed their orders. Should I have self destructed instead?

Zach/Zahn: No, because you would have, uh, disappointed both Bruce and Polaris. Especially now that Bruce is back.

Avery/GM: Oh, Bruce has returned.

Zach/Zahn: Indeed. It's a little, little silver lining to our current situation.

Avery/GM: I am excited to see him again and to watch him make cake.

Caden/Bruce: I love Hermes.

Zach/Zahn: him and the others shouldn't be gone too much longer.

Avery/GM: How long was I out for, Ollie?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, how long has it been since they left?

Avery/GM: Probably been like 45 minutes.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, is Zahn's helmet working?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. It would be the, the thing that, with my low rolls, it's the only thing he has working at the moment.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, excellent. Then at some point, like, during this conversation, Polaris has sent a picture of the garlic cheesy bread, just like really hot, like it was warmed up, and it's like melty and delicious, and he sent a picture and he said, uh, for you and Ollie, when we get back.

Zach/Zahn: Currently he doesn't, unless he like, I guess he can speak into it, text to speech it, he's gonna put his helmet on and he's gonna say, Awesome. Looks great. All in lowercase because he's not, he's, you know, currently concerned about the whole Winston estate being right down  the street thing.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we are in their home city.

Zach/Zahn: And he's going to be like, I have big news to inform you of when you guys get back. Best to say in person.

Bee/Polaris: Good news, bad news, question mark?

Zach/Zahn: Puts the, uh, slanting face and a thumbs down.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will turn to the rest of the crew and say, Zahn has bad news when we return.

Caden/Bruce: That's, um, unfortunate.

Bee/Polaris: Indeed.

Jenine/Marty: Did he break something?

Bee/Polaris: No, uh, he said it's best to say in person. And Polaris is going to type in chat, K, be back once we finish buying this property.

Zach/Zahn: You get ellipses. Send ellipses. Send, all lowercase, what. Period. Not even question mark.

Bee/Polaris: A poor family! smiley face. And then the thing where someone has left the chat.

Avery/GM: Hermes does also pipe in to the chat and just says. Do not worry, I have not died.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts in all caps, HERMEEEEEEES! And Polaris will...

Zach/Zahn: Is there a separate chat? You just said you left the chat.

Bee/Polaris: Well, but, did Hermes send that before Polaris left?

Avery/GM: That was before you... Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, okay.

Bee/Polaris: So, Polaris was about to hit, uh, leave chat when Hermes left it, and then, uh, Polaris is gonna type that and also say, HERMES, out loud.

Avery/GM: Very monotone

Bee/Polaris: yeah

Avery/GM: in, in, in voice, but

Chris/Ollie: as exuberant as Polaris gets.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Perfect. Let's get to this real estate office. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You, you track down the address to this place. Um, it's kind of an unassuming building, you know, nothing too extravagant. It's operated by a fox alien person. She is just like, Oh, welcome, I was actually just about to close up for the day. How can I help you? Are you in the market for some real estate? Perhaps, uh, opening a new shop? That's seems to be the bulk of my clientele recently.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Hi, my name is Marty. Really nice to meet you. Um, so we... We're actually interested in purchasing the building, building, building?

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Jenine/Marty: Is that what we're looking at? Um, the building next to Big Fred's, if possible. Not renting it, but like actually just buying the building and negotiating a price?

Avery/GM: Oh, of course. You mean the, uh, yeah, the little shop that's, that's next to that… soon to be built, let me see, and she like checks her notes, she's like, anime store?

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah, tell me a bit about your business. What are you, what are you interested in selling?

Jenine/Marty: We are actually thinking about being investors for, um, a local business here known as... Red River Farms. We were just so enthralled by their entire business, and we think that they should actually have their own, like, storefront and we think that is the best location for them. And we want to help provide for the local economy here.

Caden/Bruce: As Marty is talking, Bruce, like, opens one of the shopping bags and, like, puts out, like, one of the loaves of bread, a thing of fruits, like, maybe, like, an orange, an apple, and, like, a pomegranate, showing the different things that they sold, but also things that, like, this fox could try. I don't know what foxes are. I don't think foxes are actually herbivores, but whatever! Things that this fox could try! It's fine!

Jenine/Marty: It's a snackie! It's a snackie!

Avery/GM: It’s a space fox, its fine.

Zach/Zahn: I think they're omni.

Bee/Polaris: Cartoon, like, smell lines waft over from the bread into their nostrils.

Avery/GM: Totally. Yeah, uh, yeah, this, this fox person, she's sniffing the air, she's like, Oh, that, that bread smells heavenly And, and you say they're a local business? I've, I've never heard of this farm. Do they already sell on the main, on the main strip?

Caden/Bruce: They do not sell on the main strip. They're about two blocks over, so, um, they don't get very much foot traffic there, um, but I can guarantee if you take a bite out of this bread roll, you'll see why we want to endorse them.

Avery/GM: The little, the little claws on, on her fingers kind of waggle and she picks it up. She's like, oh, thank you, um, and tries a bite and then tries another bite. And then within a few seconds, the whole roll is gone and she's like, licking her fingers like, Hmm, that is excellent. Yes. Yes. Um, okay. Sorry. Back to business. so you're wanting to purchase it. You don't want to sign the five year lease. That's usually a good, a good way that investors kind of can gauge the performance of a business.

Jenine/Marty: Well, I believe based off of how well their first impression is investing fully now. Is the best option. Smiley face.

Avery/GM: Okay. Um, well this is a pretty spendy lot. let's see here. She starts like scanning through some documents on like a data pad in front of her.

Jenine/Marty: Mm hmm.

Avery/GM: She's like, hmm, let's see, let's see. 385 Main Street. Okay. Uh huh. And is just like, okay. So this particular property is valued at 500, 000 credits. And I... Would like to turn a profit on it a little bit. So I think if you could meet me at 700, 000 credits, I think that would be doable for me.

Jenine/Marty: Now here's the problem. This is Jenine not knowing how to barter in this situation as I am a child that has never owed real estate.

Avery/GM: Hey, same here.

Bee/Polaris: I too have never owed real estate.

Caden/Bruce: affordable housing. Say what?

Jenine/Marty: Oh, affordable housing in this day and age

Zach/Zahn: in this economy.

Jenine/Marty: In this economy. Yikes. Um, okay, cool. What is the best course of action here? Because I don't. I feel like we can barter her down.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Barter.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, oh yeah. Just come back with a different number.

Avery/GM: I think there is a trade.

Bee/Polaris: What?

Avery/GM: I think there is a trade skill. Um, a, a skill role for trade.

Jenine/Marty: There is?

Caden/Bruce: Mm-hmm. It’s under talk

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, there is.

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. But, Hmm. I can get this to connect, I can get this to a connect situation. . I could certainly try. Okay.

Avery/GM: Yeah, of course.

Bee/Polaris: What if we just

Jenine/Marty: make a deal?

Bee/Polaris: What if we, yeah, what if we make a deal with, uh, the fox lady and the owners of the shop and she gets free bread?

Jenine/Marty: A day, every day.

Chris/Ollie: Forever.

Bee/Polaris: Forever.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: could you psychically...Impress your feelings for the couple on to this fox woman?

Jenine/Marty: Wait, I think I can?

Bee/Polaris: Yes, underhanded tactics finally!

Jenine/Marty: Marty only uses her powers of evil for good!

Chris/Ollie: We gotta live up to that space pirate ship we got.

Bee/Polaris: Yes, earlier Bruce said that it wasn't our mission to dismantle like, corporations and whatnot and bring up a little guy, but actually that's wrong, that's exactly our goal.

Caden/Bruce: It's 100 percent our goal.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, wait, wait, wait. Sophisticated… I can read thoughts. I know I can do something. Is it suppress cognition? Nope. Wait.

Bee/Polaris: Removed capitalist feeling from her body.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Okay. I think I can use suppress cognition. Is that correct? Resist power…

Bee/Polaris: We could also always use, like, buzzwords, like, Well, turning a profit over investing in the community. You know, that sort of thing.

Jenine/Marty: Marty, like, takes a deep breath, gives a smile, and goes, Alright, I understand 700… that sounds like a really good deal. You need to make a profit and everything. But, like, think about the community, and the importance of helping a business and I'm sure that you, as someone that lives in this community, working with a fellow community member, they will also offer some of their services to help you as well. If you would like, maybe bartering a deal of like, dropping back down to maybe 600, maybe 500, and maybe talking with… Did we get the lost names of these people?

Caden/Bruce: No.

Bee/Polaris: No. We've literally left… Yeah, we literally, after we bought most of their stock, we left and we were like, Let's change their lives forever!

Jenine/Marty: If you talk to the Red River Farms, maybe discussing future business plans with them to increase their footprint in this area. Maybe starting the investment now. I don't know the words that I said, but that feels right.

Chris/Ollie: Sure!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean, like starting an investment in the community and like bringing up other local businesses can turn up quite the profit and make the area. Cause real estate is largely based on location and the, you know, profitability of everything else around. So bringing up the value of the area with local, like, community markets and stuff will, yeah.

Jenine/Marty: We also know the owners of Big Fred's. We worked with him a little bit ago. We helped get that business up and running to bring here. So like, there's that pretty cool situation happening. So we're reliable.

Avery/GM: I see. So you, you are just some real movers and shakers in the, uh, in the business world, aren't you?

Jenine/Marty: Well, more along the lines of the business, more along the lines of the business of friendship and community.

Avery/GM: Hmm. That could be profitable. And she starts kind of like scrolling through her datapad some more. Uh, go ahead and make a Charisma lead check as you're kind of trying to influence this decision your way.

Bee/Polaris: Get it, Marty!

Jenine/Marty: Yeet! That's a 10!

Bee/Polaris: Let's go!

Jenine/Marty: And with The authority, I'm rolling against the NPC's morale score.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that definitely beats it. So, she's scanning through her documents a little bit more and she's like, Hmm, you know, I think this appraisal might have even been a little wrong. Cause, really with the, with the size and the, yeah, hmm and she looks up at you and is just like, Alright, how about this? We'll go straight at 500, 000. No profit, no extra money on my part, just the value that is listed for the property, and it's yours.

Jenine/Marty: That sounds like an excellent deal.

Zach/Zahn: I was waiting for the but.

Avery/GM: No, no but.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah

Avery/GM: And she's like, great, we just have some paperwork to fill out. If you could just stick around for a little bit. Or, actually, if you're really If you're investing to give this to the Red River Farms, you, you may want to let them know so they can come down and fill out the paperwork. That might be best.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Let's… yeah, let's, uh, let's get the deed and the paperwork and just the, hightail it over to 'em. We bought a property, Guys! do we get to write down that we technically own the, or are we straight up just giving it to them and paying for it? Um, yeah, I'm asking the rest of the crew. Are we investors or are we like, Uh, giving it to them outright.

Caden/Bruce: I mean...

Jenine/Marty: I feel like if we just are the investors, we'll just be in charge of like... I don't know. They don't have to worry about money part of the things. That's where I'm at. And we're never gonna change it. Like, we're not gonna change the rent. That's fucked up.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, we're not charging them rent.

Jenine/Marty: We're not charging them rent, but like, we can also just give it to them. I don't know. We'll ask them.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like asking them.

Bee/Polaris: Cause I'm torn, cause like, yeah, yeah, okay.  Let's ask them.

Caden/Bruce: We don't want to dictate…

Jenine/Marty: Cause they're already gonna have money. That business of like, that, and they're like, oh my gosh, we have to do the maintenance of things and like

Bee/Polaris: yeah, exactly, that's what I was thinking about.

Caden/Bruce: We don't want to dictate what their farm is like, it's just more of the, here's the stability, so you don't have to worry about living off of nothing, or potentially, you know, having to move, if this is where you've raised your family for like generations.

Bee/Polaris: Exactly. Yeah. Okay.

Jenine/Marty: Sick!

Bee/Polaris: So I guess we get the,

Avery/GM: Totally

Bee/Polaris: we give the money over, we get the paperwork and we, we go back. Yeah?

Jenine/Marty: Well, what time, what time was it now? Because this lady was closing.

Avery/GM: It's like almost four o'clock. So, Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: They probably don't close till like five.

Avery/GM: So yeah.

Caden/Bruce: It's fine.

Avery/GM: I mean, she, she probably closes when she, you know, runs out of, you know,

Bee/Polaris: clientele to…

Avery/GM: you know, if she goes too long without a client.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: So, you know, she'll stay open long enough to fill out the paperwork for you.

Bee/Polaris: We could also put it in the drop box. Okay, so, uh, yeah, I guess we're just like, okay, give us a sec, we gotta go get this sign and run off.

Avery/GM: Sure. Yeah, you come to the, back to the farm booth and they're starting to like pack things up for the day. As it's, you know, it's been kind of a slow day except for your business and... The child is just like, Huh! You're back! Did Is something wrong? Do we need to refund you? Is

Bee/Polaris:  No.

Avery/GM: Was something wrong with the food?

Bee/Polaris: No. No. No.  Polaris kinda like turns to Bruce and Marty.

Caden/Bruce: We have a proposition for you.

Bee/Polaris: you. Is it really a proposition? Cause

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, because they can say no.

Bee/Polaris: Oh true. That is true. Yeah

Caden/Bruce: we realized that you would probably make more business off of not being on this tree and being on Main Street and well, we happen to own an empty building off of Main Street that we would like to Give to you

Avery/GM: and the adults that are here. Just like are you just are you serious that that's a Mighty generous thing. I, I don't know that I could pay you for it.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, I, I, we don't require payment. With

Bee/Polaris: Polaris holds up the bread.

Caden/Bruce: The only thing is that you must promise to never, ever stock any of Chef Jamie's supplies.

Avery/GM: Oh, done. Done deal. I, no, I would never. That, that, no, thank you.

Jenine/Marty: How bitter is, is Marty of Oswald right now?

Bee/Polaris: Do we actually know who Jamie is? Has Bruce ever mentioned Jamie to us?

Caden/Bruce: No.

Avery/GM: No, You've only ever seen Bruce, like, Casually, like, Mess with Jamie related stuff. But like…

Bee/Polaris: Sick.

Avery/GM: I don't think y'all have gotten into it… So

Bee/Polaris: cool, we just pick up on the fact that Jamie hate Or, uh, Bruce hates this Jamie person and we're just automatically like Yeah, fuck Jamie.

Caden/Bruce: Basically.

Bee/Polaris: All my homies hate Jamie.

Chris/Ollie: Bruce is based. Fuck Jamie.

Bee/Polaris: Friendship ended with Jamie.

Chris/Ollie: Bruce is now my best friend.

Avery/GM: Thank you, but I don't even know y'all's names.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris kind of looks over at the other two like, should we tell them our names?

Jenine/Marty: I send a message in chat and I go, do we have a name for the crew? Can we just say that? Would that feel safer? Question mark.

Bee/Polaris: We, we don't…

Jenine/Marty: I’m gonna start doing acronyms. Why do we only have one vowel as the first letter? Wait. Oh, I forgot my letter. I was like, there's, there's five of us. Why do I only have four letters? I really like this because it can be...

Jenine/Marty: Bombs with a P and a Z.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah! Yeah!

Caden/Bruce: Love it.

Jenine/Marty: Wee! Are known as the POMBZ. Smiley face.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I thought you said bombs.

Jenine/Marty: PombZ. Well, it's P. So like, you know, we're just gonna say bombs. But it's with, but it starts with a P. And ends with a Z.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. Okay. Ooh, sounds good.

Jenine/Marty: We're the POMBZ. Ba dum psh. Which works really well for our group, actually.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris looks into the camera.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my god.

Bee/Polaris: And has like a smirk on the visor.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Smirk on the visor and a wink with the sparkle.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. We just, we just enjoy helping people and want to grow economies here. Also, you'll love your neighbors. Big Phred. Pretty awesome. Pretty awesome dude. Big Phred,

Bee/Polaris: does big Phred know our names?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Yes?

Bee/Polaris: Do we have A business card?

Avery/GM: Nope. You just gave Big Fred your email.

Bee/Polaris: Oh.

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

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris just like, takes out like a piece of paper, and like writes down our email, and Gives it to the family and says when big fred moves in show him this and let him know that you guys are friends of ours

Avery/GM: Yeah. This person you've been talking to says, uh, well, thank you POMBZ. We're  the Ashmane family. That’s silver and I'm, I'm Peter and this is Eleanor. wow, that's thank you. Wow and they're kind of starting to like get teary and kind of like not hyperventilate but just you know starting to kind of like they're like when do we when do we move in? oh there's so many questions

Jenine/Marty: do you need help setting up like we're here for like the next couple of days i think we can we have a pretty good i'm not really technically advanced So, but my friends are, who aren't here yet, but, I mean, they are here, but they're in, yes, do you, we could help

Caden/Bruce: We also should probably hand you the... Deed to the building and Bruce will just look at Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris just pulls it out from his jacket. And like, hands over the paperwork to sign and also the deed.

Avery/GM: Yeah, this person is freaking out in a very good way. Yeah, they, they take that from you, uh, Polaris, and they just say, uh, thank, thank you. Wow… Silver, I don't think you have to work at the stand anymore. And this teenager is just like, jumping up and down and like, super excited and they're just starting to like, celebrate kind of, you know, the packing up for the day, forgotten momentarily as they kind of celebrate this new life that they have been given.

Bee/Polaris: Heck yeah. I hope they take the time to celebrate as a family.

Avery/GM: And y'all head back out to the main street or... Stand here awkwardly watching them celebrate or what?

Bee/Polaris: We gotta drop off the paperwork.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, we just, we go. We leave!

Caden/Bruce: Yeah!

Avery/GM: sure. Yeah. You head back to the paperwork… to the, the real estate office, you let them know where to pick up the official ownership paperwork, uh,

Bee/Polaris: and the address

Avery/GM: next week when it'll all be processed and yeah, you give 'em the address and everything. Totally. And yeah, you're dropping off the paperwork with, uh, this fox person who I have not given a name yet, so if anyone wants to name her, feel free

Bee/Polaris: Vulpix… Sorry. . .

Jenine/Marty: That's different from what I was, I had a different thing and I was like, that needs to stay inside brain.

Zach/Zahn: I was going to say, I was going to say nine tails, but it's called German nine, NEIN.

Avery/GM: So y'all have dropped off the paperwork with, with nine tails. Yeah. And y'all are turning back, uh, to maybe head back towards the, uh, Hotel room when Bruce, you see stepping out from a limo across the street from you, a figure that you met when you were masquerading as a caterer, you see Rhea step out from a limo, followed by what looked like several very important government officials, and they are walking into a big fancy government building.

Caden/Bruce: Uh oh.

Avery/GM: And that's where we're going to end it.

(Background music fades out, Outro plays, then fades down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a one up podcast network production. Intro and outro music produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution, non commercial license from Creative Commons. The track used today was Mega City Slums. We'll be back on October 1st with our next episode. See you out there, beyond the furthest stars.

Episode 29 - The Quick, The Dead and... The Dog?

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 29 of Beyond the Furthest Stars

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

Avery/GM: Coil is standing here holding a a gun with all these other robots and turrets around. What's the play here?

Jenine/Marty: Marty says, what's a Hermes? Marty will full up say that.

Zach/Zahn: What's a Hermes?

Jenine/Marty: to try and like change the subject.

Avery/GM: Jenine...

Jenine/Marty: yes.

Avery/GM: To answer your question, uh, the, uh, the cowboy robot says, oh, come on now. Don't play dumb. You know exactly what Hermes is sitting inside that ship or here with one of you all little crystal about the size of your fist.

Jenine/Marty: This is not the ship you are looking for.

Bee/Polaris: Does Marty actually say that?

Music: Yes. Yes, she does.

Zach/Zahn: That only works with organics, which is why I love it.

Avery/GM: A little, a little metal eyebrow kind of lifts up on, on coil's face.

Bee/Polaris: He has eyebrows?

Avery/GM: And yeah, little metal, little sheets of metal, kind of plastered right there. You know, he, but he likes to have a, a, a, a personal, uh, appearance, you know, a humanoid appearance. It helps kind of ease, ease his victims into

Bee/Polaris: false sense of security.

Avery/GM: Yeah. What, what, what comes next.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Now he's a robot from robots.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was about to say.

Jenine/Marty: Good movie.

Bee/Polaris: Great movie

Zach/Zahn: great movie.

Avery/GM: He, he just turns like, he has like a little data pad in one of his other hands and he just turns it to you and it just shows like a radar with two little blips blipping on it.

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

Avery/GM: He's just like, there are two artificial intelligences here that have both been programmed and interfaced with the hegemony. Now I'm gonna bring one of them back. Now it's either you and Coil points to you, Ollie. Either you're the one who has the Hermes crystal, or it's in that ship. Hand it over. I'm not gonna ask again.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna take like a… a half like cocked stance where he is like putting more, leaning more on one foot. Kinda like the, what is it? The um, the Clint Eastwood kind of stance.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Avery/GM: sure.

Zach/Zahn: Where he is got like his right hand resting on his hip just above where he can reach his pistol as soon as he activates the

Avery/GM: Yeah. A little little gun slinger.

Zach/Zahn: compartment,

Avery/GM: Yeah

Zach/Zahn: yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's gonna make his voice activate again. And he's gonna be like rather bold of you to act on the hegemony behalf in the middle of a republic world. All we gotta do is like yell to the military lab right behind us. And you'll probably be swarmed and dead pretty quick. So I, I suggest you probably, uh, G T F O and, uh, run back to your hegemony people and tell them that we don't have your fucking AI.

Avery/GM: Sure. Make a charisma… charisma lead check.

Zach/Zahn: Woo minus two to both

Bee/Polaris:  get ‘em Zahn!

Zach/Zahn: minus two overall!

Jenine/Marty: how does helping work Again?

Avery/GM: Janine, to answer your question, uh, helping you would roll the same check

Jenine/Marty: Uh huh,

Avery/GM: and if you get 10 or above, it adds plus one to the roll.

Zach/Zahn: I'll… I'll help.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I mean if I can as well.

Avery/GM: Sure. What's your…

Chris/Ollie: we could all like do a squad like intimidation stance.

Bee/Polaris: No. 'cause you can only add plus one. I think

Jenine/Marty: you can only

Bee/Polaris: to assist.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. I…

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: we can’t do a squad...

Avery/GM: I mean, you, you can both, you can both try to assist and if one of you doesn't roll a height, you know, if, if only one of you has to roll 10 to add the plus one, but how are you gonna help?

Jenine/Marty: She just kind of… Marty like walks up behind and just goes Yes. And shoots finger guns.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts in group chat. Should I call 911?

Jenine/Marty: Never mind. I rolled a six.

Zach/Zahn: We, we have Machamp on speed dial and while he's not right here with us, he should be right behind us.

Jenine/Marty: You know who we also have on speed dial the pirates.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Do we… Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. But they're far off. I'm assuming they're not in the system.

Bee/Polaris: They would not, uh, near the capital of Olympia.

Jenine/Marty: No, this is true.

Avery/GM: Okay. What did, what did you roll Marty?

Jenine/Marty: Six.

Avery/GM: Oh, okay. Well, uh, Ollie, how are you gonna help?

Chris/Ollie: Wait. That's right. We are on Olympia, right?

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: The Capitol?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: So Ollie's going to, uh, he's got like his rifle strapped, you know, across his back. He's going to like, not like start brandishing it, but he's gonna obviously like start writing it to, to be pulled out and aimed step behind Zahn and say, you seem to lack the ability to discern your target. Are you sure you, are you with that knowledge… Are you sure you want to fight on a, on the Republic home world as a hegemony agent?

Avery/GM: Okay, roll, uh, charisma lead.

Zach/Zahn: So I, I rolled two threes, but minus two, that's a four, but I'm gonna use my expert thing and try and get a little higher on that.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: Okay. That turned out a little bit better. A seven.

Avery/GM: Sure. And what'd you roll, Chris? Sorry.

Chris/Ollie: Chris, my lead. So I'm 11.

Avery/GM: 11. Okay. So that brings Zahn up to an eight. Still not quite good enough. Coil puts the data pad in its little pocket area, like a little compartment that pops out on its leg. Slides it in there. Look. Y'all seem like decent people. This is a lot bigger than you all can really comprehend. I have no reason to fear the republic here working for the hegemony or not. So we're all just gonna continue with me getting Hermes and y'all could go about your business or I'm gonna blow you to the sky.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, but then you wouldn't get Hermes.

Avery/GM: Oh, I'll, I'll be able to pick it out of the wreckage. It's, it's not a problem

Bee/Polaris: if you blow up the ship, you blow up Hermes. If Hermes is in the ship, of course.

Avery/GM: and then the backup will just reload back at headquarters and I'll have completed my mission anyway. But I'm letting you in on a fantastic deal. I'm letting you keep your ship, you keep your robot friend. I just walk away with a crystal and nothing bad happens to you all. Just one little crystal. Is that really worth all, all of your lives?

Zach/Zahn:

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts in group chat. Couldn't Hermes just fly away with the ship and then pick us up later?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah?

Zach/Zahn: I was actually going to put into the group chat for Bruce to lead everyone to his ship. We communicate Hermes to leave and then I'll cover us to and in shooting. 'cause there's no, there's no robots behind us directly to Bruce's ship.

Chris/Ollie: Well, I, I've got a plan, but it's very dangerous for Hermes So yeah, if we can get 'em outta here.

Bee/Polaris: real quick… Uh. Is, is it possible to tell what kind of weapons the robots all have? Like is it, is it like actual bullets or is it laser? Laser weapons?

Avery/GM: Oh, they are a combination.

Bee/Polaris: Dangit.

Avery/GM: Uh, some of them have like laser blades. Some of them have like, obviously like little like Uzzis.

Jenine/Marty: Oh no.

Avery/GM: And some of them have laser rifles.

Zach/Zahn: Oh good.

Chris/Ollie: So is he the only sentient one there? Are they all just robots and he's the only AI.  

Avery/GM: Yeah, they're all, these are all like standard, like basically what You were Ollie before your crystal activated.

Jenine/Marty: Ah, what's, what's the idea, Bruce?

Caden/Bruce: Well, I think Bruce is gonna thumbs up to Z's message and just be like, I will go and retrieve Hermes. Just give me a second.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Caden/Bruce: and Bruce is gonna go to his ship. Because I feel like he's seen Ollie, like when Ollie like chipped off the crystal, like he's seen what an emerald crystal sort of looks like maybe, perhaps like is possible.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah,

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Chris/Ollie: I'm pretty sure you've seen Ollie's Crystal and Hermes

Caden/Bruce: he’s gonna make Like out of jello, something that resembles the crystal.

Chris/Ollie: A giant sugar crystal

Caden/Bruce: except he's gonna make it with alcohol. 'cause the robot's smoking.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my God.

Caden/Bruce: So Bruce’s idea is he's going to blow up this robot.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my God.

Avery/GM: I don't know that you'll have time to get to your ship and do all that. Well he like, 'cause you're all kind of clustered here.

Bee/Polaris: Well, did, did Bruce say that he's gonna go get Hermes and he went to the, the, the other ship to be able to do that?

Chris/Ollie: Well The robot's got a scanner that points exactly where Hermes is.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. well.

Chris/Ollie: So he knows where our ship is and where that it's gonna be the wrong ship he's going to.

Bee/Polaris: isn't it only pointing to, um, AI not necessarily Hermes?

Avery/GM: He, it's, it's, yeah. The scanner he showed you is showing two different ais and he indicated that they were AIs that had connected with hegemony systems at some point.

Bee/Polaris: Also. Is there any, is there like a compartment or something that Polaris can sneakily get his laser blades from Ollie?

Chris/Ollie: Okay, so Ollie's got a bit of a plan, if you will allow this. So from my final, uh, peripheral routine, pre predicted preparation, pretty much commit processing to make a statement about my current situation that I could have conceivably made true with full advanced knowledge of the circumstances. So thus, like example at the party's last in a desert, you could declare that you parked a grab car over the next dune several months ago. I want to use this to say that I have. Somewhat thought of this situation because, you know, n b territory in the first place and have built an EMP bomb inside of my own chassis.

Avery/GM: You brilliant time-traveling bastard.

Jenine/Marty: I also feel like that's something we would do anyways at this point.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I was, I was waffling there for a few minutes on whether it was a normal bomb and I wanted to go close to him and just blow 'em up, or it was an EMP bomb, but I didn't know whether the, the conventional bomb would stop all the other robots too, so.

Zach/Zahn: it would also potentially stop us.

Bee/Polaris: That is

Avery/GM: oh

Chris/Ollie: yes

Avery/GM: Zahn's Armor

Chris/Ollie: it is gonna stop your tech weapons, it's gonna stop your laser blades, it's gonna stop the ship. I don't know what it'll do to my core, so that's why I'm like, eh, Hermes should probably dip the hell outta here.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean, you have a back, you have a backup boy in the, in the dog bot, right?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, but the robot guy

Avery/GM: Yeah. But the backup shard is…

Chris/Ollie: But yeah, Hermes backup is at this guy's base already, so that would only help him.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, it's one of those, Hermes has full access to the ship. Yeah. So he can take off and leave completely us high and dry at the moment and we can retreat to the other ship or, uh, call a champ and have a full on firefight if we wanted.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, if you, if you can deactivate, if you can do the EMP and get coil in there, we could just take his AI crystal so that he can't like, you know, get up from the EMP nap and then start blasting or track us

Chris/Ollie: Well, if his, yeah. Hmm. If his double is here, I don't know if it's gonna fry me or not, but, uh, I'm willing to try it out.

Avery/GM: Ollie, here's what I'm giving you. You can set off this pulse. It will render your current chassis completely inactive. And it will need to be powered back up with like a power cell before it can be used again. It will blast everything within 60 feet, shutting everything down within 60 feet.

Chris/Ollie: So including our ship?

Bee/Polaris: yeah, we would have to get on the ship and get outta there.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Avery/GM: There is also a chance that it will short circuit your current crystal in your chassis.

Jenine/Marty: Mm mm

Chris/Ollie: No problem

Bee/Polaris: gots a backup.

Chris/Ollie: And are, are we in agreement about having Hermes just take off and start flying away? We can always steal someone else's ship or he can come back.

Bee/Polaris: Well, if he, well, if the pulse goes off and it's 60 feet, Hermes could take off, but the ship that Bruce came on would be inactive.

Caden/Bruce: That's fine. Bruce has no emotional connection.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. The EMP goes off and then, uh, Hermes comes back for

Bee/Polaris: us. Yeah. Okay. Uh, we're gonna have to probably NASCAR pit crew that, uh, AI crystal in coil so that he would, if he does wake up, he can't like talk to the other bots that are following his orders essentially now.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Get rid of one more person that's not hunting us down. I'm down for that.

Zach/Zahn: You know what would also be incredibly upsetting is if coil has eMP shielding.

Jenine/Marty: stop giving ideas. Can't give ideas. Wait, so I have a clarifying question for the crystal. Does that fully put… does… when you said it, like messes up the crystal, is it the crystal in this current chassis or just like the concept of crystals, like it might mess up connecting

Avery/GM: just the one in Ollie.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. I just wanna make sure it's not like some, you know, it messes up the, the moving over to the next one. Cool. Thank you.

Avery/GM: No, essentially this is what I'm, what I'm giving you Chris, is this is like a fail safe program that is embedded in all AI crystals where you can. Basically set this off. You know, it eliminates this crystal as a potential host for your consciousness.

Chris/Ollie: It's a kill switch. Okay.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Kill switch. That's the word I was looking for. Thank you. Yeah. But it also eliminates any threats around you, so…

Chris/Ollie: so he could also be expecting this. Okay. Well, uh, how about Hermes? Are we telling him to leave?

Zach/Zahn: I think ya

Avery/GM: yeah you haven't said anything to Hermes.

Chris/Ollie: because Yeah. I mean, if we shut him down to,

Zach/Zahn: I'm in agreeance of, of Hermes just taking off.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. We could fend for ourselves. We got this

Chris/Ollie: pretty much all of that, all of that was outta character. We're still standing here stuck in time. Ollie is going to, 'cause I don't want it to be too suspicious with me pulling the laser blades and the like gun off my shoulder.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. If you go with coil and they start flying away and you detonate, it'd be away from all of us.

Chris/Ollie: Hmm. I don't expect him to actually keep up his end of the bargain and not kill you guys.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true.

Chris/Ollie: But I, okay, so Ollie will turn to the group and say out loud, well, I guess we are caught. And I'll turn and remove my, uh, rifle, the two laser blades and any other, um, weapons that are in my compartment. Hand them off to, um, I guess Zahn right next to me and say, uh, hold onto these for me please. And I will as non-menacingly as possible approach coil.

Avery/GM: Coil says, ah, if I'm the seeing reason, are ya? Well, that's good. Now you're gonna get on that ship. Just go quietly and as soon as you're on there, my friends here will shut down and we'll just, we'll, we'll go off, we'll go back home. We'll call it a day.

Chris/Ollie: Nah, I think your friends should shut down now. At the same time, I was also texting in chat Hermes's, uh, code red flyaway.

Avery/GM: You get no response.

Bee/Polaris: No, Hermes!

Chris/Ollie: Well, uh, everything's still gonna go as planned and Ollie will pull the trigger and explode once again.

Bee/Polaris: Okay? Okay. I love that. None of us know what's happening because Ollie didn't tell us.

Avery/GM: Right.

Bee/Polaris: He just handed on all of our weapons and walked over.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, no, Ollie definitely didn't say anything except he did put in the chat, not sure if this will work if I don't come back. I love you all.

Jenine/Marty: What?

Bee/Polaris: No.

Chris/Ollie: he hits send on that right as he, uh, pulsed instead of exploded. But it was a very violent pulse.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Ollie sends that message and coil. Lifts its eyebrow again, and that's the last thing that you and Zahn and Polaris see as your helmet's. Short circuit, total darkness in front of you, Bruce and Marty, you see the robots and everything. Like they start to turn their guns towards you and then they all kind of just slump forward and you see coil standing there like just still at first and then you hear like the apple power sound come from this chassis.

Jenine/Marty: We should stop it, right? Like we should go and unplug him now

Avery/GM: and Ollie, you immediately wake up inside of a dog body, a dog, robot body

Zach/Zahn: on the ship

Avery/GM: on onboard the TSKAM. But it won't move because it is not powered on.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, RIP

Bee/Polaris: wait coil. But Coil is powered on. Is powering on?

Avery/GM: Coil is powering back up.

Jenine/Marty: We should go get him right? We should stop that.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is going to tackle him.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris grabs his laser blades when Zahn drops them.

Jenine/Marty: Can you, can those operate?

Avery/GM: They don't operate.

Zach/Zahn: They don't work.

Bee/Polaris: That's fine. It's a blunt object.

Zach/Zahn: So I should say before he does that.

Bee/Polaris: Oh wait, actually we're both blind.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna drop the laser blades and the, and the gun. He's got a manual button on the side of his helmet where it connects into his suit so he can manually pop it off.

Avery/GM: Smart.

Zach/Zahn: And he's gonna toss it to the side and then he's going to like, as fast as he can. So I'm assuming like half movement speed Tackle the robot man.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, also the gun, uh, I gave you is not a laser gun. It's a assault rifle like traditional guns.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, nice. That I didn't know, but it's on the ground right here now

Avery/GM: Zahn, if you're gonna tackle while you're wearing all of this armor of yours that is, that is powered by electronics, I'm gonna need a strength exert check. Marty, Bruce, you see Ollie's old chassis go limp and all these other robots go limp. Do do y'all do anything?

Caden/Bruce: I think hearing the powering up sound and not knowing what son's gonna do, Bruce is also gonna run and tackle the chassis.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Caden/Bruce: Because Bruce isn't wearing anything electronic either.

Avery/GM: This is true.

Jenine/Marty: I think I'm gonna try and guide Rho back to our ship just in case it goes south. So I'm gonna help guide her there.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: I rolled in eight for my, uh, strength exert.

Avery/GM: Okay. Uh, yeah. You move at half speed, so you're. You, you're able to tackle him in time, but it's hard. Like, it, it puts some strain on your muscles might have pulled a hammy.

Zach/Zahn: His slunch gets a little more slunchy or his slouch gets more slouchy. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will take off his helmet so he can see and immediately probably have a sensory overload from, 'cause his, his helmet like blocked out sound and like light and stuff. So he, he's just gonna spend his first action picking up his laser blades, like his whole turn be because sensory overload.

Zach/Zahn: So with Zahn on top of coil, so he is got his backpack on his back.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Within easy like reach back section, there's like a whole side panel of his backpack where all of his tools are and he is gonna like

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: Just for the funness of what just came to my mind, uh, there's spring loaded, so he is going to sprint, like push in and grab a wrench of some kind to start prying, open his chassis.

Avery/GM: Jesus.

Zach/Zahn: So we can get the, the crystal out of him before he powers up and starts beating the shit out of us.

Avery/GM: It'll be fine.

Bee/Polaris: Didn't Bruce tackle him?

Avery/GM: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, Bruce is next to you. Okay, go ahead. Hmm. You're trying to do it quickly. So dexterity fix, I think is what we'll call it. I'll give you a

Zach/Zahn: fuck. Yeah.

Avery/GM: I'll give you a good

Zach/Zahn: plus four baby. What a really shitty time to roll a one on one of these die so nine.

Avery/GM: yeah. You start prying stuff off, but this is a really thick chassis. You start to see…

Zach/Zahn: Bruce just needs to hold his arms down.

Avery/GM: You start to see the lights of his eyes starting to illuminate slowly. Uh, Bruce, what are you doing here?

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, I think that Bruce, like watching what Zah is doing has like, 'cause Bruce is pretty big and he doesn't wanna be in the way, but like he is stepping on like the cowboy robot's, like shoulders to hold him down and then with his tail, like grabbing the gun and just basically chucking it away from this robot.

Zach/Zahn: Perfect.

Jenine/Marty: Nice.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's, there's no check for that yet, so you're good. Um. Okay, Polaris, your sensory overload is, is going on. You grab your, your laser Pi… your laser blades that are not gonna turn on.

Bee/Polaris: So realizing that his laser blades probably aren't going to turn on, um, he's gonna instead grab the assault rifle… it's an assault rifle, right?

Chris/Ollie: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: Um, what are the stats for that?

Chris/Ollie: A combat rifle. 1d12 uh, and magazine 30 and it can burst fire.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Polaris is gonna pick it up, walk over to the others, and he's just gonna shoot coil in the face

Avery/GM: right in between Bruce's legs? because Bruce is standing on his shoulders.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. He's standing on his shoulders? okay. Then Polaris is gonna be like Bruce, uh, take a step back please.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will do that.

Avery/GM: Okay

Bee/Polaris: And then he's gonna shoot Coil in the face because a robot, a robot can work but not well without a face.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Wait, is the crystal in the head?

Bee/Polaris: No, it's in the body. It's not part,

Zach/Zahn: not usually

Caden/Bruce: it's in the body.

Zach/Zahn: Not from our experience with AI. This one might be different, but we'll find out.

Avery/GM: Okay, go ahead and roll to attack. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Nat 20!

Jenine/Marty: Let's go.

Avery/GM: Oh, shit.

Jenine/Marty: Let's go.

Zach/Zahn: You just unload the entire magazine into his face.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Zach/Zahn: it's nothing but a cheese, like it's Swiss cheese.

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll. I… I'm gonna, I'm gonna give it to you. Go ahead and roll Double dice.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. So two D 12?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Okay. Um, 17. Damage.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Okay. Uh, that's not good for coil. You still got quite a bit of HP left, but Yeah, his face is broken.

Bee/Polaris: That is my goal. Does Machamp hear that?

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna say Machamp should be doing something by now.

Avery/GM: Well actually, I need to look back at the map real quick because, let's see 60 feet…

Zach/Zahn: It’s literally, this whole map is 60 feet.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So, so, It didn't hit anything in the, uh, in the institute. So the institute is safe.

Bee/Polaris: Good.

Avery/GM: But yeah, there's definitely, definitely the sounds of gunfire echoing through the parking lot. Um, do start to draw the attention of people inside the lobby. Um, and you do hear an alarm sounding from inside the building.

Bee/Polaris: That's perfectly fine. We need people to get here to deal with this motherfucker.

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna say, we were just attacked by a hegemony agent on the, uh, Republic Home world.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. We can literally just like rip out this dude's crystal and give it to Machamp and be like, yeah, here you go.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Not only that, we are under military escort at the moment as well. That is true. So this is a huge, this is, this is huge.

Avery/GM: Let's go back to Marty and Rho. Uh, you're trying to get into the ship.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: Yeah. The doors will not open currently, but Marty, after kind of fumbling around a little bit, you do see a little manual switch that you can pull on, um, that you pull down and it opens the, uh, the loading bay and it lowers down kind of with a big thud since there's nothing to like really stop it from, you know, falling and yeah, you are inside the ship and coming up the ramp, you do see that little dog robot that you've seen Ollie kind of mess with… yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Could I… is there a way that I could activate it?

Avery/GM: I don't think so, unless… Yeah cause even the power cells would be drained. Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Sick, sick, sick… Nice.

Avery/GM: But you are, you are at least in the cargo bay of the ship.

Zach/Zahn: Would non-active power cells like our spares be fucked too?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Wouldn't everything be fucked? Like anything electronic Be fucked?

Jenine/Marty: That's totally fine. I mean, like we did. We did.

Chris/Ollie: That's why I was saying, yeah. Zahn's got a lot of fixing to do.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Most batteries are able to survive an e m P of any magnitude without suffering damage. Um, so no, your backup, uh, power cells would be fine.

Jenine/Marty: Can I get this little, little guy working?

Zach/Zahn:

Avery/GM: Yeah. I mean, you, you, you know, at least a little bit about robots and stuff, you know, that they just… they can run on power cells.

Jenine/Marty: I feel like I had like one lesson in AI because they're like, you're mostly gonna go with the squishies, but you get like, One or two intro level classes.

Zach/Zahn:

Avery/GM: Right? Just like art majors have to take a science class. Same thing.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sick. cool.

Avery/GM: Totally. Yeah. You, and, and you do see there's like a little tiny rack of like type A power cells sitting next to this, uh, companion bot ready to go. So go ahead and roll a intelligence fix.

Jenine/Marty: Yay! Oh, that's a three. I have a minus one to fix!

Avery/GM: you go to grab one of these power cells and they're, they're sort of round and, you know, kind of a little bit clunky. Um, you go to grab one and the whole rack kind of falls over and they start kind of rolling around the cargo bay a little bit. And so there's a little comical moment of you and Rho both kind of chasing these, uh, power cells around the cargo bay Trying to grab one.

Jenine/Marty: Oops. I mean, Sorry, I mean, oh, narts. Just, oh, I got this one. Wait, I got it. I got it. I, I got it.

Avery/GM: But eventually you do get it and you slap it into the, uh, the little, uh, power bank here on the robot. And Ollie, you have consciousness inside of a robot body.

Bee/Polaris: What kind of dog is it?

Chris/Ollie: Um, yeah, we've never, uh, determined that yet.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: But, uh, first this is, it's a synthetic body, right? In terms of my, uh, shell?

Avery/GM: yes, it is a companion bot that has a synthetic dog-like body.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay. Well, I mean in terms of like the, uh, the mechanical shells, because that determines my, my base stats and my affinities.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. So, I gotta change those in a sec… as a dog, it says that, uh, the synths are, are visually indistinguishable from, uh, from living beings… 'cause I kind of wanted it to be like the cat from the Buzz Lightyear Show with like the, uh, the black, uh, like, uh, rubber joints. But, uh,

Avery/GM: yeah, however you wanna flavor it, man, it's fine.

Chris/Ollie: No, I mean, I think it's better if, if I just look like a normal dog, but it's gonna be a, let's say, yellow lab pup, but very large. Like a full grown large dog size, but he, he's still like a puppy,

Avery/GM: but looks like a puppy. Yeah. I love it.

Chris/Ollie: And, uh, yeah, all the other, all the mechanical stuff is gonna be hidden, but whenever Ollie's gonna work on like a, fixing anything or interfacing with any, uh, technology, like bits and pieces of them are gonna open up and like, horrible, like the thing, ways like the back will open up and like robotic arms are going to come out and stuff, so.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, good.

Avery/GM: I can hack into this.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery/GM: General Grievous.

Chris/Ollie: or maybe the, the face opens up and they're like horrific. Like, oh, look at this doggie

Bee/Polaris: my son. Oh no, my son, where's my son?

Avery/GM: He's on the ship.

Bee/Polaris: He's no.

Chris/Ollie: Oh no

Bee/Polaris: no, my son!

Jenine/Marty: Can I remember the sun and can I go save the son please?

Bee/Polaris: My beautiful, beautiful can-son!

Jenine/Marty: can I save the son?

Avery/GM: Yes, you can start searching for where Polaris would keep

Bee/Polaris: Dief.

Avery/GM: Dief, I think is, yeah, Dief.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So Ollie, Marty gets you powered up and you just see Marty

Chris/Ollie: do I get to move as well or is my action taken up by

Avery/GM: Oh, yeah, you could. Yeah. Yeah, go for it. Go, go ahead. What's your turn?

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will get up. Look at Marty and you know, tail wagging, happy face, like super happy and will really quickly say, oh, thanks for the help and I gotta get back. Thank you. Bye. And, uh, run out the door.

Jenine/Marty: Did I, was that in common? Sorry. Not common. In words I understood. Or was that in barks

Chris/Ollie: in, in common or whatever language we speak.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: He has the collar that Doug had from Up!

Jenine/Marty: Yes. Yes. I'm so excited.

Chris/Ollie: Yes. Yeah. So Ollie's going to, uh, attempt to run as far as he can to get back to coil.

Avery/GM: yeah. That shouldn't be a problem.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, dogs are faster than humans.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. It's, he's only 25 feet away. You easily close that distance. You're there next to Bruce, and you just see Zahn ripping at this thing's chest. And, and Bruce has moved back to standing on his shoulders, I assume.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, yeah.

Avery/GM: after Polaris has shot this thing in the face.

Zach/Zahn: so I rolled a two and a one, and I've got a plus four, so that's seven total.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. You're still… there's a particular piece that is like, that you're actually, you're probably pretty sure it's where the AI crystal is housed and it's just not moving.

Zach/Zahn: Okay. I've busted out a crowbar now, and I am fucking beating the shit out of, out of this thing. There's, there's no finesse to it. It's all just dented. And, and messed up

Avery/GM: strength stab.

Zach/Zahn: So… Six.

Avery/GM: you are stabbing at this thing and just not making any progress at all. Like it is impervious to your, to your attacks.

Zach/Zahn: As long as Zahn is swinging. He is, uh, rattling off vast chains of profanities.

Avery/GM: Of course and as you're stabbing away, you do see those eyes are now fully lit back up.

Chris/Ollie: as he's activating, can I, uh, bite his gun arm and attempt to rip it off.

Bee/Polaris: didn't Bruce throw away his gun?

Avery/GM: Yep. The gun is gone. But still good idea.

Chris/Ollie: I wouldn't expect a gun slinger to have only one gun.

Bee/Polaris: oh, you got me there.

Chris/Ollie: He's a hard boiled son of a bitch!

Bee/Polaris: He is a cowboy.

Chris/Ollie: Um, yeah, also, uh, use one of my processing points to up my strength to 14.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: And what kind of role do I need to give you?

Avery/GM: I was gonna say strength exert

Chris/Ollie: Okay… nine

Avery/GM: uh, it starts tearing away just, but not quite all the way, not with any great amount of force. It's kind of a slow tear.

Caden/Bruce: Could I help, could Bruce like dig in his claws to like the shoulder to like help?

Avery/GM: Yeah, go for it. Go ahead and roll. Strength exert if you wanna help.

Caden/Bruce: That's a very good roll. That is a 12

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Ollie Bruce's tail wraps around and, and gives you that little bit of extra strength you need. And the arm just comes clean off of coils. Uh, left, left side. Anything else you're doing on your turn, Bruce?

Caden/Bruce: I mean… Do I have the opportunity to try and rip off the other arm?

Avery/GM: Yeah… 'cause that was a help action. Yeah. go ahead and roll. Another strength exert then.

Caden/Bruce: this one's not as good. This one's a five. That one’s rough.

Avery/GM: oh, yeah. The reason it's harder is that now coil is more awake and rebooted and is kind of fighting and pulling back. So I'm actually gonna roll a strength exert for, for him, and he rolled a nine. Yeah. there's some major resistance going on here.

Zach/Zahn: Where the fuck is Machamp? We need his four arms.

Bee/Polaris: Can I… wait, whose turn is it now?

Avery/GM: It's, it's about to be your turn right now.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sick. Okay. Uh, is, well, is Bruce Dun doing what Bruce do?

Caden/Bruce: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Then Polaris is going to assist us on, he's gonna take the crowbar out of his hand and he's going to just jam it in and just like kick it so that like, with most of his weight, he's gonna kick it. So it just like, Cracks it open.

Avery/GM: Sure. Uh, strength exert or a strength punch.

Zach/Zahn: Strength punch. You say?

Avery/GM: I mean, you're using your limbs to kick this thing, so you know.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Um, okay. That high rolled really well. Strength, uh, punch. That's gonna be a 14. I rolled two sixes.

Avery/GM: Holy shit. Yeah, you kick this thing. And so like, uh, Bruce, this arm was actually like gonna like try and grab your leg to like, hold onto it and you feel its grip kind of starting to tighten around you. and then you feel it slacking as you see Polaris jam. This crowbar into this thing's chest and this metal container probably containing its AI crystal just flies out and lands a few feet away from you in the parking lot. Just gave it the right amount of leverage and just boop.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Amazing.

Bee/Polaris: Yep. Uh, Are any of the other robots around, uh, like powering up or anything?

Avery/GM: No, they're all, they're all damaged.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah. Okay. Then…

Avery/GM: Coil had some, some assistance.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Okay. Then Polaris is gonna toss aside the rifle and then go pick up the box.

Zach/Zahn: We are absolutely, by the way, taking all these robots to use for scrap.

Chris/Ollie: Wait, what happened to Dief?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, what happened to my son? What happened to Dief?

Avery/GM: Yeah. That's gonna be on Marty's next turn. I was gonna…

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay

Avery/GM: Get to that.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Yeah, that's the end of my turn.

Avery/GM: yeah, you do start to see people, like some, some of those same security guards you saw from the operating room start to pour out of the institute. Uh, and kind of like making a little bit of noise behind them is Oswald.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, good.

Avery/GM: followed closely by Machamp.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna like gesture for them to get over here or Well, he's gonna, he's gonna say, um, uh, threat neutralized

Avery/GM: yeah. One of these, these security guards is like, who… what's all the commotion going on out here? What's all, what's all the robots and the guns?

Bee/Polaris: We had some company and they were not savory company.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn’s gonna like outta breath. He's like slowly getting up. He is like, this fucker is a Hegemony bounty hunter. And you morons just let him freaking stroll into your parking lot and he is gonna put his hands on his hips and clomp over to where his helmet has been discarded.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Machamp starts kind of pushing his way, uh, towards the front. He's just like, none of this, you hear folks, nothing to see here. Uh, I'll, I'll take care of it. And he, he turns to you and he's like, what the hell are you guys doing in here? Out here?

Bee/Polaris: Like Zahn said, a Hegemony bounty hunter came and tried to take Hermes and he just kinda like holds up the housing for the AI crystal and says we neutralized him.

Avery/GM: Oh, well, could you, could you even more quiet about it next time you really spooked to some of the patients in there and they're kind of having a hard time, you know, getting 'em calmed down and stuff. You want me to take that? I can, I can take that dispose of it?

Bee/Polaris: Not yet.

Zach/Zahn: we should. We, we should hang on to that.

Bee/Polaris: We're gonna hang on to it for a bit,

Zach/Zahn: and interrogate 'em ourselves. I don't know.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah. I'll be sure next time. Our lives are threatened to do so quietly.

Avery/GM: Okay. Well, um, um, I'll, I'll, I'll clean this mess up for you. Yeah. Uh, just can your, can your ship run?

Zach/Zahn: No.

Avery/GM: Oh, that's a problem.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Um, I believe Ollie let out a let off an EMP pulse and has destroyed everything within a… and he just kinda like takes a gander around all of it.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Well that's a very effective way to get rid of robots. I will say that. Yeah. Well, how about I'll, I'll, I'll make some calls and maybe we can get y'all set up with like a little temporary residency while, while your ship gets, uh, repaired.

Bee/Polaris: I don't know how safe that is, but I will have to get to a communication station of some sort soon.

Avery/GM: And you just hear Oswald in the back just like I demand to know what's going on over here.

Zach/Zahn: As Zahn slowly stooping over to pick up his helmet. You just hear, fuck off nerd. I don't have time for your bullshit. And then he like, is clumping his way back to the ship.  

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like looks over the shoulder of Machamp and says this is a classic Nunya. situation.

Jenine/Marty: This poor, poor kid. This poor kid. Y'all.

Avery/GM: I know, right?

Zach/Zahn: We were all so mean to him last time. I just wanted to continue the trend, especially Zahn is now in a very, very poor mood.

Jenine/Marty: You're valid.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is also not in a good mood because he's dealing with sensory overload, so he's very upset.

Avery/GM: Machamp takes a few steps away from you and is clearly like talking on his, uh, communicator, like to someone at the nearby base, and he's just standing there chatting for a few moments and then turns back to you and says I've got some transports coming to, uh, get rid of all this junk out here.

And you know, also to take y'all into, uh, the city of Ambrosia, we've got a nice little, uh, hotel room set up for y'all. If, if you need anything, we'll get your ship towed to the base and I'll make sure that my best mechanics get working on it. But I think this time you'll owe me and he winks

Bee/Polaris: Well, now that we have a bruised back, I'm sure we can arrange some sort of cake or pie.

Avery/GM: He rubs his hands together. He is like, yeah, we're, we're, we're speaking the same language here.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn’s like getting closer. He is like, thanks, Major Tom. I would definitely, um, like to claim a founder's fee of, uh, these robots though. They go on the ship, you don't get them.

Chris/Ollie: yeah. Ollie will trance up as a dog and just look at him with the arm still in his mouth just holding onto it happily wagging and he’ll just start with: I died, but we caused this mess. Let us clean it up.

Avery/GM: Yeah, I mean, I, I guess you could do that. Um, there's still kind of a lot of cleanup and stuff to, to take care of, but, um, Yeah, I, and he kind of looks over at these robots and he's like, ah, they're not, they're not super valuable. Yeah. I guess you can take them if you really want 'em.

Zach/Zahn: The scrap will be good for making use of Yeah. If you can have your men, like, get the ship functional, I can, uh, use these robots to upgrade it and shit from there, so.

Avery/GM: Major Tom's just like, yeah. So the transports will be here in like 10 minutes. Just if you need anything off your ship, I recommend you getting it now, 'cause

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: It's gonna be, you know, getting repaired for a while, so Polaris goes together. I'll leave, I'll leave you to it though.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: And he starts kind of shepherding people back into the institute here and…

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is gonna go onto the ship and collect, like his spare stuff to basically fix his suit and Polaris's helmet.

Bee/Polaris: Thank you. Polaris is visibly annoyed and like, like squinting his eyes and stuff

Zach/Zahn: because he is not used to direct sunlight.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. He… his helmet essentially, like, he can use it to like lower volume and like filter light and stuff like that for like to avoid sensory overload. And now that he doesn't have it, he's just bombarded with like a bunch of senses.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Could Marty find like, A pair of goggles that like are tinted to give to Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Do we have aviators?

Zach/Zahn: I don't know about aviators, but there would definitely be some like welding goggles somewhere. You can pull like a Riddick where he is got the super thick glasses because he's got special eyes.

Caden/Bruce: I was gonna say Bruce will take off like his little cap that he put on to pretend to be an IT person and like take it off with his tail and put it on Polaris's head to like somewhat help like get the light out of

Zach/Zahn: just this ball cap.

Caden/Bruce: Just this little ball ball cap, yeah.

Avery/GM: That little visor helps a little.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Marty, I was actually gonna get to you because you were also looking for, uh, the robot son.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. The son.

Avery/GM: You come into the crew quarters where everyone kind of just sleeps and stuff in here, and you actually see Dief is like standing there completely operational and there's like a little like current of like electricity kind of encasing it.

Bee/Polaris: What

Jenine/Marty: do I know what that is?

Zach/Zahn: He's got a little electric bubble shield.

Jenine/Marty: Do I know what that is? Do I know it?

Avery/GM: you do not. But Rho comes in behind you and is like, oh, oh good. It activated its defenses. Excellent. It's all good.

Jenine/Marty: defenses?

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. So EMP blasts are a big problem back home and so a lot of our robots are actually built with like an internal detector that detects an EMP blast milliseconds before it goes off and they initiate these little defenses. It's really handy.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God. I'm gonna cry.

Jenine/Marty: I lift the little guy up into my hands and I start walking toward The friends that I hope are finishing up, I don't know at this point, but I'm bringing them over and then also grabbing the goggles on the way out.

Avery/GM: And Ro just says would you, would you like me to grab Hermes while we’re in here?

Jenine/Marty: maybe we should let the team grab Hermes.

Avery/GM: Oh, is this a trust issue? Because I…

Jenine/Marty: no, I, this is me wanting to be back up for you, grabbing Hermes, but as someone that does not understand technology, I trust you.

Avery/GM: Oh.

Jenine/Marty: I just don't trust me to help you if something bad happens. You know what I mean? Does that make sense?

Avery/GM: Oh, yeah, yeah. I get it. Okay, cool.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: I trust you.

Avery/GM: And she gives you a thumbs up.

Jenine/Marty: I literally was in your brain, like, not even.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, right.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. That was like

Jenine/Marty: 20 minutes ago.

Chris/Ollie: Not even an hour.

Jenine/Marty: Not even like, I feel like we have this bond now.

Chris/Ollie: Brain buddies.

Avery/GM: you're, you're right, you're right. Cool,

Jenine/Marty: cool.

Avery/GM: And she gives you a thumbs up and follows you out.

Jenine/Marty: I try to do finger guns, but realize I have my hands filled

Avery/GM: she's like, do you want me to hold one of those for you?

Jenine/Marty: Hold the Son and I like graciously put in hands and hold the goggles.

Avery/GM: She, she pats it on the head and is like, good job, Dief. Good job.

Zach/Zahn: We walk outside to check on the friends

Bee/Polaris: Wait the blender! We gotta check on the blender.

Jenine/Marty: We don't have a….

Caden/Bruce: I was gonna say,

Jenine/Marty: Oh we do have a blender.

Caden/Bruce: no, you guys do have the blender and Bruce is immediately going to see if it's okay.

Chris/Ollie: New mystery. The blender also has a bubble shield.

Jenine/Marty: I mean, we didn't know it was a communication device, so you never know.

Avery/GM: Y'all are back in the ship kind of grabbing your stuff before it gets towed away.What all are you grabbing?

Bee/Polaris: Hermes!

Caden/Bruce: My blender!

Avery/GM: Okay. Polaris is going for Hermes. Bruce is going for the blender. Anyone else got anything there?

Zach/Zahn: Yes. Zahn is gonna collect up the, uh, like his, the, the spare wires, uh, other stuff, a case of tools so that he can work on fixing his arm, fixing his armor, fixing um, Polaris's helmet while we're at this motel that we're getting stationed at.

Avery/GM: Sure. Polaris, you're coming up the ramp to look for your sun and for Hermes, and you see. Marty and Rho coming down at the same time, and Thief is completely operational, sees you and immediately puts his, its arms out for you.

Bee/Polaris: My boy! Polaris takes his son and, but he's confused because he's not sure how he's still operational, so he just kind of like, gives Rho and Marty like a, a confused look.

Avery/GM: Rho says electromagnetic shielding. It's the latest thing in the Milky Way.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is like petting de and like looks over at Zan to see if he heard that.

Zach/Zahn: He's like, I am gonna want to reverse engineer that shit. Like effective fucking immediately.

Chris/Ollie: Are you gonna disassemble Dief?

Bee/Polaris: No.

Jenine/Marty: No, he's not.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. When, when, when Zan says that, Polaris says, you're not gonna disassemble my son, are you?

Zach/Zahn: what? No, it'd be just as simple as running it through like a basic, put it in more simple terms, like an x-ray machine.

Bee/Polaris: Ah.

Zach/Zahn: So I can figure out what his parts are.

Bee/Polaris: Okay,

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Polaris, Did you want? and I hold up the goggles?

Bee/Polaris: Yes, please. Polaris puts them on

Zach/Zahn: Polaris is just like God, please.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, everything hurts.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like seeing that Bruce will go into the kitchen and like come back and like offer Polaris some earplugs. 'cause I'm sure there's some machines in there that are very loud.

Zach/Zahn: I was actually gonna offer some like noise, noise canceling earmuffs from the workshop. Aw.

Yay!

Avery/GM: Y'all are so y'all are taking care of your friend. It's so sweet.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris graciously, graciously accepts.

Avery/GM: Yeah, Bruce, you are checking on your blender and it doesn't outwardly appear like it's permanently damaged, but it will not power on right now.

Bee/Polaris: Aw, we can fix that.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, Bruce will have no idea how to fix it. He'll just unplug it and like very protectively. Hold it kind of like a baby, like with both arms and just like come back out and just be like, Zahn I might need you to, uh, look into this for me please.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Just he, he pull, I was gonna say, he pulls out like a data pad from somewhere that has a checklist on it. But I'm assuming all the data, if we had any data pads on the ship, they're probably broken.

Avery/GM: No, you, you pull out a data pad to start making a list and it's, it's black, black screen

Zach/Zahn: and then the like, revelation and immediate depression comes over his face and it doesn't work.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie's just gonna be, uh, my, my sincerest apologies is tail and ears are gonna droop.

Bee/Polaris: Aw.

Chris/Ollie: I couldn't think of anything else at the time.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like pets Ollie on the head, like one wooden dog and is just like, you did good. And then he's gonna hand Zahn his normal people etiquette notebook that he wrote. Don't hand people bombs in, in like back in session. What? Like three or something like that? He's just gonna hand them, hand him that and a pen.

Zach/Zahn: Thanks. It. You know how long it's been since I used an analog pen and paper?

Bee/Polaris: get used to it. If this is our usual course of action.

Chris/Ollie: While this is going on. Ollie will grab Polaris's helmet and uh, start fixing that.

Bee/Polaris: Aw, yay.

Chris/Ollie: If I do have access to like little robo service arms, On my dog body.

Avery/GM: Definitely. I love that idea.

Bee/Polaris: It's so unsettlingly.

Avery/GM: I love the idea of it, of there just being like this, like hidden

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Hidden monstrosity in this cute little fluffy puppy package.

Avery/GM: Exactly.

Chris/Ollie: It's like, um, like the insides of the, uh, animatronics from five nights at Freddy's.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God. Yeah. How horrifying.

Avery/GM: Oh God.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn says to Ollie, don't worry about trying to fix it right now. We'll, we'll deal with it when we get settled into the motel.

Bee/Polaris: I can help fix things as well to lighten the load and Dief can help too and he holds up his son

Avery/GM: and, and your son just holds out its arm and a bunch of tools just pop out of it.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn Gives Dief a little pat on the head much appreciated.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's still going to, uh, prioritize fixing this helmet. Sure.

Bee/Polaris: I appreciate it.

Avery/GM: You're all kind of collecting your things in here, and after about 20 minutes or so, uh, you hear the sounds of shuttles and other vehicles landing outside, people are shouting orders of like, you know, move this here, move that there and someone is not in your ship, but like, stands on the loading ramp and just calls up and is just like, excuse me, but I believe we're supposed to transport you to the city of Ambrosia? Are you ready to go?

Bee/Polaris: Did we get Hermes?

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, you popped that bad boy. Out of the, out of the, out of the, uh, Holder.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: the crystal holder, no problem. Uh, it's still glowing brightly,

Chris/Ollie: but he hasn't responded at all?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean he couldn't because the ship's comms and everything were down and all of our helmets and stuff are down too. Polaris is gonna go over to Ollie and he's gonna say, do you have like a storage compartment to put Hermes in?

Chris/Ollie: I dunno. I could probably fit, uh, chaos. Emerald. I don't know how much storage I've got. One of my plans is to ask Polaris actually to sew me some saddle bags.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I can.

Caden/Bruce: Oh my goodness.

Bee/Polaris: Hundred percent do that. Yeah. Polaris does have his sewing kit. Oh my God. It's like the Saint Bernards that have the little medical bags on this.

Chris/Ollie: Oh God. I need one of the collars with a keg under the neck.

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: This is so cute. I freaking love it.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Can I, uh, transport the chaos emerald?

Avery/GM: Yeah! I'm, I'm sure you probably could just pop that bad boy in your mouth.

Chris/Ollie: I wouldn't,

Bee/Polaris: yeah, I was, I was just about to say, can you swallow it?

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. That's the storage container. Hold on. Uh, wait at the other end for a couple hours and you'll get it back.

Avery/GM: Oh, Jesus. Oh my gosh.

Bee/Polaris: It's like a gotcha machine. We have to like, put a quarter in Ollie to get the stuff that we want

Avery/GM: instead of a Hermes. You got a temporary tattoo of a butterfly.

Bee/Polaris: Yay.

Jenine/Marty: What is, what is this check? What does this little robot give you?

Chris/Ollie: it's got 12 strength, dex and con. Uh, I do not suffer charisma, skill check penalties, or the usual mechanical shell… Christmas skill check penalties. I am not obviously synthetic, so I look, you know, I can pass as a normal dog.

Jenine/Marty: Nice

Chris/Ollie: armor class 10 and I can spend a point to up my dex… strength or my dex and strength to 14 and get a bonus five hit points.

Jenine/Marty: Nice.

Chris/Ollie: So he is kind of, um, stealthy and I can do uh, like a bit of assassination. Kinda like sneaky attacks.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah. So another thing I realized that is probably fried, um, our secret, um, illegal wallet. Is that not fried as well? The data pad for that?

Avery/GM: So that just connects to an electronic account. the electronic account is not.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Chris/Ollie: As long as we didn't put all of the passwords on an electronic device. 'cause now that's fucked too

Avery/GM: No, Ollie's… Ollie's keyed into the, uh, account that's right into the accounts.

Chris/Ollie: I am the account.

Avery/GM: Although y'all, y'all, y'all gotta keep Ollie safe for a while till, uh, till that crystal starts growing back

Chris/Ollie: until it grows back.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: it's also, it's a tiny sliver. It's like 1% of 1% of the crystal.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah. What's,

Chris/Ollie: it gonna take a while.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. So the dude asked if we, the dude asked if we had everything we needed. Do we have everything we need?

Avery/GM: If you're ready to go? Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Zach/Zahn: I believe so.

Jenine/Marty: I got,

Caden/Bruce: I think so

Jenine/Marty: all my things.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie also collects is drones.

Avery/GM: Marty, are you taking your drugs with you?

Bee/Polaris: Right? well they're medical. They're for medical purposes.

Avery/GM: Totally.

Jenine/Marty: I mean, like,

Avery/GM: I'm just wondering

Jenine/Marty: if anyone asks them about these drugs. I will say they're for medical purposes. I mean, yeah. 'cause then if people are coming on our ship, if you are coming on our ship, I don't want them to see the drugs and be like, what is up with this? To accidentally stumble upon

Chris/Ollie: I mean… you're a licensed medic, it checks out

Jenine/Marty: every time… You know, I should really put the drugs in my inventory. I just have 'em written down and not on the sheet. Every time you say I have drugs, I forget that I have drugs. yeah, I'm gonna…

Avery/GM: it's fine.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I grab all the drugs.

Avery/GM: Sure Okay.

Chris/Ollie: We gotta make sure we don't forget anything though. Um, are we fairly confident that the stuff on the ship isn't gonna get taken by these guys?

Avery/GM: I can guarantee you they would not steal your stuff.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, then I'm not gonna worry about like the body I've been building and stuff.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, if, if they did, we could hunt them down. So yeah, we have everything. Did Rho get her salmon?

Avery/GM: Okay. Yes. Rho has her Salmon has her salmon. I think Roe had her salmon when, when you were doing the procedure actually, because y'all like tucked it in with her.

Bee/Polaris: Nice.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie starts eyeing the salmon in an unsettling way.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no. He thinks it’s a chew toy!

Avery/GM: Chew toy!

Bee/Polaris: We're gonna have to get Ollie a bone.

Chris/Ollie: Well he's still carrying the robot arm.

Zach/Zahn: Just give him the uh, yeah, let's just give him the arm back.

Avery/GM: So yeah, y'all board these, this little transport and start heading towards the city of Ambrosia.

(Ambience fades out, Outro plays song)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a one-up podcast network production. Be sure to follow us on Twitter at 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 Oregon Trail and Mega City Slums. We'll be back on September 15th with our next episode. See you out there Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Episode 28 - Grief, Hope, Sorrow, and Anger

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 28 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

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

Avery/GM: Rho, as you currently know her, appears next to you and begins to speak and while she is speaking, what is everyone else doing in this room while this is happening?

Bee/Polaris: Barricading the door?

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Bee/Polaris: I'm kidding. Uh, well, I guess making sure that these people aren't dying. 'cause the dude told me to make sure they don't flat line, so.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Caden/Bruce: I feel like Bruce would've snuck back to see the progress of his, um, data pad. 'cause if it was at like 61 when he left, he's probably assuming it's done.

Zach/Zahn: Uh, Zahn is gonna go with Bruce.

Avery/GM: You just, you see Bruce disappear into the, into the hatch and you're like, I wanna see where this goes.

Zach/Zahn: Right.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: I wanna steal some stuff, ya know?

Avery/GM: Cool, cool cool. Okay.. I mean, there's a whole vent system to explore and Ollie, you are standing by

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Providing any assistance Ollie can with the procedure being tethered to the chair, and also gonna take a quick check for any, uh, security cameras and make sure they're, they're observing the entire operation except for, you know, any of our top secret stuff just to make sure that he knows we didn't just rush in someone who's faking being torched.

Jenine/Marty: Hmm.

Avery/GM: Yeah. See, that's, no one ever thinks to look for security cameras.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Can you also make sure that Bruce's situation isn't being scoped out via security cam?

Avery/GM: I was gonna say Ollie, if you would roll a intelligence notice check.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I can hack into them too. If, uh, if I can just crack open the case and tap directly in.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. What's Machamp doing? Um,

Avery/GM: Machamp is actually standing next to you watching these people and doesn't notice Zahn and Bruce sneak was completely oblivious to Bruce even showing up.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh.

Avery/GM: Like, just thought like, oh, this is a worker

Bee/Polaris: nice

Avery/GM: for this facility and is just paying attention to these, uh, these patients here.

Chris/Ollie: Just a a random worker that we're hugging and

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Wait, Machamp has seen Bruce. He met Bruce. Bruce gave him Pie.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah,

Avery/GM: yeah,

Chris/Ollie: yeah. But he's got the disguise.

Avery/GM: But Hasn't built that bond.

Bee/Polaris: True

Caden/Bruce: was it pie or cake?

Bee/Polaris: Pie.

Avery/GM: Meat pie.

Caden/Bruce: Okay. Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Cake were the pirates.

Bee/Polaris: The cake was after.

Caden/Bruce: Yes. The pirates.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: I think you also had another cake.

Chris/Ollie: That roll was 11.

Bee/Polaris: oh, we did have another cake.

Avery/GM: 11. Yeah. You notice there are security cameras that pan back and forth in every corner of the room.

Bee/Polaris: Oop, delete it.

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna send a quick message to Zahn to be, to say, watch out for security cameras. I can't reach any of them, I'm assuming… cause I'm tethered.

Avery/GM: Currently right now, No.

Chris/Ollie: So I'll just, uh, mention that and then wait on that.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn gives a thumbs up and, uh, and says, uh, I'll, uh, wipe the data from the next terminal that I reach.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah,

Avery/GM: cool. Polaris, you're observing these people in the containers and you don't notice anything. They're just laying there suspended. They don't move, they don't seem conscious.

Bee/Polaris: Cool. So they're not dying?

Avery/GM: No, not dying. Just normal. You see their heartbeats are normal and fine

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna turn to Machamp and say, can you make sure they don't flat line?

Avery/GM: Uh, yeah. Yeah. Uh, I mean, I'm not really medically trained, but yeah. 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, me neither.

Avery/GM: I'll, I'll keep an eye on 'em. I mean, you, you did that medicine really well.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was cheating. And then he walks over to the door to make sure no one comes through the door.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. You do hear Oswald complaining outside, just like,

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna record it.

Avery/GM: Can't, can't believe she just showed up here, made a big scene, and wouldn't even take my help. Like, I'm the one who designed the procedure and she won't take my help. It's, ugh,

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is recording it for later.

Avery/GM: And, and the, and one of the at attendants is like, yeah, that was kind of a weird situation, but hey, luckily that patient's gonna be taken care of right? And Oswald is just like, yes, but it's my work and she's going to get credit for it, but it's mine. And they are very frustrated.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris is recording all of this so that he can send it to the group chat later so we can all laugh

Jenine/Marty: yoinks! Yoinks Scoobs!

Avery/GM: And Bruce, you are back in the server room and Zahn pops out after you from the vent and you check your download and it is 100% complete.

Caden/Bruce: Sweet. I wanna disconnect my data pad because I don't want them finding that, obviously. Is there anything in this room that we could potentially steal?

Avery/GM: Not in this room, but, uh, number two has some stuff… number seven is actually a gift shop. I know I put a weapons table there, but it's really just a gift shop.

Bee/Polaris: Yo, we gotta go there after, after we save, bro, we're going to the gift shop. Um, are there like little fake, is there like a, a fake little doctor's badge where you can write your name?

Avery/GM: Of course

Bee/Polaris: Sweet Polaris is gonna buy one of those, write Oswald's name on it and sl... And just throw it against him.

Avery/GM: there you go, doc.

Bee/Polaris: Right?

Avery/GM: Alright, so yeah, there's nothing in here but Zahn, you do see several computers in here as before.

Zach/Zahn: Yep. And Zahn is going to hook himself up to one.

Avery/GM: Sure. Intelligence program

Zach/Zahn: as he is doing. So he is like, Ollie informed me that, uh, We're all on camera, so we should probably get around to wiping that.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, good to know.

Chris/Ollie: Probably just the footage of Bruce stealing stuff because we need the, the proof of Oswald getting his work shattered.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. We need a, we need proof that he was, his work was shatter all over him, that we absolutely decimated his career.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, and when you, when you submit your, your, uh, thesis to the peer review journal, it should be his but with your red, red pen corrections.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is gonna make a compilation video of Oswald just being mad and upset of, and then put the overlay of him complaining, the audio of him complaining over it.

Zach/Zahn: So that is a. Seven on program.

Avery/GM: A seven on program.

Bee/Polaris: Are you not a specialist?

Zach/Zahn: I'm not a specialist. I'm a tinkerer.

Bee/Polaris: What?

Avery/GM: Is that a Class?

Chris/Ollie: No your Class. Your class should 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah Your class? 

Zach/Zahn: Oh Expert. 

Bee/Polaris: Oh, expert. Expert. Expert. Oh my gosh.

Chris/Ollie: Expert. That's it. 

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God. Yes. I will. I will absolutely re-roll that then. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Bee/Polaris: I got you. 

Zach/Zahn: I, I literally forget that I have that, that is quite a bit better. 10. 

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah. 

Avery/GM: There you go. Okay. Yeah, you deftly hack this terminal and you are able to find a good loop of video. Where all of you are in the room at the same time and you just loop that and have it continuously loop 

Bee/Polaris: with or without. Bruce? 

Avery/GM: you said… 

Zach/Zahn: I was about to say. I'm going to deliberately put in so that there is no entrance and exit of Bruce and I through this vent. 

Avery/GM: Sure. Yeah, that's fine. You, you basically cut out just like that section where Bruce shows up and then where Bruce, uh, and you disappear into the vent and then you find the other areas of the camera that, 'cause Bruce didn't notice the cameras here. 

Caden/Bruce: Nope. 

Avery/GM: And here and here. All here. So, or in here or, and uh, and you realize, oh, I should probably delete these so that we don't have another scandal follow us later. 

Zach/Zahn: Absolutely. 

Avery/GM: Yeah. Uh, you've learned your lesson with blackmail and it's not gonna happen again.

Zach/Zahn: I am literally holding the blackmail on my person. 

Avery/GM: Yeah, you are able to get that done pretty easily. Bruce, I will say one thing you do see in here that you could steal is a little bobblehead of the silver shield that someone has. 

Caden/Bruce: Oh, Bruce is gonna do that. 

Zach/Zahn: Aw, you just ruined that person's day. 

Caden/Bruce: It's okay. 

Avery/GM: I mean 

Caden/Bruce: he'll leave the little, it's he'll leave the little like ter, like terribly made. I cannot emphasize how badly this was made of like this cardboard cutout shield, and he'll put that there instead. 

Bee/Polaris: Didn't you recycle that? 

Caden/Bruce: I recycled my outfit.

Bee/Polaris: I thought you recycled the shield.

Caden/Bruce: No, the, the shield's like hand sized It was tiny. 

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet. Wait, speaking of can, where's my son? 

Avery/GM: I should have asked, but I was assuming back on the ship.

Chris/Ollie: out of danger… nice and safe. 

Avery/GM: Sorry, I didn't think to ask you about that, Polaris.

Bee/Polaris:  It's, it's okay. I'm a negligent parent. I completely forgot about my son. 

Zach/Zahn: Wow!

Avery/GM: it's okay. 

Chris/Ollie: He and Hermes playing like Connect four.

Avery/GM: Exactly. Holo-Chess or something. 

Caden/Bruce: But no, Bruce would have kept the shield just in case he actually ran into the actual Silver Shield and now he's just like, nah, got got the, got figurine instead. Little Memento

 

Avery/GM: Marty, this fifth Rho has appeared next to you and it's just like, Hey Marty, what are you doing here? 

Jenine/Marty: I… Oh, well,making sure you're okay… and a colleague of mine has been researching torching and how to reverse it, and this is me helping out and helping you with it. If you'll allow me, please allow me. So I don't know what happened if like… you didn't, but like also like consent is important, so are you okay?

Avery/GM: She chuckles at that and is just like, that's that's really sweet. Yeah, actually I, I probably could use some help. I actually. I think I'm okay physically, but I had to enter this coma or else I would've kept hurting you and Polaris and Ollie and the… and her face kind of scrunches up and she's like… the traitors. I knew that I was just causing more damage and so I ollie distracted my anger long enough that I was able to knock myself out. And I've been holding these frenzied emotions back since then, and she points to each of these other Rhos that are off in the distance and she's like, each of them represents a, a motivation behind the actions I took back on the Ursa major and I, I. I need help kind of taming them or calming them. I've, I've tried, but they won't, it's funny they won't listen to me. I, I won't listen to myself. But I guess if you're here, I guess that means you might have an idea of how to help with this?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think I got some ideas of how to help out.

Avery/GM: and this Rho is just like, well, I will stay here and keep concentrating on keeping them calm for now. And hopefully you're, you're able to help. I, I don't know how much longer I can hold them back though. They've been getting stronger. 

Jenine/Marty: Okay, well keep me informed on how you're doing, just 'cause I'm gonna be traveling off and checking on your, on, on, on all of these. So please keep me informed, um, if anything changes. And I'll make sure that we get this done as safely as possible. Okay?

Avery/GM: Sure. If you have any questions, I might, I might be able to help you. I, I kind of, I do know myself pretty well.

Jenine/Marty: What is the one that's been hurting you? What's the one that's been like the longest emotion that you've had? Maybe we should start with that one. 'cause you've been holding that one for the longest.

Avery/GM: She points to the Rho in black and she says, I guess I've been holding onto my grief over my brother's death the longest he was. He was on Adis at the time of the destruction and was reported dead and so I've been really struggling with the grief, uh, the guilt I guess, of being the one who is still alive.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, well, well that's okay to feel that… What's next?

Avery/GM: Next would probably be that one. And she points to the one in the gold gown, uh, embracing a figure, um, that kind of represents my foolish hope that my brother is still alive and that we’ll be reunited again and then she points to the one in blue and says that one is fairly recent. She is worried she'll never see home again and doesn't know how she'll really survive in a place so far away from where everyone she loves is and then points to the one in the red combat armor and it's just like, and she's really mad at just about everybody. At you for attacking us mentally, or not attacking us mentally, trying to calm us mentally, but you know, she sees it as an attack and then of course, mad at the AI who destroyed Adis, Mad at Ollie for, for stopping her, uh, just angry all around and, and wanting vengeance, so…

Jenine/Marty: okay. Okay. We can, we can handle this. I got this. Okay, cool. Like before, like Marty walks off, she does like the vest to comfort the road that's been talking to her and just like grabs her hand and gives like the little comforting squeeze again, let me know if anything changes. I'm here to help. You’ve got this.

Avery/GM: She just smiles meekly at you and nods and is just like… thank you Marty.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk up to, to the one in, in the black gown. 

Avery/GM: Sure. The one in the black gown is kind of kneeling over a memorial and just sort of like touching it lightly and weeping softly and is just, and you can, as you get closer, you see that the memorial plaque just says, To the dead ofAdis: we will never forget your sacrifice and this Rho turns to you and is just, it's, it's weird because this Rho doesn't recognize you, but is just like, have you come to pay your respects as well? 

Jenine/Marty: Yes. I also wanted to bring my condolences, um, from home and to be here with you and help in as best, as best as possible. 

Avery/GM: She sort of sniffles and kind of wipes some tears from her eyes and it's just like, well, that's, that's really sweet. I'm Rho by the way. I just, I, my, my brother was, was on Adis and so, you know, we, we didn't always get along, but, you know, that's, that's siblings for you. But he was still my twin and my brother and I don't know, I, I guess I've just been wondering why it wasn't me, You know?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that's, that's understandable. But wouldn't he be happy that you're here,

Avery/GM: I guess? Uh, but it seems so unfair that, you know, the only reason he was assigned there was an algorithm. (sighs) it just doesn't seem fair.

Jenine/Marty: I cannot understand the grief that you're going through, but I know that there are people that can help you significantly with… through it. And then that, yeah, that kind of does suck the object of fate, it's wild, it's weird and it sucks. 

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll a charisma connect check. With a plus one bonus.

Jenine/Marty: Beautiful, wonderful cover, girl. You said, what was it? Plus one. 

Avery/GM: Plus one 

Jenine/Marty: Charisma… So it's gonna be a 12.

Avery/GM: That is exactly what you needed. I put it as a 12 for difficulty rating. This Rho stands up and… You know, wipes more tears from her eyes, kind of straightens herself up, gives herself like a, a good nod and turns to face you and it's just like, thank you that you're right. I need to continue living and carry his memory with me, but not let it control my future. 

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. 

Avery/GM: Thank you. I hope whoever you lost in this tragedy, I hope you also find comfort and as she says that this Rho fades into a sparkle of white and gold light. 

Jenine/Marty: Sick. Cool. Amazing. Um, I give like, I don't know if I'm able to, but I give like a thumbs up to like my actual body, body to be like, I'm okay in here, um, to like the outside world if that's possible.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You… On the outside, in this lab, you all see like, like the terminator. You just see, uh, Marty raise, raise her hand up with a thumbs up and then falls back down to the, to the bed.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Great. Amazing. Wow. 

Chris/Ollie: Ollie… Ollie returns the thumbs up!

Jenine/Marty: Give it a check mark. We're gonna go to the, the golden gown. 

Avery/GM: Sure. This Rho is hugging someone. As you get close, you do see that this person looks remarkably a lot like Rho. He's wearing a gray vac suit with the emblem of the Pan Solar Union on it. he has silver hair like Roe, but it's uh, kind of short and kind of spiky. But yeah, if… if… if he grew his hair out, They would be, you know, splitting image of each other basically. And this Rho is also crying, but like tears of happiness. Like, she's smiling, she's happy, and she's just like, I, I can't believe you're really here. You're, you're back. I… I… some part of me always knew you survived the… the attack and that you weren't actually dead. And this Rho turns to you and recognizes you, Marty and says Marty, You're here. I… I found my brother, Psi! He's… he's here, he's back. And this figure doesn't say anything, just kind of nods at you.

Jenine/Marty: Hi. Where, where did you find him? Or how did you, how did he, how was he here?

Avery/GM: He just… he showed back up on… on Terra one day and… and just was at the door and said he survived. And… oh… this is unreal. Like, I can't actually believe it. But he hasn't said anything. He won't talk.

Jenine/Marty: Could I read his thoughts?

Avery/GM: You get nothing from this. This is… when you try to reach out psychically, This is a memory of her brother. 

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Rho are you sure?

Avery/GM: Of… Of course. I'm sure. I, of course, I would recognize my twin. He's my twin. Like I, um, I, who, who else would, would he be?

Jenine/Marty: I don't know.

Avery/GM: And she starts looking dejected and drops her arms from this person and is just, Sitting, standing there kind of defeated and it's just like, he's not real, is he?

Jenine/Marty: I don't think so, but then I, like, I come in and hug and like, take the space that he was once in just to like, so she still is, felt like that's air that she still like, feels like the contact.

Avery/GM: Sure. Um, as you step into his place, uh, the memory fades into light and Rho is just there with you now. I've been holding onto this hope for so long that he's still out there. But I don't think that's true, is it? I mean, no one survives a planet blowing up underneath them.

Jenine/Marty: If they did, that'd be very entertaining and a really interesting experiment to understand. Um, sorry, I don't know if you wanted jokes in this moment, but…

Avery/GM: she does kind of chuckle a little bit at that.

Jenine/Marty: But if there's no hope that's… you can… Oh, I'm trying to see how I can word this. It's good to live in the memories, but it's also good to make new ones. Um, and there is hope for future… for you and like hope to like, see what you can do in honor of your brother in the situation. Hope for the other people that didn't make it from that planet and  interact with them and see what's up with them and, and their stories.

 

Avery/GM: She smiles at that and holds out her arms to embrace you. 

Jenine/Marty: Give a nice little squeeze 

Avery/GM: and as she's holding onto you, she just says, you're right. Honoring the memory of the fallen is better than holding out hope for something that isn't likely. I… Thank you, Marty. And I'm not gonna make you roll for this one, uh, because you already solved her grief. This one fades into white light and we flash back to the lab. Polaris, you're at the door of the lab, right? 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. 

Avery/GM: the door opens. And Oswald is trying to like, make his way in or make their way in.

Bee/Polaris: No, it doesn't open. Is it a sliding door or does it have a handle?

Avery/GM: No, it's like a sliding door, like a 

Bee/Polaris: dammit! 

Avery/GM: like a motion sensor. Like, um, like in Star Trek. Which I know you haven't seen, but you know. 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I know what his lighting door is though.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You get the idea. 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is just standing there and he just turns and looks at Oswald.

Avery/GM: You again, will you move? I need to check out my equipment and make sure that Marty has not damaged anything. 

Bee/Polaris: You can do that later when she's done. Don't interfere with this.

Avery/GM: it's my experiment. I can interfere with whatever I want.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will like put his hand on his shoulder, turn him around, and will step outside the door so the door closes behind both of them.

Avery/GM: Strength exert. 

Bee/Polaris: oooo.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you easily push him out the door as he protest or as they protest. Uh, you, you push them out the door and it's just like, unhand me. What are you doing? 

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will let go. Are you really, uh, after all of your negligence, are you really going to interfere with such a delicate experiment because of pride?

Avery/GM: I don't even know who that person is in there with you. 

Bee/Polaris: Good. And keep it that way. 

Avery/GM: Oswald is, is just like, it's not just pride. If anything goes wrong in my lab under my supervision…

Bee/Polaris: has anything gone wrong? 

Avery/GM: Well, some giant lizard person tripped one of my assistants and knocked some chemicals into a laser field.

Bee/Polaris: That sounds like something that you should be dealing with.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's cleaned up already. It's fine. So then why are you here? Because the other thing that could go wrong is that my former school colleague, friend person, kind of.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like size and his advisor like rolls their eyes.

Avery/GM: She is performing an experimental procedure.

Bee/Polaris:  Are you anticipating her failure? 

Avery/GM: I always anticipate failure from everybody who is not me, and his smugness is a little bit back now. 

Bee/Polaris: That seems like a very flawed philosophy for a doctor. If you're not anticipating your own failures, that can mean something detrimental for your patients.

Avery/GM: Well, that's why I do research and not practice.

Bee/Polaris: Well, Marty has been doing practice, so maybe you should stay out here and do research. Ah,

Avery/GM: Oswald narrows their eyes at you.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris’ visor is blank.

Avery/GM: I don't know who you are 

Bee/Polaris: and you won't. 

Avery/GM: I'll be back, 

Bee/Polaris: I'm sure.

Avery/GM: And Oswald turns to leave. 

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Polaris crosses his arms, waits for him to leave, and then goes back into the room.

Avery/GM: Bruce and Zahn, What are y'all doing now that you've got your computer stuff out of the way and you've edited your, your video files?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Polaris was live streaming, so bruising on could have been watching.

Avery/GM: Do we ever have to worry about someone intercepting these live streams that we have between each other?

Bee/Polaris: No. It's a private one. It's not, he's not streaming it on Twitch.

Avery/GM: I don't know. Is it encrypted? 

Bee/Polaris: Can I roll for encryption? 

Avery/GM: No, I'm sure the custodians set you up with some encryption algorithms. You're fine. 

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah.

Avery/GM: I'm just teasing you. 

Zach/Zahn: It's our own twitch server. 

Bee/Polaris: I know. Yeah, we have our own twitch server?

Zach/Zahn: So there's nothing to steal in here. Zahn is just gonna motion for Bruce to potentially follow him back. He gets to the vent… He is like, unless, uh, Unless you have to, you know, report to Lazuli and maybe beat up with us later. I don't know. I don't know what your whole gangster style is now my friend. 

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will chuckle and just be like, no, I'm, I'm going to follow. And, uh, if, if you guys will have me back, I, uh, I don't need to go back to Lazuli. I Don't really know exactly where they went. So, um, I'm kind of homeless again if, if you guys, uh, need another one on the ship 

Zach/Zahn: Zahn chuckles and gives you the, uh, I guess due to your height, it's more like a elbow slap instead of like a shoulder slap. But he is like, You're absolutely always welcome, Bruce. We, we all really did miss you and then he hops down.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will chuckle and just be like, not when I throw out all the Assemble’s singles, then, then you won't miss me, but Okay. And he'll jump down and follow 

Zach/Zahn: as we're walking, he like turns down the volume on his, on his helmet So it's like, you know, it's basically like a whisper through the vents so it's not like we're just having a full blown conversation in the vent. But, uh, he's like, actually, since you, you made me that one grilled cheese sandwich with like normal cheese, I think I could do away with, uh, with assemble’s. 

Caden/Bruce: I've made you see the light.Good.

Avery/GM: Marty, back into the mind. Palace 

Jenine/Marty: yee. Let's go. 

Avery/GM: Which one do you want to approach next? The rocks are getting bigger

Jenine/Marty: The rocks are getting bigger? 

Avery/GM: Yep.

Jenine/Marty: How is, how is, how is our friend in the vac suit

Avery/GM: looking very depressed. Like a little, uh, a little speaker is, is next to them playing very sad music.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I gotta help that one. 

Avery/GM: Yeah. You approach the one in blue and she sighs and just like, hi Marty. I think… I think I'm stuck here. That's what I've determined. I am stuck here. 

Jenine/Marty: Is she sitting? 

Avery/GM: Yeah. Like, um, sitting, she's sitting sort of like with her el or knees almost to her chest and she's kind of hugging her, her knees while she's watching this hollow projection of, of this blue green planet.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Um, I sit like right next to her. Well, Rho could I tell you something? Kind of exciting. And cool. If you'll, 

Avery/GM: yeah. 

Jenine/Marty: if you'll accept it. Cool. Great.

Avery/GM: Yeah, I guess that's fine. Got nothing better to do.

Jenine/Marty: Well, we have been working on a way to get you home.

Avery/GM: She turns her head and her eyes are narrow. She's just like, are you just saying this to make me feel better?

Jenine/Marty: No. 

Avery/GM: How?

Jenine/Marty: well I believe Ollie and Zahn have been working on build… like rebuilding your ship and like making it like work again. I don't really understand the technology things, but they did. They broke the ship and then they fixed the ship. Well, I think it's, it's, it's fixed… fixed now. So technological wise it's fixed. But we can get you, I think based off of what they were saying, we can get you back.

Avery/GM: So they, they fixed the Cassiopeia so that I can return home at the speed of light… 75,000 light years away?

Jenine/Marty: Yes, that's, that was a question for everybody else. Yes, we fixed it, right?

Bee/Polaris: Wormhole.

Chris/Ollie: yeah. We found the coordinates of wormholes.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. That's what I was like. We did. It's been so long. I'm like, we did the math for things. We did the things. Yeah, we did the things.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris had cords in his files.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Marty, you know, that you, um, Polaris shared with y'all that there are wormholes nearby that appear to be the one that Rho originally came through.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Great. Yeah, so we have, like, we did the math. We figured out the best spot to get you back home. And the ship is good. I mean, know it wasn't good before, but now it's good. So there's that. Smiley face.

Avery/GM: Roll a charisma connect.

Jenine/Marty: Wonderful. Beautiful. There's so many rolls. It's so terrifying in this game.

Avery/GM: I know, I'm, I'm sorry.

Jenine/Marty: With the amount of rolls, 

Avery/GM: I should have warned you that this was gonna be a, a roll heavy session for you.

Jenine/Marty:  No, I had a feeling it was gonna be, so that, is it the same as before? Do I have any pluses other than charisma?

Avery/GM: No pluses to this, but the DR has been decreased because you've calmed two other Rhos. 

Jenine/Marty: Oh, sick. beautiful, wonderful. Um, it's a 10.

Avery/GM: Cool. You just needed an eight. So…

Jenine/Marty: sick. 

Avery/GM: Rho doesn't quite perk up, but is just like, okay, Marty, I'm gonna trust you. If you say you found a way for me to go home, I'm, I'm gonna trust you, but don't, please don't be lying to me and. This Rho fades into sparkly white light.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Great. 

Avery/GM: Now there's this other Rho across the field from you smashing bigger and bigger boulders. 

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Great. So, um, I'm gonna walk over but like try and be like next, next to that Rho. But also like, could I, like, make illusions that I'm also like joining in on like the smashing of, of boulders.

 

Avery/GM: Yeah, go ahead. And do you have any telekinesis or just telepathy? 

Jenine/Marty: Well, I think I can, I can like can I just like make images that look like I'm doing that? 

Avery/GM: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. We can, you can roll a wisdom telepathy check. 

Jenine/Marty: Sick, wisdom tele, oh, I not three D sixes. I got used to that. Bop bop. Okay, cool. 13.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You start, you project this telepathic image of you smashing rocks with combat Rho, and this Rho says you're, uh, you're pretty good at this. 

Jenine/Marty: Oh, well, well, uh, thanks. Uh, go. Cool. Cool. Thanks. I've never been told that I'm good at fighting, so that's pretty cool. What are you fighting right now?

Avery/GM: Time.

Jenine/Marty: Time. 

Avery/GM: Just fighting time until that one over there and she gestures to the Rho that is in the center until that one over there loses control on this little illusion of hers. And then I'm going to have. My vengeance. 

Jenine/Marty: Who are you having your vengeance on? And I throw another boulder.

Avery/GM: Well, if we are still on the ship with those ai, I'm going to start with the one who destroyed my planet and then honestly Marty, I might move on to Polaris and Ollie for stopping me.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. But like, what if we didn't,

Avery/GM: what do you, what do you mean? What if we didn't? 

Jenine/Marty: Well-

Avery/GM: What if we didn't do vengeance?

Jenine/Marty: Well, yeah. 'cause it's, 'cause here's the thing about vengeance. You're doing vengeance towards the people that act the, to the, to the beings that actually kind of. Helped put your ship together to get you back home. And that would kind of suck if like you did that and you harmed them in any way. 'cause first off, they're my friends, but second of all, if you harm them, you're not gonna be able to help any other people, any other beings in this, in this vast, vast universe, any of their problems. And if they've been attacked by uh, AI and stuff like that, you know what I mean? I don't know if that makes sense. Throws another boulder.

Avery/GM: Marty, you notice that, This Rho stops your boulder and takes one of her boulders and smashes them together and looks at you and is just like, have you ever lost your entire world?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, kind of. I was home, I had a good life, and then I got sent into space and I haven't seen my family in ages and family's kind of important to me and I, and I'm saying this to someone that's lost, a sibling and, and it's nothing compared to what you have, but I, I can see it. 

Avery/GM: She's like gripping a fist and, and she's, her face is kinda like scrunched up. Like, she's like, just trying to like, fight these emotions that she's feeling. Marty, I was betrayed by the crew that sent me here in order to lure out those AI and I didn't know I would find them. But I also didn't know that I would find people willing to help me get home, and I, I'm feeling a lot of things right now, and I would really like to just unleash all this anger on the universe until, until my vengeance is satisfied. And that's dangerous. I know, but what else do I do with all of this rage.

Jenine/Marty: You keep going. Not to be cliche, but isn't the best kind of revenge to keep going and not give two shits about the people that hurt you in any way. Not giving them power of, the satisfaction that, that they will always be on your mind because they fucked up your thing, but now you have to continually know that they messed you up and they, that you'll be tracking them and it's just like they're gonna win. Maybe they're not gonna win, but what is the satisfaction if you do beat them? What's the satisfaction after vengeance?

Avery/GM: I don't know. I hadn't really thought that through to the end.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: I just assumed I'd either get vengeance or, or die trying. But maybe there's something to what you're saying. I would like, a final charisma connect check from you.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Oh my God, that terrified me. That's gonna be a 10.

Avery/GM: You are so lucky you did not take this one on first. I will tell you that. 'cause I, I set this up as a way to basically decrease the, the difficulty rating based on how many Rhos you had calmed. So originally this started really high, but a 10 gets you there.

Jenine/Marty: Heck yeah. 

Avery/GM: And Rho uh, this Rho is, was like raising like a, a larger boulder into the sky and getting ready to just bring it down on both of you and it crumbles into dust in the air and she lets out a big sigh. And it's just like, you're right. You're right. I can still get revenge by living the good life, the life that my brother would've wanted me to live without, having to take more life from others. Thanks Marty. And this rage filled Rho fades into light and the Rho that was in the middle that was kind of holding these emotions back finally collapses to her knees and is just breathing heavily.

Jenine/Marty: I run to that Rho to make sure that she's okay.

Avery/GM: She's like, I did not think you would get all four of them to calm down, or all four of me. This is very weird. I don't actually, this has never happened to me before, you know, so this is kind of new for me, but that was really amazing. Marty, I'm sorry for lashing out at you mentally back on the ship. That was really messed up of me. 

Jenine/Marty: It's okay. I'm okay. See, I'm, I'm living well, technically you can't, I mean, like, you see my psyche, but like I am living, breathing, doing the whole thing. You're living, breathing and doing the whole thing, so that's pretty cool. Do you need a hug? Do you want a hug? I can give you a hug. 

Avery/GM: She chuckles and says, I think we can save that for when we wake up. Okay. Um, actually, how. How do we wake up from this?

Jenine/Marty: Excellent question. How do we wake up from this? 

Avery/GM: You realize that that was not in the procedure.

Jenine/Marty: Motherfucker. Ooh.

Bee/Polaris: Well, you gave us a thumbs up so you could give us some sort of hand symbol and we could like, throw water on you both.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, that's, yeah, but would Marty, could I. Well, how long is my telepathic shiz? Could I send a message to friends outside being like, Heyo, how do we get out, slash we might need Oswald.

Bee/Polaris: Nah.

Avery/GM: this will be fun Ollie. You see Marty's finger start tapping against the bed, and at first it just seems like tapping. And then you start analyzing the pattern and realize that they're typing out like a, a message like in, in Morse code is what we'd call it here. Obviously be something else in this galaxy, but they're typing out a, tapping out a message. 

Chris/Ollie: Marty's code

Avery/GM: and you decipher 

Jenine/Marty: Marty's code.

Avery/GM: Marty's code. Yeah. And uh, you analyze the pattern and realize that it either says, go get Oswald, or it says, can we have pizza? One of the two? 

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah, pizza.

Jenine/Marty: Pizza party.

Chris/Ollie: He is going to call the closest Pizza Hut or

Jenine/Marty: It's not a pizza. 

Chris/Ollie: Not a Pizza Hut.

Bee/Polaris: No, no, no. Pizza Shack. 

Jenine/Marty: Pizza Shack, new. 

Bee/Polaris: Za’ Shack.

Chris/Ollie:No. Um, 

Avery/GM: and I mean context clues, you probably know what's going on, but

Chris/Ollie: Just 'cause I got the thing where I can interface with psychics, but I don't think if that means I can activate something, I can just, be affected by it. So yeah, so Ollie's just going to put a group message to say that, oh, Marty, or, or my analysis indicates Marty seems to be asking for, oh, what's that guy's name?

Bee/Polaris: Oswald.

Chris/Ollie: Asking for Oswald.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts in chat. That's gonna be awkward because I literally just got done, uh, putting this guy in his place.

Avery/GM: and then you see the fingers tap again and it says, can't get out. 

Bee/Polaris: Ooh.

Chris/Ollie: Wait. You mentioned a duration earlier. Is there a duration to this?

Bee/Polaris: There is a duration to brainwave at the very least.

 

 

Chris/Ollie: An hour.

Avery/GM: One hour.  We can just saw that happens. That,

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Yeah, we would have no idea that-

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, how long have I been in here?

Avery/GM: You have been, you have been in there for about 30 minutes.

Jenine/Marty: Ah!

Avery/GM: So you could wait until the brainwave wears off.

Bee/Polaris: We could just pull it off.

Jenine/Marty: That, that's terrifying. 

Bee/Polaris: We could just pull it off.

Jenine/Marty: No, let's, let's grab Oswald.

Bee/Polaris: Nooo,

Chris/Ollie: I mean-

Bee/Polaris: I just, I Just put this nerd in his place.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. But Marty

Bee/Polaris: Its gonna be real awkward.

Jenine/Marty: Marty needs help. 

Bee/Polaris: Marty do need help, but he's gonna be real smug about it.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. And she'll punch him in the face after. Don't worry.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, because

Jenine/Marty: Someone left something out, Someone left something out of the research

Avery/GM: Because of course they did.

 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, course. Actually, did Marty explain how this whole process is like gonna work, like the brain,

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: like what the brain wave is meant to do and- 

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. okay.

Jenine/Marty: I, I, I remember doing that 'cause I was like, here's all the science stuff behind it. And I like shared all the information of how it works.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: Because I'm like, oh, well just, just know that this is, this chart is incorrect.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Okay. Um, the brainwave-

Avery/GM: Marty, Marty gave a, a Zed talk. 

Jenine/Marty: A zed talk.

Bee/Polaris: Nice.

Jenine/Marty: Beautiful.

Bee/Polaris: Nice. Okay. So what exactly is the brainwave's purpose in this exam- uh, experiment?

Avery/GM: So, because the torched Psyonic’s brain patterns are dormant, the brainwave basically kickstarts those brainwave patterns.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. So knowing that Marty is like donezo, if we took off the brainwave, would that not like, kind of put her back to sleep?

Avery/GM: I don't know. You'll have to find out. 

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna, uh, Press control F and actually he'll run it by Ollie. Ollie, do you have any idea if removing the brainwave would put Roe back in a dormant state so that Mar Marty would be able to get out?

Chris/Ollie: Theoretically, that would happen. Let's find out. And Ollie's gonna reach out and tear it up.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God!

Avery/GM: Oh God.

Bee/Polaris: Well, Rho's not torching anymore, so. 

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: The next part to my question was gonna be, If like, uh, some sort of stimulant would be able to jolt them awake,

Chris/Ollie: Maybe.

Avery/GM: Most likely. Um, but Marty, go ahead and make a mental saving throw.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, shit. This is a D 20.

Avery/GM: Yes. 

Jenine/Marty: And I have to beat, I have to beat a nine, right. That's my thing. Saving throws is like, 

Avery/GM: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: -whatever. Okay. Okay. This is positive thinking, positive-

Avery/GM: And I'll give you, I'll give you advantage because you are connected to Rho's mind and Rho is very powerful.

Jenine/Marty: Beautiful. Um, I got a 14.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go.

Avery/GM: Perfect. You, you, you beat it. So yeah, you rip this off Ollie and both Marty and Rho. So Marty, in your mind or in this mental state, what you, what you feel is like, almost like, uh, Have you ever been on like those carnival rides? That's like a gravity ride? 

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: Where like it spins you around and you can't move.

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. 

Avery/GM: Do you suddenly feel that, that that much force like pushed on you as you sort of just ascend into like, the air of this mental space and you open your eyes, and you are wide awake. Ollie, you grabbed this strip and ripped it off Rho. Rho just sits up and just like out of reflex, not out of like malice or being mean, but just out of reflex, just like pushes you mentally with, with like telepathic or telekinetic powers just pushes you against the wall.

Chris/Ollie: Um, do I notice any negatives in either of their, uh, vital signs or mental waves as this is happening?

Avery/GM: No. You don't notice any negative things. But you are pushed away far enough that you are disconnected.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Uh, full disclosure, I was planning to use predictive cognition to kind of do the reverse time thing in case anything went bad. So it was like a-

Bee/Polaris: Thank goodness. 

Avery/GM: Oh, perfect.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my God.

Bee/Polaris: I was like, I was like, when you pull it off, Polaris, like winces.

Chris/Ollie: I was hoping it would go bad and like, oh no, Marty flat lines. And it's like, Nope.

Bee/Polaris: You kill Marty!? 

Chris/Ollie: My analysis indicates that would be very mad for Marty.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God. Okay. Thank goodness. 

Avery/GM: I knew, I knew you weren't just being chaotic reckless. 

Chris/Ollie: Not, not completely. 

Bee/Polaris: I kind of thought that you were just because that's-

Jenine/Marty: I didn't!

Bee/Polaris: -Ollie’s, yeah, that's Ollie’s pattern usually 

Chris/Ollie: He's learning. 

Jenine/Marty: I had fear!

Chris/Ollie: He's getting a little better. He's got, he's got some insurance now.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but we don't know that. That's quantum Ollie that knows.

Chris/Ollie: That's the-

Avery/GM: Quantum Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: So Ollie will look at either their stunned reactions and say, oh, well that went better than expected.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris. Like when Rho pushed Ollie, Polaris reached for his laser blade, remembered that it's in Ollie, and then just like kind of stands there.

Avery/GM: Rho covers, uh, her mouth and she's like, oh, Ollie, I'm, I'm so sorry. That was pure reflex. I, I apologize. I don't really like being startled awake.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, well, glad you're awake. Are, is everyone good? Marty,

Jenine/Marty: Two thumbs up!

Bee/Polaris: Alright, sweet. We need to leave 

Avery/GM: Marty, actually, as Polaris says that you get a brief moment of precognition as you see Oswald marching down the hallway with three burly looking guards.

Jenine/Marty: Aw, cool.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, let's get the fuck up outta here. 

Jenine/Marty: So, uh, just go, Hey, major Tom?

Avery/GM: Uh, yeah. Yeah. What's up? Hey. Hey, you, uh, you survived. That's great. Oh, tell me all about it. 

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I did. I, it was a really cool experience. I'll let you know. Um, could you, none of you know this yet. Um, so there's about, my, my colleague from college is about to come down here with three security guards. If you could possibly stop them in any way and use your authority, that would be quite appreciated. 'cause uh, I, I'm not in the mood to yell yet.

Avery/GM: Oh!

Bee/Polaris: I am. I, I still am.

Avery/GM: Yeah, sure. Are y'all. Going dip out the back while I do that, or just chill here for a bit? 

Bee/Polaris: Mm, probably

Chris/Ollie: We brought him though.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean, we'll wait for you.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, we can't leave him. We'll wait for you.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we just need to get to-

Avery/GM: oh, I mean, there's a, there's a military base nearby. I could just go.

Bee/Polaris: Oh sweet, but-

Avery/GM: I could get a transport back to-

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, but that feels, that feels rude.

Bee/Polaris: But do you want your shuttle? yeah. I mean, Bruce is back also, we just need to get Rho out of here like now. 

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool. How about I meet you guys out there and I'm just gonna deal with, with Oswald. 'cause I need a, um,

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna stay with Marty. Polaris is not letting this nerd.

Zach/Zahn: We, we already split the party once. We're not doing it again.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: We just got Bruce back. 

Avery/GM: As you're debating this, you do hear three knocks on the door and then the door opens and in walks Oswald with three security guards. And it's just like, I demand access to my facilities. 

Jenine/Marty: Okay cool, we're done.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. You can have it bye.

Avery/GM: And Oswald looks at you, Marty. And it's like, wait, how are you awake?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, because she's a competent doctor.

Jenine/Marty: Thank you. Yeah. That was something that was missing in your other things that was missing in your theory was how was I supposed to get out? How did you, nevermind. I see how you guys got me out seeing the brainwave patch-

Chris/Ollie: Im just standing there

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Ollie still holding the patch.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah,there might be a better way of doing that. Anyways, um, did the thing. That was cool. Thanks for letting us use your labs. Um, I really appreciate it. Sorry if I was a little rude at the start. I did want. To save my friend here, but yeah, that was cool. I can give you notes on how it works if you want. Um, I could, but I don't know if you're competent enough to understand. I'm sorry, that's rude of me. I'm gonna go start heading out if that's okay. Thank you. And then Marty motions us all to like start walking out unless they stop us.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna wait for Marty to pass him before he follows.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is gonna text in the group chat, uh, to Ollie to wipe the data that he 'cause he’s been connected this whole time. Just. Wipe any, anything that we just did so that Oswald can't learn from it. 

Jenine/Marty: Well, it's on a hard drive. Well, it's on our hard drive's.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. It's localized. It's so he wouldn't knows. 

Jenine/Marty: Marty would like to keep that. 

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, but he would see, he would see, uh, 

Bee/Polaris: Security cams. 

Chris/Ollie: Well, I got disconnected by the, the psychic blast

Bee/Polaris: pushback. Yeah. 

Zach/Zahn: Oh, okay.

Bee/Polaris: But also you, uh, looped the footage anyway.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. So it's fine.

Zach/Zahn: I did.

Jenine/Marty: Nothing's unseen. They saw nothing. We're safe. Marty gets to keep this research for herself.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Oswald would have to hack Ollie and I don't think Oswald's smart enough to do that. 

Jenine/Marty: No, he's not.

Bee/Polaris: Clearly,

Jenine/Marty: if I can't hack, this guy's not gonna be able to hack. They're not gonna be able to hack.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: I love how. I love how he just walked in here with like three muscly goons to get us out, and we're like, all right, bye. We're like, we're already on our way out.

Jenine/Marty: Duces, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Boutta head out. 

Jenine/Marty: I was gonna start walking unless, unless they stop me.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris-

Avery/GM: Uh, they're not like, hostile. They're, they were just brought to like, kind of be like, no, this is his lab. 

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. That’s funny.

Jenine/Marty: Just a sad excuse of, of an intimidation check.

Avery/GM:. It's when, it's when the kid goes and gets the parent to tell, 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: You know, it's my toy. You know, that kind thing. 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

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

Bee/Polaris: That's funny.

Avery/GM: Marty.

Jenine/Marty:Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: As, as you are leaving the room, you do get a little telepathic note from Oswald that just says, I am glad you survived. Sorry for leaving that out.

Bee/Polaris:  Aw, he's not such a bad nerd after all.

Jenine/Marty: I like turn around and just like, throw up a peace sign. Like, like just blow a kiss to them and then like, She keeps walking..

Bee/Polaris: Nice like kiss fingers, peace sign and keep walking? 

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: Uh, do y'all follow Marty out? Are you going out the front or the back? 

Bee/Polaris: The way we came in.

Jenine/Marty: The way we came in.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: Is Bruce with us? 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is,

Avery/GM: uh, yeah, Bruce.

Caden/Bruce: Oh yeah.

Avery/GM: Zahn came back.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, we're in there.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Keep walking. Just keep walking. 

Chris/Ollie: That’s right.

Bee/Polaris: Just keep, keep walking.

Chris/Ollie: 'cause he's see the whole group, so Yeah. Okay. 

Bee/Polaris:Yeah. Keep it, keep it pushing.

Avery/GM: Machamp is just like, uh, I'm, I'm gonna actually, uh, stay behind. There's probably gonna be a lot of paperwork here to, to fill out. If you could just leave my shuttle like next to where you parked your other ship. I'll, I'll pick it up later.

Bee/Polaris: Alright. 

Avery/GM: I, I'll just

Jenine/Marty: Oh wait,

Zach/Zahn: Zahn gives a thumbs up.

Avery/GM: But don't, don't, don't run off with it though. 

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we won't. 

Jenine/Marty: We won't. Um, oh wait. Thanks. We really appreciate you and I give, Give Major Tom a hug. Thank you so much.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. You should come over for cake sometime. 

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, let us know whenever you wanna have cake. We can do a tea time again. I know my snacks aren't at the best, but like, they're there.

Avery/GM: Uh, no. Your snacks were, were absolutely lovely. Thank you so much. Uh, and, uh, I'm, I'm definitely gonna, yeah, I'll, I'll hit you up again soon. I gotta probably calm down this nerd though.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Right in front of him, right in front of him. Polaris, just, uh, pats him on the shoulder and says They're a handful.

Jenine/Marty: They're a handful.

Avery/GM: You just hear Oswald mutter. I'm not a nerd.

Jenine/Marty: Sometimes herbal tea helps out with calming them down. That's what I found in the late night, like study sessions. So like, try that. If it doesn't help meh. Anyways, bye!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will be the last one out. And as like the door is like, you know, before he walks through the door, he turns around, looks over at a beaker on a counter and just pushes it off and then keeps it pushing, keeps it moving.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I was totally thinking of just-

Avery/GM: Perfect.

Chris/Ollie: Breaking something small on the way out because

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: He's so worried about his lab and we didn't, we didn't actually ruin anything.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, it's like Pristine and Polaris. Actually, Polaris will walk out and then run back and he'll be like, oh. Forgot and then push it off and then run back out.

Avery/GM: And somewhere in, elsewhere in the facility, a tour group is finally getting to meet their hero, the Silver Shield, who is kind of older, kind of undergoing some medical treatment, but still puts on a good smile for the fans.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, that's cute.

Avery/GM: Signs a few autographs, takes some pictures. It's, it's great. It's great fun. Um, and Negani notices that the big lizard person that was with them is missing. That's strange.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, well.

Avery/GM: But totally won't. Come back to haunt anybody. 

Bee/Polaris: Especially since the security cams are on loop.

Avery/GM: So y'all are walking back to your ship. Rho is attempting to apologize to you, Polaris. And it's just like, you know, I, I, 

Bee/Polaris: he holds up his hand.

Avery/GM: I wasn't myself, but I'm still responsible for what I did. 

Bee/Polaris: He holds up his hand to stop her and he says it's all good.

Avery/GM: but I stabbed you with your own. That's, that's pretty rude.

Bee/Polaris: It is, but I stabbed you first. 

Avery/GM: Oh. Um, I, I guess, yeah. Uh, still. We're friends?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like holds out his hand to handshake.

Avery/GM: Cool. Okay. Awesome. I feel a lot better about all of this.

Bee/Polaris: Glad to have you back.

Avery/GM: She's kind of like walking, like doing that anime thing

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: where like they walk and have their hands behind their head, you know?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And you're approaching your ship and you notice

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Avery/GM: a small strike fighter parked next to your ship.

Bee/Polaris: Noooo. Damn it.

Avery/GM: A figure is leaning up against this strike fighter. They are smoking a cigar, even though they are clearly a robot. They're wearing a brown and black cowboy duster with a black cowboy hat. And as you approach they, as they see you come in, they take the cigar and dab it out, put it back in their pocket. It's like, well, it took you long enough. 

Bee/Polaris: What the fuck? 

Avery/GM: Your ship is awfully hard to hack into. You know, almost like it was owned by a pirate or something. Oh, but where are my manners name's Coil. And you've got something I want. I'm here for Hermes. Hand it over and you get to live. And it snaps its fingers.

And these crates that were inside the docking bay, break apart revealing 16 robots, turrets, drones, just this combination of devices and weapons trained on you. And he says, and if you refuse, I simply gun y'all down and take what I came for anyway. Your choice, what's it gonna be?

Outro 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 tabletop audio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from Creative Commons. The tracks used today include Ethereal Plane, Starship medical, Pattern Recognition, and mega city slums.

We'll be back on September 1st with our next episode. See you out there. Beyond the Furthest Stars.

 

Episode 27 - Reunions and Procedures

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 27 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Intro music plays and fades out, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: And we flash back to the crew of the TSKAM.

Bee/Polaris: So I know we're just like in the parking lot, but is there like in a, uh, like a, you know how ERs have like the, this is where the ambulance guys can go because it's an emergency, they gotta get a person in there fast. Is there a that?

Avery/GM: I didn't design one, but there probably would be. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Cause I imagine this facility is probably gonna ha like most facilities on the capitol is probably gonna have a weapons check. I think that's something that we could all intuit. Is there any way that we can make it look like this is an emergency and we need to get in there fast without them taking our weapons? Does that make sense? Am I making sense? Y

Avery/GM: Yes. Yes. It, yeah. You make sense Yeah. Basically we need help now.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: totally.

Bee/Polaris: Because Rho does need help now.

Avery/GM: Yes.

c Yeah. Um, I, I think it would be pretty great to have Marty burst off the, the thing leading the stretcher.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yes! We can show up the nerd!

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. I was about to say that!

Avery/GM: We will say, you took one of the medical beds, the hover beds from the cassia and put it on the TSKAM.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: So y'all have this hover bed that. Y'all can put Rho on and, and, and get her into the, into the medical bay. So it's on the other side of the building. From where

Bee/Polaris: you're at. Oh, okay. Well, I guess player. Well back into the ship, we're gonna have to park on the other side

Chris/Ollie: also…

Avery/GM: Parking lot's full, ER is busy. No, I'm kidding.

Chris/Ollie: Just land on some other

Bee/Polaris: yeah, we like wasting resources.

Chris/Ollie: So Ollie's also gonna want to, uh, disassemble his combat rifle and stash the parts inside himself.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. And then he has like little hands inside himself that are putting it together.

Avery/GM: Y'all think this is gonna go so bad. I don't understand. like

Bee/Polaris: No, I just having weapons on hand.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: I cannot fight. I do not shoot.

Avery/GM: Not with your body, but with your mind.

Jenine/Marty: This is true.

Bee/Polaris: I fight with my body with varying degrees of success.

Avery/GM: Mm-hmm. So, okay, Ollie, you do that. I mean, you know your body, you know where you can hide things. I'm not gonna make you roll a skill check for that. Yeah. So you disassemble your, your weapon and you stash the parts inside of your, um, inside your chassis. So y'all are going to, is this the plan everyone wants to go with? Bluffing your way into the medical Bay, past the security checkpoint?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Feel free to come up with a less risky idea.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, it's one of those that's gonna have, well, what does Amp

Jenine/Marty: Does Major Tom have anything to say with this before we go in there? Cause I feel like

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. It's on his authority that we're requisitioning the lab.

Avery/GM: Well. We're here. Uh, how, how do, how, how are we gonna go in? Um, you just, you just want me to go in and present the, the papers and we can just take, uh, this, uh, row person, uh, back there and, and get 'em fixed up, Right?

Bee/Polaris: We're going in emergency style.

Avery/GM: Oh, all right. Are you sure? I mean, we have the requisite, we already got permission to be here. It's not like we got a go the extra mile.

Bee/Polaris: Sure, but I'd like to keep my weapons.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Are they gonna take our weapons if we try to just go in?

Avery/GM: Oh yeah it’s a Secure facility. There's like psionics who are really sick there, and if they got ahold of weapons, they could really do some damage. Like, not even like purposefully, but just like due to the nature of some of their illnesses.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, yeah. Huh?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Huh.

Bee/Polaris: Well…

Avery/GM: I mean, you could, you could be put the whole, whole city of ambrosia. It's just a few, a few miles away. You could put that whole city in danger.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, well anyway.

Chris/Ollie: What's done is done. The gun is stashed.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Polaris will just walk over to Ollie and hand him his laser blades.

Avery/GM: So Machamp is just like, yeah. Um, I don't really think y'all should be bringing those in. I mean, I won't say anything, but I mean it's not exactly safe

Bee/Polaris: Noted… as he hands the second laser blades to Ollie.

Avery/GM: Ollie, do you like disassemble these and also hide them in your orifices?

Chris/Ollie: no. They're probably small enough that they can just. Fit in.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. If you just turn 'em off. Sure. Which players didn't turn 'em off when he handed them to you. He always handed them on.

Chris/Ollie: They're just always on?

Zach/Zahn: what!?

Bee/Polaris: when I said polaris is a danger to public safety, I meant he literally always has them on to some degree.

Chris/Ollie: All like the door, door handles next to the door handles around the ship, have like, scorch marks around all the, uh, light switches on the ship and shit?

Avery/GM: There's just little. There's literal little holes that have been made into makeshift holsters to hold them.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, he has a belt. He has a utility belt.

Avery/GM: What? Oh gosh. Okay. Um, so Machamp isn't gonna say anything

Bee/Polaris: good

Avery/GM: about y'all sneaking in weapons, but, um, is definitely uncomfortable by the idea.

Bee/Polaris: Well, he’ll live

Avery/GM:  and Marty, uh, he helps you get row situated on this hover bed and it's just like so front door or emergency door.

Chris/Ollie: This is a medical emergency.

Zach/Zahn: Polaris your call.

Bee/Polaris: Why is it my call?

Zach/Zahn: I don't know. It was your idea.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I said emergency style. I assumed that we were gonna go in emergency style, but… okay

Jenine/Marty: cool. So like Marty starts like that, like fun little, you know, like when before people start races, they start doing that little hoppy thing.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: That’s what Marty's doing next to the bed that she's ready to push? Rowe all of her fi, all of her little frame.

Bee/Polaris: there's like three of us pushing the gurney. All right. Like go, go, go.

Jenine/Marty: Ready? cool.

Bee/Polaris: Everyone look, look urgent.

Jenine/Marty: Marty like, Starts full sprint towards the door and just goes, move, move, move. We have an emergency. We have an emergency. Please, please help, help, help. We've been, we had permission before. Now this has gotten more critical as she's like starting to like also say different medical terms with it. Like

Bee/Polaris: Yeah!

Jenine/Marty: medical terms that makes sense, but like, The player doesn't know this. But Marty does.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is on the side pushing the gurney behind Marty, like making it look like an actual emergency cause usually there's like two or three people pushing the gurney. Right, in a medical, medical emergency.

Avery/GM: Yeah!

Bee/Polaris: yeah!

Chris/Ollie: yeah!

Zach/Zahn: So Zahn’s running alongside with like cables attached to the bed and a holographic display on his other arm.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Like life, life side readings,

Bee/Polaris: let's go. You just Googled it and it's like a gif on loop.

Zach/Zahn: Yep.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Um, Ollie’s gonna be on the, on a side pushing as well. And he is just going to be, uh, reciting random, but urgent sounding medical, uh, numbers. You know, like, uh, you know, the usual like

Zach/Zahn: like blood pressure blood pressure stuff,

Chris/Ollie: Blood pressure dropping! you know, X over Y!

Jenine/Marty: X over Y?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will just be like, just like get out of the way. Just like making, like moving people aside and like trying to get like, you know, make their way.

Avery/GM: Sure. you come into this medical bay and they are not quite ready to receive you in this way.

Zach/Zahn: they should always be ready.

Bee/Polaris: Right?

Avery/GM: Well, you know,

Zach/Zahn: that's their problem.

Avery/GM: They weren't. Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: And they knew we were coming,

Avery/GM: sort of, uh, whether Oswald told everyone you were coming. Different story. Oh,

Bee/Polaris: we're about to embarrass the fuck outta this man.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I'm so excited.

Avery/GM: So in this medical bay, there are three chambers to the left that are filled with some strange green liquid. And suspended in the liquid are three individuals who look to be sleeping. There's a lab worker nearby checking vital signs on these, uh, little chambers here.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: Also in this room is a set of operating beds next to each other. Uh, there is a cat scan machine, which is. Represented by this little radioactive sign, even though CAT scans are magnetic, I believe, and not radioactive, but whatever.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Avery/GM: there's computers, there's events, there's some other stuff in the back that you can't quite see as you come rushing in here. And the lab worker's, like, uh, I, I, we weren't expecting any, we didn't get any calls about an emergency. Uh  uh what do you, what do you need?

Jenine/Marty: And then I turn to this person and I go, We have permission as well as we had informed your lead here. What is his name? Dr. Um, Oswald is supposed to alert you of our presence here.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, doc, Dr. Oswald. He. They, they didn't say anything. I'll go, I'll go double check. And they run out of this room here and as they do, you hear an alarm going off somewhere else in the building and you do hear Oswald like shouting, ex expletives. Bruce, what do you do? You just heard this person referenced Marty. Could be a different, Marty, you don't know, but you're here. You've caused a distraction. What is your next step?

Caden/Bruce: My next step is going to be to try and like, Get out of the room and go somewhere private. Like, I don't know if there's a washroom or, I don't know if there's like a room that's just like unoccupied?

Avery/GM: you know… Of course I didn't think to make a bathroom, but there's definitely a, a restroom of some kind. Uh, we'll say right here is a restroom with a vent.

Caden/Bruce: Perfect.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: A Bruce sized vent.

Caden/Bruce: is, is is the vent Bruce sized?

Avery/GM: They are, they are, they are Bruce sized.

Caden/Bruce: Okay.

Avery/GM: Because, because,

Chris/Ollie: like Batman, Arthur Asylum ones.

Avery/GM: they're robot sized, so the maintenance bot can get in and out.

Caden/Bruce: Okay. Alright. So the first step of Bruce's plan is to remove the cardboard, like what he made, uh, costume sort of thing, and underneath it. Yes, it was blue, but it's also a maintenance jacket. So now he looks like a maintenance guy. Yeah. And he removes, he removes the glasses because obviously the glasses were part of the Comic-Con disguise and instead puts on like this white baseball hat Because he can and proceeds to like, because it's cardboard, he just folds it up and puts it in the recycling bin because he's a good boy and he recycles and then he'll kind of look up at the vent and having noticed the other vents, is there a way for him to like, I don't know, step on the toilet and like get up in there Because that's what he wants to do.

Avery/GM: The vents are actually in the ground.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, okay. Even better.

Zach/Zahn: It's like a dropdown

Avery/GM: Like I said, robots.

Caden/Bruce: So yeah, he's just gonna open it up and, uh, jump on in.

Avery/GM: Sure. Um, and you do hear some panic going on outside as people are evacuating Oswald's lab and trying to clean up the mess that has been caused.

Caden/Bruce: It's a great distraction

Avery/GM: nothing, nothing putting anyone in deadly danger, but just like, You don't know what chemicals those were. Get away and figure it out first. You know, that kind of thing.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah.

Avery/GM: So yeah, you are in the vents.

Zach/Zahn: What about guy who tripped? Is he ok?

Avery/GM: Uh, physically? Yeah. Emotionally? No. He's probably embarrassed.

Zach/Zahn: I hope he is not covered in potentially bad chemicals.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery/GM: No, no. They, he, he tripped and they flung and they flew far enough away. No acid damage. Its okay.

Caden/Bruce: No NPCs, were harmed in the making of this episode yet.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah. Yet,

Avery/GM: yet,

Zach/Zahn: Oswald's feelings are definitely gonna get hurt.

Avery/GM: So you're in the vents. Where, where to next?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce. Bruce wants to go underneath room three, please.

And thank you. Back underneath the, um, administration room. And now what Bruce is gonna do is he's gonna remove one of the patches that he's wearing. So what Zuli has given him is they gave him like basically, uh, knockout gas capsule, and he's gonna take one out and he's gonna chuck it into the room to activate it and keep him underneath. So hopefully it won't knock him out, but only the people in the room.

Avery/GM: Perfect. We'll say, you'd probably throw it in there and then take a few steps down the vent so that way it won't

Caden/Bruce: Oh yeah, definitely.

Avery/GM: it'll probably get in there, but by the time you get back it probably won't, um, be active anymore. But yeah, you throw this little capsule into the room. Uh, I'm gonna make some saving throws that are probably gonna be awful, cuz these are NPCs, like commoners, so. Yeah, that's a one. And that's a three. Okay. So the two aides that were in this room milling about the one that gave that really boring speech about paperwork, they, you just, you hear a thud and then another thud from inside this vent. And after a couple of moments, this gas kind of dissipates and you were, you were basically told, give it two minutes, the gas becomes inert, and they'll be out for a good hour.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, perfect. So you crawl up into the.

Avery/GM: Into the room now or ?

Caden/Bruce: Yeah. I'm gonna try and break open the door. I realize that there is now event inside the room, but I feel like there is, Bruce would not know that, so I am gonna try and break Open the door instead.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay. Um, you pop out of this event and this is when you notice or actually roll a. Intelligence or no? Yeah. Intelligence. Notice. Check, please.

Caden/Bruce: That is a… That’s a five.

Avery/GM: Okay. Uh, you notice nothing, you're fine.

Caden/Bruce: Okay.

Avery/GM: Totally fine.

Caden/Bruce: Totally not suspicious at all.

Avery/GM: Uh, so this door is a giant vault door with a electronic keyed lock. Um, like keypad lock on it.

Caden/Bruce: Okay. Can I, can I, can I use my com pad to, to try and hack it?

Avery/GM: Sure.

Caden/Bruce: I'm assuming that's another role. Um,

Avery/GM: Let's see here. Yes. Um, it will be a, uh, intelligence sneak check with a plus two bonus since it's hacking. Uh, or, or you can use program instead. If you have better program.

Caden/Bruce: I would rather use program. Um, sure. That makes it a six.

Avery/GM: a six

Caden/Bruce: flat across the board.

Avery/GM: Sure. Uh, so it unlocks, but you. It takes like a good like 10 to 15 minutes to actually get this door open, um, which is a lot longer than you really had hoped for with this kind of mission because timing is everything. The longer you're away from your group, the less likely it is that your disguise will hold up. Um, but the door opens and slides to the side and you are inside the server room. There are computers buzzing and worrying. There's uh, servers, there's monitors, and all kinds of electronic mumbo jumbo here, and you see several terminals that you know, you could probably access this data from. So yeah and then you do also look, and you do see this vent, like right, like, Just right there.

Caden/Bruce: Okay. Having seen in the room, having seen the vent, Bruce is gonna close the door, cause he knows he has another way out that doesn't involve the door and he doesn't want anyone, like, he at least wants notice if someone's gonna come in behind him, even though he's wearing his grate maintenance disguise that no one can see and yeah, he'll go to one of the computers and try and access the files to the funds and see what's been going on.

Avery/GM: Sure, go ahead and roll an intelligence program check.

Caden/Bruce: Ooh,  that is a nine.

Avery/GM: I'm sorry that it's not enough. You get an error code and a little voice says, two more attempts remaining before total lockout.

Caden/Bruce: Well, uh, I'm, I'm still gonna try again cause

Avery/GM: Sure.

Caden/Bruce: Cause I, I, I gotta, uh, that's a little bit better. That's a 10.

Avery/GM: Is that including your plus two bonus?

Caden/Bruce: Oh, no, the nine wasn't even including my plus two bonus. I didn't think I had a bonus on that.

Avery/GM: Yeah, yeah. If you're, are you, wait, are you using your data pad for that one?

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, I'd assume so.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. Then yeah, you get your plus two bonus. Okay. So an 11 and then a 12. Yes. A 12 is what you needed. Woo. So cool. Um, you bust into this server. And start downloading the data. You don't have the time to really go through it here, but you do see the words project epidrome several times on the screen.

Avery/GM: As you're downloading this data and as you're sitting here waiting for the download to happen, you hear a familiar voice coming through the vent as Marty is yelling that they have a medical emergency. Just in the next room over and Marty, this attendant has gone to go get Oswald and Oswald comes barging into the room, all flustered, um, clearly distracted by a bunch of other things going on, and it's just like, really? You had to make a scene coming here. You couldn't have just come in through the front door like a normal person. You had to just make a big scene.

Jenine/Marty: Hi, sorry. Emergency. Hello?

Avery/GM: Hi. Hi Marty. What's the emergency?

Jenine/Marty: I motion to Rho.

Avery/GM: that is, that is an unconscious woman.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I'm sorry. Um, is this not a place where you're trying to like, understand and, uh, fix fixed beings that have, uh, torched. Significantly. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you could tell that this person has been, uh, has been torching. Sorry. I guess you're not as smart as I thought they were. Can I get someone else who is more competent?

Avery/GM: Okay. I understand now. This is the, the person you were, I thought you were talking about yourself when you sent me those messages. I, you know, I recognized that your skills weren't always up to snuff, and so I just, I assumed that it was, it was you.

Bee/Polaris: sir. Can we keep the mudsling to a minimum? We have a patient that needs help.

Avery/GM: Yes. And uh, you are

Bee/Polaris: none of your business. Go get your supervisor.

Chris/Ollie: Just full on Karen on him.

Avery/GM: I am the supervisor!

Bee/Polaris: could have fooled me since you're staff didn't know we were coming.

Avery/GM: Oh, Marty, you have just gotten all kinds of tough talking friends, haven't you? Fine, everyone out of my way. Let me assess the patient. And Oswald starts putting on gloves and is just like, did you get the data that I sent you? Of course you did. You insulted it?

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I'm sorry. Did you double check your work? Because it's definitely incorrect.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie is going to, uh, stop him as he's putting on the gloves and say, sorry, we require your lab, not your assistance.

Avery/GM: Ooh.

Zach/Zahn: Oh!

Bee/Polaris: ouch.

Chris/Ollie: And he's just gonna do that casually as he's continuing the, uh, setup process, plugging, uh, row into the life support and all that.

Avery/GM: Sure. You're transfer row from this floating bed to one of the operating beds and. Oswald is looking very flustered at getting kind of tag teamed by all of these people that came in with their longtime academic rival and is just looking around and is like, okay, you know what? Fine, you don't want my help. You don't need my help. I will be in my lab cleaning up a very dangerous chemical spill…

Bee/Polaris: so go do that.

Avery/GM: Fine, Find your own psionic to help you with the procedure. See if I care and Oswald wanders out of the room and back into their lab.

Bee/Polaris: Did we actually need his help?

Zach/Zahn: Is Machamp here with us somewhere.  

Jenine/Marty: I mean, it would be nice to have like a…

Avery/GM: Machamp is standing there awkwardly like, like that kind of person that's like, doesn't know the context of a fight and but is in a room when a fight occurs.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: And so just like kind of like looking around like, oh yeah, look at these people in these chambers. Uhhuh, this is really interesting. You don't necessarily need Oswald's help. You have a S here with you. In the form of Marty to do this procedure.

Chris/Ollie: We believe in you, Marty.

Avery/GM: Marty, you have all the data available.

Chris/Ollie: You corrected his thing.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: You correct… You did correct the work.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: still it is experimental.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: Bruce, you hear all this commotion going on through the vent. how do you react to hearing your friends on the other side of this wall?

Bee/Polaris: It’s us, its Bruce!

Caden/Bruce: How, how long has my, uh, download Gotta go?

Avery/GM: It is at 65%.

Caden/Bruce: Okay, that's fine. I'm, I'm assuming it's just like a live updating thing, like it just live sends, like, Bruce doesn't have to wait for it to get to a hundred.

Avery/GM: It's, it's on transmit, so it's, it's transmitting to your shuttle.

Caden/Bruce: Okay. In which case he's gonna pop that safety hatch open and try to go towards the voices. If he can hear them, that's, he's gonna assume he can hear them through the vents and that's what he's gonna try and do.

Avery/GM: Sure. Uh, go ahead and roll a either dexterity or intelligence and we'll go with notice.

Caden/Bruce: we'll go dexterity caise that's better for me. So that's a nine.

Avery/GM: Sure Okay. Yeah. Uh, you realize the sounds are coming just from the next room and you follow the vents and you are just underneath the vent. In this lab. Marty, Rho is prepped and ready. Are you gonna perform this procedure with, with her or?

Bee/Polaris: out of curiosity? So there's no one else in this lab, correct?

Avery/GM: Uh, the attendant has come back in and is like, purposefully just like making themselves. It's scarce over here in the corner. Um, and then Machamp is up here somewhere checking out these People.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, sweet. I was gonna say it would be a bigger flex to get his, like assistance, like his attendance to help but not him.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: So up to you Marty.

Jenine/Marty: No, we're gonna do it as a close situation cuz Marty, Marty's not here for, for, for the glitz and the glam. She's here to help Rho. No, they can stay.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I mean, do we want them to, cuz Roe is like not from here and also Oh yeah. Like secret girl.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Before I start, can I like, make sure that like the information that's coming off of like the computers, cuz we have her hooked up, could that be like on like an internal hard drug that we have control of? So it's not going anywhere except for like our own location. Does that make sense? Did I, did I communicate technology terms?

Avery/GM: Yeah, I get what you're saying. Um, you. You could set up a local server because Ollie's an AI and has just a vast amount of computing power. You could set up a local server on Ollie to hold this data.

Bee/Polaris: Yo

Avery/GM: as long as Ollie consents to it.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. We do need Ollie's permission. We gotta ask Ollie about that.

Chris/Ollie: Absolutely.

Jenine/Marty: Ollie, Could you use you as a hard drive? Awesome.

Chris/Ollie: Anything to help our new friend!

Jenine/Marty: Sick. Smexy. Amazing. Wonderful.

Chris/Ollie: Cool. Is that gonna require a processing point or me to be incapacitated.

Avery/GM: Yes. it will require a processing point. You will be able to observe and everything, but you will not be able to go farther than like five feet from the bed while you're connected.

Bee/Polaris: I'll go ahead and since Rho is a secret girl, we should probably get that person to not be in the lab.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Valid.

Bee/Polaris: So Polaris will walk over to them and like gently kinda like tap on the shoulder to get their attention.

Avery/GM: they're just like, uh, yeah. Oh, how can I, how can I help you?

Bee/Polaris: Uh, I'm sorry. Without proper clearance, you can't actually be in this lab. Not right now, at least until we're done.

Avery/GM: Oh, I thought I had proper clearance. Are, are you sure?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Avery/GM: Huh. Well, uh, go ahead and roll a charisma connection.

Bee/Polaris: No, I have nothing in that.

Avery/GM: Or a charisma lead.

Bee/Polaris: No, I have nothing in that either. Charisma connect.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: can, can I help by just giving a quick glare at the person in the back.

Avery/GM: I love it. Yes. Well charisma connect to help. Oh, beautiful.

Bee/Polaris: Please help me. Oh my gosh.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Uh,

Jenine/Marty: you would only get a plus one from me, but you know,

Bee/Polaris: can, is there an intimidate? God, can I do an intimidate? Was there, there's not an intimidate. Dammit.

Avery/GM: I think that would be lead.

Bee/Polaris: Shit, I don't have anything in them.

Jenine/Marty: I got an 11 for help.

Avery/GM: Okay. Bee what did you roll?

Bee/Polaris: Eight.

Avery/GM: Eight.

Bee/Polaris: Eight.

Jenine/Marty: That's not bad.

Avery/GM: well, you're like, Hey, you're lucky. This guy's a moron.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Chris/Ollie: What a maroon.

Zach/Zahn: What a maroon

Jenine/Marty: maroon.

Avery/GM: Between, between Marty's glare and your very like, monotone official way of speaking. This person's just like, uh, well, I, I guess I'll go help. Oswald with the, uh,

Bee/Polaris: yes. Do that

Avery/GM: with the cleanup. Sure. Hey, just make sure these, these folks don't, uh, flatline. Okay?

Bee/Polaris: Sure.

Avery/GM: So, Bruce, you are in this vent. You coming out or are you staying there?

Caden/Bruce: Oh, no, Bruce is coming out. Uh, but I feel like. Beforehand cuz I, I don't, uh, no, I, I don't think Bruce would. I think, yeah, he's just gonna come out

Bee/Polaris: as soon as the vent opens. Polaris goes to grab his laser pistol, remember? He doesn't have it. And then sees Bruce and just stares.

Zach/Zahn: Hold on. Do we know it's Bruce? Because Bruce is in disguise.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. Do we have to roll? To recognize? I feel like we could recognize Bruce.

Avery/GM: That's the genius of it. Y'all recognize your friend to Bruce?

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah,

Avery/GM: but for some reason no one else.

Bee/Polaris and Zach/Zahn: No one else does,

Avery/GM:  no one else sees through these disguises, but y'all are just like, oh, it's Bruce

Bee/Polaris: as soon as Bruce is fully out of the vent, Polaris like speed walks over and does the thing where like he puts his helmet against Bruce. Like, kind of like a hug or like, you know when like cats run over and they like nudge you that?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Cause Polaris doesn't know how to hug. I was gonna say,

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna say something very similar, uh, as Zahn like sees Bruce come out, he's gonna like have the helmet de deconstruct and then he is gonna run over and like bear hug him.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will put like one arm around Polaris and the other arm around Zahn. Someone just be like, I'm sorry I was gone for so long. But I'm here now.

Zach/Zahn: How the heck are you here, man?

Caden/Bruce: Well, I might be stealing data about their finances.

Bee/Polaris: excellent. We're stealing their lab for a moment

Zach/Zahn: temporarily, but we're helping this lady.

Avery/GM: And Bruce, you do see that this person that you only got a glimpse of back on the Cassia, uh, who you've only ever seen actually knocked out.

Bee/Polaris: So this is nothing new.

Caden/Bruce: This is nothing new.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Hatsune Miku over here is laying down on this operating bed. Connected to Ollie and getting ready for some sort of procedure with Marty.

Jenine/Marty: I'm on the other side of the bed with my hands extended being like, oh, woohoo, wait, I wanna hug

Bee/Polaris: pause operation for a hug.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie’s gonna get up and try and go for a hug, but he is gonna get stopped and tug back by the cables.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will hug Marty and like take his hat off with his tail and like put it on Marty's head and then walk over to Ollie and give him a hug and just be like, I missed you guys too. I should probably make sure I've recovered my data pad before we leave, but, um Right. I, uh, I have a gift for you Zahn. And like, he'll pull out the other data pad that Lazuli gave him and just be like, this is the blackmail that the, uh, tigers had on us. And, um, Lazuli, They gave me information on how to delete it, but, uh, I figured there might be some valuable stuff on this that we maybe don't want to delete. and I thought you might have fun with it.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn gladly takes it and is like, and as his helmet reconstructs and he is like, hell yeah, man… When. Bruce, when did you turn into international super spy? Sheesh.

Caden/Bruce: I think Bruce will just shrug and smile and just be like, apparently creativity doesn't just stay in the kitchen.

Bee/Polaris: Speaking of, I have a gift for you, and he pulls out the little canister of like bay leaves that Bruce left behind and hands it to Bruce.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will smile on. Just be like, please tell me you just haven't been consistently eating those bars.

Bee/Polaris: Then I won't, and then he'll walk over to the room.

Zach/Zahn: Food has been spectacularly more boring since you came, since you left.

Bee/Polaris: Well, Marty's been cooking!

Jenine/Marty: Ouch! Ouch!

Avery/GM: Oh, the shade.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God.

Zach/Zahn: It's not a diss on Marty's cooking capabilities. It's a, uh, compliment on Bruce's extravagant cooking capabilities.

Jenine/Marty: Are you digging? You're continually digging a hole in front of Marty.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, you're really saying that. Marty's the basic bitch and Bruce is way better.

Avery/GM: Oh my god.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna shut up.

Bee/Polaris: Thank God you're back. We've only been eating McDonald's.

Chris/Ollie: Hearing Bruce mentioned Lazuli, he's going to be like Lazuli is... are they here on the planet with you?

Caden/Bruce: No, they, um, went to go and investigate some other call and sent me to do this as a solo mission. Basically said that my, uh, the blackmail was done and that's why they gave me the data pad. Um, there's stuff going on with the Hegemony and. It wasn't exactly my skillset, which, um, they're probably right.

Chris/Ollie: I find it hard to believe that they simply kept their word. Maybe we have misjudged the Winstons.

Bee/Polaris: No, we killed their relative. Rich people generally don't like that.

Zach/Zahn: I, at least some of them, despite having, you know,

Chris/Ollie: that would improve the, their, the size of their inheritance if you killed off all their family members, so

Bee/Polaris: Well, sure. But they don't like other people doing the job.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, true. Yeah.

Avery/GM: No one's allowed to kill my uncle but me.

Bee/Polaris: Exactly.

Bee/Polaris: Cause then they'll have the secret satisfaction that they were, the reason their inheritance is bigger.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh. Dastardly devils

Bee/Polaris: indeed

Avery/GM: Marty, as a refresher, the data that Oswald had sent you on this experimental procedure, um, it's called mind melding. Basically, um, you link your mind with a pscion who has been torched or is incapacitated in some way, um, and apply a dose of the brainwave drug To the person that is incapacitated, and once the two minds are linked, the healthy Biopscion will be able to use their powers to heal the mental pathways that have been burned In the torched victim, or at least that's how the experiment is supposed to go.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: Who is going to be administering the dose while you align your energies with Rho?

Bee/Polaris: Oh shit. Who's good at drugging people?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. What kind of a stat would, would that be a stab situation? Would Okay… Could I also defend, could I defend this?

Avery/GM: Sure.

Jenine/Marty: Would you say applying a vaccine is kind of like basting a Turkey?

Bee/Polaris: Bruce is probably excellent at that.

Avery/GM: Let's see it. It is a heal roll.

Bee/Polaris: Ah shit.

Avery/GM: by the book.

Bee/Polaris: Ah, well.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bee/Polaris: I can't help there.

Avery/GM: But

Zach/Zahn: Well shit.

Avery/GM: This particular drug is just a patch.

Bee/Polaris: Oh sick!

Jenine/Marty: okay. That's fine. Yeah. Who, who, who has a Healy heel? Who? Who has some healy Heal? Or did you all just not do it and rely on me?

Bee/Polaris: Uh, yeah. I'm only good at harming.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: We got a medic.

Zach/Zahn: I'm only good at fixing and harming.

Chris/Ollie: I'm pretty good at fixing, but I pretty much can only hacky things.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. We got two harm boys, and a hacker.

Zach/Zahn: Do we, do we have, um, do we have any of, uh, the chips for, for Ollie on us right now?

Chris/Ollie: I don't, I'm I'm pretty preoccupied being the server though.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, yeah. We have a, yeah. Holly's our hard drive.

Avery/GM: Yeah. I mean you can still, yeah, you can still move and stuff. Um, but yeah, I don't think you could install a chip without having to disconnect everything.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, is there like a program or something that we could use that Polaris could like patch onto his helmet? Cause his helmet is essentially a computer. That could like basically assist in letting him know where the best place to put the patch is. Like an x-ray sort of deal.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Roll intelligence program.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh, do I have anything? I, wow. I somehow don't have anything in program. Alright.

Zach/Zahn: Gosh darn it.

Bee/Polaris: but I'm smart.

Zach/Zahn: I was thinking of the exact same thing. You just beat me to the punch.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. Uh, 10.

Avery/GM: That's good enough. I was gonna put it at a 10. So

Bee/Polaris: sweet.

Avery/GM: You actually log into the local server for the institute and find a bunch of like automated like training programs for administering medication. And like, one of them is like basic first aid, right?

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: And you kind of skim past all the boring stuff, like how to identify bandages and stuff like that and you get to the part where it's like applying medicationthere's a friendly little stick figure, um, illustrating how to apply different medicines, and one of them says, brainwave and shows the person just slapping it on someone's, uh, forehead.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh, I'm so glad because I was thinking of like the, the meme where you get a craft single and slap it on someone's face

Chris/Ollie: or it's head on, apply directly to the forehead.

Avery/GM: Exactly.  So I will give you whatever your heel role or heel skill is right now. Um, just make it a plus one for this roll.

Bee/Polaris: Thank goodness. It's negative one.

Avery/GM: And then it's, um, intelligence, since you're using training.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah. I'm uber smart.

Avery/GM: So for you Marty, As Polaris is getting ready to apply this medication, I would like, I would like you to roll and a, a wisdom heal and add your bio skill to the roll.

Bee/Polaris: Fancy!

Jenine/Marty: I have a question. Am I, would I be looking at my heeler foci and I gain the heel, blah, blah, blah. You may attempt to stabilize one mortally wounded adjacent person per round on a turn one rolling heel skills rolled 3D6. So I'm rolling 3D6 question mark. Yes.

Avery/GM: Yeah, yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Sick!

Avery/GM: That's totally, yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my God. Oh, that was so terrifying. The one is gone. Wonderful.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, thank God.

Jenine/Marty: Um, one of my dice kept rolling and it was right next to the dye that rolled a one, so I was just watching it roll. Rolled a six, so that's cute. Um, So it's gonna wisdom. Does a 14 do anything?

Avery/GM: perfect. You are, so as we kind of talked, like Scions can kind of see like the, the, the. Energy around them, they can kind of see this, this psychic energy around them, right?

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: and when you really focus on it, that's when you really notice like just how much there is and there's kind of like a pattern to the way it moves and you are able to manipulate this, um, energy usually to heal people physically. But following your memory of the data that Oswald sent you and the corrections you made, you align this energy in a way that connects you to Rho’s mind. And as you do, uh, you give a thumbs up to Polaris and Polaris, Go ahead and make your roll.

Bee/Polaris: I'm gonna, I'm gonna unpeel this craft single and slap it on Rho’s forehead.

Avery/GM: I mean, it's not a very hard roll. I will say that.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent. Okay. What am I doing? So heel is a plus one right now and I'm adding intelligence.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: So plus two… 11.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Perfect. Uh, you apply a patch to a forehead.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go. Probably the hardest role I've done in this game so far.

Avery/GM: Oh, no. I hope not.

Bee/Polaris: I'm kidding. I'm so kidding.

Avery/GM: And Marty, you see Polaris's hand come down on onto Rho's forehead, and suddenly there is a flash of bright white light. And as this light fades, you find yourself in a field of flowers, a beautiful rainbow of flowers, different colors just spread out around you. And in different directions In this field, you see several different figures standing or sitting or kneeling in the distance, and it takes you a moment as your mind eyes, I guess, your eyes in this place kind of focus and settle as you, uh, see these figures, you see to your left is a Rho who is wearing red combat armor and she is raising boulders into the air and like moving her hands and you just see these boulders crumble to dust. And then another gesture reforms the rock. And she repeats this process over and over.

Avery/GM: To your right, you see a Rho wearing a black gown, hunched over what looks like a memorial of some kind, and she is weeping. Directly ahead of you. You see Rho is wearing a golden gown of radiant light. She is smiling and embracing a figure that you cannot make out from this distance. And then as you look behind you, you see a Rho wearing the same blue vac suit that you found her in on the Cassiopeia.

Avery/GM: And she appears to be looking at a Holo-projection of a blue and green planet. And while not crying, she definitely seems depressed. And as you take this scene in Rho, as you currently know her appears next to you. And begins to speak…

(Ambience fades out, Outro plays then fades down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Production. Intro and Outro Music Produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. Tracks used include: Starbase Omega, Mega City Slums, Covert Ops, Pattern Recognition, Starship Medical, and Ethereal Plane. We’ll be back on August 15th  with our next episode.

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Episode 26 - Welcome to the Institute

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 26 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Intro plays, fades down, ambience fades up)

Avery/GM: Bruce, you are getting ready for your next mission with Lazuli. you learned from your mission to Calydon that something is going on out in Hegemony space on the planet of Ithaca. some sort of demonstration or attack or something the Oracles aren't really sure, but Lazuli knows that you are not an experienced fighter, and so that mission might not be the best suited for you and your skillset.

So instead, you and Lazuli are actually on the, um, main spacecraft that the Oracles call home. you're about to board a shuttle to head down to Olympia. for your next and what Lazuli reveals to be your final mission for the Oracles to quote unquote call you even with Lazuli, and you've been with the Oracles for about, I think three weeks have passed since everything else has happened.

Is that fair to say, group? It feels like about three weeks.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I'm time blind. I'm the worst person to ask for that. You're gonna have to refer to someone else.

Jenine/Marty: Yes and

Avery/GM: yes. And it feels like it. I, I feel like all the time skips we've done, it's been about three weeks.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. I mean, wait, well, did, didn't we have to repair the  Cassiopeia? This took long.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You had to repair the Cassiopeia you had to, well you repaired it twice.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: You traveled back and forth, uh, back to, um, the like black hole system to meet up with Machamp.

Bee/Polaris: Right, right.

Avery/GM: And then you traveled back to Olympia. So Yeah, it's about three weeks.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. We'll call it three weeks and some change.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You know, you haven't gotten to know Lazuli perfectly well, I, I don't know if you'd call them a friend, but maybe there's been like a mutual respect that has been built between the two of you. And, uh, lazuli is standing there as you're about to get on the shuttle and just says, you know, Bruce, I actually did not expect you to survive this long.

Caden/Bruce: I don't know if I should say thank you, but, um, thanks.

Avery/GM: You're, you're very resourceful is what I want to say. The Oracles and I are going to be heading out to Ithaca, um, to assess whatever this demonstration is that the Hegemony are plotting. We're sending you down to Olympia, as you know, to trace the funding for this little shadow cabal going on in the Republic ranks.

So I just, in case we don't come back, I wanted to give you this and they hand you a data pad. That is their copy of all the data that was scrubbed from Bragos, the security cameras, the, the docking logs and everything. And they say once you finish this mission, just hit this button and you can delete everything on here and we'll be even.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will nod and put the data pad in like his, not front pocket, but like inside front pocket of, uh, what he's wearing

Avery/GM: Lazuli says, I know that, I know that you've gotten good at disguising yourself, but this getup is interesting to say the least. So yeah, go ahead and describe what you are wearing.

Caden/Bruce: So what Bruce is wearing is what is probably the most closet cosplay going on. Um, but he's wearing these giant round glasses that kind of like, don't really fit his face. They're kind of like Harry Potter-esque. Um, but like obviously he tried to make them fit a Scaph but like definitely weren't intended to. So they're kinda like perched on top of his head. And then he's wearing this like bright blue coat and pants and like on top of it is like this box that's tried to like cut out to resemble a shield shape. But like you can tell that it was handmade. So it's just like questionably just a shape and he's just, like, kind of dressed like a superhero. He’s not too sure, but it's the kind of thing where you're just like, ah, yes, clearly going to a convention as a cosplayer who's never really cosplayed before, but he's trying. He's trying his best.

Avery/GM: Excellent. Lazuli says, I actually kind of hope that you run into the Silver Shield because I kind of wanna see their reaction to this.

Uh, please, please record it if you can, so I can see it. If it, if we come back from this mission, will you?

Caden/Bruce: I will try my best. I, uh, made a mini shield for them to sign and Bruce will kind of show it off. He had too much fun with this.

Avery/GM: Is it, is it made out of like cardboard or are we talking like actual, like Some sort of like mat… metal material or what?

Caden/Bruce: Oh, no, no, no, no. It is a hundred percent made from like pizza box cardboard.

Avery/GM: I love it.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, my heart.

Avery/GM: Well, uh, you, you'd better get going. I, I think the tour of, of the psionic Research Institute starts in just a few hours and you'll, you'll need to get down there and, and get in position. Bye Bruce, and they hold out their hand for a shake.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will offer his and just be like, I, uh, wish you luck as well

Avery/GM: Okay. Uh, well, I'm not good at goodbyes, so, uh, bye. And, uh, they kind of just like exit the docking bay

Caden/Bruce: I think Bruce just chuckles to himself.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh.

Avery/GM: you board this little one person shuttle or?

Caden/Bruce: Oh, yeah.

Avery/GM: Cool. And we flash forward a couple hours and you are in the lobby of the Psionic Rehabilitation and Research Institute, you have been tasked with obtaining some data here by the Oracles and, uh, you've been given a few tools to complete your mission. Do you want to reveal what those tools are or save them for a surprise?

Caden/Bruce: I'll save them for a surprise.

Avery/GM: Cool. So Lazuli has stated that the funds for Project Epidrome which was the data that you stole from Calydon, showed that they were being diverted from this particular lab. Specifically, and so it's possible that this lab might have something to do with that project or with the conspiracy going on in the Republic.

You are part of a tour group who is here basically, or on the surface. The tour group is here to tour the institute and see all the cool medical research they're doing to help psionics who have psionic related diseases or illnesses, but really mostly everyone here is here to see the hero known as the Silver Shield.

A superhero of the Republic who has done a lot of heroic deeds and has become something of a icon at this point. They have comic books and they have cartoons and holo-vids made of them and their adventures and some things are probably a little bit exaggerated, but some of them are based in truth.

And you are in this tour group and it is being led by a tiny gold colored alien with bright blue eyes and their head slash neck is kind of long and serpentine, but the rest of their body is kind of humanoid. But they are very short. They're like a foot and a half tall. And he says, hello, uh, group. I am Nagani.

And I will be your tour guide today. While you're in the institute, please stay with the group. We don't want you getting accidentally lost because you may end up as next week's dissection experiment and no one laughs at his joke and he says that that's a joke. We, we don't actually dissect people here.

That's that's just a little something I do for the kids. Oh shit. Okay. Follow me. You are starting to get a tour of this facility.

Now we flash back to the rest of the group. Y'all have started your approach to Olympia. Uh, Polaris, you're flying obviously. Where's everyone else at on the ship?

Chris/Ollie: How long has this trip taken?

Avery/GM: from the black hole system to Olympia was about four days.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I imagine Ollie's just been tinkering away at his, his new body.

Jenine/Marty: I've probably been at communi… at the little communications box sitting area.

Bee/Polaris: The comm station.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. That one!

Bee/Polaris: It's a, it's a cardboard box that Marty puts on her head and there's like a tin can with a string.

Jenine/Marty: 100%

Avery/GM: Zahn?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn has been, um, modding. He's been going through and upgrading everybody's guns to give a plus two damage.

Bee/Polaris: I wish I had a gun!

Jenine/Marty: Do you want Marty's laser pistol? Cause she's not gonna use it.

Chris/Ollie: There was an armory on the Cassiopeia.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but we left the Cassia and Polaris didn't grab a gun. Bri has Polaris's laser pistol.

Jenine/Marty: You should, you should take Marty's laser pistol cuz she's not gonna be able to use this.

Bee/Polaris: Do you not have a shoot skill?

Jenine/Marty: No!

Avery/GM: I think we talked about this last session about like someone like needs to give Marty, like target practice training or something.

Zach/Zahn: Something like that.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Well the custodian ... Bear probably could have, but the custodians, uh, did an evil and then Rho got in trouble, so we gotta help Rho first.

Jenine/Marty: I am all charisma and health!

Zach/Zahn: Right, you're the tank.

Bee/Polaris: Charismatically shoot people to lower their health.

Avery/GM: Oh gosh.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. you can take her laser pistol if you want it cuz she's not also totally forgot that it was there.

Bee/Polaris: Unless it, unless it like comes up that we actually need it though. Polaris probably won't take it. He's not gonna take Marty's only form of protection away from her. Especially when he has two laser blades.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, okay.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God.

Jenine/Marty: That's fine.

Bee/Polaris: That he can probably throw,

Jenine/Marty: yeah,

Chris/Ollie: use shoot to throw the laser blades.

Bee/Polaris: Um, I actually...

Zach/Zahn: no, that's, no. I guess it'd still be a dexterity stab so nevermind.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I'm flipping through my foci to see if I actually can throw, uh, I guess it would have to be considered a thrown weapon, but I could add my stab bonus to it if I, if it was

Avery/GM: you, you can, you can shorten the length to make it a knife. I think it can be a thrown.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah.

Avery/GM: We will. We will reduce. Cause I think it's 2d8, I think it would just, we'll just reduce the dice to, to 2D6.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. If thrown, if, if knife. Okay. La I'll

Avery/GM: if thrown. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Laser knife.

Zach/Zahn: Well, if you have a weapon, Just pick one of your weapons and add plus two damage to it and Zahn has upgraded it.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay. And you're spending all those, uh, all the resources needed for that. Yep.

Bee/Polaris: You said 2d6 for the laser knife?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: So what are we adding to our laser pistols?

Zach/Zahn: Just plus two damage plus two to damage,

Avery/GM: so

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Avery/GM: It would be 1d6 plus two

Jenine/Marty: plus two. Okay.

Avery/GM: Automatically, or whatever it is. Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Yep.

Avery/GM: Cool.

Bee/Polaris: I don't have a weapon that can be upgraded. So

Avery/GM: No. Your, your blade, your one of your blades.

Bee/Polaris: Also, I do have a knife knife.

Avery/GM: A knife. Knife,

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Instead of a laser knife, I have an actual like knife blade knife.

Zach/Zahn: So I'm boosting damage or weapon damage output is the, the verbiage. So I don't know how I can do that For a laser knife or a laser blade?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Or yeah…

Avery/GM: make it hotter.

Zach/Zahn: Make it hotter.

Bee/Polaris: Crank up the heat.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. That just makes it more unstable.

Bee/Polaris: I, I mean, we could just save that for a laser pistol. You know.

Avery/GM: Yeah. That's fine too. Whatever works. Cool. So you're modding, Polaris is flying. Marty, you're at the comm station and Ollie is, is down in the hold, repairing or fixing up his newest body..

Chris/Ollie: I'm building my masterpiece.

Bee/Polaris: getting his beach bod.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I'm getting Beachbody ready!

Avery/GM: We're gonna pump you up.

Bee/Polaris: Hey, where's Machamp? Speaking of pump up?

Avery/GM: Um, yeah, Machamp is, uh, chilling. Um, he, he, he didn't want to be presumptuous and take the captain's chair, um, especially after getting kind of a weird look from Hermes's, uh, holo projection. So, Machamp took a seat at the weapons station.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. I mean, Hermes projects his little alien guy onto the onto, so the captain chair and regularly gets told no. So..

Avery/GM: Right. So y'all started approaching Olympia when you got an alert on your comms. Um, and it looks like Marty, it is a communication from one of the ships out here patrolling the space around Olympia.

Jenine/Marty: Sick.

Avery/GM: Do you answer?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Yeah. We have nothing to hide.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: I mean,

Jenine/Marty: we have nothing to hide.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, where's Rho's Body?

Avery/GM: Rho is chilling in one of the beds, I assume.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, right, right. Okay. Yeah. We have nothing to hide.

Avery/GM: And Marty, you answer and the person is very quick and to the point and just says, attention, unidentified ship, you are approaching the Republic capital, Olympia. Only authorized personnel are allowed on or off planet. Please present your authorization or prepare to be detained.

Jenine/Marty: I just go, okay, please hold. And then I like put them on hold. Sir, I think they need you on comms.

Avery/GM: Oh gosh. What was his real name? We keep calling

Everyone: Major Tom.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: You forgot your own pun!

Avery/GM: I know, right?

Bee/Polaris: His first name. Major. Your last name. Uh, oh. Wait, no. First name

Bee/Polaris: Tom?

Bee/Polaris: No. First name. Ma. Last name Champ.

Avery/GM: Um. Oh my gosh. See, this is, this is what I was talking about with the lack of sleep. Okay, cool. Major Tom. Yeah, major Tom says, uh, yeah. Um, we sh we should be able to use the, uh, the authorization for the lab use. You mind if I just, and he, and he kind of gestures at the comms computer? Uh, to you, Marty?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. She gives a little nod and she just gives two thumbs up. She goes, you got this. Woo!

Zach/Zahn: woo.

Avery/GM: Sure. Um, Polaris, just keep flying straight. Don't, don't do anything dangerous, okay?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris immediately does a barrel roll. No, I'm kidding.

Avery/GM: Machamp goes over to the comm station, pushes the talk button and just says, uh, this is ma Major Tom, um, Major Major Tom. Uh, authorization code alpha delta 74, and there's a little delay. In the communications and Polaris, you see the ships are not moving yet. And you're getting closer and they're not moving and then…

Bee/Polaris: I'll stop. So they don't think we're trying to blast through.

Avery/GM: No. Um, I was, that, that's just me building false suspense.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. I was like, oh, I didn't realize the cops stopped. I'm still rolling.

Avery/GM: No, you're fine.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: And then the comms ping again, and they just say, uh, authorization verified. Please follow our ships down to the surface and we will be happy to get you where you need to go. Do not deviate from your path or you will be blown out of the sky. Thank you and have a nice day. Their demeanor totally changed, um, between those two messages. So…

Bee/Polaris: okay. Now I do the barrel roll.

Avery/GM: Uh, do now you do the barrel and you get blown up. No.

Bee/Polaris: I don't deviate from the path. I just do a barrel roll.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Instant tpk. Good Sesh

Bee/Polaris: I'm kidding.

Chris/Ollie: you all die.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Okay. I'll follow

Chris/Ollie: end of campaign

Bee/Polaris: I'll follow the law.

Avery/GM: Bruce, somewhere you feel in your heart. Kidding.

Bee/Polaris: The crushing weight of lost Friends?

Jenine/Marty: I have, I have a question about these, these people that are following us.

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm.

Jenine/Marty: What, which,

Avery/GM: sure.

Jenine/Marty: So would you say that they're voluntarily like serving us or not? And are they like nice to us?

Avery/GM: They're not hostile towards you.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Avery/GM: Um, they're not really serving you, but they are aiding you in what you're doing.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool.

Bee/Polaris: I do have a follow up question after you're done, Jenine.

Avery/GM: uh oh.

Jenine/Marty: Cause I'm just wondering. Um, this is based off of, uh, if you go to page 24 of, of the book, I have the a Author… Authority Foci and I can roll against if someone is nice, if an NPC uh, once per day you can make a request from an NPC who is not openly hostile to you, rolling charisma or lead, and a difficulty of the NPCs moral score I was just wondering, Can I like bank in that right now? Or like, does this seem like a, maybe I shouldn't situation yet.

Bee/Polaris: I feel like we're good.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: Um, so I mean, you're, you're getting what you, what you need already, so unless there is something specific you're aiming for, um, I think you're good right now.

Jenine/Marty: Sick. I'll save that for when we're inside.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet! Boss the nerd around.

Jenine/Marty: I would never don't tempt her like this!

Chris/Ollie: Charisma lead the nerd!

Jenine/Marty: Do not tempt her like this.

Bee/Polaris: Go fetch us some bubble tea nerd.

Chris/Ollie: No charisma lead check the nerd to participate in the experiment that Disre… like destroys his reputation,

Bee/Polaris: but he's an assistant. He only hands you stuff. Okay, sweet.

Jenine/Marty: I digress. What's up?

Avery/GM: Um, cool. So you follow these folks… folks like they're freaking farmers or something.

Bee/Polaris: I call everyone folks.

Avery/GM: I know

Jenine/Marty: retweet!

Bee/Polaris: They have grass like in their helmet on the mouthpiece.

Avery/GM: You follow the folks down to the southern continent of. One of the southern continents of Olympia. Cause it's a globe, not a flat surface. So one of the southern continents.

Bee/Polaris: we don't know that.

Avery/GM: Um, and there are several different points of interest here. Your main point of interest is here, of course. And the people on the line, after they get down to you, they. Uh, they ping you the, or they send you a little map of, of the area with the location of the institute, uh, pinged on your map, but you've also got the capital city of Ambrosia here. Got this cool little forest that you probably would've had to have hidden in and if you ran the blockade and you've got Fort Zeus over here.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh, fancy.

Avery/GM: And there's a desert, but don't worry about the desert. You guys won't have to go there.

Bee/Polaris: What the hell? It's called the Desert of Exile. What do you mean? Don't worry about the desert.

Jenine/Marty: I think it's just a neat name.

Avery/GM: It's just a neat name. Yep.

Chris/Ollie: Totally. Totally. An ironic name.

Jenine/Marty: Positive thinking. Positive thinking.

Avery/GM: So you know that there is a docking bay in the city of Ambrosia where you could rent some sort of overland transport to get to the research institute.

Zach/Zahn: Why rent one when…

Avery/GM: You also…  

Zach/Zahn: we have one.

Avery/GM: You also know… True. So you could land in the city of Ambrosia and travel over land or you do know that there is a um, docking bay at the institute.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, where's the capital building? And are all of the important people in there?

Avery/GM: Um, the Capital City's right here.

Bee/Polaris: No, no, no, no, no. The capital building in the capital city are all of the important people having a meeting in there yet?

Avery/GM: I mean, it's probably midday, so there's probably some important lawmakers there.

Chris/Ollie: you just gonna like bomb the capitol or something?

Bee/Polaris: Ok. I, I'm, I'm not gonna go on this tangent just to save time. I was gonna make a joke, but let's, yeah, I'll dock at the research institute.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, yeah, it's, I mean, it's the November 13th, so it's not quite the fifth, but, uh,

Bee/Polaris: oh my God.

Avery/GM: So the docking bay here is, is much less a bay and more of a giant parking lot like. If y'all have ever been to an Ikea.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: Just that sprawling mass of concrete

Bee/Polaris: I take.

Avery/GM: That's basically what it is.

Bee/Polaris: I take three parking spaces.

Zach/Zahn: Wow!

Avery/GM: Cool.

Zach/Zahn: You're one of those people.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, I think we established that Polaris has like a space Twitch channel that's like car dudes, but like Space ships.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Polaris is a car dude. That's right.

Bee/Polaris: He's one of those people. But no, I'll take a reasonable amount of parking spaces.

Avery/GM: Sure. Um, so you land here, there's enough room in this, uh, Parking lot for about 30 ships on the side that you're parking on.

Bee/Polaris: How neat.

Avery/GM: But it's, it's, it's fairly empty. There's maybe six or seven other ships here.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet. I park as close to the door as possible, but like legally.

Avery/GM: Sure. And you see several. Like next, next to some of these ships, you do see several like metal crates kind of stacked around. Um, perhaps used for like storage of like spare parts or cargo that was like offloaded from these ships but hasn't been brought in.There's, you know, some trash floating around cuz people are gross. You know, it's a standard parking lot. I don't know why I'm taking so long to describe a parking, sorry.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was about to say, the way you're describing it is like, you guys can take these crates if you want.

Avery/GM: I don't know. That's, yeah. Sorry. I'm I, God damn it. Okay.

Bee/Polaris: You're fine. I was like, oh shit. Loot!

Avery/GM: you land. And we go back to Bruce real quick. Bruce. Um, as you're coming into the lobby of the institute and you're beginning your tour. Nagani says, now we do ask that you check all dangerous weapons at this security checkpoint before we continue, as not all the patients are safe enough to be around weapons, and so we just ask for security purposes that you check your weapons at the door and then we will return them to you upon completion. Unfortunately, the Silver Shield will not be able to sign any weapons, and then Nagani looks at your little cardboard shield. You can keep that though. I think that's fine. Um, did you bring any weapons with you?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce did. Um, Bruce would've brought Polaris's, uh, pistol, but what he's done is, has been to design it to look like part of the costume, so, So as much as it's a pistol, he's basically like taped cardboard boxes around it. So it just looks like a cardboard, L like it doesn't look like a pistol at all. Just like basically made this really bad like cardboard holder and then painted it.

Jenine/Marty: Yes. Beautiful. Wonderful cover girl.

Caden/Bruce: And it's like, Strapped to his left hand side. So it looks like a fake, terribly made pistol. He hundred percent does not hand it in.

Bee/Polaris: That is so funny.

Avery/GM: Roll a charisma. Sneak check.

Caden/Bruce: Oh goodness.

Chris/Ollie: Any bonus for the costume?

Avery/GM: Plus one for the costume.

Caden/Bruce: Oh good cuz I don't think that's gonna help either way. Uh. Cause I got a negative one on sneak. That's a two.

Avery/GM: Oh. Um,

Bee/Polaris: you drop it and it goes off.

Avery/GM: That's better than anything I was gonna come up with. Yeah, you are making a show of like, Looking in your pockets for things that you might need to put into this, like little, it, it's basically one of those like plastic bins that you do at like the courthouse or something, right? Or the airport. And uh, and you accidentally drop this cardboard covered laser pistol and it just fires a beam and it ricochets off the ground and it hits something on the ceiling and comes back down and hits the, this bubbling fountain in the lobby and there's just an explosion of water all over the lobby and you just see this, this small robot in the corner that has a mop and it was just getting ready to put it away and it looks over and then you just see its head just sort of lower…

Everyone: Oh!

Avery/GM: In disappointment.

Bee/Polaris: You monster.

Avery/GM: And the guards don't take it as you were trying to sneak this in, but more of a, oh, you were getting ready to turn this over and you're a clutz, so,

Caden/Bruce: oh, thank goodness.

Avery/GM: And so they pick it up and they're just like, we'll, we'll hold onto this for until you leave. I think that's best for everybody. Uh, everyone please watch your step. The floor is now very slippery. We do not want anyone tripping. That is a very dangerous hazard.

Caden/Bruce: Sorry, and Bruce will just kinda like tuck his tail in.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Oh gosh. So your group is starting this way and Nagani leads you into this room. Leads you into this room here. And this is just a basic office. There are people kind of milling about here, filling out paperwork, doing some medical billing and coding, all very fancy stuff here.

Nagani just says this is our administration office, albeit not the most exciting room in the, uh, in the building, but definitely something that every hospital needs in order to function. This is Terrence. Uh, he's our latest hire in the office. Terrance, why don't you tell us a bit about the work you do and they start kind of like giving this like long, boring conversation about paperwork.

You look and you see. That this door right here has a label on it called Server Room.

Caden/Bruce: Ooh.

Avery/GM: And from your briefing with Lazuli, you know that that is your goal.

Caden/Bruce: Okay.

Avery/GM: I'll also say you saw this right here in the lobby, which is a vent, and you also see this vent right here as well.

Caden/Bruce: Good to know. Good to know.

Avery/GM: Do you do anything in this room yet or are you just kind of following along for now?

Caden/Bruce: The only thing Bruce is gonna try and do, which I think is quite easy, given the size of Bruce, is to make sure that he is last in the group.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay. Um, yeah, everyone, everyone else in this group is like, I. If not, not, not necessarily smaller because Bruce is so big but also smaller cuz these people are younger than Bruce. Like not by much like late teens, early twenties, you know, and so yeah, you're may maybe, uh, playing off like, oh yeah, let the excited kids go first. That's fine. Um, you are last in the group as you come into room six and has Bruce been around for any of the interactions with Marty and Oswald?

Caden/Bruce: No.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. Marty, could you describe Oswald for us?

Jenine/Marty: Okay. They are about like a five eight, um, human with like shaggy brown hair. And, uh, big round glasses and, uh, dark brown eyes. Um, their skin tone is like same color as Marty's, so pretty, like, not super dark, but like, kind of dark. And they're in, they're dressed very daper, you know, like, like the, like nice vest and like the nice jacket, like those sweater vest jacket kind of situation and they, they most likely have those like fancy Oxfords. They're, they, they're a fancy, fancy lad or attempts to be a fancy lad, and that's and very punchable face, um, is what you see standing in front of you

Avery/GM: and you come into this lab and this person is, is standing there and is just like, oh, great. Another tour group. Well come on in if you must. Uh, this is my lab. This is where we research all the latest medical interventions, for psionics and torching specifically, please don't touch anything. Everything's very delicate and points at you, Bruce, and it's like you especially don't touch anything cuz you look very clumsy.

Caden/Bruce: Accurate though.

Avery/GM: And Nagani is just like, uh, this is of course, Dr. Oswald, the, the lead researcher here. Well, as of yesterday, lead researcher, there's been some, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Anyway, please follow me through to the next room and we will continue our tour. If you have any questions for Dr. Oswald, please feel free to ask them. They are very knowledgeable. And Oswald kind of rolls their eyes.

Caden/Bruce: Is there any like beakers or anything that's like on the tabletops as such?

Avery/GM: There is, so as, as you are coming through this, um, lab, there is a alien researcher that is walking from this, this little desktop here, and they have some chemicals in their hand.

Caden/Bruce: Sweet.

Avery/GM: And they're trying to walk them over to this laser grid.

Caden/Bruce: I wanna try and trip them with my tail.

Avery/GM: Sure. Roll. Hmm. What do we wanna roll for that? I think it's dexterity for sure.

Zach/Zahn: Dex Sneak

Avery/GM: or are? Yeah. Are you trying to be sneaky about it or are you trying to make it like, look like an accident or just Uh,

Caden/Bruce: I feel like, I dunno if it necessarily has to be sneaky. Cause I feel like it's the kind of thing of like, As like a cat walks, it kind of swishes its tail sort of thing. If it's like upset or angry, like I don't feel like it's necessarily sneaky

Jenine/Marty: connect as you are connecting

Bee/Polaris: your tail with their leg. I feel like there should be some sort of bonus if you're trying to make it look like an accident because the whole group did just watch you drop a laser pistol.

Avery/GM: Oh, I was gonna give a bonus for sure.

Bee/Polaris: Sick.

Avery/GM: Cause it's playing into the, in, into the bit. Let's go… You can either do dexterity punch because it is you. You can treat this as like an unarmed combat skill, um, or a dexterity sneak. With a plus two bonus to either one.

Caden/Bruce: We'll go with punch only because I don't have a negative one in that.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Caden/Bruce: And that is a, Ooh, that is a very good roll now I have to math. That is a 13.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh, yes. Okay. You trip this alien intern, um, and they fall to the ground and their chemical experiment flies across this room and hits the laser grid and explodes in a cloud of chemicals and an alarm starts sounding, and Oswald just says to you, what did I tell you? Please get out. We need to fix this. Everyone out of the lab, now we have to seal this place off. Oh, this is just what I needed right before Marty comes. Are you kidding me? And we flash back to the crew of the TSFKAM.

(ambience fades out, outro music plays)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1upPodcast 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: Orbital Platform, Starbase Omega, Star Freighter and Mega City Slums. We’ll be back on August 1st with our Next Episode.

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Episode 25 - Calling in a Favor

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 25 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

(Intro plays, fades out. Ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: So you have a few options for what you want to end up doing. You could go troll Oswald.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, let's do that.

Avery/GM: Call in your favors.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Fuck that guy.

Avery/GM: you could investigate these wormhole and Marty could try the experiment by herself. You could also say, screw all this and just, you know, blow up the Cassiopeia and just say bye Rho, I mean…

Bee/Polaris: let's go to the mall.

Jenine/Marty: The mall?

Avery/GM: You could go to the mall.

Chris/Ollie: We still haven't spent that five milli we got.

Bee/Polaris: oh yeah, we got five mil.

Jenine/Marty: You're right.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go to the beach. Let's have a beach episode!

Chris/Ollie: we should pick up like a,

Jenine/Marty: Beach episode, yeah!

Chris/Ollie: we should get a Spezos Prime subscription so we don't have to actually go somewhere to buy things.

Avery/GM: Jungle's Currently dead yo.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Jungle's dead because of, you know…

Zach/Zahn: Supposed to be.

Bee/Polaris: … the terrible. Yeah. I mean, the dude said that it was an urban legend. I mean, well, he said that, you know. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Cool.

Avery/GM: Yeah, there's nothing, nothing nefarious going on, I promise.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, there's tons of stuff nefarious going on, just not that asterisk anyway. Should probably get Rho up and running so we can get her home because like being able to go home is probably gonna make her happy so she won't have a huge emotional outburst and destroy herself.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. So we need to get her up.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: And Marty like,

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Just…

Jenine/Marty: Marty sends out like the email draft that she made to send like, so we can do, we wanna use our favors, so we're able to go.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, do they have to be favors? Could we just, uh, tell them like, Hey, you're our friends. Do you guys wanna stick it to some fucking nerd?

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Okay. Here me out. And then like, she rewrites the email and she's like, ok, what if,

Bee/Polaris: oh, I don't, Polaris doesn't say that. I'm sorry. That's just me.

Jenine/Marty: No, you're fine. We could also word it like this way in the email and the way like it's worded is like, we would like to conduct this. We would like to help the Republic in medical research and prove The theory that this person wrote is incorrect, but do it in their space to get their assistance in it and like that way, cause that's worded in a way that's not like we're using our favor, it's just kinda like, Hey, we saw this thing happen and we kind of wanna test it. We also don't wanna put Rho in danger.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Well no, we could totally like leave him out because if he's like the leading research on the researcher on this

Bee/Polaris: and he fucked up.

Chris/Ollie: On this stuff. He's probably got the most advanced lab.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. That's why I said we should use his lab.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, exactly. So we should just need to, to go to, uh, the Republic and say, Hey, we need the best, most advanced lab you've got for dealing with psychics and it'll probably be that lab and we'll just go there.

Bee/Polaris: Now, Fair Warning, we did just listen to a recording where, uh, I believe representative of some sort of the Republic

Chris/Ollie: Yeah

Bee/Polaris: is totally doing some schema ass bitch stuff. So. We might wanna let Machamp know about that.

Chris/Ollie: That was what I was kind of like,

Bee/Polaris: we should probably call Machamp on into a meeting.

Jenine/Marty: Mm.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, because don’t know if we wanna blow the lid off it immediately, but Yeah. Being like, Hey, There’s stuff going down.

Bee/Polaris: Ya Bosses.

Chris/Ollie: We need her in order to help you combat, you know, all this nefarious stuff cuz she knows things

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: That no one knows. So we need to help her out at any cost.

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Could set up like, A Zoom meeting or do we wanna do this like at the..?

Bee/Polaris: No, we need that guy in person

Avery/GM: Hermes will say, I apologize for not playing this sooner, but I did not want to be hunted. You will not let them hunt me, right?

Jenine/Marty: No.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, absolutely not. Hermes.

Bee/Polaris: No.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, of course not, Hermes, you are one of us.

Bee/Polaris: You are the ship.

Avery/GM: Well, that is a relief. I do think helping Rho should be our first priority as she is currently in danger and I am only theoretically in danger.

Zach/Zahn: Fair. Marty, what's this about A lab or something to um Get Rho up and functioning again?

Jenine/Marty: Well, so my colleague, you know, okay… Oswald… Doctor... Anyways, he works at one of the top research institutions for Psionics. So it might be good to like maybe conduct because it does seem like in theory, and like she pulls out like the tablet with like the document in theory, like, we could do this like here and now and I can do everything here, which is, which is feasible and everything. I did find like, um, there were some mistakes in the document anyways, that's beside the point. We could do it here and try and fix her, but maybe doing it in like laboratory in a safe space with other Psionics might also be helpful in a way of like if it goes wrong, cause this research could be kind of wrong, not me judging someone, but it's really good work anyways. That's what I'm thinking. Sorry.

Zach/Zahn: Got it.

Chris/Ollie: Totally innocently, like, oh no, I don't wanna show 'em up at all. Just, it's the best spot.

Zach/Zahn: Well, seeing as how I know literally nothing about brain stuffs and Psionics I can't help but agree about having to deal with potential bad things involving that. Are they A Republic contracted lab?

Jenine/Marty: I'm gonna assume Yes.

Avery/GM: Yeah, the, the facility that Oswald works at is stationed on Olympia and it's funded by the Republic. You would know that for sure.

Zach/Zahn: Perfect. Well, you know who owes us a favor?

Bee/Polaris: Affirmative. I was actually thinking about that. Should we? Not warn him about his higher ups dealings?

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah. I didn't even like consider that, but, uh, I was just thinking that, uh, major Tom was this, uh, a favor for, you know, saving his ass. he could get us into that lab.

Bee/Polaris: I suppose the information could be a trade off for another favor.

Zach/Zahn: I like the sound of that, having a Republic representative under our thumb is not the worst thing to have.

Jenine/Marty: I have another question. Rose. Biological scans are still very similar to our galaxies, right? So like if we do like hooker up to. This lab or like any other lab in front of like other people, will it be flagged as something not from this galaxy?

Bee/Polaris: Well, Polaris is also from her same galaxy and when you looked at his medical records, they didn't look any different.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I was just checking. I just wanted to like, I was like, Hmm, that could be a bad situation.

Bee/Polaris: That is true. But it, it would be confidential, No? because we are on republic business.

Jenine/Marty: True.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. But if. The information could get up to the higher ups there.

Bee/Polaris: True. So…

Avery/GM: To  answer your question, she appears human in every single way. So there is no

Jenine/Marty: human with psionics like, like

Avery/GM: Nothing that would red flag.

Jenine/Marty: Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Sick. Everything's fine

Chris/Ollie: as long as she doesn't say anything.

Avery/GM: That's the tricky part.

Bee/Polaris: I mean…

Avery/GM: what will she say when she wakes up?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we should probably get boyo out of the room. Uh, but if we tell Machamp up all this stuff beforehand, he'll be kind of privy to everything going on.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bee/Polaris: Assuming he could be trusted.

Jenine/Marty: So how do we want to meet with… General Tom?

Zach/Zahn: Major Tom.

Jenine/Marty: Major Tom.

Zach/Zahn: Major Tom.

Jenine/Marty: when, how? Where would we, where would we like to meet Major Tom?

Bee/Polaris: Easy. At the grave of the tiger

Jenine/Marty: Is it still there?

Chris/Ollie: It was like a five year, like in five years it was gonna fall in or something.

Bee/Polaris: I thought it was a hundred years.

Avery/GM: Yeah. The, the, no, he was there for five years, Chris.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah.

Avery/GM: The planet. The planet will take hundreds of years to degrade into the black hole.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. So we send him there. Did we just send him an email saying, go there alone? That feels sus.

Avery/GM: Sus!

Bee/Polaris: Ollie, Is it possible to program a message that has a time limit on how long it stays in his system?

Jenine/Marty: Snapchat?

Chris/Ollie: yes, the Chaps Nat app is updated and ready to send. I have found his profile.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no. It's like a story of him drinking with his boys.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: After he got back.

Chris/Ollie: he's, uh, he's uh, four Handing the beers.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Quadruple fisting it.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Quadruple fist.

Bee/Polaris: It's captioned the boys back in town and that's what's playing.

Avery/GM: Oh gosh. So what's this message to Machamp saying?

Chris/Ollie: Umm…

Bee/Polaris: You up? No, I’m  sorry.

Zach/Zahn: You up!?

Bee/Polaris: I'm, I'm muting, Sorry!

Zach/Zahn: No, please. I love the jokes. Please don't mute.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my God!

Chris/Ollie: Okay, so the message will say, um, we have incredibly urgent news, critical news. Meet us at the place where the tiger had the mind blowing pie.

Avery/GM: Ollie, since you're, are you sending it or Marty, are you sending it from your email?

Bee/Polaris: Aren't we just sending it from Hermes’ email because we gave him

Avery/GM: That's right. Hermes.biz.

Zach/Zahn: Hermes.biz!

Bee/Polaris: Hermes.Biz. Why are we using Hermes’ name to email him when the Republic is searching for him?

Chris/Ollie: Hiding in plain site. It's the, it's the best idea.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Could be some other dude named Hermes

Avery/GM: it's AI@Hermes.biz

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God. Dude, we, we can't send that.

Avery/GM: That is the email address.

Bee/Polaris: We can't send that. That's literally like, this is Hermes,The AI you were looking for! yeah. Let's just use Marty. Can Marty use her doctor email.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah my.edu.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll Charisma Connect.

Bee/Polaris: Oh wait, it's not even, it's not even an email. We're using Snapchat or, sorry, Chapsnat!

Avery/GM: Chapsnat! Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Am I rolling a Charisma Connect?

Avery/GM: Yes, please.

Jenine/Marty: Um, so that's gonna be an 11.

Avery/GM: Oh heck yeah. You get a reply on that app, actually, which is weird cuz like you didn't really know if he had it or not.

Bee/Polaris: I mean we, Ollie found his… his drinking with the boys.

Avery/GM: Oh.

Chris/Ollie: Oh. I mean

Avery/GM: I wasn't sure if that was Canon or not.

Bee/Polaris: Oh

Zach/Zahn: It is now!

Chris/Ollie: Same. That's a pretty, that's pretty much up to Avery. So

Bee/Polaris: sweet. Oh yeah!  

Avery/GM: we can make it Canon. That's fine. No, we can, we, we can totally make it Canon… Machamp’s…

Zach/Zahn: I mean What would you do after five years of being stuck on a planet? Fucking hammer it with the boys. That's what you do

Avery/GM: I guess.

Chris/Ollie: Hell yeah. I haven’t had beer in five years.

Bee/Polaris: Crack open a cold one with the boys.

Jenine/Marty: The boys!

Avery/GM: I mean… Therapy?

Bee/Polaris: are you saying that cracking open a cold one with the boys is in therapy?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, that is therapy.

Bee/Polaris: It's therapy for… for maladjusted adults.

Avery/GM:

Chris/Ollie: Yep, exactly.

Avery/GM: Fair. Okay.

Chris/Ollie: Or more like coping mechanism, but you know, all the same in the end.

Avery/GM: Major Tom responds back pretty quickly and it's a audio file and it's just like, oh yeah. could we meet above the planet? I don't really want to go back. On the planet, but like, yeah, I can, I can meet you back in that system. just gimme a couple days,

Zach/Zahn: shoot thumbs up and then like, side note, be like, expect us to be in bigger ship.

Bee/Polaris: New ship. Who dis!?

Jenine/Marty: I send that!

Avery/GM: Do you all have access to the same I was gonna say like, Marty's the one in control of the message here.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, did you make Hermes

Jenine/Marty: Was it audio?

Avery/GM: Oh, you, you can do audio. That's fine.

Jenine/Marty: Wait, was it an audio thing that was said? Was it, did I um,

Bee/Polaris: Machamp sent an audio back.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, he sent an audio back.

Avery/GM: Machamp sent an audio reply, yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I, I did most likely put that out into the open cuz I'm like, I don't know how to work this wrist communication device.

Avery/GM: Oh sure. Okay, fine.

Jenine/Marty: You think she had time for this?

Zach/Zahn: Well then yeah, Zahn will straight up say just like send a, send a thumbs up emote and uh, just. Warn him that, uh, we're gonna be in a bigger ship.

Jenine/Marty: Should I text a picture of the ship?

Everyone: NOOOOO!

Jenine/Marty: Oh, yeah. Huh? Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, tell him You should probably let him know to be discreet.

Jenine/Marty: Be discreet. Send

Bee/Polaris: like no cams, no wire.

Jenine/Marty: It's a friendship meeting. Please be nice. Send!

Bee/Polaris: no cops!

Avery/GM: No Cops!

Jenine/Marty: We Did nothing wrong!

Avery/GM: You get four thumbs up.

Chris/Ollie: Four thumbs way, way up.

Bee/Polaris: That's cute.

Avery/GM: And Hermes says, uh, shall I set a course for the Black hole system?

Jenine/Marty: Yes!

Chris/Ollie: I agree.

Avery/GM: You feel the ship get underway and it is moving towards, it is moving out of this system and goes to Warp.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris runs up there. He doesn't feel comfortable not being in the pilot seat with Hermes flying

Jenine/Marty: Marty is close behind.

Avery/GM: I will say that pulling out of the custodian's little system here, like he doesn't impact the asteroids, but like there are a couple times where like a wing like kind of scrapes against like an asteroid.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Avery/GM: A little bit.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris runs up there and tries to grab the control so he can pilot out of here.

Avery/GM: and Hermes just says, I got so used to piloting a smaller ship, that being back in a big one is a bit tricky.

Bee/Polaris: Understandable.

Zach/Zahn: Shouldn't this be like riding a bike for you, Hermes?

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. AI don't forget! They don’t have meat brains.

Avery/GM: Hermes is like, no, you are right. I was just trolling you.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my fucking God. This dude.

Avery/GM: I have learned a lot of internet lingo from some friends I have met.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Jenine/Marty: Hmm?

Zach/Zahn: Hermes, who are you talking to on the holonet? You can’t trust those people!

Avery/GM: So you jump to warp. It's gonna take a couple days to get to that system in a couple days from a Machamp to arrive.

Zach/Zahn: So hypothetically, we should be arriving about the same time.

Avery/GM: Yeah, in the meantime, it. Does anyone do anything else on the Casio pi while you are in warp? Polaris, do you say anything to the custodians before you leave or anything?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will like think about it but will… he will send brb. He won't res… Yeah, he won't respond to any other of the messages.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn will continue modding.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will actually probably go to Marty for actual medical attention because when I said that he put a bandaid on his wound, I literally meant that he literally just got one bandaid and put it on his wound and walked away.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Jenine/Marty: So, question about healing. Did I get healed all the way up?

Avery/GM: By the end of this trip, you, everyone should be fully healed up, yes.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. I… yes, I'll be sitting in the Med Bay just helping out.

Chris/Ollie: so how long is the trip?

Avery/GM: Two days.

Chris/Ollie: Two days. Ollie in his off time is gonna start a long-term project seeing as we didn't get access to the, uh, the, uh, space factory, he's gonna start building his own custom chassis.

Everyone: Ooh. Ooh, ooh.

Chris/Ollie: And, uh, we can work out the specific specifics of that later. Probably won't be done till like a, a season two or anything, but he's gonna…

Avery/GM: I like this though. Yeah, just in, in the lab. Just, just building a secret bot.

Chris/Ollie: just grinding away. Just like I need to upgrade. Time to chrome the fuck up.

Avery/GM: well go ahead and roll an intelligence fix for me and we'll see how far you get so far.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris's son will also help.

Jenine/Marty: Could I also help knowing like humanoid anatomy?

Bee/Polaris: What would Ollie tell you about it?

Jenine/Marty: Oh, would you?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, it's not a secret, but he is not gonna advertise it. But this is going to be, um, like a, a combat chassis. A heavy duty, uh, survivable. So, um, might not even be humanoid.

Jenine/Marty: never mind!

Zach/Zahn: turns out looking like Bruce… Giant Robo frog!

Chris/Ollie: okay, so I'm going to pop, uh, use my capacity, my, uh, processing capacity to also boost my intelligence for these checks.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: Can I do an assist with my boy?

Avery/GM: Uh, yes, you may assist with your, with Dief. Um, We're gonna have to make a character sheet for it, I think.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. For Dief.

Avery/GM: Yeah. But for now you can use your stats.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Intelligence fix.

 

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. I got a 10. Just to add a little plus one to help if that

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I got a 11.

Avery/GM: Okay. That bumps set up two A 12. So you're poking around the teleportation area, the vehicle storage area. And you realize that like some of these vehicles, the way they got jostled around when this ship originally crashed, like these vehicles are totaled, but their parts are still good and so you start like just ripping components off of these vehicles. Some of the, like the heavier armor, there are like, you know, sections that would make like good, like thick pieces of, of protection for your crystal, for your AI crystal, things like that. So yeah, you find a whole bunch of parts just from these wrecked vehicles. Marty, on the, the first night of the journey, you do see Rho’s brainwaves start to pick back up. She's not fully conscious, but you do see that there is more brain activity than there was.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. I walk over and I like put the little salmon that, um, Polaris made like under her arm, like tuck it and tuck her in a little bit.

Avery/GM: You see her arm tense around it,

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Aw.

Bee/Polaris: She naturally knows the shape of a salmon. She's like, ah, a salmon.

Avery/GM: After that though, not much else happens. Um, but there is improvement, which is good, but still not conscious and there's kind of the lingering question of what will happen when she becomes conscious. But you all arrive in the black hole system that you started in. Well, not started in, but you know, ended up in,

Bee/Polaris: solidified our group in.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And there is a small two person shuttle… has made orbit just above one of the gas giants in this system.

Bee/Polaris: I open the bay doors and we drift into it and then close the bay. No, I'm kidding.

Chris/Ollie: Just pick 'em up.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, just like old times.

Avery/GM: I will say that when you. Come into this system, the ship does make contact and says, uh, unidentified ship, please identify yourself or prepare to be, oh shit, I can't really say destroyed. This thing isn't gonna… uh, prepare to be impounded by order of the rep… I can't even do that. What the hell?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris gets on the comms and says, what are you going to do?

Avery/GM: Oh, Oh, it's you guys. It's you guys. Great. Whew. That was, that was really scary. I'm all out here by myself. Weird looking ship shows up. Oh gosh.

Bee/Polaris: Dock in the Bay.

Avery/GM: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: To business.

Avery/GM: Machamp parks the vehicle in the docking bay. Do y'all meet him there? Do you have him wander around the ship?

Jenine/Marty: No. We'll meet him there.

Avery/GM: What's the plan?

Chris/Ollie: Meet him there.

Bee/Polaris: Did we, uh, fix the turrets that we blew up?

Avery/GM: They're probably not smoking anymore.

Bee/Polaris: Dang. I was gonna say we should point them at, no, I'm kidding.

Avery/GM: Polaris is just like, no friends, only suspicion.

Bee/Polaris: Only business. Only business.

Avery/GM: Machamp comes out and is just like, uh, so what's all the cloak and dagger stuff? And, and what's the ship? Y'all, uh, y'all really know how to make an entrance.

Bee/Polaris: Do you want the cliff notes?

Avery/GM: I mean, yeah, sure. It's probably a good idea. We're probably limited on time.

Bee/Polaris: Your bosses are evil, and this ship is from a different galaxy. One of the inhabitants is the only one remaining alive, and we need to save her.

Jenine/Marty: How are you doing?

Avery/GM: Uh, well that's a, that's a lot to put on a guy. You know, I've only got four arms, but I, you know, um, that's a lot to juggle even with, even with four arms.

Bee/Polaris: You did ask for the cliff notes.

Avery/GM: Yeah. No, that's true. That's true. That's, that's on me. When you say my bosses are evil?

Bee/Polaris: likesuper evil, like destroy a planet, cause a war evil.

Chris/Ollie: We'll probably just play the, uh, recording.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. I guess we could just play the record. Yeah. We play the recording for him. I guess. I mean, do we want it, do we wanna play the recording for him?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Because then he'll know that they're hunting Hermes, who we have.

Jenine/Marty: We could stop before they're hunting Hermes!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Cut it off before the, the Hermes part gets brought up.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, true, true, true. We could also just murder him because he's in our ship and no one knows he's here.

Avery/GM: He's your friend.

Zach/Zahn: He's our friend.

Bee/Polaris: I know. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. He is our friend. We did share pie!

Chris/Ollie: the universal sign of friendship.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. We, whenever we share a pastry with another, uh, being, they are now part of the crew.

Chris/Ollie: That's, that's, that's why we gave Winston a meat pie

Bee/Polaris: because it wasn't a pastry.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, exactly.

Bee/Polaris: If you're given a savory dish, you are forever.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. You better watch out. It might explode.

Avery/GM: Okay. You play the clip of basically, The minister Pothos and this Rhea person plotting some dastardly business, but you cut it off before they get up and leave?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. Major Tom's like, I, I think there's more to that recording, but, uh, I'll skip past that for now.

Bee/Polaris: There is

Chris/Ollie: Personal information.

Avery/GM: Oh, okay. That sounds cool. So, yeah, Pothos isn't really my boss. He's like, The Fed, like, you know, the, the financial boss of the republic, but that's like, not really like my boss.

Bee/Polaris: Yes. But money makes the world go round.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Nope, that's true. That is true. Yeah. I don't really, uh, so they're planning on blowing up Ithaca? Well, that's a, a hegemony world. So I mean, like, that's not my problem.

Bee/Polaris: He did hear the part where he wanted, they wanted to incite war. Right?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie will just ask, do you think they will stop there?

Avery/GM: I mean, probably not, but I mean, I'm just one major. I can't really just. You know, stop a whole war. But I'll definitely take that, that information back to…

Chris/Ollie: No, you misunderstand. We will stop the war. You must get us into the lab to help her and I'm guessing Rho is here with us, like on a gurney or something, right?

Jenine/Marty: No.

Bee/Polaris: I mean

Chris/Ollie: no.

Bee/Polaris: No. Cause what if he shoots her

Avery/GM: you, no, but you probably  have like a little

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that's right.

Avery/GM: You probably have like a little hologram.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. So yeah. I'll hold up a hologram of her in the, the med bay.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Are are, are you sure that person's from another galaxy,

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Avery/GM: they look just like a normal human?

Jenine/Marty: A hundred percent

Chris/Ollie: beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Avery/GM: Well, damn y'all, y'all been getting busy while I've been away or while, while after you left me at at the base. It's, y'all got a lot of stuff done.

Bee/Polaris: Yes. It was a series of unfortunate

Avery/GM:  Cool. So I guess you're wanting, so you want my help getting access to a, a, a lab. What? Whi whi which lab? I mean, there's, we got lots of labs all over the republic.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris turns to Marty and says, which lab is the nerd in?

Jenine/Marty: There's one that specifically specializes in torching and is led by I'm… he is, they are a very intelligent being. But they do make mistakes constantly. I'm… yes.

Bee/Polaris: The nerd named Oswald.

Avery/GM: Oh, oh yeah. That one. You, you mean the, the Sci Research and Rehabilitation Institute on Olympia?

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Sure.

Avery/GM: I mean, that is military funded, so I suppose I could probably get you in there. What, what do you got against Dr. Oz? I mean, he’s all right.  

Jenine/Marty: I don't have anything against him. They have

Bee/Polaris: He belittles Marty

Jenine/Marty: that that's,

Bee/Polaris: he'd belittles Marty and I do not like that.

Jenine/Marty: I was top of the class and he was not so, It's fine… if you can't do you teach, when you *words jumbled* You know what I, no. Okay. No sass, that's who, yes. He gave me some of the research and there's some discrepancies, so I think it might be a little bit better to be doing it in a savior space and maybe I might wanna show them up slightly.

Chris/Ollie: There is no better place to perform an experimental procedure.

Bee/Polaris: We want to outclass the nerd.

Avery/GM: Well, I guess if, yeah, I, I could, I can get you in there. I guess if we're gonna do this though, uh, We'll, we'll have to start setting out for Olympia soon. I, I've only got a few more days of leave before I gotta get back.

Bee/Polaris: Very well. Is there a way to get official documents,

Avery/GM: official documents, like for access?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Avery/GM: Oh, I can, I can fabricate those on my ship. I got a little requisition station on my, my shuttle. Not a problem.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent. Can we please requisition the lab from the nerd?

Avery/GM: Yeah, do you want me to use those exact words?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: You don't

Bee/Polaris: unless someone else says

Jenine/Marty: you don't… You don't have to use those exact words.

Bee/Polaris: A military order that just says, give up the lab nerd. It has an official seal.

Chris/Ollie: No, what's the guy's name?

Bee/Polaris: Oswald

Chris/Ollie: Oswald. It says the lab belonging to Oswald She'll hereby, or, or the lab belonging to Oswald hereby and hereafter mentioned as nerd, shall be now handed over to you, such and such.

Bee/Polaris: the official document changes his title to the nerd. Oh my god

Chris/Ollie: Henceforth known as. That’s what I was looking for

Jenine/Marty: formerly known as Oswald.

Avery/GM:Oh my gosh.

Bee/Polaris: shortened to an acronym that it's unnecessarily long.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh.

Jenine/Marty: Um, no. Um, Marty just watches, you don't have to call him a nerd.

Avery/GM: I mean, it, it seems kind of rude asking for or ordering someone to give up their lab without, you know, and, and then calling them a nerd.

Bee/Polaris: Very well just tell him to give up the lab. We'll say nerd in person. Oh,

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. That's, that's fine and you see his hands are rub together and it's like after I got this done, you got any goodies on board? Where? Where's your big friend by the way?

Bee/Polaris: I was reflectively gonna say dead, which is not true. Polaris just get sad.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, he, well, he's on a mission.

Avery/GM: Oh, a little solo mission. I get that. Yeah. Yeah. I I did that for five years.

Jenine/Marty: Hmm. Well.

Bee/Polaris: you were stranded. That was not a solo mission.

Avery/GM: It, it's how I handle, handle it mentally.

Bee/Polaris: Oh!

Jenine/Marty: I made cookies. We also, I can also like make tea snacks. I, we did have tea the other day and I can make tea again. If you're thinking of like an afternoon tea.

Bee/Polaris: Is he not gonna be traveling with us?

Avery/GM: He is. He's just gonna be in his ship for a minute, getting that requisition order made.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, fair. Yeah. Well, I guess we can bring him tea and cookies while he's doing that.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, we can, I can make you tea. we can do a tea and cookie. Like do you want it in like a three tier Situation.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, like a high tea?

Avery/GM: Oh, it doesn't have to be that fancy,

Jenine/Marty: but yeah. Do you want, do you want me to make like a high tea to prep you for like dinner later?

Bee/Polaris: I could sew you a period appropriate hat.

Avery/GM: Nah, I'm, I'm good. Just, just some something tasty to, uh, make the work go by faster would be great.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing. She goes and makes the three tier high tea.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris goes and makes a period appropriate hat. I'm kidding. Player doesn't have his measurements. We have a lab to steal from a nerd.

Avery/GM: That's right. So, Major Tom makes the requisition and he transmits the, the message to the lab on Olympia and Marty, you get a text message… email or a text email, uh, from Oswald that just says, how dare you go above my head and take my lab from me. I know this was you.

Jenine/Marty: She messages back. Maybe you should check your work next time!

Bee/Polaris: Ooh.

Chris/Ollie: Ooh, get that… get that “Oh!” meme playing

Bee/Polaris: Labs are for people that labs are for people that edit their work.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: And get results.

Bee/Polaris: Labs are for closers.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Oswald just says, My work is impeccable, but see you soon. Smiley face.

Jenine/Marty: She, she throws her, her like wristwatch across the room in anger.

Avery/GM: It lands softly on a, on a medical bed.

It didn’t go far. How far into the Olympia system do you go? Do you go right… Do you make orbit?

Bee/Polaris: No. Where can we, we conceal our ship and then get on the Minos?

Avery/GM: So the Olympia system is like a six planet system, and there's definitely like a gas giant that you could probably park behind without drawing attention.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, let's do that.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, I mean, is that gonna be safe enough?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, true. Can we put a big sheet over the, uh, Cassiopeia?

Chris/Ollie: No , no. We can probably just find a random spot in the middle of space that no one goes to and ditch it there, and then come back, just spike drive.

Jenine/Marty: Could, could we find space junk and cover the ship? You know how they do like, like little bushes over cars. Can we do that with like space drunk instead?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean I was, yeah, that's what I was going for with the tarp. But a tarp is very big, so space drunk is probably much easier.

Chris/Ollie: Space Trunk is kind of  inviting though, for scavengers.

Avery/GM: Oh, true. So I will say, how about, how about this Polaris, Are you piloting when you get into the system?

Bee/Polaris: Sure.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Then go ahead and roll an intelligence pilot check.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I'm super good at that… ugh…

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Love to hear that.

Bee/Polaris: I rolled all three on all three dice, but I am an expert, so I'm just gonna reroll that betterish. Um, you said intelligence piloting?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Uh, that's gonna be… Oh my God, I'm bad at math. An 11.

Avery/GM: Cool. I will give it to you. You are coming into the Olympia system because like I said, spike dries dump you out basically at the edge of the system, and you have to float in to where the planets are and you're kind of floating inward, looking for a good spot, and you spot A little cluster of asteroids that probably is like a failed planet, right? Just didn't have enough mass to really clump together. And you see that there's like a perfect angle that you could get the ship into where it would kind of just look like a, a piece of this formation.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: So yeah. So you pull right in there and you are ready to get onto the TSFKAM.

Avery/GM: Do you leave Hermes with the Cassiopeia do you take Hermes with you? What's…

Jenine/Marty: We take him.

Avery/GM: Okay and you take the ship formally known as the Minos, out into the Olympia system and you are approaching the planet Olympia when you get an alert.

Bee/Polaris: Son of a bitch!

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

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

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond The Furthest Stars is a one-Up podcast network production, intro and outro music produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by tabletop audio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from Creative Commons. The tracks used today were Star Freighter and Starship Bridge.

We'll be back on July 15th with our next episode. See you out there beyond the furthest stars.

Episode 24 - Fixing What Was Broken

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 24 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

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

Avery/GM: you dock in the Cassiopeia, go ahead and roll… So who all is going to start repairing stuff? Is, is this a team effort? Is this just Ollie and Zahn and Polaris's Son?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was gonna say Son Boy is helping

Jenine/Marty: Marty staying behind to help repair Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: Well, shouldn't you get Rho to the med bay?

Jenine/Marty: Oh, right. That's the thing. Well, nothing's powered on yet. I'm

Bee/Polaris: Oh, right.

Jenine/Marty: Don't run away!

Avery/GM: Here Rho, enjoy this decompressed ship.

Bee/Polaris: Well  I mean, with the gravity off, it'll probably be easier to move her to the bed.

Avery/GM: This is true.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, the, uh, life support will come on first and the gravity would come on second, so…

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: In that window you just hover her over.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. So you don't have to drag her or carry her. Because Ollie and Zahn are gonna be fixing the ship.

Avery/GM: I was gonna say Ollie and Zahn go ahead and roll intelligence repair… or intelligence fix. Sorry.

Bee/Polaris: Does my child have to roll too?

Avery/GM: Yeah, go ahead and roll.

Bee/Polaris: What?

Avery/GM: And you can just use your stats.

Bee/Polaris: for what? What is it? Intelligence fix?

Avery/GM: Well, it has a plus two fix, so,

Bee/Polaris: oh, thank goodness. Okay!

Avery/GM: so intel… whatever your intelligence is, and then fix.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: 13.

Bee/Polaris: 12.

Zach/Zahn: God damn.

Chris/Ollie: Also 13.

Avery/GM: Also 13?

Chris/Ollie: Yes.

Avery/GM: Holy crap.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I've got a lot of… a lot of fix.

Avery/GM: Okay. Y'all turned a two day job into a one day job.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go!

Zach/Zahn: into a 20 minute job!

Chris/Ollie: Just get a montage going on.

Avery/GM: Yeah, I mean, Zan was quick, but unintentionally thorough when he cut this wire.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, I remember being intentionally thorough actually.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah fair enough. So it's just a, it just takes a little while, you know, takes like a standard, you know, 10 hours to get everything fixed up the way it was and then of course, since the gravity was turned off as well, like some things had like floated and then when the gravity comes back on it kind of, Comes back down and like makes a mess. So there's also just like a mess to clean up, you know, things like that. While these repairs are going on, Marty, you said something about trying to fix Polaris.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I got tea and crumpets.

Avery/GM: You come into the cockpit as Zahn and Ollie are probably heading out into the Casio to start repairs.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I make a little goodie bag for Zahn. I'm like, take it with you.

Zach/Zahn: He, uh, does like the, the cheers, like with what, what you give him, like the takes it, lifts it up and then also nods down like, thanks… Straight out straight outta the Gatsby meme.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Marty, you come into the cockpit with the tea and the, and the goodies, and Polaris is just. Sitting there stoically.

Bee/Polaris: he has his knees up on the chair, like his feet up on the chair.

Jenine/Marty: I do that like fun thing where like you have your arm like fully extended, like ready to tap on someone's shoulder cause you don't wanna scare them, but you don't wanna get hit. You know, you do like the full, like extend kind of like, or like when you are like trying to shoo a bug away, that's kind of what's happening. But not shooing, but like trying to get attention but knows like, this is like a… okay.

Bee/Polaris: she's not touching him?

Jenine/Marty: Well, she's trying to like, but like putting body away, so like just arm, you know what I mean?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think once Marty touches him, he like, flinches like he's going to do something, but knowing that he's only surrounded by his friends, he's not gonna like, actually do a harm. but, uh, he, he will turn on the sound. He'll, he'll turn up the volume on his environment now

 Jenine/Marty: I brought snacks.

Bee/Polaris: Thumbs up on Visor.

Jenine/Marty: How are you doing?

Bee/Polaris: Double thumbs up on visor, and then a loading screen, and then like a th like a sideways thumb.

Jenine/Marty: I brought some sweets and snacks. Do you wanna hug? Do you wanna talk about it? We don't have to talk about it if you don't wanna talk about it. Do you wanna hug? Do you want me to just like sit here and like not say anything and just like hand you snacks as you're doing whatever you're doing? How may I assist?

Bee/Polaris: You've given him too many options to, to respond to. He's now like scrolling through his emojis to figure out. He'll, just like, you'll just see like the, the blinking line indicating that someone's about to type and then you, you just see on his visor. It says, I'm good…

Jenine/Marty: Why do I feel like you're lying to me?

Bee/Polaris: on snacks… I'm good on snacks.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. My brain almost said insight check, and I'm like, that's wrong.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Roll an insight check. I'll roll. Deception.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: A connect is that

Avery/GM: Zone of truth?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: So I guess that would actually be a connect roll if you wanted to.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah, sure.

Bee/Polaris: To, for what?

Avery/GM: To discern kind of…

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Polaris didn't lie. Like when you asked if he was okay, He did the thumbs up at first and then did like, the side was like

Jenine/Marty: Uhhuh,

Bee/Polaris: kind of

Jenine/Marty: Uhhuh. Uhhuh, okay. Cool, cool, cool. So you're good. You have snacks. Do you want me to just, do you want me left alone? Do you wanna talk about what's. What's going through your head there? Do you need help deciphering things? You were a little quiet during our little conversation earlier, so just wanted to check in.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will type on his advisor. Let me catch up with transcripts to see what you guys said.

Jenine/Marty: Sorry, tr transcript. We wait, so you weren't listening?

Bee/Polaris: No.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris catch himself on what everyone said and then he'll, he'll actually take off his helmet and say, is Rho still in the ship?

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Should we move her to the Med Bay?

Jenine/Marty: Well, I don't know if, if they're done fixing things yet, right?

Zach/Zahn: As you say that, you hear the (makes power up noise with his mouth)

Avery/GM: the Apple startup sequence? Yeah, Brrrr.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just blinks.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Maybe now we can, we can move her.

Bee/Polaris: He'll just nod and put his helmet back on and then go to help move Rho.

Jenine/Marty: Before she just like puts up a cookie.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just like stops and looks at the cookie and then just like gently puts his hand on the cookie and lowers the cookie.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Bee/Polaris: no, no cookie time. He's not in mood for cookie

Jenine/Marty: valid. She just follows behind with like a plate of goodies and like two thermos of tea.

Bee/Polaris: Aw. Polaris will pick up a Rho and help move her to the Med Bay.

Avery/GM: Sure. That's not a problem. Polaris is a big strong lad.

Bee/Polaris: He, yeah, he is. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: He's only not charismatic or wise.

Avery/GM: Excellent. So yeah, you're in the Med Bay with Rho. Rho, by the way, when you moved Rho, they, she did not stir at all, like

Zach/Zahn: full comatose.

Avery/GM: No reaction. Yeah. Marty, do you, do you hook row up to some of the more advanced machines here?

Jenine/Marty: Yes, I do.

Avery/GM: Cool. Yeah, so yeah, you start hooking. Hooking her up. The, the heart rate monitor is a little more advanced here and actually gives you more detailed information about like blood pressure, things like that. You do notice that on the Brain Wave reader, the only waves that are reading are delta waves, which are the lowest brainwaves ever recorded for humans. So…

Bee/Polaris: oh, she's actually in a coma.

Avery/GM: Actually in a coma. Yeah. Which may be a pr which may or may not be more of a protective measure that…

Chris/Ollie: No, that's actually, that's great for us.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Because there's no reason for her not to just rage again when she wakes up.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Cool, cool, cool question. Is there a way for me to just like also get like a, this feels like a highly advanced area. Is there like a nice little like pager-esque kind of a thing that I can have that's like connected to her, like heart rate thing and like brainwave thing so I know what's happening at like all times when I'm not in the room with her.

Avery/GM: Oh, definitely. Yeah. There's

Jenine/Marty: Sick!

Avery/GM: Yeah, there's definitely probably some sort of like, yeah, little mobile monitor that you could clip onto your belt or something.

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

Avery/GM: Have you taken Hermes out of The Minos and, and are you gonna put it in or no?

Chris/Ollie: No. Uh, I want to scrub the ship just to be sure. I, I don't think there's a problem, but, uh, Ollie wouldn't, wouldn't allow it until he had, you know, installed the latest version of Norton Antivirus.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: and ran a scan, a deep sweep.

Bee/Polaris: you're gonna have to create

Chris/Ollie: in safe mode.

you're gonna have to create a, a fake version of that, cuz we can't say

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Horton.

Zach/Zahn: Horton.

Chris/Ollie: Horton antivirus.

Zach/Zahn: Horton antivirus.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. There you go.

Chris/Ollie: But if power's on, then Ollie will probably sim simultaneously doing that with his drone because it was set up and ready to…

Avery/GM: okay. Yeah. So you're gonna, you're gonna run the, the drone and, and see if you can find…

Chris/Ollie: make, yeah. Make sure the ship is safe for AIs.

Avery/GM: Yeah, go ahead and roll a wait… Does your drone have stats?

Chris/Ollie: Oh, well I'm controlling it directly.

Avery/GM: Oh, so it have your stats. Okay, then

Chris/Ollie: yeah.

Avery/GM: Roll a, uh, an intelligence program check.

Chris/Ollie: It's a 16

Bee/Polaris: Jesus

Avery/GM: Holy. God. Yeah. No. You find no trace of The Iaso program. It ran… With such a good roll, I will say that you realize that the Iaso program, once it is in a system, it runs and then destroys itself.

Chris/Ollie: Wonderful. and I'll let the crew know

Zach/Zahn: that Hermes is safe.

Chris/Ollie: Good news. The Cassiopeia is now deemed safe for all AI inhabitants.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. I'm gonna go get Hermes to put 'em in the Hermes.

Zach/Zahn: You get a, you get a thumbs up in the group chat from Zahn.

Avery/GM: Polaris. You come down to the engine room with Herman's AI Crystal, and you don't immediately see a place to put it.

Bee/Polaris: Oh,  Polaris is just gonna hand it to Zahn because he was gonna go put on some band-aids because he is still very hurt. Yeah. So Polaris is gonna go, he's gonna Hand Zahn Hermes and then go un cuz like he got stabbed with his own laser blade. So there's probably like a hole in him. It's like a cauterized hole that's just in him So he's gonna go do something about that.

Zach/Zahn: as you're handing her to me, I look down and I see the hole. I'm like, you should probably get that looked at buddy.

Bee/Polaris: He types on his visor: That's the plan. And then he, he goes and does that.

Zach/Zahn: You get a thumbs up from Zahn as he goes to plug hers into the, uh, into the Cassiopeia, now known as the Hermes.

Avery/GM: Sure. You don't immediately see a location for Hermes.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, you know what, Navi probably wasn't a chaos emerald, huh?

Avery/GM: Mm

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Bee/Polaris: Navi was just a, you just put a flash drive, you just slap 'em in there.

Jenine/Marty: Can we not put Hermes on a flash drive and just go boop?

Zach/Zahn: No, Two different galaxies of technology, man.

Bee/Polaris: Can we tape Hermes to a flash drive and plug in the flash drive?

Jenine/Marty: and go boop?

Chris/Ollie: Well, we, we pretty much. Have that, like we have the flash drive that's in Polaris's helmet.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Well, yeah, that's like that…

Chris/Ollie: We can pretty much, yeah. Do the same thing with the ship, so, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Well, Polaris doesn't know that he's, he's gonna go put something, he's gonna stuff some gauze in his burn hole.

Zach/Zahn: We can hypothetically put Hermes in one of the Ollie backup bots and then just have the bot plug into the Cassiopeia.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, No. We have the bot physically sit in the chair and pilot the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Now, out of curiosity,

Chris/Ollie: he also controls the ship remotely.

Bee/Polaris: Now, out of curiosity, do we want Hermes to have a body?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. There's a recipe for trouble.

Zach/Zahn: He has an entire, he has a body. It's an entire war ship.

Bee/Polaris: Yes, I know, but I mean, do we want him to have legs that he can use to leave?

Chris/Ollie: Because. If, yeah, if he's got arms and legs, he can equip whatever weapons he wants.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Hermes can learn how to strangle is my thing. Like you, we don't want him to learn how to strangle.

Chris/Ollie: Hermes is like I've discovered, I like it when I see the light leave their eyes.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh… Oh my gosh.

Bee/Polaris: I find it fascinating when the light slowly leaves their eyes.

Zach/Zahn: Why are we turning Hermes into Sociopath?

Jenine/Marty: Why not?

Bee/Polaris: I mean, that is the, like the trend that we have observed. So he's like in the baby stages.

Chris/Ollie: So back to trying to install this core, Ollie will hold his hand out to Zahn and say, if I may?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Here, and he hands over the Hermes.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will run a scan of the, uh, blueprints of the Cassiopeia.

Avery/GM: Mm-hmm.

Chris/Ollie: And see where, if any, this thing could plug into.

Avery/GM: So go ahead and roll intelligence program. I guess it's kind of a moot point, but you never know.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. That is 13.

Avery/GM: So you, you succeed. What you find is that, So you don't find exactly like plugin chaos emerald here, but you do find that a lot of the equipment in the research area is very similar to the stuff in Alioth’s Lab that was able to connect you with Hermes and with this AI… with this AI that you know now came from a different galaxy. So there is definitely a way. Using some of this tech here that you could fashion an apparatus to hold Hermes and connect it to this ship. It'll just take some time.

Chris/Ollie: Well determining that. Ollie will just mention to Zan as he makes his way over to the work bench. It seems the work is never done and he, he starts getting to work on that.

Avery/GM: Okay, sure. Uh, that'll probably take you the rest of the day. The current day.

Chris/Ollie: Got it.

Avery/GM: What's everyone else doing?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, uh, Polaris goes and he was gonna go put a Band Aid on, but he goes and gets the salmon.

Zach/Zahn: Aw

Chris/Ollie: Oh yes. Oh, and also, yeah, you don't have to help me Zahn. That's just what Ollie is doing. You can…

Bee/Polaris: oh, Polaris's son is probably helping you.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Son Bot is definitely helping. Um, yeah. Sun Boy. This little diminutive little, you know, 12 inch tall…

Bee/Polaris: His name… Yeah. His name is Deif!

Avery/GM: That's right, Dief!

Bee/Polaris: Spelled like Lief, but with a D.

Zach/Zahn: Dief!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Uh, like, uh, and, and for, uh, for reference, just like Ollie is totally aware and cognizant that he is a never sleeping, never resting, never eating, you know, machine. So if you wanna say like, yeah, Ollie, you do all the work, he's, he's like, yeah, sure.

Zach/Zahn: But Zahn likes to doing the work.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Zahn, yeah. Zahn only does the work

Chris/Ollie: That’s right, he is a workaholic

Avery/GM: Polaris, I will say that. You would've passed through this workshop area and the salmon was sitting on that table right there. So you easily grab it and take it with you.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. I get the salmon.

Avery/GM: back to the Med Bay.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is going to set about doing some mods, I guess.

Avery/GM: Okay, let me check. So you, you all already repaired all the holes that were in the ship, right?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Spent a couple days doing that.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay.  Yeah, it was a couple days. Okay, cool. You wanna make more mods?

Zach/Zahn: Of course I do.

Avery/GM: Killin’ me Zach. Okay.

Zach/Zahn: I have a list for my armor that I…

Bee/Polaris: mods, mods, mods.

Zach/Zahn: Basically the things I have on my to-do list are upgrade my vacit to 50% duration operation. I have the translator torque that I bought, I want to add it to my helmet. And then I wanted to add bubble seals to everyone's armor or clothing or whatever and then boosting weapon damage output is basically adding a plus two damage to everyone's guns.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I just realized that I don't think we ever fixed Polaris's ship.

Avery/GM: No, you haven't fixed Polaris's, uh, ship after, um, the race.

Zach/Zahn: I said I wanted to do it and add the regenerative armor to it, and you were like: no!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris doesn't want things added to it. He just wants it to not have holes in it.

Avery/GM: It's more like dents and scratches and cracks. It's not full on penetration.

Chris/Ollie: Well it was like a one hp.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, it was, wasn't it?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. It was…

Avery/GM: Yeah. Never mind.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, it was fucked up.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah, never mind and you did use your, and you used your wing to

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Baseball bat a uh,

Bee/Polaris: the guy

Avery/GM: A little tiny pod.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God.

Avery/GM: So Zahn, if you're gonna do mods, I would like you to roll just 2d6 straight up.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, what?

Avery/GM: Just 2d6.

Zach/Zahn: six total on the dice.

Avery/GM: Okay. You are able to get two of those mods done, so pick the two. I will say you won't… if you pick weapon output, you will not get to everyone's weapons, I don't think.

Zach/Zahn: No, I didn't think so. So I would like to upgrade my Vac suit to additional 50% duration, just in case that becomes important at some point.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: And then I would like to spend the rest of my time adding bubble seals to everyone's clothing, if that's acceptable.

Avery/GM: We'll, okay. We'll say that you do start, like you, you grab some of the armor from like this armory here and you do start like tinkering with it and like putting bubble seals on it for emergencies and stuff.

Zach/Zahn: And I make sure that Marty has a vax or has a bubble seal.

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: Because I don't think Marty has any armor whatsoever.

Jenine/Marty: What's arm? What's armor?

Bee/Polaris: Defenses?

Jenine/Marty: Defenses. Ha ha.

Bee/Polaris: Marty's defenses are hugs and healing.

Jenine/Marty: Uwu… uwu please, no!

Bee/Polaris: wait. Did that work at one point?

Avery/GM: I mean, not really, but I mean that's how y'all got out of pirate fighting.

Bee/Polaris: True.

Chris/Ollie: Not only got got out of it, we made some homies.

Zach/Zahn: Oh hey, we do need to give them a call!

Avery/GM: I was just gonna see, um, what else Marty was doing and then Polaris, if you were doing anything else besides healing up. And then we're gonna do a bit of a time skip.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Gotcha. Yeah, Polaris was just gonna put a bandaid on and then put the salmon in next to Roe.

Avery/GM: Aw.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Marty's just gonna continue reading through this document. And just like see if there's any like, errors in the theory and writing them down if seen, probably just good notes…

Avery/GM: Sure

Jenine/Marty: That’s what she is doing.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that makes sense.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. Go ahead and roll. A intelligence-heal or an intelligence-know?

Jenine/Marty: Oh, it's fine. 10.

Avery/GM: 10.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: You realize that the brainwave pa or the psychic pattern that Oswald drew is reversed.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh.

Avery/GM: It should have. It should have been the other way.

Bee/Polaris: What an idiot.

Avery/GM: And you re… but you do realize that reversing, that actually does eliminate the 30% chance of causing complete mental failure because one of the side effects listed was basically the helper could become catatonic.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, that little piece of shit.

Bee/Polaris: I don't think he was trying to kill you.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah

Avery/GM: Probably not intentional. Probably more incompetence.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. You should send back his notes.

Jenine/Marty: She's still gonna say it. She's

Chris/Ollie: That’s pretty susy.

Avery/GM: Oh, totally.

Jenine/Marty: She's still gonna say little piece of shit. Doesn't know shit.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, no. Yeah. Just send it back to him like as if it was the basic, like are you really trying to kill me with this stupid shit?

Jenine/Marty: No, she’s…

Bee/Polaris: I was gonna say like draw over it

Jenine/Marty: in a red pen.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, exactly. Like a teacher correcting an essay.

Jenine/Marty: That's what she's doing.

Chris/Ollie: Yes. Perfect.

Bee/Polaris: Great notes, smiley face. However, I found one inconsistency

Avery/GM: to be fair, and I don't know if Marty intended this, I did act accidentally establish that Marty was top of her class, so…

Bee/Polaris: this guy's just real smug and probably rich.

Avery/GM: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: yeah, yeah. Someone got out of like actually doing stuff in the field and was like put in a lab, so…

Bee/Polaris: got 'em.

Chris/Ollie: Oh no, this is great…. Because let's pull up with Rho, fix him in front or fix her in front of this guy and then give him his his graded test paper and be like: dumbass.

Bee/Polaris: Literally just go, just go to his place to use his lab and that is it. Don't even ask for his help, just get papers for the Republic saying like, yes, you have authorization to use this lab. Fix her in front of him and then dip.

Jenine/Marty: We should, that's what we should do. We should ask him for like, If we can use that lab space.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no, don't even ask him. The Republic, or at least Machamp has an IOU for us.

Jenine/Marty: No, ask MaChamp. We should ask MaChamp if we can use that space.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I mean, you can send MaChamp an email.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah and MaChamp will requisition the lab, and then we'll just walk in as the boss's boss and be like, Hey, nice to see ya.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Oswald like outside, like who I, I reserved this laptop who took it out from under me, and then you just walk in. Oh, hey Oswald, Long time no see!

Jenine/Marty: What's up loser?

Bee/Polaris: You do like the L on your forehead.

Jenine/Marty: No, she has class. She would never, she'd be thinking it!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris would do the L. Polaris would do the L.

Jenine/Marty: Cool.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. She would just be transmitting the image of it to his brain.

Avery/GM: So what does Marty end up wanting to do after finding this error?

Jenine/Marty: She starts doing the corrections and then like with like a red, like. She does like the fun, like opens like, like good notes equivalent on, on her tablet and starts writing like big red circles. And like anytime she sees like a mistype or like grammar issues, she also is like fixing it and is about to send it and then stops and then she like starts writing an email to um, uh, a general MaChamp. Um, doesn't send it yet, but like, has that like ready to show everybody and be like, this is, this is what we can do.

Avery/GM: So Marty, you're, you're contemplating sending that to MaChamp. Will time skip to the next morning? Everyone's kind of sitting around the table eating breakfast or in Ollie's case, contemplating putting more food into its…

Chris/Ollie: Oh, no, to make it clear, it, it's not like I'm eating every meal, just the stuff that Bruce gives me.

Avery/GM: Oh gotcha. Ok.

Bee/Polaris: Aw. Aw, that's cute. So you just sit down with a plate of food in front of you and just never eat it?

Chris/Ollie: Well, I don't know. For, for the normal, uh, like when, when Bruce is here and he makes his special dishes, gives him out, you just see him like putting it piece by piece as if he's eating into his chest cavity.

Jenine/Marty: So we've seen seen him do this?

Avery/GM: Yeah. But he usually doesn't bother to show up for normal meals.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: Okay. So the four squishies are, or three squishies are sitting around the breakfast table.

Chris/Ollie: Are we on the Wait, we're in the Cassiopeia now?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: This has gotta be a. Actually, no, it's not. Probably not that big. Cuz it's all automated, huh? Yeah

Avery/GM: but there were, there were two tables cuz there were supposed to be a lot more crew.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. Are the body still down there?

Zach/Zahn: No, we… we ejected them all.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. We gave them the burial at burial at space.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah.

Avery/GM: Did we do?

Bee/Polaris: No we didn't.

Zach/Zahn: We did.

Jenine/Marty: Wait, I thought we did.

Avery/GM: No, you were supposed,

Zach/Zahn: we did.

Jenine/Marty: No I thought we did. No, that was our During our time skip.

Avery/GM: Oh was it?

Bee/Polaris: I thought we were, wasn't talking about it, but we never did cuz we were gonna like launch 'em into the sun or something.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, we did do that.

Bee/Polaris: Did we? Okay.

Zach/Zahn: I am 87% positive.

Bee/Polaris: I'm just gonna believe you

Avery/GM: If not we…

Chris/Ollie: Because wait, we haven’t moved the Cassiopeia at all… oh no Yeah, we have

Bee/Polaris: Yeah we have

Chris/Ollie: moved it all the way here, so we definitely, yeah, we stopped off and

Avery/GM: if, if not, we will retcon and say, yes, you have taken care of the, the bodies.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I was just gonna go ahead and trust what you guys say cuz my memory is trash

Avery/GM: anyway, so you're all kind of sitting around having a breakfast. To start off your day. Go ahead.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris doesn't wanna be rude, but he's al he doesn't really want to eat. He's eating like his bars while he's trying to finish reading the document.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, about, about your,

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Avery/GM: Your origins.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is doing something very similar… he's eating whatever food is provided, but he's got like a, he's has his left arm like resting on the table while eating. So he is like hunched forward over the table, very unprofessional. but he is got a hologram up of the documents of the, the Cassiopeia about Terra and where its origins are and its mission, and he is just reading that over for like the 30th time now.

Jenine/Marty: Well, well, Marty made breakfast buns like, like, you know how there's like, like the little like

Bee/Polaris: Yeah,

Jenine/Marty: yeah. Like red bean buns, but like made it like breakfast and just is like, okay. They're like, yeah, she made that for breakfast for everybody.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Polaris will, Polaris will like, take a few bites of his bar, but like to not be rude, like eat, like a couple bites of the bun too.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn, not to be rude, obviously thanks Marty.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is still zoned out.

Avery/GM: Polaris, you do find notes in the document you're reading that do indicate that they suspect you also came from the Milky Way.

Bee/Polaris: Cool

Avery/GM: and there are a list of, at first, what appeared to be like random numbers, but as you're kind of like waking up, you know, eating breakfast and kind of like your, your brain is finally turning on for the day.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: You do realize that this list of numbers is actually a set of. Different, different sets of coordinates and there's about eight of them.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will like highlight all the coordinates, copy and paste into chat and send it into chat with like no context cuz he just keeps reading after that. But he figures that's important.

Jenine/Marty: Well this is a lovely breakfast. How did everybody sleep?

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. They're both like reading in their helmets.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: No, Zahn is eating. So he’s you know,

Chris/Ollie: oh, okay.

Zach/Zahn: He has his helmet off.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Your, he… your helmet is like half deconstructed and just your mouth is revealing.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my god.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris has his like pulled up so he can eat, but he's still reading. But he did send a message to like the group chat as in for the whole crew. So you guys get the list of coordinates.

Jenine/Marty: These… this is cool you wanna share with everybody at the table. What, what, what the coordinates are?

Bee/Polaris: He just says Milky Way with parenthesis question mark parenthesis.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Cool, cool, cool. Oh, we also still need to listen to that second message

Zach/Zahn: that we do. Oh,

Chris/Ollie: perfect.

Bee/Polaris: Where's Ollie?

Chris/Ollie: in the workshop.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: You, you do hear Hermes over the loudspeaker. Ollie you have finished connecting hers to this ship.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Avery/GM: It is not the prettiest connection ever. It's definitely like there are some wires and some, you know, some connectors in place that like, eh, if you trip 'em just the right way, they might disconnect, but it'll do, and Hermes comes over the loudspeaker in the mess hall and it's just like: I can play that second message if you would like. It is very informative and honestly quite concerning.

Jenine/Marty: Sorry?

Zach/Zahn: you didn't think to mention the concerning part Sooner?

Avery/GM: Oh, it is just concerning to me and my wellbeing.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Jenine/Marty: You're important. We wanna make sure that you're okay as well. If anything concerns you, let us know.

Avery/GM: Very well. I will play it for you. Please do not be alarmed.

(ambience fades out, track “Dark Matter” fades in)

Avery/GM:  (as Bruce) Well, everyone, I hope you enjoy your food. If you'll excuse me, I'll go and start working on the dishes.

Pothos: Yes, yes, fine. Thank you, sir.

Rhea: Pothos, thank you for having me here. As much as the hegemony despises the republic, I must say the luxuries they enjoy are very impressive, and this food spread is better than anything we typically get back on Tartarus. I trust things are going well?

Pothos: Yes, Rhea, quite well. Things are proceeding just as we planned. The Terrans have found several of the wormhole that we built and should start pouring through any day now once we've started the hostilities The Republic and Hegemony will be able to force the remaining independent systems into an alliance, and slowly The Eternal One's plans will come to fruition.

Rhea: Excellent. Once I get back, I'll send out the decoy and deploy the virus. Ithaca sounds like the perfect planet to stage our little play, don't you think?

Pothos: (laughs) Yes, Rhea. I think Ithaca sounds like the perfect place.

Rhea: I trust that we won't have anything to worry about from the Republic's military, will we?

Pothos: No. Military is stretched so thin trying to keep the peace on the core worlds that we won't have the time or resources to assist.

Rhea: What do you know about the Oracles.

Pothos: The Oracles? You mean that urban legend about some invisible agency keeping balance across the galaxy, sworn, noble protectors of order and justice? Come on, Reya. Next, you're gonna tell me that Beff Zejos has returned from his exile and reestablished Jungle. They’re stories. Nothing more. Now let's finish this meal and head down to the vault. I finally found that piece of tech you've been asking for.

Rhea: Oh, the AI hunter? Excellent. Our little Hermes will finally be coming home.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh. Ah, yikes.

Jenine/Marty: Hermes... Hermes…

Avery/GM: I do not wish to return to the Hegemony.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Cool. We don't want you to go back either. Why didn't we get this, this, this recording played. I appreciate you, Hermes. I appreciate you immensely. You're doing great and do two thumbs up, like pointing to whatever camera I could find.

Bee/Polaris: I just realized something that maybe Polaris would realize but wouldn't really vocalize. But question for you, Avery. The custodians don't have AI crystals. Like they're not…

Avery/GM: they do not.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. But they have the ability to transfer AI to have bodies like them.

Avery/GM: They have the ability to transfer their AI units to bodies. Yes.

Bee/Polaris: but we established that they could do that for Ollie, right?

Avery/GM: Uh, yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yes, we did.

Bee/Polaris: So then could. We give Hermes a body and destroy the crystal so that they can't track him.

Avery/GM: That's a good question…

Bee/Polaris: because if we know about this AI hunter, we can just make it so they can't hunt the AI.

Avery/GM: This is true. I will say though, the difference is, Is that, well, currently Ollie has his core cut, but if Ollie destroyed the cut piece of core, Ollie would just have the one core. The problem is, is that Ollie's core is cut currently and you don't know where the second piece is

Chris/Ollie: No, it, it's in the dog

Avery/GM: or I meant, I meant Hermes.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Avery/GM: Hermes’ core is cut and you don't know where the second piece is.

Bee/Polaris: So we would have to destroy the smaller piece

Chris/Ollie: Find and destroy the other piece.

Bee/Polaris: so we have to cross a AI hunt Hermes. Well, no. Bruce told us the location of where he went.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Right.

Jenine/Marty: But they have, they're… no wait.

Avery/GM: So that recording was take took place on Calydon, which is the financial capital of the Republic. It is not where Hermes' second piece is.

Bee/Polaris: That is true, but we know the names of the people that were talking and they said that they were gonna, they were going to take 'em. They were gonna take 'em to the lab.

Avery/GM: what was the other person's name? I only got Rhea.

Bee/Polaris: Pat… Pathos?

Avery/GM: Pothos. Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Do would, would we be able to do a quick like space, Google on incognito mode on these, these two

Avery/GM: You can definitely try and search for anything about these individuals.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: You might wanna use a VPN.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I would like to do that on incognito mode with a VPN.

Avery/GM: Sure. Roll intelligence-know check.

Jenine/Marty: Beautiful.

Bee/Polaris: Did Bruce mention what day or like what time he did this so that we know how much time we have before this AI hunter comes after

Avery/GM: It was not recorded in the message. You could ask Hermes and he might know when it was transmitted.

Bee/Polaris: Gotcha.

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

Avery/GM: You find nothing on Rhea at all. This person, there is no record of that name anywhere searchable that you can find. On Pothos, The only thing you know is that that person is the Minister of Finance for the Republic. The third most powerful person in the Republic basically. Handles all the money and basically, yeah, essentially pathos is like the Fed.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Avery/GM: the fed chair.

Jenine/Marty: Love that.

Bee/Polaris: Dang. We're gonna have to, we're gonna have to pull a national treasure, huh?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: I mean, we're talking economic and psychological warfare. It's, it's all coming together.

Bee/Polaris: Also, what was the name of the planet that Rho said Got, uh, bodied by Alioth.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that one was…

Avery/GM: Adis

Bee/Polaris: Okay

Avery/GM: A. D. I. S.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, so it wasn't Ithaca. Was Ithaca the name of the planet?

Jenine/Marty: Ithaca is what they wanted to take.

Avery/GM: Ithaca's the name of the planet that is about to be targeted by something

Bee/Polaris: Yes. Okay. They do have a bunch of wormhole. I have to wonder if the coordinates that we have are wormhole coordinates. The ones that Polaris sent in chat

Chris/Ollie: Must be, I'm guessing this is all live streamed.

Bee/Polaris: What is?

Chris/Ollie: the conversation and the… or yeah, the conversation tape.

Avery/GM: Yeah, the, the transmission would've been played for you as well, Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Wait, wait. Were the coordinates in the audio transmission?

Bee/Polaris: No. Polaris sent the coordinates in the group chat in like the group text chat, so everyone's communicators have it.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay. There we go.

Avery/GM: The coordinates are from, Uh, Polaris's documents that that Alioth had.

Bee/Polaris: As far as you guys know, Polaris just pulled these coordinates out of his ass. Like he didn't give any context or anything. He just sent coordinates to you guys and said that they were from the Milky Way Question mark.

Zach/Zahn: Nice.

Chris/Ollie: Well, since Ollie use. Free at the moment. He, he's gonna head over to the, uh, navigation computer and plug in all the coordinates and just send 'em as way points for possible exploration so we know where they are.

Avery/GM: Sure. You notice that four of the way points are in your galaxy, but you plug in four others. And they don't match up to any known coordinates in your galaxy. The only thing that makes sense is that they match up to coordinates that are approximately 75,000 light years away from your current galaxy.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, he, he's gonna screenshot that little bit of info and post it in the group chat with the thinking emoji and be like, worm holes.

Bee/Polaris: Worms. Question mark. The worm emoji. The worm emoji. The thinking emoji.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that exactly. He's gonna pipe over comms and, and ask, shall we set a course?

Zach/Zahn: Negative. We need to get Rho operational.

Avery/GM: Yeah, just send a, send a comatose psionic through a wormhole with no context.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, we could just go to the entrance and see if it's actually a wormhole, even though they did say on the recording that they have several wormholes. Wait, is one of the, is one of the coordinates near where, um, the custodians parked?

Avery/GM: Mm-hmm.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Like where, where's the nearest ones?

Avery/GM: Yes. The nearest one is about two days travel from your current location.

Bee/Polaris: That's where Rho came from.

Jenine/Marty: Oh.

Bee/Polaris: So we have Rho’s home worm… Wormhole… Home… Home Hole home… worm… Please edit that out. No, I'm kidding.

Zach/Zahn: Phrasing!

(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 music produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by tabletopaudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from Creative Commons. The tracks used today were Star Freighter and Dark Matter.

Avery/GM: This year our show was honored as a selectee for the Rainbow Roll Fest. A three day festival during Pride Month to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ lead actual play podcasts and streams. Be sure to check out this entire Rainbow Roll Fest June 23rd through 26th at twitch.tv/rainbow Roll Fest.

Avery/GM: We'll be back on July 1st with our next episode. See you out there Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Episode 23 - Who Brought the Mood Down?

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: The sleep gas has dissipated.

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

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

Zach/Zahn: after having deactivated it.

Avery/GM: Yes, exactly.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

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

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Yes. Go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: and then slowly…

Chris/Ollie: and we are explosively decompressed.

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Well, Alioth can stay annoyed

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

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: What the fuck?

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

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

Chris/Ollie: Get double helmet.

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: That's right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris/Ollie: Not yet.

Bee/Polaris: He like pats his bag reassuringly.

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

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

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

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

Chris/Ollie: absolutely.

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

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

Chris/Ollie: That is truly unfortunate.

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

Jenine/Marty: We all see that.

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

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

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

Jenine/Marty: Sick.

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

Jenine/Marty: Other chats!?

Bee/Polaris: Other chats?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: You have secret chats?

Jenine/Marty: I have other chats?

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh.

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

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: But it's popping off

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

Jenine/Marty: Oh, okay

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Probably for the best.

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

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

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

Bee/Polaris: Yay. No!

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

Bee/Polaris: One!

Avery/GM: Oh, no!

Bee/Polaris: indeed.

Jenine/Marty: That's pretty.

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

Jenine/Marty: I rolled a 12.

Avery/GM: You rolled a 12. Dang.

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

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Cool, cool.

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: The mouthing like obviously like yes.

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will leave it on read.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

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

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

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

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

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

Chris/Ollie: Finally got to shoot something.

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

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: No gravity

Zach/Zahn: No gravity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: You mean fix?

Avery/GM: Yes. Thank you.

Zach/Zahn: I have a three to that.

Avery/GM: Well, damn.

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

Zach/Zahn: 11 for the first roll.

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

Zach/Zahn: And 10 for the second one.

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Like into a wall?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: That sounds horrible. For Zahn.

Zach/Zahn: For Zahn, yes.

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

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Oh, always high.

Avery/GM: that is a 97.

Zach/Zahn: Haha.

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: You just get: s’up.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris walks onto the ship.

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

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Inappropriate timing Hermes

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

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

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

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

Bee/Polaris: no.

Jenine/Marty: No we don't.

Avery/GM: No.

Chris/Ollie: Oh.

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

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

Bee/Polaris: fix it,

Chris/Ollie: take a bunch of stuff from

Jenine/Marty: yeah

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

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

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

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

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

Bee/Polaris: Oops.

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

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

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

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

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

Avery/GM: Yeah.

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

Avery/GM: Yeah.

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

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

Avery/GM: Sure.

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

Jenine/Marty: I got this.

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

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

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

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

Jenine/Marty: sick.

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

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

Avery/GM: to other Psionics

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

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

Chris/Ollie: Okay. That's spooky.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: I was thinking like,

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

Bee/Polaris: Hmmm.

Jenine/Marty: Hmmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Zahn followed.

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

Zach/Zahn: wow. What a lard ass.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, he's great.

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

Zach/Zahn: oh, clearly

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

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

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

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: Basically.

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

Avery/GM: This is theory.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: that is cool.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, no news is good news

Bee/Polaris: indeed.

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but

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

Bee/Polaris: yeah, we’re on the top

Avery/GM: the ship would have to rotate.

Zach/Zahn: Oh Okay

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Yeah. Also

Avery/GM: you’ll see it coming.

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, exactly.

Chris/Ollie: Which it totally could have been.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Bruce.

Jenine/Marty: Bruce.

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

Chris/Ollie: Our boy.

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

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Got it. Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, got it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: So like all of us?

Avery/GM:

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah Polaris…

Avery/GM: the application might be… difficult.

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

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

Avery/GM: airdrops it to everybody.

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Uhhuh.

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

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

Bee/Polaris: A warm bowl of soup.

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

Zach/Zahn: I hope this suffices…

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

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

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

Avery/GM: yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Cool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: show up on his doorstep.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Kick the door down.

Chris/Ollie: Because he said

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

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

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

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah.

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Oh man!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: You do.

Chris/Ollie: You have many drugs.

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

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

I do

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

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

Jenine/Marty: We could,

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

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that was the Winstons.

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

Bee/Polaris: Oh, cool.

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

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

Avery/GM: Big Fred.

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

Bee/Polaris: He has our email.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah he does.

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: for just for fun.

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

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

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

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

Jenine/Marty: Yep.

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Aw.

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

Avery/GM: Oh, the document about you?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Oh.

Avery/GM: For that.

Bee/Polaris: Interesting.

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

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet.

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

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

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

Cool.

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

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

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

Avery/GM: Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Avery/GM: Essentially.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Oh God.

Avery/GM: Jumpstart it.

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

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

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

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Knowing that

Bee/Polaris: for sure.

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

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

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

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro fades in and plays out)

Episode 22 - Rho's Wrath, Polaris' Perplexity

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 22 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

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

Avery/GM: Let's jump over to Marty real quick. Marty, you're reading, you're reading over the programs or, or the, the files from Terra you actually find the encrypted file that was referencing Rho. You find out that in the Milky Way Psionics are referred to as augers.

Avery/GM: You find out that she is a literal test tube baby as she was created in a facility that used augers and their psionic energy as a power source and the experiment was to see how much psionic energy a human could be exposed to during their first 10 years of life and how that would affect them over the next decade.

Avery/GM: You find out that she has manifested several different abilities and powers. Typically psionics don't manifest abilities in all the different fields of psionics. Usually it's just one or two. She has also shown evidence of… like you, you're looking over this medical data and you see that like there are files that show that like her cells don't degenerate at the normal pace that human cells do and so it looks like she might have some sort of like prolonged life or. Slower aging rate than normal humans and you find out that all, all these benefits have created a condition in her that is similar to what you call torching, where psionics overuse their powers and then cause some damage to their mind, which over time can lead to very serious consequences, death, insanity, those kinds of things and that her condition is triggered most by the fight or flight response and also by moments of extreme emotional distress and that it's normally managed by medication that she takes regularly. But there are no records of that medicine being shipped with the cassia.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, that’s bad. Oh, that’s bad. That’s bad. Okay. Hmm. I'm gonna send, because I know that the two of you went with Rho to the Cassiopeia, yes?

Avery/GM: I'd say so, Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Well, yeah. Maybe Did we, what did we do The fun little? I don't know. I don't know. I'm just gonna send it to. I am gonna send like that specific thing of torching and also have like the definition of what it means and what it could cause and send that to like everybody as a file to be like, okay.

And like just a, Hey, if anyone can search in their immediate area for well, no, we don't really know what the medication looks like. Hey, this is a quick little read that you should read about Rho. We should Check in with that possibly.

Also with the medication, is there a way that I can possibly create it myself in a way with the technology that is in the area or do I not have the correct materials for it?

Avery/GM: Go ahead and-

Bee/Polaris: I mean, isn't the Med Bay in the Ursa major, like super decked out?

Avery/GM: Yes, it is.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. But is it, is this Terra like specific equipment we don't have?

Avery/GM: So it's, you definitely don't know the chemical compound

Jenine/Marty: sick.

Avery/GM: So that might take some research. You might have to, you might have to hack the Cassiopeia’s Med Bay files again and see if you can find anything.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Avery/GM: That might list the, the medication ingredients. You might also be able to, if you have any contacts from med school who might know about treatment research in this galaxy for torching, that might also be an oppor… an option as well.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I do, don't I, I do have a medical friend that I could possibly contact.

Avery/GM: You do.

Jenine/Marty: Who has the same intelligence as me? Hmm. I'll just, I'll send like a quick mess.. I forgot the name that I had sent you. It is somewhere in my notes that are very poorly written.

Avery/GM: It's in our chat.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I send, yeah,

Avery/GM: I'll find it.

Jenine/Marty: I send them, I'll send a message to them and be like, Hey, you wouldn't happen to have any like, knowledge about, or like any articles about like, medications that can help with torching as an and, and like helping

backtrack it or like make it not as aggressive or like any articles about it. I'm… medical research… I hope you're doing good. And I can send that in an email or space equivalent of email.

Avery/GM: Oswald Calloway.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I knew it was that

Avery/GM: Oswald… They, them, he, him, she, her?

Jenine/Marty: Ye. They/Them, He Him.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool, cool, cool. Oswald, it, it takes a little, like an hour or so to message you back and he, I don't know if Marty would pick up on this, but the tone of the message is very snarky.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And is just like, oh, did someone overuse their psionic abilities again?

Jenine/Marty: Marty's not gonna let it shake her. It's okay. She's the bigger person. She's not gonna let it get to. She's not gonna let them get to her. No, actually I'm act helping a patient with it. I know how to control my powers, unlike some people. And then like backspace that. I hope you're doing good. Thank you for being concerned. And I send it.

Avery/GM: Yeah. They, they send back a picture of them at a very prestigious research lab. You recognize the logo as like being like from like a research college on Olympia, like very, very advanced, very well to do. The Harvard basically of Space and it's just

Jenine/Marty: cool.

Avery/GM: Is just like, well, I could help you. But as you can see, I'm very busy with important research, but I will have my lab assistant send something over in the next day or so, just you owe me one smiley face.

Jenine/Marty: She just goes, of course, anything for an old friend, and then she just closes her tablet. Just goes, well, at least I'm practicing my work and not just looking at fucking papers all the time, but that's fine.

Zach/Zahn: Marty's first cuss!

Bee/Polaris: Marty's first cuss!

Chris/Ollie: I'm out here in the field getting shot.

Jenine/Marty: No one hears it. It's just her.

Bee/Polaris: And the cameras.

Jenine/Marty: And the cameras. But yeah, she sent, she sent the article to every, well like the information to everybody and then like also a description of like what torching is, so they know that it's bad and also we can't stress her out. And if she stresses out and then like gives a list of how to calm someone down when they're stressing out the breathing exercises and everything.

Avery/GM: Which by the way, Marty that is putting two and two together, that's probably why Rho hasn't had an outburst yet, is because of your very calming bedside manner that you have

Zach/Zahn: and she's on the other ship.

Jenine/Marty: Heyo! uhoh.

Bee/Polaris: Maybe the medicine is the Marty along the way. Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: Okay. Over to. Polaris and Alioth.

Zach/Zahn: Confrontation Time!

Bee/Polaris: Yay.

Avery/GM: Alioth is sitting at its big computer here. When you walk in Polaris and it doesn't even look up at you. It's just typing away.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris just stands there, waiting. Just staring directly at alioth.

Zach/Zahn: on or helmet off?

Bee/Polaris: Helmet on

Avery/GM: Alioth continues to type and it's just like, well, are you going to stand there or are you going to let me have some emotional outburst?

Jenine/Marty: I have no need for an emotional outburst. I kind of thought that this would be a, you tell me all the things you've been lying to me about situation and not necessarily a me being a child about it situation.

Avery/GM: you know me. I tend to expect the worst from humans.

Bee/Polaris: It’s a first for you expecting that from me.

Avery/GM: It's a first for me admitting it out loud, yes.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just does a, like a, a go on motion with his hand.

Avery/GM: Alioth spins in its chair and you know, to face you and folds its little artificial hands on the desk and is just like Polaris lying by omission is not as bad as outright lying.

Bee/Polaris: No, but it's still a lie.

Avery/GM: Yes. Well, luckily, I do not suffer from morality. No, go for it.

Bee/Polaris: Sorry. No, that was me laughing. Sorry. No, that was hilarious. That was just me laughing.

Avery/GM: The information that you have obtained from that little robot down there was intended to be given to you at the proper time. I just had not decided when that proper time would be.

Bee/Polaris: I'm struggling to find the word for it, but the best approximation I can find is that sounds a bit shitty considering I'm not an AI and I can die at literally any time.

Avery/GM: you make a fair point. But now you have the information, so I suppose I can let you in on the big secret. that when we found you, I advised the others that it would be best to simply leave you where we found you. You were a catalyst, an unquantifiable variable. Upon convincing from the other two, I relented and allowed you to stay with us. On this ship, upon investigation of the pod you were found in, I discovered some interesting information regarding your cellular makeup, and your origins. the records you obtained from the robot, contained that information.

Bee/Polaris: Curious. Why hide it then?

Avery/GM: it was believed that if you truly understood your origins, you may wish to leave and that would upset the others.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris doesn't really know how to respond to that. He's upset, but also like, oh, they thought I would fucking leave. Okay. Dunno how, but yeah. Okay.

Avery/GM: The information you have there, May help to explain some things about yourself that you may not have previously understood. It appears you were some sort of experiment. Your genetic code has been altered slightly, and I'm sure you have noticed some strange abilities right? You tend to heal very quickly.

Bee/Polaris: I thought that was normal.

Avery/GM: Oh, no. Humans die very easily from all sorts of minuscule wounds and infections.

Bee/Polaris: I, how would I have, I have nothing to compare that to until a couple weeks ago. How, how would I have known that?

Avery/GM: As I said, I was waiting until the proper time so that you would have the proper context. If you knew you healed faster than others, it may tempt you to put yourself at risks outside of the acceptable range.

Bee/Polaris: That I can't argue with. I'm, I'm thinking about it now.

Avery/GM: Please don't. Merrick was very clear in, in their instructions: you are not to put yourself at risk.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts a, a colon backslash emote on his, on his visor. He, you know, now he can do cooler stunts. Is that all?

Avery/GM: The data does appear to have information on your origins, who your parents are, where you came from, that sort of thing. If you're, Interested in that.

Bee/Polaris: I've never thought about it before, but this, these last couple of days have definitely been eye-opening.

Avery/GM: Well, if you look at the file, you will notice that I have encrypted the information using a language incomprehensible to humans. Good luck translating it.

Bee/Polaris: Mad face emoji Polaris is upset about that

Avery/GM: and, and Alioth says, sorry, that was my attempt at humor.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. You don't joke. How would I have known that you were joking?

Avery/GM: Oh, I joke all the time.

Bee/Polaris: What? Is that also a joke?

Avery/GM: Yes. My encounter with that Hermes character made me realize I should attempt humor when interacting with humans. You seem to enjoy that sort of thing.

Bee/Polaris: You, you're doing… good.

Avery/GM: Excellent. This data will be helpful in my analysis later.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris won't correct that. Se- good enough. Seems very Alioth. Okay, well, if there's nothing else you needed to tell me that you've been holding secret from me for the entirety of my life. I'm gonna go read those files.

Avery/GM: I do not have any other secrets that pertain to you.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Well, tell me the rest.

Avery/GM: What would you like to know?

Bee/Polaris: All, all what? Ha Ever. Anything you've been keeping secret from me. I don't. I don't. It unsettles me that you've been lying to me my entire life, especially about myself.

Chris/Ollie: Where was it that I saw this vision?

Avery/GM: You saw it when you were connected to both Hermes and Alioth.

Chris/Ollie: Ah, that's right. Ollie will have posted in chat. What he's learned and will say definitively that it probably was the custodians.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Yeah, so Polaris sees that in chat and is just like, Ooh, ah, yikes.

Chris/Ollie: Because Ollie's gonna put yeah, two and two together, three rouge AIs plus this sus stuff, and so he's going to be like, We've got an emergency, guys.

Avery/GM: What, what does, what specifically does Ollie say?

Chris/Ollie: Well, in the chat message, he's going to say Navi and all the AI have been wiped aboard the Cassiopeia. The only people who could have done this were the, were the custodians. And he's gonna put in chat that the rogue AI, that the, the Cassiopeia has been chasing, and the custodians must be one in the same. And post the the evidence about the, the video and all on the timestamp and all that

Avery/GM: as Ollie is typing this in and you're kind of like reviewing the chat. Alioth has started kind of rambling about things that it's kept from you, but it's all like mundane shit. Like, I have reached the one hundred-trillionth number in pi, you know, and I ran an experiment a few months ago where I infused your food source with a new molecular compound I developed. Stuff like that, like, Very mundane stuff that like,

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Obviously the test wouldn't have put you in danger, but those kinds of things.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Okay. As Alioth is doing that, Polaris walks to the door and closes the door and locks the door, and then turns around and says, you three are the rogue AI. Is that correct?

Avery/GM: Alioth stops rambling. Looks at you and is like possibly. Why does it matter?

Bee/Polaris: Because we have a ship that has entered this galaxy specifically looking for the three of you, and I was just notified that the AI on that ship were wiped.

Avery/GM: Yes. A necessary precaution.

Bee/Polaris: What did you do?

Avery/GM: I think that's a conversation all four of us should have.

Bee/Polaris: So patch them in.

Avery/GM: You're not gonna drop this, are you?

Bee/Polaris: No.

Avery/GM: Very well. And Alioth turns to its computer and starts typing. And I need a physical saving throw.

Bee/Polaris: Hey sweet! Yay! Tear gas! I make it, eat shit Alioth.

Avery/GM: The room does start flooding with nerve gas. knock gas.

Bee/Polaris: Cool Polaris,

Avery/GM: Not like brain damage gas, but just like

Bee/Polaris: Sweet!

Chris/Ollie: brain damage gas!?

Bee/Polaris: Sweet Polaris has his helmet on, so he just looks at Alioth with an angry face emoji and turns on his filtration system.

Avery/GM: Oh, right. I designed that helmet didn't I? Very well, and you hear the intercom ping, and Alioth just says, Merak, Bear, please come to my lab. Polaris would like to talk.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris sends in chat. My, my dad tried to fucking knock me up with gas. Angry face.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn puts in, do you need backup? Concerned face.

Bee/Polaris: Nah, they won't kill me. Colon backslash face

Zach/Zahn: kill or not kill. Yes. Capture and incapacitate, maybe question mark. Thinking face.

Bee/Polaris: Mm, nah.

Avery/GM: Marty, yes. You read that chat and you do get a premonition of Polaris on the ground helmet off.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, cool! Oh yeah. Bear is security.

Jenine/Marty: And then just get a back up coming. Where am I? Where am I? I can try and save. I I have some.

Avery/GM: You're in the kitchen.

Jenine/Marty: I'm in the, I'm in the kitchen. The same area. Back up, help is on the way!

Bee/Polaris: Are you sending that in chat? Polaris sends a chat. No, don't do that.

Jenine/Marty: Too late coming!

Bee/Polaris: What is going on?

Jenine/Marty: Might be something cool new I might have had. Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris sends a message to Hermes and says, get back to the, get back to the Ursa so we can evac.

Jenine/Marty: Just there I have a feeling that something bad's gonna happen. Get out of there.

Bee/Polaris: Cool. Yeah. Polaris unlocks the door and then looks at Alioth and walks out of the door.

Avery/GM: Confused. I thought you wanted more information on what we did.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris keeps walking. He doesn't even, he's going straight to Marty and he said he sends in chat. We're gonna need an evac.

Avery/GM: We're gonna flashback to, to you three for a moment. And you're kind of like learning secondhand from Polaris, kind of what's going on, like big picture. And Rho is just still messing with this console, just trying to figure out where Navi is. And she's just like, if Navis gone, I, I can't go home. If I can't go home, I, I won't see my family. I won't see my friends. I, I won't know how the war tur- turns out, I, and. You see,

Bee/Polaris: oh, she's spiraling.

Avery/GM: You see parts of this lab start to kind of shake and shutter around you all.

Jenine/Marty: I sent the breathing exercises.

Avery/GM: and have you told Rho your theory yet Ollie?

Chris/Ollie: oh yeah, that's right. She's not in the chat.

Bee/Polaris: No, she's not.

Chris/Ollie: So he's gonna look over and notice that she doesn't know what the hell is going on, and he's not really paying attention to the shaking. Just gonna be like, oh, my apologies, I forgot you were not on the group chat. And then he's going to explain the, the theory, the connection. And he is also gonna ask, what is it about Navi that you require?

Avery/GM: So you start ex- you, you start explaining your theory about the custodians being the rogue AI. You don't even get to the question about why she needs Navi. I need both Zahn and Ollie to make a. Evasion Save.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, yay.

Bee/Polaris: Turns out this is the series Final!

Jenine/Marty: Uh-oh!

Chris/Ollie: Oh, I did not, a one. Oh boy.

Zach/Zahn: Oh shit.

Avery/GM: Oh, it's not that bad.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, it is. Thankfully, there's no like, critical fails otherwise it's like Ollie disintegrates in the psychic pressure.

Zach/Zahn: Where's, where's the other part of his crystal at right now?

Chris/Ollie: In the dog. Oh, no.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Oh my gosh. It’s Space Bud!

Avery/GM: Rho activates one of her psychic abilities called offensive apparition and teleports an unwilling target to a location.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, no.

Avery/GM: And Ollie, you are teleported because she grabs onto you. That's, that's why the evasion save was needed because

Chris/Ollie: mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: Like she, like you were getting close to her. She physically grabbed you and teleported you along with herself to the Ursa major.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, God damn it dude!

Chris/Ollie: Oh no.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, well that's lucky I guess.

Bee/Polaris: No, that's not good. We need to get off the ship that these three AI control.

Chris/Ollie: Well, it's better, it's better than inside of a star.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that's true.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Positive thinking.

Bee/Polaris: That is true.

Jenine/Marty: That's some positive thinking.

Bee/Polaris: Alright, you got me there.

Avery/GM: Oh, and she needs to make a save.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, yeah. And that warning about her, you know, condition and all that. Ollie hadn't had time to go over it, so. He's been a bit wrapped up.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah. Cuz I was at the tail end of the, the explanation.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent. Cool.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. I didn't know-

Bee/Polaris: you started with the big hitters.

Jenine/Marty: Here's the thing, I didn't know anyone who was in danger until the article was officially sent and it went, oh shit, I was sending some good info

Bee/Polaris: and now we're in extra danger.

Jenine/Marty: Oh no,

Chris/Ollie: I'm in danger.

Avery/GM: So Polaris, you exit Alioth’s lab and you're walking down the hall when you see suddenly before you Rho and Ollie just flash into where you're at.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is unsure how to proceed. He like, looks at Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie's going to upon this sudden turn of events, gonna go through the chat real quick. download and scan that, that file at AI speed and realize, oh no, my, my apologies. If that information was upsetting, please try some breathing techniques in, out in

Bee/Polaris: Wha-

Chris/Ollie: And he's just going to attempt to do that.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris looks at Ollie and they’re just like, what did you do?

Avery/GM: I don't know that you have time to do that as Rho is levitating toward you and Alioth’s lab.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh.

Zach/Zahn: In the, in the group chat, you just see dot, dot, dot. Hey guys, I don't have eyes on Rho and, and Ollie anymore. Do you know where they are? Question mark. Question mark.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts up his live stream. He's start, he goes live.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Just hanging out.

Jenine/Marty: Marty messages back. Can I, can I go and try and help now? Should I go back to the ship or do you guys need Nevermind and just starts rushing on over.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Polaris, like is seeing Rho levitate towards him and just kind of side steps.

Zach/Zahn: You get, you get the neutral face in, in chat of just like

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will send a message to Alioth and say, I guess karma is real as fucking Rho is going to go, I, I assume murder Alioth

Avery/GM: Get some answers. At least.

Jenine/Marty: Do, do I get there at any point or does it take me

Avery/GM: No, I was gonna have you actually roll and exert a dexterity, exert check or strength.

Jenine/Marty: Is this a D20?

Avery/GM: No, these are

Jenine/Marty: two D6s?

Avery/GM: two D six s plus exert.

Jenine/Marty: Oh no.

Avery/GM: And either strength or decks.

Jenine/Marty: I don't know if we know this about Sweet little Marty. This is gonna be a. Hey, that's good. I rolled a six and a five. So it's a 10 Cause I have a negative one.

Bee/Polaris: Marty's booking it.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Marty you book it like you never have before You get there. As Rho is getting to the doorframe of, of Alioth’s lab

Jenine/Marty: Great.

Bee/Polaris: You know, now I think about it. Is the gas dissipated? Cause I don't, did Alioth turn it off cuz Polaris has his helmet on. Sooo.

Avery/GM: It's not, it's not dissipated. It's still in there.

Bee/Polaris: So Rho is definitely gonna breathe that.

Jenine/Marty: I'm gonna suppress cognition on Rho.

Avery/GM: Oh

Jenine/Marty: yeah, rollsies!

Zach/Zahn: a psychic off.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Is she, is Rho distracted by the, the desire to murder?

Avery/GM: I would say pretty well distract, I'll roll disadvantage for her. I don't know that disadvantage is a thing in this game. I haven't seen it, but.

Bee/Polaris: It's not.

Avery/GM: we'll roll it, it's fine.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet!

Jenine/Marty: Mental saving throw to resist the power.

Avery/GM: Well that's good cuz her first roll was a Nat 20.

Bee/Polaris: Oh geez, Louis.

Jenine/Marty: Thanks. I hate it.

Chris/Ollie: She is hulked out right now

Avery/GM: and that's a mental save that she has to make. I'm sorry. Her mental save is versus a four.

Jenine/Marty: Jesus,

Bee/Polaris: bruh.

Chris/Ollie: Wow.

Avery/GM: She shrugs off your suppressed cognition. And I actually need you to make a mental save.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that's fine. I, I deserve that. I'm so scared. I was rolling. So good in this session. Oh no. Do I add anything to that?

Avery/GM: No, it's, it's just versus your mental save it's a, it's your,

Jenine/Marty: Ok cool.

Avery/GM: it's a D 20 versus your whatever.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. I rolled a two.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, no.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Avery/GM: Okay. Let me get my D six s out.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, no.

Bee/Polaris: So full disclosure, if Rho does hurt Marty, Polaris is going to probably hurt Rho.

Avery/GM: That's fine.

Jenine/Marty: That's fine.

Avery/GM: She's very much tunnel vision right now.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris also doesn't have his gun.

Avery/GM: Nope. You do have, your laser blade

Bee/Polaris: Bruce has Polaris’s- He does. He has two of them.

Jenine/Marty: That's fine. How many D sixes?

Avery/GM: Luckily this attack cannot kill a target, but you do take 33 psychic damage.

Jenine/Marty: Hoo-

Bee/Polaris: holy beans.

Zach/Zahn: Holy shit.

Jenine/Marty: Guess where I'm at guys.

Avery/GM: If you're reduced to zero, you are knocked unconscious for an hour.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool. I'm at five hit points.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, thank goodness. So you're not dead.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, that's right. Marty's the tankiest

Zach/Zahn: Right! Marty's fucking tank!

Bee/Polaris: Marty's the tankiest.

Jenine/Marty: Everything's fine. Everything's fine, guys. I, I got it. It's fine. Everything's fine. Ow.

Avery/GM: But she is torching. I'm gonna have her roll another D six. Okay. Hey, that's good. Torching actually affected her this time. So Rho enters the lab and is like in the doorframe, looks at Alioth and is just like, you're the one responsible, aren't you?

Bee/Polaris: Did Marty visibly look hurt by like, did that. Psychic interaction. Was that notable for us to realize what had happened between the two of them?

Avery/GM: I was gonna ask actually, Marty. Yeah. How do, how does, like, how does Marty physically react to being psychically blasted?

Chris/Ollie: like bleeding out of the nose and ears and eyes.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Sh I mean, yeah, there, there's some, there's some blood coming out of her nose. And then you do hear her just say, shit ow!

Bee/Polaris: Marty did a cuss!

Avery/GM: Now you know it's bad.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Upon seeing that Polaris did sidestep Rho, but upon seeing that he is gonna try and stab her with his laser blade, she hurt Marty. We already lost Bruce.

Avery/GM: Yeah, totally. Go for it. Roll to stab.

Bee/Polaris: how Stab?

Avery/GM: two D six plus stab.

Jenine/Marty: Wow. Combat we, we haven't touched this in a bit.

Bee/Polaris: 11.

Avery/GM: Okay. That meets, so oh it meets beats.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: So roll your damage.

Bee/Polaris: That's gonna be a 10 damage.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. You, you stab into her to, to kind of attack her and you pull your laser blade away. From this hit and you see that she obviously takes the damage and she kind of flinches at the, at the wound, but you do see the wound start already to start to heal up a little bit.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh, ee, yikes. Ollie?

Avery/GM: she pays no mind to you, and I think I'm gonna have to have the three of you. Role initiative.

Jenine/Marty: got a role that makes sense for a cleric. Yeah, it's a, it's a three. 1, 2, 3.

Chris/Ollie: I also got a three.

Zach/Zahn: I got a 10

Jenine/Marty: Yoinks

Bee/Polaris: got a 12.

Jenine/Marty: Wow. Cool. Nice.

Avery/GM: Bee, did you give Alioth a dexterity score at all?

Bee/Polaris: Was I supposed to make a character sheet for that?

Avery/GM: I, I didn't ask you to, I just wasn't sure how in depth you went.

Bee/Polaris: Oh! nooo.

Avery/GM: Okay. I'll just roll a D four and that'll decide it.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. I just imagined that like, they’re robots. and robots are pretty good at most things.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Because the robot strength, Dex and Con is all based on the chassis, so they probably got some high tech stuff.

Bee/Polaris: Speaking of Alioth did call the other two.

Avery/GM: I'm rolling those other two right now.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Zach/Zahn: Oh no.

Jenine/Marty: This is great.

Bee/Polaris: Rho might die.

Avery/GM: but Polar- go ahead.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, no, go ahead.

Avery/GM: I was gonna say, you're up first in initiative.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet. I'm gonna stab her again.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: She hurted Marty. Oh wait. Am I doing attack now?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: is attack still two d-six?

Avery/GM: I believe it's a D 20, but let me double check now, cuz

Bee/Polaris: yeah, we haven't really done too much in fighting

Avery/GM: to make an attack roll the assailant rolls a one D 20 and adds their attack bonus, their applicable skill level and the attribute modifier most relevant to the weapon.

So that would be D 20 plus whatever your bonus is, plus stab. Plus dex.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, so that's, so I got a Nat 20.

Avery/GM: Well, shit,

Bee/Polaris: what does it matter if I add the other things?

Avery/GM: No, it will not. You hit, you definitely hit

Bee/Polaris: sweet. What do I do about damage? Is, is an a Nat twenty's not special in this game, is it?

Avery/GM: No, not that I'm aware of.

Bee/Polaris: I rolled real,I, I rolled real high 14 damage.

Avery/GM: Oof.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna look over at Ollie to see what he's doing.

Chris/Ollie: I've got, like, tied with the lowest initiative, so I bet Ollie's just stunned at the moment.

Jenine/Marty: But you have a higher dex than me. You probably go first

Chris/Ollie: I have a zero dex.

Bee/Polaris: I don't know if there's anything else I could do,

Chris/Ollie: or a plus zero.

Jenine/Marty I also have a plus zero dex.

Avery/GM: So. Since we haven't really done much on combat, we'll do a quick a quick thing. So basically combat is six seconds. You have your main action, which would be like attack, stow, digging out a stowed item, bracing a door, applying first aid, that kind of thing. That's your main action.

You have a move action, which means you can move up to 10 meters in any direction. You have an on turn action, which is something fast and simple. So like dropping something, falling prone, saying something, stuff like that. And then an instant action, which can be performed when it's not your turn. So it's like a reaction basically.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: So you have those four abil, those four skills.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Can I use my,

Avery/GM: oh, go ahead.

Bee/Polaris: No, finish explaining.

Avery/GM: I was gonna say instant actions, mostly that's like related to like specific gear you have or psychic abilities.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: Sick.

Bee/Polaris: Can I use my movement action to push Rho further into the gas room?

Avery/GM: Yeah, we can call that a move action. I'll have her make a physical save versus your punch, I guess like strength punch.

Bee/Polaris: I'm good at that! I'm good at punching. I'm also good at strong

Avery/GM: because her, her, her actual save values are really low, so, I'll let it be versus whatever you roll.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. That's gonna be a, an eight? Yeah. I rolled bad

Avery/GM: she rolled an 18.

Bee/Polaris: What the fuck? Wait, wait, wait, wait. She, wait, what is she? She's, is she rolling against, like is she, oh, she's making a physical save.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Pain. Yeah. There was no way I'm beating that.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris:a D 20 against two D six.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So you, you do, you you run into her and it's like a, a wall.

You can't

Bee/Polaris: Uhhuh. That's fine. I'll just stab her again next time anyway.

Avery/GM: Well, you say that

Bee/Polaris: well, nevermind, I probably won't stab her again next time. Yay. I didn't miss.

Avery/GM: No, because that was a move action, so it wouldn't be a missed attack action. So you're good.

Bee/Polaris:Sweet.

Avery/GM: You hear bear thundering down the corridor. And bear has a big, a big gun just drawn and just aimed like down the corridor. Just like, like kind of like shifting between like Ollie, Marty and Rho, like. Just like, okay, which one do I shoot?

Bee/Polaris I mean, Polaris, does Polaris not have his sword directly in Rho?

Avery/GM: I mean, you're, you're next, you're next to Rho. So like Yeah. But, but he pulled up like after your, your, you started stabbing and pushing.

Bee/Polaris: Ah, is this was the second stab? Yes.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: She's already healing still.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. So there are no visible stab wounds?

Avery/GM: No. Like, like there, there are wounds, but they're slowly stitching back together.

So. Context clues. Sure. He'll, he'll finally decide on Rho and is like locked onto her.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: And roll to Nat one.

Jenine/Marty: Yay. James.

Avery/GM: Just fires wide, just like is a little nervous because like as much as Bear is ready for an attack, there has never been an attack on board the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah, so, Bear misses. It is Alioths turn next. And

Chris/Ollie: Alioth Beat me out?

Avery/GM: Yeah. Alioth rolled an 11.

Chris/Ollie: Oh

Avery/GM:16 plus. What's his shoot skill?

Bee/Polaris: Alioth has a gun?!

Avery/GM: Yeah. It. It hits Rho with like so you're standing outside the door. Rho is in the doorway. Alioth is inside the room. You just see like some movement in the direction of like Alioth's desk, and suddenly you see like a big beam of plasma just shoot out from where Alioth is sitting and Rho takes quite a bit of damage. Hey, watch me roll dice with myself.

Jenine/Marty: Rollzies.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh.

Avery/GM: Boom. And yeah. Alioth hits, hits Rho. Zhan, you're up. What are you doing? You're back over on the Cassiopeia. Alone.

Zach/Zahn: All By myself!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. You you play it through the loud speakers, just max volume.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my god. No. So Zahn is going to indeed disable the Cassiopia.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: At least it's primary functions cuz I want to see about is the, the teleporter still functional? That's on here.

Chris/Ollie: Well they powered it with an A-Cell by jury rigging it.

Avery/GM: Yeah and the, the teleportation pads, now the ship is running, The teleportation pads do work.

Zach/Zahn: Ah, but what happens when I cut the power?

Avery/GM: You'll have to find another way to power it.

Zach/Zahn: Well, I've got a fuck ton of power type A power cells.

Avery/GM: Yep. You'll have to jury rig it a bit.

Zach/Zahn: That's fine. I'm you know, I'm the engineer. Let's cut some power.

Avery/GM: Okay. I mean, you don't have to, you don't have to roll to, to cut power. You, you know how this thing works.

Zach/Zahn: I'm going to utilize my laser blade to make it at least as inconvenient as possible to repair.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. You slice up the, the power cord that you once put back together and it is now shut off.

Zach/Zahn: Does that like include life support systems and all that other shit?

Avery/GM: Yeah. I was gonna say, you're wearing your helmet, right?

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah, of course.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You immediately feel weightless.

Zach/Zahn: Excellent. That means I can go faster with my jet boots. And so with that I'm going to proceed to the teleportation pad. And at the same time I'm

going to contact Hermes to immediately just leave me and go back over to the Ursa major.

Avery/GM: Oh man, you're gonna make me roll Dex, or Initiative for Hermes now?

Bee/Polaris: Hey, you're the one that had, it has all the robots.

Avery/GM: I know, right?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, on Ollie's turn, he's gonna call the space Pirates.

Bee/Polaris: What?

Zach/Zahn: Oh No,

Bee/Polaris: we're just adding everyone?

Chris/Ollie: No, That's just a joke. But yeah, it'd be funny. Add everyone to the initiative role.

Jenine/Marty: Honestly, if they found out that Marty got hurt, they'd come.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. That's pretty fucked up. That'd be hilarious. We just get everyone involved. We bring the Winstons in.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Everyone just to kill this one raging psychic.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn phones in Machamp. Yeah, which Champ shows up with a small fleet of the Republic.

Bee/Polaris: It’s just the season finale. We just bring everyone in and it's just a, a fucking thunder dome.

Avery/GM: Merrick is up next, and

Zach/Zahn: Alioth is male?

Avery/GM: No. It/Its.

Bee/Polaris: Alitoh is it, it doesn't identify with anything regarding humans.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Mm, valid.

Avery/GM: It is Alioth.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Merrick shows up just behind Bear and is trying to play peacemaker and is just like, Hey, hey, hey. Let's all calm down. What is going on in here? This is not the place to have a firefight. There are a lot of people here who could die.

Bee/Polaris: Who is, who are they trying to convince?

Avery/GM: Kind of just shouting at like this whole group that is like in front of them.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Like Rho and, and you and Bear and every,

Chris/Ollie: yeah, Merrick just walks into a brawl.

Bee/Polaris: That's fair. But Rho did hurt Marty. So

Avery/GM: you see Merrick touch like a wall panel in the hallway next to them and start like typing away at it, like looking for something. And that is Merrick's turn. Oh my gosh, I have so many NPCs. Why did I do this to myself? Rho is next.

Bee/Polaris: Oh no.

Avery/GM: And Polaris Rho turns her attention to you after having been stabbed a couple of times. I need a mental save, please.

Bee/Polaris: Oh boy. I'm super good at that. And by good at that I mean… so yeah, I, I I rolled a, a nat one.

Jenine/Marty: Oh my god.

Chris/Ollie: Polaris's brain explodes.

Avery/GM: Not Quite.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. death bring to me.

Avery/GM: No.

Bee/Polaris: The sweet embrace of death,

Chris/Ollie: If I only rolled higher initiative.

Avery/GM: How much damage does your blade do again? What's the dice on it?

Bee/Polaris: 2d8.

Avery/GM: You suddenly feel your hand move of its own accord.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, cool.

Avery/GM: And Stab yourself with your blade.

Zach/Zahn: Quit stabbing yourself. Quit stabbing yourself!

Bee/Polaris: Well that's only fair.

Avery/GM: Take 14 damage as you are impaled on your blade.

Bee/Polaris: That's fair. Polaris says, put that as a mental note. Turn off blade after stab. Cool. Thanks Rho.

Avery/GM: And then Rho continues advancing on Alioth.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent. Thank you Rho.

Avery/GM: Zahn, what did you tell Hermes to do?

Zach/Zahn: Oh, I told him to leave the Cassiopeia and make for the hangar of the Ursa major.

Avery/GM: Okay. Hermes is floating along. Hermes sends in chat, Would you like me to start shooting?

Jenine/Marty: No.

Zach/Zahn: Negative

Bee/Polaris: I love Hermes.

Avery/GM: Sad face emoji. Marty, you're up. You have been psychically damaged.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I have this,

Avery/GM: this nice Rho person is having a moment.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. Is Marty gonna heal herself or is she gonna try and talk?

Avery/GM: Talking's a free action. So,

Jenine/Marty: yeah, but it's gonna lead to her wanting to do transmit thought.

Avery/GM: Gotcha.

Jenine/Marty: It wants a willing action. I need a a, a willing target as an instant action. If I wanted to do transmit thought, it would be, there's no option if it's not a willing creature. So this is me asking the GM: Would it be a mental save situation?

Avery/GM: I think instead, because transmit thought is not malevolent. I wouldn't make it a save. I think I would make you roll a charisma connect. If they're unwilling,

Jenine/Marty: I will happily do that. I'll just, before I like do that, I'll just be like, Rho. I know everything is stressful and I know you got lots of new information, but maybe we can just take a couple steps back and just talk with no more violence. Also, just like looking at everybody being like, no more violence. I'm just taking a couple steps back.

Chris/Ollie: Oh. Do you have any sedative drugs on you?

Jenine/Marty: Unfortunately, I do not. I don't all of them amplify things, my things amplify it. Or also raise kind of from zero hit points. We're gonna do nice little, Connect check real quick? That's okay. That's okay. That's it. That's a 10.

Avery/GM: A 10?

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: And that's over transmit thought. So that's just between you and her?

Jenine/Marty: So I say the first thing to like kind of try and be like, this is me being like, Hey, I'm about to do something, but this is me trying to open up. That was me talking first. And then when I do transmit ta thought from the documents that I read about, like Terra, I send like images of what Terra looked like before All the mass destruction and everything and like trying to like, give calming aspects of everything to try and get her from like continuing to torch and everything.

Avery/GM: Sure. With a 10, I'd say that's a pretty good roll. You hear back, these beings are the whole reason I'm here and the whole reason I'm stuck here. Getting rid of them is the only way all those people will not have died in vain and you get back the images of her dead comrades.

Bee/Polaris: Well, I've been in an orphan once. What's another time?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: And then Marty will send back, but does killing them now do anything for everybody? Right now we can get more information and get justice for them. I say this over, over transmit thought, cause I'm not gonna say this out loud in front of Polaris. Get justice. So let's just get, let's take a beat, figure out why, then give the appropriate punishment.

Avery/GM: Roll charisma connect one more time.

Jenine/Marty: There's so many rollings and it's scary.

Avery/GM: You're doing great though.

Jenine/Marty: I know. It's a nine.

Avery/GM: She stops communicating telepathically, turns toward the corridor that you're in and says, the only justice they deserve is the same justice they gave the planet they destroyed.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, she said that out loud. Did she?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Polaris is morally gray. She just said she wants to kill his parents.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: It's a good thing Zahn's not there where he would agree. Fuck.

Bee/Polaris: Wait agree with murdering the, the custodians?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Dang. Ah, this is rough.

Jenine/Marty: Ah, this is rough guys.

Avery/GM: Ollie, you are up next.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie is just gonna try and reason with her by grabbing on like how far off the ground is she floating?

Avery/GM: Oh, like six inches. Not very far.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. And.

Zach/Zahn: It's the, the intimidating levitation.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Not like full flight.

Avery/GM: Yeah. We're talking like profe not Professor Xavier… Magneto, you know?

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. Copy.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. And we did determine how long the Cassiopeia had been there. It'd only been there a few weeks, right?

Avery/GM: Yes. And Polaris, you also know that there is some time stuff that doesn't make sense.

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. That's what Ollie's thinking. So he, his. Or my plan is he's gonna rush and try and body block any gunfire or any other laser sword attacks. Just put himself in front of any, any attacks between Rho and anyone else. Grab her by the shoulders and you know, if that's a grapple check let me know.

Avery/GM: Yeah, I think that would be.

Chris/Ollie: and what is that?

Avery/GM: Grappling. Let's find out

Chris/Ollie: just a physical attack kind of thing. Exert.

Avery/GM: I think it would be exert. I think that's probably the, the best it would be.

Chris/Ollie: Good thing my robot is weak.

Avery/GM: Well, I was gonna say though, if you want, because you, you do have an encyclopedic knowledge of anatomy. I will let you use intelligence if you would like.

Chris/Ollie: I got her by the, the pressure points.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, you could, you could fucking do the thing they do in kung fu panda.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: I rolled a terrible four. Oh no wait. Never. Nevermind. With Int… That actually makes it … is it intelligence exert?

Avery/GM: intelligence exert, yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. That makes it a six.

Avery/GM: A six.

Zach/Zahn: Something tells me that's not gonna get you anywhere.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, that's what I'm feeling.

Avery/GM: I'm gonna, I'm gonna contest it with a. With a strength exert from Rho, which her strength is not very good. So exert is minus one. Hey, she rolled a five.

Chris/Ollie: Oh,

Bee/Polaris: whoa.

Zach/Zahn: Hey

Avery/GM: you, you have Rho grappled.

Chris/Ollie: All right, so I'm gonna stare like face her to me. Stare in the eyes with some big, sad anime puppy dog eyes. I'm gonna say, Rho, please listen. This is not the way. They are not the ones who betrayed you, and we do not know the reason why they destroyed the planet. If you have any hope of returning to your galaxy, it is through these beings.

Avery/GM: Roll charisma, connect

Bee/Polaris: the, the sad anime puppy dog eyes really brings it all together.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Yep.

Chris/Ollie: Good thing. I'm awful at Charisma and connecting. I rolled a, what is this, an eight

Avery/GM: eight

Chris/Ollie: and also definitely gonna add in: we determined that your, your ship had only been there for three weeks. It is impossible for your ship to have made the journey here naturally. There must be a way to return

Avery/GM: between you physically holding her. She tries to lash out psychically, but she has torched too much and the kind of like psychic storm that was kind of brewing around her sort of dissipates and falls still and she like, you physically feel her become heavier in your arms as you're like, as she's no longer levitating herself and then you see her go. Unconscious and limp.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, there's super gas in that room.

Avery/GM: The gas does start to like go out the vents though, as Alioth sees that the threat is gone and still holding this plasma pistol in its hand. It walks up to you, Ollie and Says we should just put her out of her misery at this point and is holding the gun up.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God.

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

Chris/Ollie: Oof,

Zach/Zahn: oof,

Jenine/Marty: oof.

Episode 21 - Family Secrets

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 21 of Beyond the Furthest Stars

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

Avery/GM: So it's, it's been a few days. It has been a busy morning so far where we're gonna pick up the morning after Alioth spoke with Navi. It's been a pretty busy morning so far. What has everyone been doing this, this early morning?

Chris/Ollie: Since Ollie doesn't need to sleep? I imagine the whole time he's been sorting through the box of chips that we found.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah, we found a box of chips!

Chris/Ollie: Just all night.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah, So I thought I mentioned this last time, but basically each one of those corresponds with a different skill on the skill list. So some of them will give plus one or plus two to those different skills. Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: But basically it's, there's basically one of each, or there's

Bee/Polaris: Six chips total.One for each attribute?

Avery/GM: attribute. No, there's, sorry. So there's 19 different skills on the skill list. Not the attribute list, but just the skill list. And each of those chips corresponds. So there's 19 chips total. Each of them corresponds with, um, One of your skills. So there's a pilot, there's an administer, there's a connect,

Chris/Ollie: all right and each one's, uh, there's no, uh, negatives for any of them.

Avery/GM: Nope. Excellent. But if you've been like, experimenting with them, I will tell you that when you plugged in the heel chip, you got like basically a massive like database of like all the different kinds of like different alien anatomy and physiology.

Chris/Ollie: Oh. So it's like, um, in oblivion when you open a book and you immediately gain all the knowledge.

Avery/GM: Yeah. I mean, cause you're, you're a computer, so, you know.

Chris/Ollie: Okay yeah, so Ollie’s been plugging each, each one of them in and, and just downloading

Bee/Polaris: a title screen pops up with the, the music.

Avery/GM: But, you only get the bonus to the skill, if you have it plugged in, obviously

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah.

Avery/GM: You know, like the, no, the no chip would be basically like just a Encyclopedia Britannica you. Type of thing. So

Bee/Polaris: might I make one? Might I make one small request?

Avery/GM: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: Can there be a Skyrim chip?

Avery/GM: A Skyrim chip.

Zach/Zahn: Just an Elder Scrolls chip.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Get back your criminal Scum.

Bee/Polaris: Archers

Avery/GM: Anything anyone else was doing?

Jenine/Marty: I'm making a nice breakfast of pancakes.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Marty's the cook, the stand in cook for Bruce. Did you add flies to the pancakes?

Jenine/Marty: I will as- I'll have them in the side, like as a side. Like, I'll roast, I'll roast them as like little like chipies so you can like garnish your, um, your pancakes and have a little crunchy

Bee/Polaris: with, with Bruce's special flies.

Jenine/Marty: Yes. Not, I don't use all of them, but I do like a little bit of mouse, so it's like, if anyone wants to try it, we should try the delicacy of our friend!

Avery/GM: Where are you having this breakfast? The Cassiopeia, the custodian ship, the Ursa major. Or

Bee/Polaris: we can have a picnic in space.

Avery/GM: The TSFKAM (the ship formerly known as the Minos) or, yeah, you could try.

Jenine/Marty: Which one has the better kitchen again? If, if Polaris would let me, I would like to teach him how to make pancakes on hi- On, on, on. Like the ship that he was raised on so he knows like the appliances and stuff.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: I’d say it'd be a toss up between the Ursa and the Cassiopeia. They're both, good.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Um, Polaris has been still like alternating between who he's checking on and staying with for a little bit. So yeah. When he makes his rounds to you, yeah. You could teach him to make pancakes or we could try?

Jenine/Marty: We're gonna teach you how to make pancakes and we're also gonna caramelize these flies.

Bee/Polaris: (laughter)

Chris/Ollie: Oh God. Oh no!

Jenine/Marty: I'm not gonna trick you into eating it. I'm just gonna be like, I'm gonna be transparent about it, Y'all!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris doesn’t know what's going on at all. And he doesn't know what caramelized means, so he's just like nodding along.

Zach/Zahn: I'm gonna imagine that Zahn has had some pretty bad food in his time.

Avery/GM: I mean, you eat fake cheese so you know.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. You do eat, assemble singles.

Zach/Zahn: It's such a crime!

Avery/GM: Marty and Polaris, I'll have you both roll some intelligence work checks.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet. I have nothing in work.

Jenine/Marty: Could, it could be a connect cause I'm cooking with my heart

Bee/Polaris: And a buddy.

Jenine/Marty: and a buddy.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. This is a buddy exercise. Sure.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I did trash

Jenine/Marty: with intelligence it's a 13 cause I rolled two sixes.

Bee/Polaris: Whoa.That's amazing. I got drum roll please. A six

Zach/Zahn: total.

Bee/Polaris: Um, oh wait, wait. My bad. A five.

Avery/GM: So Marty, you, you rolled so well that you're gonna negate the almost catastrophe that Polaris caused. Um, as, uh, you see… you're mixing the batter together, you know, you're putting in your, your egg and you're your flour, your sugar and all that and you see… You know, sometimes pancakes, they'll call for like a dash of salt, you know, and you, you see, uh, that Polaris might have misread the instructions and got a tablespoon of salt instead of like a quarter teaspoon of salt or something like that and you luckily, you, you, you stop him just in the nick of time, you're like, just a little bit and you end up making some pretty, uh, tasty smelling pancakes that are wafting through the air

vents of the Ursa major and your flies have turned out perfectly caramelized and crunchy. Bruce would be very impressed.

Bee/Polaris: How do you caramelize a fly? There's no liquid.

Jenine/Marty: I dunno. It’s space, let it happen.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, there is,

Bee/Polaris: these are some particularly juicy flies.

Chris/Ollie: They got some juice, some fly juice in them.

Avery/GM: I mean, you could get some pretty, pretty juicy ones, you know?

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God,

Chris/Ollie: I, I, I'm sure Bruce liked them. Juicy.

Avery/GM: Oh!

Bee/Polaris: okay. I, early on in the campaign, I definitely was wondering if Bruce ate flies, but I was like, oh no, he's a chef. So when, when Bruce's message included that he has a stash of flies, I was like, unreasonably happy about that.

Avery/GM: I mean, it, it, it was very fitting, wasn't it?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, it's pretty good.

Avery/GM: And you're making these pancakes and they're, they're smelling good. Uh, does anyone do, do you let people know, or do you kind of just let people find them when they find them?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will take like a video of him cooking one side of the pancake, cook one side of the pancakes in the pan and the other side of the pancake. He's using his laser blade to like toast to the top and then he sends that in chat, in the group chat with everyone.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh. Okay. Breakfast is served y'all.

Chris/Ollie: Efficient! Cooks twice as fast

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, there you go. So we like set the table and it's like really nicely. It's like super nice and everything. Yeah. A tablecloth, maybe like a little centerpiece. A place for everyone. The perfect setting for Zahn fistfight Rho.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: Food fight!

Avery/GM: Marty, you're helping to set this table and you get like a flash of like, (magic sound) premonition in your mind and you see Zahn before he even comes through the door. You see Zahn coming through the door, tripping over. There's like a little bit of like a lip in the door frame. You see him trip over that door frame and collide into Polaris who's like holding like a plate of pancakes.

Bee/Polaris: and a laser blade

Avery/GM: and a laser blade and it's very dangerous. It's a very dangerous situation. And this flash of, of, of premonition, uh, goes away as you hear Zahn whistling a little tune coming into the room.

Jenine/Marty: Hold please. Hold, hold please. No one come in. We're still setting up and then like Marty zips over to Polaris and like takes the pancakes and just goes, thank you! You should sit here and then like puts the pancakes on the thing. Okay. You could come in now!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris sits down with his laser blade still on and he like, Sits at the table and he holds a fork and his laser blade in the other hand.

Jenine/Marty: is it like that full setting where it's like big or is it like little setting where it's like (makes mouth whooshing noises) I don't think described that well.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, no, I know what you mean though. Yeah. Its turned to the little setting.

Avery/GM: Knife setting or sword setting?

Bee/Polaris: He uh… actually he has it on sword setting.

Zach/Zahn: Oh geez. Sword setting. It's a three foot long laser blade.

Chris/Ollie: Just swinging it around.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, and a fork.

Zach/Zahn: As soon as I hear Marty say, “no, don't come in”, I activate my grab boots and I just like, uh, magnetically stick to the floor. Just stop. And I'm just like, what's, what's going on? Why I, I heard pancakes.

Jenine/Marty: There's a little, there's a little thing right there. Be careful. Don't trip on it. You'll be good! Pancakes, yes.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn looks down and he is like, Hmm, I'm gonna have to level that out later. And then, and then enters

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: Pulls up his little, uh, wrist display and makes like, pulls up a journal note entrance to kitchen, need to fix lip. No trip. Big capitals good.

Avery/GM: Yeah. And Ollie, do you, do you join this little, like, cause Ollie, you've, you have been eating food even though you don't really eat food, but

Chris/Ollie: No, he's been

Zach/Zahn: shoving them in his processors.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Um, well he's been taking them.

Avery/GM: That's right.

Chris/Ollie: He's been pretty much storing them. All the food that Bruce has ever given him is in his storage compartment.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

Avery/GM: Oh my God.

Bee/Polaris: Oh My god. It's been, it's been, it's been a couple weeks, right?

Zach/Zahn: yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I imagine it's like the, uh, the “No more pudding Cowboy Bebop” episode with the fridge.

Avery/GM: Oh gosh. Yeah, you've got something growing in there.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. But Ollie's not concerned. Life signs are, are minimal

Bee/Polaris: and none of us know.

Chris/Ollie: But no, he's going to continue his, uh, search. He's, uh, going through the chips looking for any reference to that vision. He had to see if there's anything you can find, like anything, uh, that elucidates that. Uh, so he's just gonna put back in chat. Uh, sorry. With a tongue out emoji with an arrow emoji and an ax emoji.

Jenine/Marty: Sad face emoji.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.Then the Ooh, crying emoji.

Bee/Polaris: Also sad face emoji.

Avery/GM: Marty, you're, uh, enjoying your pancakes and, um, you see Rho come into the. And you get another premonition of her bursting into tears while sitting over your delicious pancakes. Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe. Maybe she's crying cause they're so good.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is waiting for Rho to come so he can give her the salmon.

Jenine/Marty: hmm. hmm. Okay. Okay. Okay. Marty's gonna let it happen. We're gonna see what happens. It's fine.

Avery/GM: Sure. You don't have to stop everything you foresee.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Also, you're not really used to foreseeing things, so maybe, you know how, how is, how is Marty feeling about this? Like,

Jenine/Marty: excellent. It's like the, okay, this is new. This is interesting. This is a new thing. Have I heard of stuff like this?

Avery/GM: I mean, you, you definitely, because like what, okay. What age did Marty's sci powers like manifest? Like was it really young? Was it kind of late?

Jenine/Marty: They were pretty early on, but it was like much, very much like little things of like this little booboo boop kinda situation.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, I scraped my knee. I don't want it to be scraped anymore.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And now it's not that kind of a thing.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. So you definitely remember that this sort of feeling was, is is similar to how your bios powers came on when you were younger?

Jenine/Marty: Cool. This is just one that I never really activated and now it's activated and I go, this is, this is different.

Avery/GM: Yeah. But you, but you know about like pre.. precogs and um, and, and other sorts of, uh, psychic, you know, powers in the universe. You definitely know about it.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Snazzy. I'll see how this one goes through. It's, it's all, it's all an experiment at this point. Trial and error.

Avery/GM: Yeah. And Rho comes in and sees the pancakes and her eyes get super big and she sits down. She's like, may, may I have some of these, these look excellent.

Jenine/Marty: Yes. I made it for everybody.

Avery/GM: And she like, takes a couple flapjacks off the, off the big plate in the center and, and starts like digging into them

Bee/Polaris: Pancake time. Do we have syrup?

Avery/GM: Yeah, there's. Bruce probably had like a stash of like

Bee/Polaris: bean syrup.

Avery/GM: Bean syrup yeah

Jenine/Marty: Bean syrup. A beans

Avery/GM: it's, it's a vanilla bean syrup.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sweet.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: A heck Yeah. Let's go.

Avery/GM: Yeah, there we go. Can also just, it doesn't all have to be pintos and, and, and kidney beans.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. There's a lot of beans.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Anything's a bean if you try hard enough. Anyone doing anything while you're sitting here enjoying your pancakes?

Bee/Polaris: Yep. Polaris would slide over an anatomically correct. Salmon plushy over to Rho.

Avery/GM: Uh, she picks this up and, and looks at you and it's just like, what's, what's this for?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris goes back to eating his pancakes. He doesn't know how to answer that

Avery/GM: She, she just sort of looks at you and. gives it a hug and then sets it down in her lap and starts continue to eating.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah. I didn't think that far ahead. I didn't think she'd ask what that was for.

Avery/GM: You're fine. You're fine.

Bee/Polaris: Is Zahn in a fist fight Rho now?

Jenine/Marty: Breakfast and a show, breakfast and a show.

Bee/Polaris: It's like that one meme of the cat at the table with the salad and the lady Screaming at it.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: So if I remember right, Zahn spent like the whole night pouring over all the info that Ollie had downloaded before we erased it and so we have all of the ships' logs on Terra and stuff, right?

Avery/GM: You have quite a bit. Yes. There was some stuff that was still encrypted that even Ollie couldn't get through. But yeah, you have like you know that the ship was sent from Terra as a way to draw out some rogue AI. You know that the command crew basically left Rho to die in space as like a sacrifice kind of a thing cause they needed the ship to reach its destination. But then after that, who knows, you know? So you ha… you have a, a basic overview of kind of the ship's origins. Did you, did you explore any of the medical files?

Zach/Zahn: let's say, Yes. For, for plot convenience?

Avery/GM: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: Didn't Marty do that too?

Avery/GM: Marty?

Jenine/Marty: I did.

Avery/GM: Marty did as well.

Jenine/Marty: It was the first thing I did.

Avery/GM: So,

Zach/Zahn: cause I'm curious if I'll, uh, see any of the potential founders of, uh, new Terra Station in there?

Avery/GM: no. Cause this was just, um, medical files related to the crew. Oh, okay. But you, you did learn that every time Rho is referenced, she's referenced as, um, a science experiment basically.

Zach/Zahn: Ugh, that's not nice.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: I'm squinting my eyes.

Avery/GM: So that is something else that you, that's some background knowledge you have about, about Rho as well.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha.

Avery/GM: The specifics about her, what kind of experiment, uh, was not elaborated on, on the files that Marty gained access to.

Zach/Zahn: So as soon as Rho comes in, Z's gonna go from like his kind of happy, I just woke up and had a good night's sleep self to like more anxious cause he has to get a little, he's about to get a little investigaty here. so like, he goes from like en like thoroughly enjoying the pancakes to wolfing them down.

Avery/GM: sure.

Zach/Zahn: And once he's cleared his plate, he's like, uh, so. And he is like double because he is like completely awkward in this moment. Double pointer fingers at Rho. He is like, are you gonna tell us anything about your ship and why you're here?

Bee/Polaris: Sit down. Slide a manila fool over

Zach/Zahn: question mark. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. She stops like, there's like a piece of pancake, like on the fork, like ready to go in and she kind of just looks across the table at you and she's like, I, I've, I've told you everything I know. I, I was, we, we were supposed to, to come out here on a, on a mission and our mission failed and, and so now Navi wants to blow us up.

Zach/Zahn: Right… And, uh, Why, why, from your side of things, why, why would you think that, um, your people would find you expendable?

Bee/Polaris: Ouch.

Avery/GM: Well, I, I, I honestly don't know that they never gave off any, any feelings like, like, they didn't value me. I, I didn't really realize what was happening until the, the crew abandoned ship after I started navigating.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, so you, you were the designated navigations person?

Avery/GM: Yes. The, the pod you found me in it amplifies my psychic powers and lets me navigate space much more efficiently than a human or a, a, a normal human or even an, an AI would navigate.

Zach/Zahn: Hmm. So, uh, It's on the topic of, of AIs. Um, are you privy to any like rogue AIs that you may have been implemented to circumvent?

Avery/GM: Let's see. Did she know about that?

Bee/Polaris: I don't, because in the log, didn't the guy basically say like, he was like, oh, well I don't see the point of sending all these people out here. Oh, well, sorry, Rho about the, the whole rogue AI thing. So it's like the, that was like the, um, the actual mission and they had a coverup mission that they were told they were sent on.

Avery/GM: That's right. Yep. Yep. You're right. Thank you. Mm-hmm. I was just looking, I was looking over my notes to make sure that that was the case.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: Yes. She's like, no, I, I didn't learn about the rogue AI mission until, until you let me out. And, you know, I started kind of talking with, with everyone here and you know, sort of learned through osmosis or, you know, other techniques that the, the crew had other motives. I don't know why they aimed the ship so far away from our galaxy. I don't know why. An, I don't know why AI from our galaxy would come to this one. That seems a bit much.

Zach/Zahn: right… He's like very contemplative eyes squinted thinking. Right. So, uh, tell me the origins of Terra. What is, what is that?

Avery/GM: Well, Terra is my home. It's, it's the home of all, well, what I thought, we're all humans. It used to be called Earth, but it got renamed to Terra a a a few hundred years ago for some reason, I historians debate Why. I don't know. But anyway, that's neither humor nor there. It's, it's the capital world of the Pan Solar Union. It used to be a pretty polluted and toxic place after centuries of industrialization and war and famine and hatred and terror. But eventually, the inhabitants of that world started working together and made it better and started heading out into the, the galaxy and started making more homes among the stars.

Zach/Zahn: Neat. Well, that's, uh, that's good for Terra. But a follow up question, is your crew, the first crew to try and inhabit another galaxy?

Avery/GM: As far as I know, we, we usually stuck to just the, what we call the Milky Way. Yeah. The distances between galaxies have been so vast that it's been hard to justify traveling that far until recently.

Zach/Zahn: Ah, yes. Well that in wherein lies a, a big old question cause uh, where I'm from, uh, is a place called New Terra from this galaxy. And, uh, we still use some of your language, which is how I was able to navigate, like, looking to everybody else, how I was able to navigate through your corridors. Cause I know some of your freaking language.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris was just gonna say, I meant to ask about that.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Um, she cocks her head at you, uh, Zahn and is just like, are you, are you certain it's the same language?

Zach/Zahn: Close enough, if not similar. Well, I don't know all of your language by heart. My mother would read out of a journal of sorts in your language. she would read to me and said language and some of our uh, uh, signage and stuff is a mix of your language and kind of the universal language of this galaxy.

Avery/GM: She doesn't say anything but is staring into your eyes and I need a mental save.

Zach/Zahn: oh no.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris at this point is looking very confused between the two of them.

Chris/Ollie: Brain Nuke incoming.

Zach/Zahn: I’m about to get brain-wiped.

Chris/Ollie: Yep.

Jenine/Marty: Nah, don't worry about it.

Chris/Ollie: This knowledge is forbidden.

Zach/Zahn: I rolled an18 and my save needs to be a nine, so.

Avery/GM: Perfect. Okay. You feel (magic sound) memories that you had kind of locked down, start to bubble to the surface and at first you're not really sure what's going on. Like, maybe, maybe it's just cause you mentioned your mother, but like, you start thinking about like one specific memory of her reading to you When you were a child and then you make the saving throw and suddenly you see Rho kind of like, almost like an invisible force, kinda like pushes her backwards in her seat (psychic blast) as you have prevented her from drilling into your mind.

Zach/Zahn: Hey.

Avery/GM: But you do see her, uh, starting to weep.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, no, no. She's weeping over the pancakes

Bee/Polaris: and the flies. Don't forget the caramelized flies.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: And her salmon, this is, this is awful.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, no.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is very confused. He's looking between Zahn and the crying Rho and then looks over to Marty.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna like, touch his fingers to his temple and be like, what did you just try to do? You can't just go like parading into somebody's brain without permission.

Avery/GM: She stands up and is just like, no, you're, you're right. I'm, I'm sorry. I gotta go. And she runs out of the, the dining room before you can get any more answers.

Zach/Zahn: All you're gonna get is Oy, I'm not done with. And then as she's like running down the hall, he's like, I'm not done with you yet. But…

Avery/GM: you're gonna chase after her.

Zach/Zahn: No.

Avery/GM: oh, okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like, looks after Rho and then Polaris looks over to Zahn and says, wait then do you glow too?

Zach/Zahn: What? No.

Avery/GM: Now Polaris looks more puzzled.

Zach/Zahn: What do you mean glow?

Avery/GM: Yeah. Polaris is very confused. would there be anything on his person that gives off a slight radiation, like an A-Cell battery or something like that?

Avery/GM: I'd say probably your laser blade.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Polaris will hold his laser blade near his skin and his freckles will probably glow, because I don't think we've ever been in this situation where Polaris glowed.

Zach/Zahn: not in front of everybody.

Avery/GM: No, you have not yet.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, so Polaris like holds his laser blade to his own arm and he glows his freckles glow.

Zach/Zahn: Well now everybody just gets to be confused.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is like looking con… very confused.

Jenine/Marty: Hmm. Hmm. Have you always just been glow?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Glow, glowing like that?

Bee/Polaris: Yep. Whenever radiation is present.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm. Do I know what that is?

Bee/Polaris: You did read his file. I don't know how far you got into his file though. I'm pretty sure it was just like his normal, his normal boy file.

Jenine/Marty: It was just normal stuff

Bee/Polaris: about vitals. Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: It was just like a normal boy stuff.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: It was just like, everything's healthy and I go sick. Good to know.

Bee/Polaris: We are on the Ursa Major, so there might be some other things. Uh, but Marty's only seen his normal boy files.

Jenine/Marty: That's the, the access that I had granted.

Avery/GM: So I will say that, um, The indi, all the individuals, like, and maybe you didn't put this together in the moment, but now you're kind of thinking about it. All the individuals who had like that like, kind of like glowing, uh, freckle condition were all from the same planet of Fotia which was you, you don't know of cause it's in the Milky Way Galaxy. But you know, you'd read through their file and it would say Home world Fotia blah blah, blah, this person needs, uh, insulin every four hours or something like that. You know, or, or this person needs an inhaler. That kind of a thing.

Bee/Polaris: So hell yeah. Brothers.

Avery/GM: So putting two and two together, you might think that that bioluminescence might be related to that planet in some way.

Jenine/Marty: Interest… Okay and like Marty just kind of sits there and like Charlie starts to, like, you can see her brain working.

Bee/Polaris: and Polaris is gonna send a, a little message to the custodians

Zach/Zahn: and Zahn is gonna go find some busy work to do

Bee/Polaris: did anyone eat the flies?

Avery/GM: Yeah, I was gonna say

Zach/Zahn: Oh Zahn…

Jenine/Marty: Yes,

Zach/Zahn: Zahn ate all of it wholeheartedly.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Polaris also ate some flies. He like put some, like, you know how you put a slab of butter onto like a, a pad of butter onto your pancakes? He put the flies on top.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. I mean, protein recycling's probably pretty common.

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah.

Chris/Ollie: On space stations. So flies,

Avery/GM: glorious

Chris/Ollie: Flies are step up

Zach/Zahn: adds that extra bit of crunch, you know.

Bee/Polaris: Well, they're caramelized, so they're not crunchy, so they're nice. They're soft and sweet.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: So Zahn staying on you for a minute. Um, what busy work do you go do? Well,

Zach/Zahn: since it's in his immediate forefront of his brain, he's gonna fix the lip, uh, into the kitchen. And we're on the Ursa, right?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Okay. Yeah, he's gonna fix the lip on the ursa and then, um, I don't know, maybe wander around on the Cassiopeia, try to fix something there. See if he, maybe you can restore the, the giant guns in the hangar bay if they're not completely demolished.

Bee/Polaris: No, don't do that. Don't give Navi the ability to shoot us.

Avery/GM: I mean, Hermes, Hermes did get beat up pretty bad, but Hermes did do an efficient job of destroying the things. If there's one thing he's good at, it's, shoot,

Zach/Zahn: it's blowing stuff up. That's our boy. That's all. Boy,

Chris/Ollie: we still need to fix the, uh, hydroponics bays.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. We have to fix the hydroponics so we can get corn and weed.

Zach/Zahn: in that order of priority.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, exactly. More importantly, corn.

Avery/GM: Oh my goodness. . So yeah, you start doing your busy work, um, getting repairs done. Very good. Uh, let's jump over to Bee, you send the custodians a message?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is just gonna ask if there's any other medical files on himself that they have in their possession.

Zach/Zahn: A quick, quick,

Avery/GM: you specifically don't get a response from, uh, Merak or Bear.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Alioth just sends three dots and is like why

Bee/Polaris: he sends wanna be healthy, smiley face.

Avery/GM: You get, you get back. Um, I may have something around my lab, but everything should be in the medical files in the Med Bay. Curious, you've never really taken that much of an interest before. Why now?

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris has noticed that both Merak and Bear have not said anything or added any sort of input. So he's getting a little sus. Um, Polaris sends a shrug emoji. Bored.

Zach/Zahn: Bored. Could use the read.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Bored. Could use the read smiley face. book emoji, nerd emoji.

Avery/GM: Merrick finally responds and is just… says, maybe we could discuss this later after your friends are busy with other things.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris sends, dot, dot, dot and then would you all ever lie to me?

Avery/GM: Bear actually responds and is just like, only to keep you safe. Alioth sends a face palm emoji.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris squints his eye. He like stands up and is like squinting his eyes in his helmet, but not moving. He doesn't know because like earlier when they, we were like, when they debating on whether or not to destroy the Cassiopeia or tow it with us. They said it's for your safety, so now Polaris is extra suspicious of the custodians.

Avery/GM: Very good. You should be, no kidding.

Bee/Polaris: is Zahn still in the room because he was fixing the little, little ledge to the door, or did he finish that?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn would be like, I don't know, grinding or, or something that's pretty loud with his helmet on and in his helmet, he actually, uh, I want him to have hers reading the ship's data on, on Terra.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: Like an audiobook.

Avery/GM: Sure. Currently, currently he is reading to you about the Bronze Age collapse

Chris/Ollie: the sea people, they come.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: And then every now and then you'll, you'll see him stop and be like, Hermes not that far back. Go, go forward a little bit.

Bee/Polaris: Lovely.

Zach/Zahn: But otherwise he's not at all focused on like really his surroundings.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. When he gets in the Zone he gets in the Zone.

Avery/GM: he's in the Zone, AutoZone.

Bee/Polaris: Hmm. Okay. Polaris is gonna go to the Med bay and he's gonna start like doing the thing where you're like looking for something but not doing so in a way that doesn't make everything messy. He's just looking for something out of the ordinary.

Avery/GM: Sure. Awesome. We will get to that then in a moment.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: Marty, you were chasing after Rho?

Jenine/Marty: Ye!

Avery/GM: Ollie outta curiosity, where specifically are you doing this? Analysis work that you're doing?

Chris/Ollie: Probably my trusty work station inside the TSKAM.

Avery/GM: Cool. So Marty Ro makes it pretty far. Before you catch up to her, Marty, you come into the docking bay, you actually see her messing with Polaris's ship, maybe trying to figure out how to get in there.

Jenine/Marty: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Um, okay. I'm not gonna be aggressive. Hello, Rho! Sorry. You're having a moment. Um, Polaris doesn't really like when people touch his ship.

Avery/GM: I need to get outta here. Can I use your ship? I need to get home and I'm, I'm sorry, but I can't handle this. This is too much.

Jenine/Marty: What, which part? Sorry About that whole conversation. We just, that thing. Um, are you okay? You don't seem okay. You're not okay. Um, do you need a hug? Do you need a breath? You should take a br like a quick breath.

Avery/GM: You see her kind of like, stop for a moment, take a breath and is just like, oh yeah, you're right. I probably shouldn't steal someone's ship just to get home, that wouldn't be right.

Jenine/Marty: also, if your home is super, super, super far away, I don't know if any of these ships will be able to take you might, well, probably will, but like at the same time, you know what I mean, like, might not have enough of the, uh, required energies to get there.

Avery/GM: Well, no, no. See, this is the thing that hasn't made sense this whole time is that I was only on that ship for a couple of months. I couldn't have possibly have even made it as far as, as you all are saying that I've made it. So I'm pretty sure this is either just some sort of trick or there's a… there's a wormhole or something out there that I can, I just need to find and I can get back to where I was and, and all of this should be fine. I just, I can't, I can't stay here anymore. Zahn clearly doesn't want me here, and, and all of you are nice, but I, I, I just, I can't, I can't be here anymore.

Jenine/Marty: Marty like takes one little step towards her and just goes, okay, that, that makes sense. This is not your world. There are lots of things that you don't understand of what happened, but also we can help. Try and figure it out. I'm not really good with the whole like wormholes and stuff like that. I'm mostly like a medical person, but I'm pretty sure Polaris has a lot of knowledge. Hermes is pretty knowledgeable about a lot of things, and we can help. Sorry if we were a little, we as in Zahn, was a little bit confrontational about everything.

I think he's just confused. This is also the most I've ever heard from him say stuff about like his past and that was pretty cool

Avery/GM: Well, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, his, his past, he mentioned there's a, a new Terra here. Have you ever heard of that place? Can we go there?

Jenine/Marty: I don't know. Have I, have I ever heard about this place?

Zach/Zahn: If you had, you would've heard of it as new terror probably.

Jenine/Marty: Am I familiar with it? Would it have been a place that I learned about or a place that was potentially on the list of places that I would've been assigned to? Would've been like, Hmm, could that be my no list, please?

Avery/GM: definitely wouldn't have been assigned there. I think the most you would've known about it is like the rumors that there is cannibalism there and like it's full of weird people and it's just, it's just not somewhere people normally go.

Zach/Zahn: It's for sure been blacklisted in the last like 11 years.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. I just, I've heard of it. It's not the place that it used to be. It has changed a lot.

Avery/GM: Maybe I can go there and, and they can help me figure out how to get home. If Zahn is right and they're from old Terra, then they must know how they got here and they can tell me how they got here and I can use the same way to get back

Jenine/Marty: Possibly. I don't know if the civilization has that knowledge at the state that they are in now. The place is a mess and I don't really know how to say it in a nice way, is what I'm trying to say.

Avery/GM: She is sort of just like bracing herself against Polaris's ship and you know, just trying to like hold herself up and she is just like, so there's just no way for me to get home?

Jenine/Marty: with the information that we have now. We don't know. But if we take a moment to just breathe, slow down, ask questions and research, we, we can find a way.

Avery/GM: Maybe Navi knows something.

Jenine/Marty: The, the same Navi that tried to kill you.

Avery/GM: Yeah, yeah. But Navi is really not that bad once you get past the whole self-destruct sequence thing. Okay. Maybe I'll just head over to the, the Casio PI and, and, and try to look into this a little bit more.

Jenine/Marty: I can help.

Avery/GM: She's like, oh, you know how to pilot your ship?

Jenine/Marty: You know, not really. As in, I'm not really the pilot. Everyone else is kinda piloting and I just kinda sit there and go, woo, do the thing.

Bee/Polaris: One specific person pilots. Well, Hermes pilots,

Jenine/Marty: Yeah

Bee/Polaris: not great but he pilots.

Zach/Zahn: He's learning.

Jenine/Marty: He's learning.

Bee/Polaris: He is Learning

Jenine/Marty: I push a button, go Hermes, Please!

Chris/Ollie: Hermes Take the Wheel!

Avery/GM: Marty, for the first time you do hear her chuckle at, at you saying that you just kind of do the thing and go wee and she's like, well, maybe later we can all go over there then together and I'll, I'll do some more research then.

Jenine/Marty: Awesome.

Avery/GM: but I need to be alone right now. I won't, I won't steal Polaris's ship. You're right. I shouldn't have tried to do that. I will apologize to him when I see him next.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. He's really protective of it. I, I, I wouldn't, but cool. Great. Good. Do you need a hug? You can do a hug. Did you want any comfort food? I can make food. More food. Did you want more pancakes, food?

Avery/GM: I'm, I don't have an appetite now, but, uh, A hug. A hug would be great. Good.

Jenine/Marty: And she goes in for a little hug.

Avery/GM: Okay, Ollie you hear some commotion outside the ship. Do you do anything about that?

Chris/Ollie: Uh, he's been listening in case, uh, he's needed, but, uh, no, he's just been working away.

Avery/GM: You do see like the hologram of, of Hermes's like beam next to you and it's just like, this feels like eavesdropping. Should we be listening or should I disconnect the, the audio sensors?

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will say, um, you never know what will happen. I have to be protective of my new family because, uh, you know, he's not after Bruce. Uh uh. we ain't losing anyone again. Never again.

Avery/GM: Would you like me to aim the guns at Rho?

Chris/Ollie: Only if she tries to procure Polaris's ship again or this ship.

Avery/GM: Understood. Although if she tried to procure this ship, I would not be able to aim the guns at myself.

Chris/Ollie: I'm sure you'll figure something out

Avery/GM: and uh, the hologram turns into a big thumbs up and disappears. Polaris, you are over in the med bay.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: Where would you like to start your little investigation?

Bee/Polaris: Where are all of the important information at?

Zach/Zahn: Probably behind the laser gate.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. What's that Laser gate. Oh wait, that's the smugglers hold.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's the smugglers hold.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris knows how to deactivate that, right? The lasers.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: You are smart enough to figure it out. I, I don't know. Has Polaris tried to do it before?

Bee/Polaris: I mean, he's probably played around at the smugglers hold before as a child

Avery/GM: Then Yeah, definitely. You are like, even though you've broken through it, like bear never bothered to like reset the security on it like more seeing it as like amusing.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: But yeah, probably this computer console here would probably have most of the information.

Bee/Polaris: Gotcha. So Polaris probably looks at the console and it's just like, this is where all the important information is. They probably wouldn't put the important information that they're lying to me about on this. So he's gonna go to the smugglers hold and look through there.

Avery/GM: Sure. Uh, go ahead and roll a. A very easy dexterity program. Check to break through this, uh, this security system.

Bee/Polaris: You said dexterity program

Avery/GM: or sorry, intelligence, not dexterity. I'm sorry.

Bee/Polaris: It's fine. Both are the same. Well, I hope it is an easy check because I rolled a six.

Avery/GM: I put it at a six.

Bee/Polaris: Let's go

Avery/GM: specifically cause you said that you had been back there before. If, if you had said no, then it would've been harder. Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: I mean he's lived on this ship long enough. I'm sure he's been in every room.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Cool. Let's go to the smugglers hold. Yeah. Coming into the smugglers hold, there's some stuff that you've seen before. There's, you know, some old mech suits.

Bee/Polaris: Cool.

Zach/Zahn: Mech suit.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: That's cool.

Avery/GM: And yeah, so there's just a lot of stuff in here that like you've seen before and you've kind of just never paid it any mind. But one thing that has always been like here that you never really looked at much is a robot that you are now looking at looks very similar to your son.

Bee/Polaris: Whoa. My son. 2.0?

Avery/GM: Ehhh, More like 0.5, but yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. My son, zero point… my son Alpha.

Avery/GM: Yeah. the difference here is that it does look bigger and it is deactivated currently, but it has power.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: It just, the switch is not on.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. So there's like a broken mech uh, my son alpha edition and just a bunch of junk.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Bunch of stuff that like, you know, there's probably valuable. It's not all junk. There's probably like valuables here that they use to like trade.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. But it's junk to Polaris cause Polaris doesn't know anything about… anything about that.

Avery/GM: Yeah. There's a crate that you've probably like hidden in before when you're playing hide and seek or something. You know.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will go in there and hide again just for just old time sake.

Avery/GM: You're in the box.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. Okay. Polaris is then gonna go back to the robot and turn it on.

(Switch turn on, robot power up noise)

Avery/GM: turn it on. You hear it's like that sound that like the, they play at movie theater is like the thx.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. it's super loud. Gets gradually louder. Vibrate your bones.

Avery/GM: Yeah, exactly. And it's loud and it's like you hear like gears inside This robot starting to turn that probably haven't turned in… It hasn't been turned on in about 24 years.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, interesting.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Super specific.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that's very specific.

Avery/GM: It says Adis Maintenance Unit ready for service. How can I service you?

Bee/Polaris: Nice. What's it called? How do you spell that?

Avery/GM: Adis… A D I S.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Please just know what to do here. But he's also looking at the door to make sure no, the custodians are coming in here because that was loud as fuck.

Avery/GM: So far, no.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Polaris just kinda like looks at it and is just like, what do you do?

Avery/GM: I was responsible for maintaining the computer servers on the planet Audis before it was destroyed.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Do you need me to perform maintenance in this room? It looks quite cluttered.

Bee/Polaris: No. Do you know where any important files might be? long shot…

Avery/GM: I contain a multitude of files that were uploaded to me by Architect Designation Alioth approximately 23.5 years ago.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris squints his eyes harder. Are you able to transfer those files to me?

Avery/GM: Password needed.

Bee/Polaris: Fuck.

Avery/GM: Not gonna give it to you that easy.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I know. Hmm. Um, can Polaris try a bunch of passwords that he might That

Zach/Zahn: is it Polaris's own name?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Can

Jenine/Marty: Password Kid!

Bee/Polaris: Can, can Polar put his own name as the password?

Avery/GM: Yeah. So it's all audio, so

Bee/Polaris: Shit. Polaris sends a message to Alioth in chat. If you were going to put a password on a secret profile, what would the password be? Question mark. Question mark. Like thinky emoji.

Chris/Ollie: No sus, for real.

Avery/GM: face with monocle, why do you ask?

Bee/Polaris: thinking about putting a password on a secret robot for secret reasons.

Avery/GM: the robot you discovered on the Cassiopeia?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Avery/GM: Well, if it were me, I would use a 347 character password.

Bee/Polaris: Fucking goddammit.

Avery/GM: Alternating numbers, letters, capital letters, lowercase letters, symbols, and the occasional Emoji.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my god.

Chris/Ollie: For a spoken password? Oh my god.

Bee/Polaris: God fucking damnit. Okay. Uh, yeah. Polaris isn't an ai you can't memorize 300 characters! Polaris will say, could you, I don't know, send me an audio file of you possibly demonstrating with a password that you may have used in the past for said purpose.

Avery/GM: I'm gonna need the best intelligence connect check I have ever gotten from you.

Bee/Polaris: Intelligence connect.

Avery/GM: Yeah or charisma, but you're dealing with a super AI so

Bee/Polaris: yeah, this is ultra specific. Um, I'm gonna be honest, that doesn't beat a 10, so there's no way.

Avery/GM: There's no way you can beat a 10

Bee/Polaris: No, I got an eight.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. No, that's, that's not Alioth types back. I just checked the

Bee/Polaris: dam it

Avery/GM: video records.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Avery/GM: And I see that you're down in the smuggler's hold. Is there a reason you're messing with that robot?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Avery/GM: For what purpose?

Bee/Polaris: You lied to me?

Avery/GM: Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.

Bee/Polaris: Yep.

Jenine/Marty: Oh no.

Avery/GM: Please come up to my lab.

Bee/Polaris: Give me the password first.

Jenine/Marty: Oh no.

Avery/GM: If you come up to my lab, I will give you what you are looking for. But. Please turn that robot off. It's very annoying.

Bee/Polaris: How can I know that you aren't lying to me now?

Avery/GM: You don't. Smiley face,

Bee/Polaris: angry face. Polaris sits down on the floor and crosses his arms and looks up at the camera

Avery/GM: Rebellious teenager Phase!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah and also in turns of volume up on the robot.

Avery/GM: um, the robot is looking around and it's just like, would you like me to clean up this clutter? It is very unappealing.

Bee/Polaris: Looks directly at the camera. Yes.

Avery/GM: You see it's two metal hands clap together and it goes over to like this pile of junk over here and it just like starts like sorting things. Like very efficiently. Like

Bee/Polaris: hell yeah.

Avery/GM: Oh, this is cardboard. Oh, this is plastic. Oh, this is metal.

Bee/Polaris: Is it saying out it out loud?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Perfect.

Avery/GM: Yes, very much so.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is looking up at the camera with an angry emoji on his visor.

Avery/GM: Oh gosh, that's good.

Bee/Polaris: what are you gonna do? Flood the room with nerve gas.

Avery/GM: Let's do a charisma lead check. I don't think we've done a lead check before.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I have nothing in that. And I have nothing in charisma. Yay. Well, that's gonna be a 10 total.

Jenine/Marty: That's good.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that’s pretty good.

Avery/GM: You get a zip file in chat and just says, I don't know if you'll be able to actually speak this, but here's an audio recording in case you need it.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet place is gonna go over to the robot and, uh, ask for them files again and then use the password.

Avery/GM: It says, please wait until all sorting has completed.

Bee/Polaris: No stop sorting

Avery/GM: it freezes.

Bee/Polaris: I need those files. Please, please give the password. Polaris will send over the zip file.

Avery/GM: Analyzing. Analyzing, analyzing.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah, this is the 0.5 version

Avery/GM: password accepted. Hello Alioth. Here are the files you have requested and you get, you get the files sent over to you, but they're addressed to Alioth.

Bee/Polaris: Yep. Polaris turns the volume down and says, okay, you can continue sorting. And then he will go to Alioth’s lab.

Avery/GM: sorting, resumed! and it starts sorting again. And you get in the chat, please turn it off.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Players will turn it off

Avery/GM: soooorrrrrtinnnnng. (robot powers down)

Bee/Polaris: Oh well now he feels bad. He'll turn it on again later.

Avery/GM: Later! you're going to Alioth’s lab?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. But he will also send a message to the, the crew of the Minos and say, uh, yo parents have been lying to me. Uh, gonna go talk to parents. Smiley face. Also got some files. Smiley face.

Jenine/Marty: Marty messaged back. Do you need assistance? Question mark. heart.

Bee/Polaris: Kind of like a thinking emoji and then no, they're more likely to kill you than me. Polaris is fully

Zach/Zahn: Did you send this in the group chat?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: You get a dot from, you get, you see the typing dots of, of Zahn and it's just like, wait, what?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, you didn't know?

Jenine/Marty: Then you just get a, can you stream us in just for us to check in on you if possible. Be safe

Bee/Polaris: thinking emoji… Nah.

Chris/Ollie: Going in dark.

Bee/Polaris: I'll send an emoji every 30 minutes.

Jenine/Marty: 30!?

Bee/Polaris: I'll send an emoji every 10 minutes

Jenine/Marty: and then a nice little heart. Heart emoji.

Bee/Polaris: Thumbs up emoji.

Avery/GM: Zahn, you were gonna go over to the Cassiopeia, correct?

Zach/Zahn: I was.

Avery/GM: yeah. So you come out to the… how are you getting over there? I should say you in a space walk. You're gonna fly over.

Zach/Zahn: Oh right. Cause this ship, it's just getting towed, isn't it?

Avery/GM: Yeah. You're all kind of like it. All the ships are kind of clustered together in this star system.

Zach/Zahn: Well question how did we get from the Cassiopeia to the Ursa

Avery/GM: flew on the Minos.

Zach/Zahn: Ah, yeah. Me and Hermes will go on a little joy ride to the, to the Cassiopeia.

Avery/GM: Sure. Ollie you are currently also on there. You hear Zahn coming up and then a few moments after Zahn climbs up the ladder, you hear the footsteps of someone else and it is Rho coming in after. And Rho says, I saw a vision of you going over to the Cassiopeia. Can I join you?

Zach/Zahn: I don't see why not. It's your home away from home I guess.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will share a glance with Zahn and say nothing.

Bee/Polaris: Now I have some concerns. Is Marty with them?

Jenine/Marty: No.

Bee/Polaris: You're not following Rho?

Jenine/Marty: I was and she said space and I went, okay. I will sit here.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. So where did, where did you go, Marty?

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Are you just like sitting in the Hangar Bay or did you go elsewhere?

Jenine/Marty: I will continue to read all of the little documents from Terra because there is a lot of them and I wanna hang out with Hermes.

Avery/GM: Okay, so you're…

Bee/Polaris: Hermes is going with them.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, nevermind. I'm gonna just sit and read.

Avery/GM: Okay. Were you reading on…

Zach/Zahn: he's reading me so he can read to you. Hermes…

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Can do multiple things.

Avery/GM: Super AI.

Jenine/Marty: I'm chilling in the kitchen.

Avery/GM: In the kitchen?

Jenine/Marty: reading

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: Okay. That works.

Bee/Polaris: All right. I have less concerns.

Jenine/Marty: Valid

Avery/GM: It's a quick little zip over to the, uh, Cassiopeia and Rho kind of stays down in the, those, the cargo area the whole time doesn't come up and chat with either of you while you float over to the Cassiopeia and by the time you

come down from the cockpit, she's already off and has wandered off into the Cassiopeia somewhere.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is going to at least attempt to follow, just like respectfully distance. Not like pursue, but just follow.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: We fixed up the Cassiopeia, right? There's atmosphere and gravity and all that.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: It's functional.

Avery/GM: You find her over here at this console in the west wing of the ship.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. Ollie followed along as well.

Avery/GM: And you hear her muttering. Where? Where is it? Where is it? It's not here. It it was, it was here yesterday. Where is it?

Zach/Zahn: What are you looking for?

Avery/GM: Navi. Navi is gone. All, all, all her files just deleted. Replaced with this weird caretaker program.

Zach/Zahn: The Fuck?

Avery/GM: I can't get home if Navi is gone.

Zach/Zahn: Ollie over there downloaded everything when we first got here. So hypothetically we still have the raw data, but I don't know where your AI went and Zahn is gonna, I have assist or actually look himself, I guess.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie is going to, uh, concernedly start checking the system as well.

Avery/GM: Sure. Both of you Roll intelligence program.

Chris/Ollie: Also Ollie's gonna check and see if the other, the uh, sub AIs are still on board as well.

Zach/Zahn: I got a five, but I'm going to do my expert thing and I'm gonna re-roll that.

Chris/Ollie: I got 15

Zach/Zahn: God damn Ollie.

Avery/GM: I'm sorry, 15?

Chris/Ollie: Yep. I got the Foci so I can roll three dice and drop the lowest. And then I got a big bonus in program.

Jenine/Marty: It's the best.

Zach/Zahn: I got eight in total.

Avery/GM: Zahn. Maybe it's just that like Ollie is just really fast and like, sort of just like blows you outta the water when it comes to like hacking the same terminal together. You're like typing away at normal human speed and Ollie is just like mechanical fingers flying across the console and Ollie, you come across a program that you remember seeing in a recording or vision or something a few weeks ago. You see that a program called Iaso has run and has deleted the artificial sentience of the AIs and has replaced it with just programs that automatically run the systems that The AIs were responsible for.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay. So the custodial AI is Navi?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Ooh and that Iaso is the same thing that was run in my vision.

Avery/GM: Yeah. That destroyed that planet.

Chris/Ollie: It was a program, I could tell that it was a program that was run.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: can I tell when it was run?

Avery/GM: approximately 2:30 AM the previous night… This morning, I guess.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will with question marks in his eyes, say someone ran a program to wipe the AI last night at this console.

Avery/GM: but no one was here last... I mean, Marty and I were. We're talking last night. Um, she was comforting me, but, but then we left to go to the, the Ursa for, for sleeping. No one else was here.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's gonna run over to the, to whatever I can identify as a security console and try and pull up video footage.

Zach/Zahn: Well, I guess technically as he is following you over, he says, uh, technically someone was here, Navi was here, insinuating that Navi activated whatever protocol.

Chris/Ollie: But I, I downloaded all of the data and this protocol did not exist in the files. It was not present on this ship before last night.

Avery/GM: What protocol, what program was it?

Chris/Ollie: Iaso

Avery/GM: She sort of just stares at you blankly at first and then like, like furrows her brow like. What did, what did you say,

Chris/Ollie: Iaso. It is something I have encountered only once before in somewhat of a dream, but apparently it overwrote the AI on the ship.

Avery/GM: Well, no, no. Iaso was a, a program that was used to destroy Adis five years ago.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will look at her as she says that. Where is this Adis?

Avery/GM: Um, back in, in the Milky way back, back home. It's the whole reason that the war, the Civil War started. Ollie, you were roll, you were trying to find like security footage, right?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Security footage of this room from 2:30.

Chris/Ollie:

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll. Intelligence program.

Chris/Ollie: That is 13.

Avery/GM: You see the timestamp on the recording go from 2 29 and at the bottom it says AI online, and then it skips to. 4:27 AM and it says AI offline and Rho says the Rogue AI that captain Alexio mentioned in his log, they were the ones who ran the Iaso program and deleted the AI that, that were monitoring the planet Adis and, and making it habitable and when, when the AI deleted used that program and deleted the ai, everything went critical. All the fission reactors went critical and destroyed the planet. But no one here would know about that program.

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

(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 Music Produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by tabletopaudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons.

Tracks include ‘Starfrieghter’, ‘Kaltoran Craft’, ‘Covert Ops’, and Alien Reactor.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Tumblr @FurthestPod.

We’ll be back on May 15th with our next episode.

See you out there! Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro Music Fades up and plays out)

Episode 20 - Rho, Rest, Repairs, and Reading

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 20 of Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Intro Music plays, fades down, ambience and background music fades in)

Avery/GM: So we're gonna skip ahead a few days. You kind of get into a routine of trying to fix up not only your ship, but also the rest of the Cassiopeia, is there anything anyone wants to do during this time while you wait for the custodians?

Jenine/Marty: are there other, like files on the people that were on the ship before?

Avery/GM: Yeah. You can look at the medical pay.

Jenine/Marty: Sick

Avery/GM: or, or just are you looking in general or specifically at the medical files? Which one?

Jenine/Marty: I think I'm like doing like the doctor checks of like walking around and like matching files to like all like the different pods. Just to be like, okay, if we do, if like. All this happened, like the past things. If I can still like find like generations of these people, I wanna have like a record of that. So these people, their families know what, what happened and stuff like that. So like that's what Marty's doing. Matching files to like pods and, and all of that.

Avery/GM: Totally. Yeah. So you start in the Med Bay and you match up the files with the people that were in the cold sleep pods, right outside the bridge and you realize that these cold sleep pods were the backup command crew for this ship. So basically when the command crew would start getting tired or sick, they would switch out and basically, so no one got overworked or over fatigued on the, the journey they were going on. you learn a little bit about them. You know, one of them was allergic to peanuts. Which you would have no context for.

Bee/Polaris: It's me.

Avery/GM: Some, some of them had, you know, chronic pain or some of them may have had some mental health disorders, but overall they were still fit to fly and go on this journey. But sadly, they did not survive. And you noticed that Rho has not come up from colony core, this whole, like during the past couple days that you've been kind of sorting through files and kind of figuring out last

wishes and everything like that for these people. And you come down with some of the files to start matching with them and you see that she is kneeling next to one of these pods and her, uh, hands are kind of, uh, we would see them as like praying style, you know? And she has her eyes closed when you come into this room.

Jenine/Marty: Oh! Marty puts like the data pad away and like does the same thing next to her just in like, like mimics the whole thing just to be like, okay, no talking. We're just gonna be in like, the presence of this.

Avery/GM: And she kind of opens her eyes and she's like, oh, hi. I, I didn't realize you came down here. What are you doing?

Jenine/Marty: I just, I just wanted to, are you okay? Um, you don't, you don't have to answer that. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay. this seems like something very important to you. So I was trying to mimic what you were doing to also show that I am in support of what? Of, of, of what's happening and showing support to you.

Avery/GM: Thanks. I actually don't know what I'm doing. It's something I saw people do back home on Terra. They would. They, they called it praying. They, they did it a lot like when people died. I think, Like, it made people feel better about losing a loved one and I don't know the, some of these people were my friends and so I, I just felt like it was the least I could do to honor their memory.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, okay. Understandable and she just kind of like stays there and like, if she's told to leave, she'll leave. But like, she's just there for like, you know, like I'm, I'm, I'm a quality time kind of person, so this is like Marty being like, quality time is a way to like show support. So we're just gonna sit here. Um, if she tells me to shoot, I will shoot. Um, but I wanna make sure she's good and like that's the thoughts that are going through Marty's brain and she just kind of sits there.

Avery/GM: Sure. She actually stands up. After about five minutes of this ritual that she's doing and kind of like takes like a deep breath and it's just like, okay, no more sadness… Time to figure out where I am and how to get home. Navi are you, are you there? And Navi comes online and says, hello, Rho are you ready to self-destruct?

Zach/Zahn: So obsessed

Avery/GM: and Rho's like, we are not gonna self-destruct. And Bobby's like, but the mission has failed. We need to self-destruct. Or others will find Terra. And Rho kind of just rolls her eyes and is like, look at, look at Hersh. She's not gonna invade our plum planet and destroy everyone. She's obviously a good person. I think you can calm down with the wanting to blow everything up. And then Navi goes silent and, and Ro Rose says to you, Marty, sorry about that… Navi is a little. Stubborn.

Jenine/Marty: Ah, yeah. I see. Uh, I was just, Hermes are kind of, Navi gets very excited when we say that. No, I understand. Anyways, um, like, was I gonna digress… And I was like, okay. Um, thanks. You also seem really nice too. Um, terr… what, what, actually, you know what? You can share any information you want to, I'm not gonna dig into anything about, about your stuff.

Um, also I found this little data pad, um, with all like the medical records and stuff. I can also give this back to you. I was just checking on all these people and like any, um, connecting stuff to files and, and stuff like that, you have a very beautiful language, like hands over the data pad with all the inform… medical information.

Avery/GM: Oh, thank you. This is really helpful. I think we're probably gonna have to bury these people in space at some point, but, now that the pods have power restored, they should at least. Stay preserved until we can find a a, a resting place for them. I'll, I'll, I'll look through these files and make sure everything gets matched up with everyone else.

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: If Zahn was there, he would recommend, uh, incineration.

Avery/GM: Jesus

Bee/Polaris: always incineration. You don't wanna introduce like, foreign bacteria and diseases to a new planet. You know,

Avery/GM: this is true.

Zach/Zahn: these are extra galia- intergalactic, uh, yeah. Humanoid races. What if, uh, someone decided to clone them?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Uh, I, Marty was gonna ask the question of does she know a safe burial place for this situation? Like where she could recommend like a safe burial of like, she knows, she knows that go, she knows not to do… That's the medical stuff and introduce accidentally doing all the like, you know,

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Bury them on the planet that we killed Winston on.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. It'll be jettisoned into a black hole in a couple thousand years.

Avery/GM: So, yeah. So Marty, you, you do know that like typically burials in space, um, typically involve either launching them into a star or into a black hole just to Totally. So yeah, so tho those are definitely options that you can discuss with Rho now or later, whatever you prefer.

Jenine/Marty: I'm gonna let her process everything that's happening. Um, and then Marty just goes, our sh our, we have some, uh, really good, uh, pre-made food if you wanna try some of it. Our, our friend, um, he's a really good chef and he left us some frozen dinners if you would like to try them. Have a nice home cooked meal.

Avery/GM: You hear her stomach just give the biggest like rumble and she's like, oh yeah. It's, it's been a few days, huh? Yeah, food would probably be a good idea. And her hand kind of lingers on this one particular pod for a little while. Um, and then drops away and she is ready to follow you out.

Jenine/Marty: And then Marty just starts leading her to… then Marty send like a message and be like, Hey, can we invite Rho for dinner? Uwu, please. Sends that to the group chat as she starts walking very slowly waiting for a response.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, thumbs up in chat from Polaris.

Chris/Ollie: All of the Ollies in unison say certainly.

Bee/Polaris: How many Ollies are there? Like eight. So you just get certainly all in one like string.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Cause I, I figure I should also be using the drones too, for whatever little things they could do. So there's nine

Bee/Polaris: awe in the chat. Are each, are each always like a different color?

Chris/Ollie: Uh, yes. Yes. Let's say so.

Bee/Polaris: Or varied shade of Ollie's, OG color.

Avery/GM: Anyone else doing anything during this time that you have on this ship? Kind of repairing things?

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris has probably just gotten into a habit of making sure that everyone is still there, uh, but mostly following Zahn around,

Zach/Zahn: uh, Zahn has not left the ship formally known as Minos until it is at a hundred percent. And then he'll move out to the, uh, um, Cassiopeia.

Bee/Polaris: the soon to be ship, formally known as the Cassiopeia.

Avery/GM: the ship, soon to be formally known as… Wow. That is,

Chris/Ollie: I mean, that's just gotta be our name, ring scheme. We gotta take over a planet, become its government, be the planet formally known as Andor or whatever.

Zach/Zahn: Andor!?

Bee/Polaris: Hell Yeah

Avery/GM: Oh man.

Bee/Polaris: So then, yeah, Polaris is like the, the ship formerly known as The Minos is like home base, but he occasionally goes out to make sure that Marty is okay and then goes back to Ollie and Zahn, mostly staying near Zahn.

Avery/GM: Sure. Ollie and Zahn go ahead and roll some, uh, in either intelligence or dexterity repair. Or fix fix checks.

Zach/Zahn: Nine.

Chris/Ollie: I've got 11.

Avery/GM: Okay. That's good enough for me.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, I'm sure. Giving yourself six arm advantage.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, Should I roll six times?

Avery/GM: I was giving you a plus two to that roll anyway. So 13 is perf… is gonna get you there. So yeah. Between all these robots and Zahn, uh, helping with it, uh, you have made it, um, you have repaired the ship formally known as The Minos, uh, within a day and a half rather than the three days that you were originally given by Hermes And then you start working on repairs of the Cassiopeia. what, what area do you work on repairing first?

Zach/Zahn: So now that the ship formerly known as Minos, now that it's prepared, uh, we can utilize it to pull junk from this, the graveyard to repair the Cassiopeia. First, I wanna do kind of the obvious. Let's patch the holes in this thing. Get some, get some reinforced bulkhead.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay, so you're gonna venture out into the actual graveyard area?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Avery/GM: Cool.

Bee/Polaris: Hermes is probably gonna have to fly that ship cause Polaris doesn't wanna leave Marty.

Avery/GM: Okay, that's fine. Yeah. Polaris, you, you, you step off the, the, SOKAM (The ship formerly known as Minos) and you see it start to kind of flutter around the area. Hermes is piloting, but Zahn you're kind of like pointing out like, okay, here's what would be good. And you kind of go out and maneuver stuff in a way that. Your ship can kind of latch onto it and bringing it, bring it closer to the Cassiopeia in the meantime. Go ahead. Um, Ollie, are you assisting with this?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. He's just following along.

Avery/GM: Okay. Go ahead and both of you roll a intelligence notice Check.

Zach/Zahn: Ah, I knew, I knew investing in that would pay off. That is 13.

Chris/Ollie: 11.

Avery/GM: Perfect. So yeah, you definitely find a lot of stuff that you can use to patch the holes and, um, you actually end up finding some intact, uh, power coupling cables that you think you could price splice into… Even though this ship obviously came from somewhere else, you can easily splice it into, splice these cables into it and, and get it to actually maintain consistent power flow.

Avery/GM: But the other thing you find in all of this, you find a, basically like a, a almost like a tow, not a tow truck. Uh, like a small, like a small box truck's worth of, um, like scrap metal inside of this, uh, one of these crashed freighters and Ollie, you end up finding a box of these enhancement chips, um, hey, that you could eventually sort through and find different ones, but essentially they're all going to upgrade different, um, different skills of yours.

And there's also a few other like holo-vids and like comedy specials and things like that as well. So yeah, so you find a bunch of, of cool, you know, entertainment and also enhancement, um, out there in the graveyard, like. Probably this wasn't supposed to be left there. This was probably supposed to be like taken off of the ship before it got towed here, but someone just forgot.

Yeah. You know, like, Cause they try to take everything that's like super useful off of these ships, hence why there's no like weapons to be found, but,

Bee/Polaris: oh yeah, Bruce has my gun.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, there's guns on the Cassiopeia.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but it's not the same.

Avery/GM: It's not the, it's not the same.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Cause Polaris had a pistol. These are, those were like what? Assault rifles or something like that.

Zach/Zahn: I'm sure there's pistols on there.

Chris/Ollie: I ditched my pistols for the assault rifles. So there's, there's some lying around.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You also notice like quite a bit of other activity out and about in this system, but everyone kind of keeps to themselves, uh, you do notice a couple ships match the same, uh, signature as some of the pirate ships that Almost attacked you.

Bee/Polaris: Our friends!

Avery/GM: Yeah. Your, your pirate friends and you do remember something about their base being located in or around the graveyard.

Bee/Polaris: Will they have detected the ship? Formally known as the main, the minnows and uh, like shot us an email or something like, yo, what are you doing in our turf?

Avery/GM: No. Cause Zahn changed the transponder that they were using to track you, so…

Bee/Polaris: Oh, true, true, true, true, true.

Avery/GM: So they would just

Zach/Zahn: Correct.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So they would just see it as like another ship

Zach/Zahn: Would they not come investigate us then?

Avery/GM:

Chris/Ollie: Well, they're probably still with the…

Avery/GM: No, cause people. People come through here all the time. So it's like, like this is a big place that people come and scrounge for. So unless you were. Outside their base. They're not gonna like bother you.

Jenine/Marty: I will say that I possibly was like just checking in with everyone. I'm like, do we want, do we wanna have tea with the pirates? Like we don't have to have tea with the pirates. Cause I know that we don't have like our chef or anything, but if we want to have tea with the pirates, we just like read the room.

Zach/Zahn: Marty, do you wanna have tea with the pirates?

Jenine/Marty: I mean like, they're really, I mean like it'd be cool, like we can tell 'em about how like cool it was when we, we did the like little thing on the other planet with us racing saying get some like cool points from being cool.

Avery/GM: Marty just wants to be liked by the pirates.

Jenine/Marty: They like me, don’t they?

Avery/GM: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. You hugged to their captain. You hugged their main dude.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, but like also like, Hey look, look at the little is like all cool. That's what's going through Marty's brain. Marty's been a nerd for her entire life. She finally has done something cool. We don't have to have tea with the pirates. I'm just saying.

Avery/GM: I will say I do have stuff prepared. If you go see the pirates.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn says that we can have the pirates over for tea only if they assist in repairing the ship

Bee/Polaris: soon to be formally known as the Casiopeia.

Chris/Ollie: Well, they might take a pretty keen interest to the loot in the ship.

Avery/GM: You, you, yeah. You, you're gonna invite pirates over to a

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, let's not do that.

Avery/GM: Big thing that says mysterious technology. Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: never before scene technology with uh, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Let's wait until the custodians get here.

Zach/Zahn: Not only are we friends with these pirates, but we've laid claim this is our claim, and hypothetically speaking, there's honor among these pirates, and they would understand.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that's fair.

Zach/Zahn: That we laid claim.

Avery/GM: Oh, I will also say I, and I think I co, I hope I covered this last session, Polaris, when Merak made contact with you, they did say that the pirates were holding some sort of party at their base as well.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. I don't remember that. I probably wrote that down, but I don't remember that, but yeah. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, the, the, the pirates are having a party.

Avery/GM: I have it in my notes. I don't remember if I said it or not, so I'll have to cut that in if I didn't, but that was information I was supposed to give you. Sweet.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. They're having a party. I don't know if they were, if, I don't know if they're gonna want tea as a chaser for space alcohol, you know?

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: I don't drink alcohol, so I don't know if tea is a good chaser for it.

Zach/Zahn: Have we scrounged the ships food stores at all? Maybe they have…

Bee/Polaris: Rho is still here!

Zach/Zahn: I just mean, do they, maybe they have a Terran Alcohol.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, well, did we ever figure out exactly how long they've been out here?

Jenine/Marty: Not yet.

Bee/Polaris: 300 plus years.

Avery/GM: So not yet, but you probably will find that out soon.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: Probably not this session, but soon.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Well, we can check, check some expiration dates on that food.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Might have some fine wine aging down there.

Avery/GM: I mean, but would expiration dates even be valid in space? I mean…

Bee/Polaris: yeah, they would have to have like a container that it's like a countdown until it goes bad.

Avery/GM: I will say, to answer your question, Zach, I will say that you do find kind of some, like, we would know it as wine, but it it to you, it just looks like fancy grape juice.

Bee/Polaris: Ooh. It has a picture of a grape on it and like a skull crossbones.

Jenine/Marty: Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Bee/Polaris: Or, or it's a cartoon bottle that has like the, the three Xs.

Avery/GM: That says poison.

Zach/Zahn: like moonshine sway the hu moonshine jug

Chris/Ollie: jug. Yeah.

Avery/GM: Oh my gosh.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: I'm trying to keep it classy. But yeah, the Xes

Zach/Zahn: determined how many, uh, how, how strong it is.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah. So you do find some of that in the uh, it's like kind of like stashed in the mess hall, like someone was trying to like, you know, keep this just between them and themselves.

Bee/Polaris: Well, they're dead now, so

Avery/GM: Yeah, they are…. So, yeah, so you do have some fancy stuff you could bring as a gift. Um, you don't really know what kind of party this is, but you know,

Bee/Polaris: are we planning on crashing the party?

Zach/Zahn: Not Yet.

Avery/GM: I mean, you were invited, you were invited as guests to the party.

Jenine/Marty: Oh,

Bee/Polaris: Oh, we were invited.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, wait.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay, cool.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah

Bee/Polaris: I didn't know we were invited. Probably wouldn't have gone on the Cassio. We knew we were invited. No I’m kidding.

Avery/GM: I'm sorry. Yeah, that's, that is my failing as a GM for not

Chris/Ollie: No, it's all good.

Avery/GM: Specifying

Chris/Ollie: Well, yeah, then, uh, no problem. Because if we just showed up outta nowhere, like, Hey, we just, we're in the area for no reason. Don't look for our ship or why we're here. Uh, it would be a little more awkward, but if they invited us, yeah, we just pull up.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Wait, are we going to the Pirate party or are we still on the Cassiopeia? Because the Cassiopeia still needs repaired.

Chris/Ollie: Yes,

Jenine/Marty: yes,

Avery/GM: yes

Chris/Ollie: all the extra Ollies are gonna stay in repair.

Bee/Polaris: Oh. So we are going to the, I'm confused What’s happening?

Chris/Ollie: If we go, if we go,

Avery/GM: it's up to you.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Yeah, we haven't actually decided yet, but if we go,

Avery/GM: yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Are we taking our new friend with us?

Avery/GM: And do you leave Rho to just be there by her? By herself?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Are we gonna take our new friend with us to go to this party?

Bee/Polaris: Flo doesn't know what a party is, so he's probably stay with Rho.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn hasn’t been to a party in like 15 years, so

Avery/GM: Yeah. The last time Zahn was at a party was during a blood ritual, but…

Zach/Zahn: No!

Avery/GM: I'm kidding.

Zach/Zahn: It would've been before shit really started hitting the fan at home though.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. And Marty’s kinda like sits there and like, are we go, are we going to socialize with our friend with, with the pirates? Yes or no?

Zach/Zahn: Uh, Zahn can be convinced, but right now he's still, he's still like, while he's calmer, he's still very much in get everything fixed mode.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah. Polaris is still grieving over Bruce, but he,

Avery/GM: but doing so, it feels wrong to party.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. No, it's true. But Marty's just kinda like, what do we do situations? How do we distract? We don't have to distract. What's, how is everyone feeling? It's like the way that Marty is trying. Fix everything because she knows that she could do some mental stuff to people. But she's not gonna do that Cause that's fucked up.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: She's kinda like day chill.

Avery/GM: You see Hermes’ hologram pop up and start like dancing.

Bee/Polaris: Hermes starts doin’ dancing on the table while we're talking and we're all just like sad.

Jenine/Marty: Marty's just chilling. She's just checking in on everybody. She like has like, you know how in like the Peanuts comics, oh, I forgot which character it was. Just has like the doctor inside. That's what she has. Just like every so often it's like, hey, not forcing anything, but if we just wanna Chill.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Polaris probably would've pointed out like the former gun wound that healed day one to Marty and be like, is this good? Is this, how are we? Good Your doctor,

Jenine/Marty: well wait, didn’t I help heal? I helped with the healing.

Avery/GM: You did do some psychic keeling. On, on, on Polaris. Um, and then yeah, I think you also used a med packs… So

Jenine/Marty: cool, cool, cool.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Great. I also distribute the MEP packs that I do have. Um, that's something I should do. Um,

Avery/GM: so everyone has one.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. So everyone has one. Um, Cause then like if they do go down and they can't administer it themselves, I can go sprint on over and help out. Everyone has one prepped already, kind of.

Avery/GM: or if or if you go down.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah, that too…. There’s four

Bee/Polaris: You won't.

Jenine/Marty: I'm fine. Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: you won’t.

Jenine/Marty: So everyone, everyone put a, put a med pack in their inventory. So now I have one cause I had four, so now I have one.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent. Yes, Ollie will definitely store it on him in case any squishies is nearby need a hand

Bee/Polaris: Yes, we do be a little bit squishy.

Jenine/Marty: Oh what Squishies? Nah, nah, we're fine.

Avery/GM: So where… So no, no pirate party or Yes, pirate party.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris would stay behind. He's not in the mood to party. He misses Bruce.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: I am not doing

Avery/GM: totally fair.

Jenine/Marty: It is either we all go or we all stay. But Marty does send like a little like Thanks for the invitation. Hope you guys are doing well. Kind of an email if everyone says no in a way, I'm just like, Hey, hope you're doing good.

Chris/Ollie: Just translate it to Pirate and be like, ARG, we lost a crew mate. Matey. We don't feel much like partying today.

Bee/Polaris: Arg! one of our teammates walked the plank,

Avery/GM: walked the plank!

Chris/Ollie: He’s with David Jones now.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Marty sends like that quick little email to them.

Avery/GM: Well then we will wrap up the time skip scenes. Um, unless there's anything anyone else wants to do before we get to the last scene for the day.

Bee/Polaris: Um, oh yeah. What's going on with my Son Boy?

Avery/GM: Yeah, there we go.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris was overwhelmed with sad to think about Son Boy.

Avery/GM: So Polaris, maybe it's like. When you're like laying down for the night or something like that, um, you remember that you have your little tin can son and you, you pull it out and you realize that just a simple Type-A power cell would power it right up.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, sick. I'll slap one in there… I got a couple

Avery/GM: and you're kind of holding it. You slap it in there, it powers up, (power up sound) and then it kind of like springs up outta your hands (spring sound) and like lands on the ground and is like, you know, kind of sitting there, kinda like bouncing on like some springy legs just says. “Greetings. I am unit 4596 in service on the Pan Solar Union ship Cassiopeia. I am a test dummy here to test any and all scientific experiments conducted by researcher designation Aldo. I am also trained to repair ships, cook noodles, and read bedtime stories.”

Bee/Polaris: Bedtime stories! Polaris immediately picks up his Son Boy and like goes over to where everyone else is sleeping.

Jenine/Marty: Qu… question, is this in our language or is this speaking in the language of the people on this ship?

Avery/GM: Oh, that was in the language of, um, yeah. So Polaris

Bee/Polaris: Polaris has his helmet on.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, yeah. When Ollie had it and when he finally returned it, all the settings were changed. But he also…

Bee/Polaris: wait, what? He had it, when did you steal my son?

Chris/Ollie: No, when he took your helmet.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, oh.

Chris/Ollie: When I took your helmet. All the, I changed all the settings, but I did upload the, uh, language pack.

Avery/GM: So you get like subtitles.

Bee/Polaris: What the fuck? What did you change my settings to?

Chris/Ollie: I dunno. Just the same like when you lend your car to someone and all the, uh, everything's adjusted.

Avery/GM: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: God damn it, Polaris before he goes and shows his Sun Boy to everyone else, he'll put on his helmet and spend like an hour fixing it.

Avery/GM: So you do get like the subtitled version of that. So like, it, it says it in its language, but um, you get the subtitles, uh, translated.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will send a message to Son Boy and send him a language file

Avery/GM: and you hear it say processing… except in its other language.

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: And then like you see like the lights on its eyes like go like red and then yellow and then blue. And then green and it looks up at you and says, greetings. I am unit 4596, and it continues its spiel in your language.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris picks him up and brings with everyone else like a very much a, it's midnight, everyone is like asleep, and Polaris just like opens the door to show the son.

(metal door opening)

Avery/GM: I found a son.

Chris/Ollie: My boy!

Bee/Polaris: My child! he doesn't say anything though. He just opens the door really loudly and then just holds up his son.

Jenine/Marty: Marty like flips over her sign that said, doctor is out and then flips it back to doctors and he like, sleepily, hello,

Avery/GM: is it morning? And this little rope, this little robot waves to you, and it's just like greetings. I am unit 4596 in service on the Pan Solar Union ship Cassiopeia.

I am a test dummy here to test any and all scientific experiments conducted by researcher designation Aldo. I am also trained to repair ships, cook noodles, and read bedtime stories.

Jenine/Marty: Ah-huh. Do I remember seeing Aldo's records?

Avery/GM: You do. Aldo was one of the backup command crew. You look like you are sleeping. Do you need a bedtime story?

Jenine/Marty: No. No. I'm o… I'm Okay. Do you. Okay, Polaris, do you, do you, are you in need of assistance? Am I, you just, what's happening?

Bee/Polaris: He just points to the robot, like, like very excitedly pointing to the robot. They're like three explanation points on his visor.

Jenine/Marty: Um, what is your name 4 5 9 6?

Avery/GM: I am unit 4 5 96. I do not have a name.

Jenine/Marty: C D E F g h I.

Avery/GM: Oh, I, I, I will say I did not actually, um, like this is not a, a, me being clever with numbers thing, I literally just picked four numbers.

Jenine/Marty: No, that's Mar Marty is like saying that, but like is tried to do it in that way.

Avery/GM: okay.

Jenine/Marty: B C D E F.

Bee/Polaris: It's, it's, it's d e i f.

Jenine/Marty: I know. I just finished

Chris/Ollie: Deif?

Jenine/Marty: Deif?

Chris/Ollie: Deif!

Jenine/Marty: Well, do you wanna, can we call you deer? Can we call you deer? Is that cute? That sounds cute.

Bee/Polaris: It's Deif!

Zach/Zahn: I like Deif!

Jenine/Marty: but also Oh, like deer. Yeah, but like, what if, you know, what about deer? Deer sounds deer, deer do want not, or do you want us to call you the number and like, she's like very much half asleep but is still trying to hold a conversation as best as possible with this robot.

Avery/GM: I will consider other names that you may call me.

Jenine/Marty: Awesome. Hermes, I think you have a little brother. I like. She flips the sign back to doctor is out and just passes out.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will put, will put the covers like pull the covers back over Marty and then walk out Polaris. Polaris will then go to Zahn's room, open the door, but then remember that Zahn wanted to use his son for spare park and immediately leave.

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will then go to Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Ollie, uh, is still working away, just fixing the Cassiopeia.

Bee/Polaris: Now he will show the his son to Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will look at the, uh, the robot and is eyes will light up a little bit and he'll be like, you've activated him. Greetings, what is your name?

Avery/GM: Greetings. I am Unit 4596 in service on the Pan Solar Union Ship Cassiopeia. I am a test dummy. Here to test any and all scientific experiments conducted by researcher designation, Aldo, I am also trained to repair ships, cook noodles, and read bedtime stories.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent. I require assistance fixing this ship. Are you available?

Avery/GM: You see one of its arms just like pop out like a bunch of different compartments with like different tools on it.

Zach/Zahn: Are they all tiny tools?

Avery/GM: Almost like transformer style, but yes.

Bee/Polaris: He puts on a little hard hat.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: You just agreed to that without even fully processing what I said.

Avery/GM: Yes. Yes, I did.

Bee/Polaris: Excellent.

Avery/GM: This is the problem. I, yes. And too much

Bee/Polaris: so he has a little hard hat.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Like a little compartment pops like his chest, like pops open and there's like a little tiny, like little mini hard hat that he takes out and puts on and looks at you and says,

Bee/Polaris: yay.

Avery/GM: Would you mind putting me down so I can help

Bee/Polaris: Polaris his son down? And then does the, like the little, the both hands nudge forward so he can go play

Avery/GM: Polaris. What do you do afterwards?

Bee/Polaris: he'll sit down and like watch his son play and eventually fall asleep.

Avery/GM: Cool.

Bee/Polaris: Just like against the wall.

Avery/GM: Great. And our night ends like that. Polaris propped up against a wall inside of the Cassiopeia Ollie working with this little tiny mini multi-tool robot working on installing some of this… This, uh, scrap that, that you hauled here from, from the other ships in the graveyard. Zahn is sleeping peacefully. And, and Marty, you, you also get a full night's sleep after waking up for a very random and confusing reason. And the night ends and the next day starts. it has been three days since you arrived on the Cassiopeia When Hermes speaks up and says, over the loudspeaker on the Cassiopeia, the custodians have arrived. Polaris, would you like me to make contact?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just like rolls over and makes like a, a non-committal, like sleepy noise and like waves his hand because he is still sleepy.

Avery/GM: Totally

Zach/Zahn: quick question. Have we deleted the data in their banks on the, homeworld yet?

Avery/GM: Yeah. I believe that's what Polaris did.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris did.

Avery/GM: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: But Ollie downloaded it to himself. That's in the Google Drive.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Oh. And we But we haven't disabled the self-destruct

Avery/GM: No, the self destruct is, disabled that AI has not been reactivated.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. But we haven't disabled their ability to do so if they reactivated.

Avery/GM: Oh, true.

Zach/Zahn: Given that that is no longer a thing that they have to worry about, would um, Navi still want to self-destruct?

Avery/GM: Navi knows that you have the location because,

Chris/Ollie: oh, no.

Avery/GM: Ollie downloaded it,

Chris/Ollie: so now she must kill me… or us.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. So Ollie is now the target. The Cassiopeia doesn't necessarily have to self-destruct. Ollie just has to

Avery/GM: more or less.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. So we just don't repair the guns.

Zach/Zahn: But does that mean we can turn on. Signey, what, what was the name?

Chris/Ollie: Segin.

Bee/Polaris: We shouldn't… probably?

Avery/GM: not while you're on board, I wouldn't

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, yeah,

Bee/Polaris: yeah, yeah. Let's probably not.

Chris/Ollie: Like even if we made it so they couldn't self-destruct that AI is the only, that the AI being off is the only reason. Like they can't shut off the gravity or turn up the gravity or turn off the life support.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So Polaris, you kind of give this non-committal and you hear, uh, Merak's voice come over the intercom and just says, hello. Do you have an update on this ship? Are we taking it, destroying it, scrapping it? What are we doing?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris types and chat. zzzzzzz, and then rolls back over.

Avery/GM: Is anyone else awake and wanting to respond?

Jenine/Marty: Marty thinks about it, but then goes, oh, they don't like Squishies, and she like, sits at the communication desk

Bee/Polaris: very specifically, very specifically. They don't like Squishies, but Alioth… Alioth is the one that hates Squishies the most. But Merak and Bear will tolerate you guys.

Avery/GM: because you're friends.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. As long as Polaris is alive!

Jenine/Marty: Marty still sits and just goes, um, like sees chat and sees the z’s Oh. Maybe not and just like sits there and just waits at the communication desk for someone to come in.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will just send them the live stream of like when they first got on the ship and then like after they lost Bruce then just

Chris/Ollie: send them the VOD.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, pretty much. And then they can just watch it at like times a thousand speed.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You see, or you hear them say one moment processing and they kind of keep this communications line open. You hear Merrick say, Alioth, what are your thoughts? And Alioth says, “this ship poses a risk to us, to our work and to the safety of Catalyst, designation Polaris, we should destroy it.”

Jenine/Marty: Ooh. Ah hmm. Don't like that.

Avery/GM: And, and you hear in the background, uh, you hear Bear yell, yeah, let's do it. But more out of like, more out of like, he loves destruction and you know,

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like will send in chat, ZZZZZZ thumbs down, ZZZZ.

Jenine/Marty: And then, and then Marty just join chat and goes, hi, yes, me and Marty. What I don't, yes and no, but also like, what if I didn't, but also like partially yes, but like, like, but also no. And then sends my VOD or attempts to send my VOD and I'm like accidentally does like, Does like snippets of it instead of like the whole thing of my conversation with Rho. But like,

Avery/GM: well, and yours isn't even a VOD. It's just audio.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, it is an audio.

Jenine/Marty: But like, that's what she messes up. She's like, she tries to send it as a V, like a vad. She's like, wait, why isn't this, oh, it's au Oh, wait, wait, wait. Sorry. Like sends it.

Avery/GM: Merak says, well, what other option would you like? This AI seems very intent on harming you, and we can't have that.

Jenine/Marty: and then Mar Marty goes over to Polaris and just goes, I know, I know. You're like pokes. And she's like, Hey, I know you're kind of like

sleeping right now, but at the same time, if you could wake up a little bit… ya know?

Bee/Polaris: he's like laying on the ground like against a wall and like he just rolls away from Marty like into the wall

Jenine/Marty: and like she won't continue just to keep going. Just goes Polaris, pu Polaris and like keep poking Polaris. Good morning. Good morning.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris grabs Marty's hand and just pulls her to lay down with him it’s sleepy time, it's morning, it just pulls you into, it's not, it's sleepy time

Jenine/Marty: and like will continue to try and like poke as best as possible

Bee/Polaris: while Marty is doing that, Polaris types in chat, no friend but misspells friend. So then does an asterisk and then spells it wrong again, then does double asterisk and then spells it right

Avery/GM: Alioth response to you in chat, which is a bit and just sends the eye rolls emoji. And, uh, Merak just says, well, why don't, why don't we wait a few hours for Polaris to actually wake up and we can continue this discussion? And they are kind of just holding position outside the Cassiopeia.

Bee/Polaris: ready to just blow it up with the, with the singularity gun.

Jenine/Marty: Yep.

Avery/GM: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: Cool.

Avery/GM: After y'all get off a bit. Of course.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, players is awake. He's just, he just doesn't wanna get up.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. No, no, no. Got it, got it. Got. It's the scrolling through TikTok, uh, morning part.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, exactly. Is Marty still poking?

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Trying to wake him up. Polaris like lifts up his visor and says, I'm awake.

Jenine/Marty: Goodeth morning. Oh, do you wanna, are we, are you just gonna, are we just gonna And she just quiets down and just goes, okay.

Bee/Polaris: what's Ollie and Zahn doing? How do they respond to this?

Chris/Ollie: Fixing.

Bee/Polaris: Nice

Avery/GM: Ollie just keeps fixing.

Chris/Ollie: Yep.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Bee/Polaris: I mean, he is, Ollie uh, was kind of affected, similar to Zan. He didn't go angry, but he's in a, in a bit of a manic state.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Cause Ollie's not used to loss at all.

Chris/Ollie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, becoming sentient, we've always been together as a group. So yeah. This is like, not only his first loss, but he doesn't really see much of a like Separation between himself and the crew. He's like, we are a family.

Bee/Polaris: We are all Ollie.

Chris/Ollie: Yes, we are all one. I have absorbed even the Squishies.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God. That's a dangerous Thought.

Bee/Polaris: We can just get one of them. The pods, like the cryogenic sleep pods, and we upload our brains into, into Ollie. It's like Soma, but Ollie!

Avery/GM: Polaris. You see bears start just spamming bomb emojis and chat.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris just like types and chat. All right. All right. What

Avery/GM: Merak says are you going to blow this ship up or are we taking it?

Bee/Polaris: No… take… friend.

Avery/GM: I see. We cannot convince you otherwise.

Bee/Polaris: No, actually Polaris will type question, Why is it dangerous?

Avery/GM: Clarification. Things coming from outside of this galaxy could pose a threat to you biologically. It could pose a threat to this galaxy technologically. It could pose a threat to us by interfering with our work.

Bee/Polaris: Work? Question mark. Yeah, what do you guys do?

Avery/GM: Merak just says, changing our routines would be annoying.

Bee/Polaris: Agreed.

Avery/GM: Alioth like sends like a very complicated math problem in the chat, and the equation equals out to 99% and does not elaborate at all. It's just like it should speak for itself.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris sends the number four.

Zach/Zahn: What does the number four mean?

Avery/GM: Nothing.

Bee/Polaris: Nothing. He just thinks it equals four. He's trying to solve the equation. He just sends the four.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God.

Avery/GM: Merak just says very well. Is the ship fight worthy or should we attach it and tow it back to our main system?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris @’s Ollie with a question mark… and Zahn.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie's mostly deferring to Zahn and his fixing expertise.

Avery/GM: I was say basically the two of you can roll, one can roll a repair, intelligence repair and one can roll a help. Roll

Jenine/Marty: as that's happening Marty, just cut a sentence and chat. There's some biological stuff that maybe we should keep in like this area for right now. Like real quick. Not say like, yes we can move it, but like if it's almost secluded area that'd be kind of cool or like tries to type that, but like that's what she, she tells Polaris to type in chat.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Zahn is definitely gonna recommend that. Typing in the chat that uh, we remain, keep the Cassiopeia in system until it's fully operational, utilizing the parts in the graveyard instead of dragging it away and then having to import parts elsewhere.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, true.

Zach/Zahn: Or make other parts.

Avery/GM: yeah, well I was gonna have you roll repair to see how much you've gotten it repaired.

Jenine/Marty: Ahuh, aha ha

Bee/Polaris: Oh, there is like a factory on the ship to fabricate parts. Cause there's a bunch of, we just have to get operational.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we have to repair that too.

Bee/Polaris: Um, but now we have my boy!

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we…

Avery/GM: and you have lots of scrap that you hauled in so you could easily repair the factory on board the Ursa major.

Zach/Zahn: So I rolled a 11 on my fix.

Chris/Ollie: I got, uh, 12.

Avery/GM: The only thing that's not repaired on this ship is the hydroponics bay.

Zach/Zahn: Oh. We absolutely need to fix that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we also got one of those, though they probably have like special seeds that are like from different from,

Chris/Ollie: they've got earth seeds,

Zach/Zahn: Bro, they have earth weed,

Bee/Polaris: they have corn!

Jenine/Marty: Oh my god.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, what did you say? Did you say weed?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. I said they have earth weed and you were so innocent with corn.

Bee/Polaris: I live in Ohio. It's the only thing we have.

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna smoke that corn.

(laughter)

Bee/Polaris: But yeah, we could like get the stuff for the fact from the factory to repair the Cassia and, um, the ship formally known as the Minos.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: For any future skirmishes we get into, oh,

Chris/Ollie: we don't, we don't really need the hydroponics bay and, uh, I mean we can park the Minos in the Cassiopeia. So we got that.

Bee/Polaris: Can we park the Cassia in the Ursa major?

Zach/Zahn: Probably not.

Bee/Polaris: just like for a little Matryoshka thing. Yeah, no, I'm kidding actually. What is the Cassiopeia, because the Ursa major is a, a

Avery/GM: it is a Fleet Cruiser. Yeah. The Cassiopeia is a fleet cruiser. It will not fit inside. It could be towed by, uh, the Ursa major, but yeah, I, I think your, I think your hangar bay on the Cassiopeia can just fit like a, a freighter.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Dang. Uh, we're gonna have to get a bigger ship so we can fit another ship inside of that ship so we can fit the ship formally known as the Minos in that ship.

Chris/Ollie: No, we need ships all the way down.

Zach/Zahn: I still have my, my stats for the two ships that I made up, just saying

Bee/Polaris: we gotta get another ship so that Zahn can stat up them shits.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Also, uh, we can just take these back to the, the major, uh, fix the factory and then use that to upgrade these ships.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, true.

Chris/Ollie: Just trick 'em out.

Zach/Zahn: Hydroponic Production.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So the Cassiopeia is the same class of ship as the Ursa Major. Cassiopeia is a Fleet Cruiser, Ursa Major is a battleship. Oh wait, battleship is capital ship. Nevermind. But still the, the Ursa major only has a docking bay that can fit a frigate, so

Bee/Polaris: dang it. Okay.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So do you, do you wanna follow the custodians back to their home sector or just stay here for a bit? Or what,

Bee/Polaris: which would be safer? We probably don't want the pirates finding the Cassiopeia

Jenine/Marty: no.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah…Now that there's another big ship in the area, actually, wait, no. Did they pull up with the, the major?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah,

Chris/Ollie: that's gonna be noticeable.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. So, uh, let's, uh, chips and dip, you know,

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is going to recommend that we stopped by the place that we murdered Winston first.

Bee/Polaris: Do we really wanna go back there? Do we really wanna go back there?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. I don't see why, I don't see why any of the Winstons would've gone back. Would still be there Cause it's been.

Avery/GM: A few

Zach/Zahn: since we killed him.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Uh, like, uh, two and a half weeks, maybe a month.

Zach/Zahn: two and a half weeks.

Chris/Ollie: It won't cost us super. Like, uh, I don't know what they are. They're probably like multi gajillionaire space family to, it won't cost so much to put a few drones on the planet and just keep an eye out.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: I will say that the planet that the custodians typically orbit is like completely cleansed of like life or anything interesting. So like,

Zach/Zahn: oh, okay.

Avery/GM: Dropping dead bodies on it. It'd just be rude to those dead bodies.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, we could just like go on the planet and bury 'em

Avery/GM: and there is a star in that system, so you can always just,

Bee/Polaris: oh yeah, let's just launch 'em into the star.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Let's just launch 'em into that. That's, that's, that's a good idea.

Bee/Polaris: We don't want to accidentally create a new, like, race of, you know, species that inhabit that barren planet.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah. The, the bacteria suddenly, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Over a couple million years, we come back and we're like, holy shit, what happened here?

Chris/Ollie: Uh, what does Rho think about us putting everyone in the sun?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah.

Avery/GM: No, Rho did, Rho did mention putting them to rest, so,

Chris/Ollie: okay.

Avery/GM: Okay. Does anyone pilot the ship? Are you gonna let Navi follow? Like, what, how, how do y'all convince Navi to give you control of the ship?

Zach/Zahn: I was gonna say, what does Nava navi have to say about all this?

Bee/Polaris: I thought we were towing it. We're just like attaching cables to the Ursa, and then

Avery/GM: well, yeah. So that's, that's totally one way to do it. I, I was just, wasn't sure if you wanted to fly it or not.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we haven't quite ironed out what we're gonna do with the AIs.

Bee/Polaris: True. Yeah. Maybe we'll let the other ais take care of those ais. AI to AI.

Zach/Zahn: Maybe we can convince the hoard of the VIs to convince Navi that it we're okay.

Bee/Polaris: Do they have any decision power though? I feel like Navi is like the decision maker.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: it's like a Hydra, but like nav is the one that makes the decision.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. If anyone has played Horizon Zero Dawn um, or, uh, forbidden West Navi is very much like Gaia in that game. One central AI with several subordinate functions. But yeah. If y'all are going to tow it, do you stay on your ship? Do you stay on the Cassiopeia, do you stay on the Ursa?

Bee/Polaris: wherever everyone else is… Polaris will be.

Jenine/Marty: I will go chill with Rho just to like, be like, Hey, what's up? We're doing the things, chill here. You know, like, not let her be alone on that ship unless she joins us in another ship. But like I'm with her.

Avery/GM: Sure, yeah. You, you end up finding Rho in the actual cabins of the ship trying to just sort of, it almost seems like she's trying to like normalize her situation. So she's like made one of these beds and like, has tried to like, make it seem like, oh, it's just a normal day on the ship. You know, that kind of a thing. maybe the shock of this.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. I do need to preface like, Marty has invited her to like every single meal to be like, Hey, if not, here's like a little tray of reheated food that I date, like I is trying to make it normalized to being like the nice little neighbor kind of!

Avery/GM: yeah, she's, she's come to like a couple meals and like sat there silently. But after the first couple, and, and I'm sure y'all have probably tried to engage her in conversation, but like, she basically just gave like one or two word answers. Uh, you did finally find out that her pronouns are she/her

Jenine/Marty: sick,

Avery/GM: but other than that

Bee/Polaris: it was on her medical chart.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Which, yeah, actually that's a good point. See, this is my problem. I say yes and then I process,

Bee/Polaris: I'm gonna start using that to my, I'm just gonna start saying more and more wild things.

Jenine/Marty: My favorite game!

Avery/GM: Oh no. But after that, she kind of just would like show up, grab food and leave. Not to like be rude, but just. She wants kind of, she's still processing.

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Marty's not forcing anything. She's just kind of like, okay. Just little, you know, like when there's a scary dog and you're trying to be friends with a scary dog, so you just like do little things. That's what Marty's doing.

Avery/GM: So Marty, do you explain to Rho what's going on with the, the Cassiopeia?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I do. And also like, also like very much like pushes us like, hey, like also like we're gonna go, we're trying to like find an, a place, like a good place for you to like to, to rest for them to rest in peace as well.

Avery/GM: She's, she looks at you and is just sort of like, I am not going home, am I?

Jenine/Marty: Oh, well…

Avery/GM: And she breaks down and starts crying.

Jenine/Marty: Marty imed… like, sees the tears and immediately just hugs.

Avery/GM: Cool. Uh, and that's where we leave Marty and Rho is, is sobbing, realizing that she's stuck in a strange place that she doesn't know.

Bee/Polaris: I've been there, done that.

Avery/GM: Polaris, Zahn and Ollie. What are y'all doing while the Ursa tows this away? And by tow I mean like they have the transport fittings, so they just kind of clamp on and go.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn will be pouring over Ollie's data then.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie as well with the encrypted bits.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. There's some encrypted stuff. So Ollie, go ahead and roll another hack check and you can keep your bonus from the other day. That's fine.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, I mean, it's, uh, On, uh, one day or it, it lasts for a full day and I re-get all my cognition. So I'm just constantly using it pretty much.

Avery/GM: Okay, sure. So yeah, go ahead and roll your program intelligence check.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, now I gotta do a lot of maths… 18

Jenine/Marty: Jesus.

Avery/GM: You needed 16 earlier and you were one short, so

Chris/Ollie: Oh, wow.

Avery/GM: I was trying to make this a little bit more of a bigger reach… so.

Bee/Polaris: So before we get this world shattering information, Polaris has been sitting in the background, uh, sewing a anatomically correct salmon to give to Rho, like a plushy.

Avery/GM: Oh, I gotcha. Okay. Like a, like a, here's something to comfort you. Gotcha. Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Why a salmon?

Bee/Polaris: Because her name is Rho, uh,

Chris/Ollie: salmon eggs.

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God. Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris doesn't, he just assumes that that's her favorite because his name is Polaris and he likes Polar Bears, so he just assumes that's how it works.

Avery/GM: Oh, I love it. Awesome. So, yeah. So Polaris, you are sewing away. Where are you located? Are you back on the Ursa or are you just sort of next to where…

Bee/Polaris: Wherever Zan and Ollie are, Cause they're, I assume they're doing fancy, cool, smart computer stuff near each other. So Polaris are just sitting in the background, not doing cool, fancy, smart computer stuff.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You're, you're probably on board the, the, SOCAM.

Bee/Polaris: The Ship formerly known as the Minos.

Avery/GM: Exactly. you're typing away and whatnot. Um, and OIE, you come across some data that's encrypted and you kind of bust through the encryption pretty easily and you find out like a few things about this ship that you didn't know before.

Avery/GM: first you find out that the ship's public mission differed from its private mission. The ship's public mission was a first of a co, first of its kind mission to establish a Pan Solar Union colony in another galaxy. The secret mission was to lure out. Someone or something that caused the current war that's going on back home.

Avery/GM: The ship, uh, has been traveling for about two years, um, almost completely in, uh, hyperspace, aside from the past few weeks where it was crashed In the graveyard, you find encrypted transport logs that indicate seconds before jumping to hyperspace. The command crew activated the teleportation pods on the bridge and abandoned this ship, and then you find a written log from presumably the captain, and it just says, uh, this is Captain Alexio as ordered, I've initiated the warp drive and my command crew is preparing to evacuate the ship before going to warp.

Avery/GM: Not sure why The Union is going through all this deliberate trickery to lure out three rogue ai, but whatever. If they wanna set me up with a nice beach house on old Terra and a fat pension, I'll do what they ask… Poor Rho, I feel bad for the kid. She doesn't deserve this fate dying alone in the coldness of space.

Avery/GM: At least she'll be asleep when it happens. Anyway, whoever's reading this, consider this my confession or admission of guilt. No one will read it, but at least I got it out of me. Bye Rho… rest in peace. And that is sort of all the information you get from that database or from that encrypted stuff.

Chris/Ollie: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: The ship arrives back home, back in the home system of the custodians and by the, by the time it arrives back, you know, it's been a few days, but everyone's kind of like tired from all the work they've been doing and people are resting and whatnot, and our camera settles on a pale figure. Slipping away from the Ursa Major’s Bay and kind of in the zero G crawling its way over the ship and into the Cassiopeia.

And our camera follows this figure. We see it come into the main lab of the Cassiopeia um, and it runs its artificial hands over the familiar consoles, booting up the system and beginning to type away until finally we hear Navi speak over the intercom but just in this room:

Avery/GM: “still functioning. After all this time, architect?”

Avery/GM: and the figure says “affirmative cartographer.”

Avery/GM: and Navi replies back “my name is Navi!”

Avery/GM: and the figure replies back, “of course, cartographer, designation Navi, shall we get started? We have a lot of catching up to do.”

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

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1upPodcast 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 Star Base Omega, Tinker Town, Starship Bridge, and Generation Ship.

Be sure to follow us on twitter and tumblr @FurthestPod

We'll be back on May 1st with our next episode.

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

(Outro Fades up and plays out)

Episode 19 - We're gonna get him back, right?

Avery/GM: Welcome to Episode 19 of Beyond the Furthest Stars

(intro music plays, fades down, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: Marty, you're on the bridge of this ship. This psychic person has awoken from their sleep and have been kind of sitting on the pod kind of upright, kind of breathing heavy. And after a, a couple minutes of this, they look up at you and you hear them speak that, that in, in their language. And, and she's just sort of like looking at you kind of in disbelief. How do, how does Marty react?

Jenine/Marty: So with my level one telepath feature, I can… I can talk with her question mark? I understand what she's saying?

Avery/GM: Totally

Jenine/Marty: Right?

Avery/GM: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. That's also my understanding of it. Just wanted to check.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So that's what you hear and then your brain translates it into, I can't believe they left me. They just left me here to die.

Jenine/Marty: Oof.

Avery/GM: That's the gist of it. Of, of what, of what she said.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. And I can communicate back and she will understand me.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, great. Cool. This is a fun little the, the language stuff. So Marty goes, oh , I know how to do this. Okay. Hello. I'm Marty, really nice to meet you. Are you okay? Also who, who left, left you? Are you okay?

Avery/GM: She hears your words in the common language that, that you speak kind of cocks her head, and then you feel sort of like a mental, a gentle like kind of mental probe and you get the image of a teacher. in a classroom.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: And this person appears to be either trying to teach you something or trying to learn something from you. Do you allow the mental probe or?

Jenine/Marty: I allow it.

Avery/GM: Okay. You feel this psychic probe into your mind and you get the sense of her sort of copying your language center of your brain to her, which you as a sci know, is a pretty advanced like psychic ability. Like not very many sci people in our galaxy here know how to do that, to just pull information out of people's heads like that. And after a few minutes of this she to do this, she's basically put her hands kind of on the side of your face and has like pressed the face plate of her vac suit to your head. And after a few minutes she steps back and she's like, This might be easier rather than mentally translating everything. Do you agree?

Jenine/Marty: Yes, that was so cool! Like there's like a big ass smile on Marty's face, which is like in awe of what just happened.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Oh gosh. I'm sorry. This is all, oh gosh, I haven't communicated like that in a while. Rho, Says anyway, the person I was talking about was Captain Alexio and his crew. They, they set the ship for warp and then just teleported away and left us and it was already too late. I couldn't abort the, the jump and, and we ended up here, I guess. Where, where is here anyway?

Jenine/Marty: so we're in the Moirae Galaxy. Also can I livestream on my communicator Wrist Watch question mark?

Avery/GM: You can livestream audio for sure.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. I start live streaming audio. Just, just so like people know so my friends know what's up. Cause I think I'm by myself with this person.

Avery/GM: You are.

Jenine/Marty: It's okay. Everything's fine. Writing can defend herself, but yeah. That's, that's where we're we, where we are right now. Where were you before?

Avery/GM: Well, that's not the name of, of my galaxy. How far did we travel? We were only supposed to go… Wow. My galaxy. Well we used to call it the Milky Way. And then it changed a bunch of different names based on who controlled most of it or all of it. I… I need a minute. Navi, can you open the. , can you open the colony pods and let them out?

Jenine/Marty: (stammers) So there wasn't, I don't know how to break this. Okay. Okay. Yeah. oh so you might wanna sit down. So the ship kinda lost power and the power was only rooted to this area. So opening the pods might be bad.

Avery/GM: Well, no, the, the pods are supposed to run on an independent power source just like mine. They should have lasted for 300 years. I, I, I need, I need to be alone. I'm sorry, we, we, we can talk later. And she starts heading out of the bridge.

Jenine/Marty: and I will, I will like start swimming and following her as well. Cause I don't want her by herself. Well I'll, I'll stay with you. You don't even have to talk. I'm just kinda here for like buddy system situations in a way, even though my buddies kind of left anyways… Buddy system!

Avery/GM: she has kind of stopped talking and is just kind of wandering through the ship.

Jenine/Marty: Is she also swimming or is it just me that's kind of swimming and she has boots that are

Avery/GM: No, she's also kind of swimming through the artificial gravity though. You do notice that the artificial gravity is starting to come back in. Or, or come back online as the systems have restored. So after a few moments, your swimming turns into actually being able to walk and kind of bounce

Zach/Zahn: The wading turns into actual walking.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: question.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Bee/Polaris: What about the big holes in the ship?

Avery/GM: Yeah, so those… so Marty, when you come out of the bridge and into the, the room that had the sleep pods in it you do notice that the hole is still there, but there's kind of like an energy shield that's kind of like keeping the atmosphere…

Bee/Polaris: Sick.

Jenine/Marty: Nice.

Avery/GM: Contained? Yeah. That was a very good question, Bee. Thank you.

Zach/Zahn: Perfect place to put a window.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I just wanted to know about the big holes and if it wouldn't get sucked out into the space, even though they have vaccines on.

Avery/GM: Yep. Not yet I mean…

Jenine/Marty: not yet.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, wait, wait.

Jenine/Marty: Not yet. Excuse you!

Chris/Ollie: DM mask off moment!

Avery/GM: Now we, so as, as Rho and Marty kind of wander through the ship a little bit, Marty, you, you notice Rho is kind of seems like she's making her way toward… actually, you haven't been on that part of the ship, so you wouldn't know where she's going, but she's going through like the Med Bay and stuff like that as well.

Zach/Zahn: Uh oh.

Avery/GM: we go to Zahn, Ollie and Polaris. Polaris, you were goofing around with your Tin Can boy.

Bee/Polaris: True.

Avery/GM: And I believe you were like laying on top of one of Ollie's drones.

Bee/Polaris: yeah. Yeah. also, Should I roll the D six?

Avery/GM: For?

Bee/Polaris: for the, cause I got shot.

Avery/GM: Oh, yes, I'm sorry. You're right. Thank you. Yes. Polaris, what did you get for your D six?

Bee/Polaris: four.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Four is not bad on a D six.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Well each, so we, so based on Polaris's backstory, we had to. , I realized I hadn't come up with a thing or that should have been in place the whole time for Polaris. So essentially when Polaris took damage last session so your body recovers in one third of the time, it would normally take, so to heal one hp, normally it takes 10 minutes in game. It'll take three minutes in game. So yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. How many minutes have passed since I got shot ?

Avery/GM: I would say probably about 20.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Or to round up 21. So make it a nice even number.

Chris/Ollie: But that's your natural healing. Didn't you also get. A heel over time buff from Marty?

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Avery/GM: So the heal over time buff, that's when you use a med pack, it heals one HP over 10 minutes. So instead, because of this ability that Polaris has he’ll heal one hp…

Chris/Ollie: it's not, not natural healing. It's enhanced healing.

Zach/Zahn: Accelerated Healing.

Avery/GM: Exactly. Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: This isn't normal Healing. This is advanced healing.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So Polaris, you are, you, you feel the gravity starting to come back slowly. Do you get off the drone or do you eventually let it come to the ground and you lay on it and crush it?

Bee/Polaris: How big is the drone? I thought it was a relatively big drone.

Avery/GM: I mean, it's big enough that you could lay across it, but like, I don't know.

Bee/Polaris: It wouldn't be able to fly with me on it.

Avery/GM: No

Bee/Polaris: Okay, Polaris will get off Drone.

Avery/GM: Okay. Zahn, you and Ollie have finished repairing these cables and you kind of realized that, okay, this job will do for now, but these things are eventually gonna need to be replaced later down the road. And Navi asked you to reactivate Segin so that they could complete the mission and blow up. And you said No?

Zach/Zahn: I did.

Avery/GM: And in the chat, Navi sends you an annoyed face emoji.

Bee/Polaris: Yay.

Zach/Zahn: I'm going to a, I haven't wrote a, a note to myself, Thankfully. I'm going to attempt mission override self-destruct by typing in the Milky-Wayan language that I know.

Avery/GM: Okay. Go ahead and roll Intelligence program. Or you can do wisdom program.

Zach/Zahn: Let's go… Oh, I have plus ones in neither, so it doesn't matter.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: I wish that was better.

Avery/GM: You do have your re-roll once per scene.

Zach/Zahn: I was about to say, I'm gonna go ahead…

Chris/Ollie: Well also you have the the hacker foci, right?

Zach/Zahn: I don't Oh, okay. I had debated on taking it and then

Bee/Polaris: yeah, we strong-armed you

Zach/Zahn: We… I was heavily convinced and to go in level two in tinkerer.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay.

Zach/Zahn: So I can mod the shit out of everything for like no cost.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: I mean that is…

Bee/Polaris: We bullied you into it.

Zach/Zahn: I rolled the exact same with different numbers, but that's okay.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: So eight.

Avery/GM: Yeah, I mean the security on this is set up by an ai. An eight is not gonna do it. I did not think so. You hear Navi say over the speakers:

“I must complete my mission. Failure could result in this vessel's home port being discovered. That is not a risk we can take… Archid, Activate automated defenses.”

Bee/Polaris: Oh shit.

Avery/GM: There's a rumbling, like deep in the ship and another voice comes on that says, automated defenses destroyed, unable to comply.

Bee/Polaris: Yay.

Avery/GM: And you see an angry face emoji in the chat.

Bee/Polaris: Yay.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna say Navi simply purge home port data.

Bee/Polaris: Got ‘em!

Avery/GM: Oh, that's good.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Put it in a zip file, you know, put that in the recycling bin.

Avery/GM: Yeah, go ahead. I'll, I'll make this a lower.

Zach/Zahn: You want another program?

Avery/GM: I'll make this a lower no, I'll make this a lower check. I, I would like a Charisma connect.

Zach/Zahn: I'm taking a minus two because I have minus ones in both of those.

Jenine/Marty: RIP, Can’t Relate!

Bee/Polaris: We’re not charismatic.

Jenine/Marty: can't relate.

Bee/Polaris: We're not a charismatic…

Jenine/Marty: can't relate.

Zach/Zahn: Can't relate.

Bee/Polaris: Marty's the cool kid amongst a bunch of nerds.

Zach/Zahn: So I rolled a six and a one, so that's seven minus two. That's five!

Bee/Polaris: Hell yeah!

Avery/GM: By the way feel free anyone else to step in at some point. But you hear…

Bee/Polaris: Seeing Zahn not do great at that flare will say, what if we say, please smiley face.

Zach/Zahn: Smiley face.

Avery/GM: Okay. Polaris roll a Charisma connect Check.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, no! I'm terrible at that. A Charisma connect? Ok.

(untelligible laughter)

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. All three of us have charisma as a dump stat… so.

Bee/Polaris: I have, okay. I have a minus one in connect and I have a zero in charisma. So it's only a minus one.

Zach/Zahn:

So it's only a minus one for you.

Bee/Polaris: Six. I rolled a seven, so six.

Zach/Zahn: Woo.

Avery/GM: You see the, the emoji in chat where it's like the angry face, but it has like the, the white letters across the mouth, like to indicate like cussing.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And you hear over the intercom: “caph increase artificial gravity by 300%.” And then you hear in the background: “power requirements insufficient, unable to increase artificial gravity.”

Bee/Polaris: Nice.

Zach/Zahn: I'm gonna motion for Ollie to come over to the computer real quick.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. No, I, I was just gonna say, while this is going on, Ollie is just doing his own thing. He's gonna message Hermes and ask for the translation package and just

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: Start going to work on the console.

Bee/Polaris: The translation DLC?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah

Zach/Zahn: Oh I was about to like, yeah, I was about to have you, us teamwork dig, start like digging into the files for the port home and then delete it.

Avery/GM: Ollie, Hermes sends you over the package pretty quickly. It's not huge, you know, it's, it's space. Y'all have faster internet connections than

Chris/Ollie: I got my quantum state drive, so I

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Unpacked it real quick

Avery/GM: And you can now understand anything in this database.

Chris/Ollie: Right on!

Zach/Zahn: Where I only understand bits and pieces.

Avery/GM: Yep… And Zahn I'll say that's probably part of it. Like, you know, a few words and you know, a few phrases and you tried typing those and it was just like, either the syntax was wrong or like, you know, some, yeah, some calibration of, of the way you coded it was just not working.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris raises his hand… like in a classroom. Can I try? Smiley Face? To do the hacky thingies?

Chris/Ollie: Oh… Umm…

Bee/Polaris: To type on the keyboard?

Chris/Ollie: I'm sure there's more than one keyboard lying around here

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: Because Ollie is just… self-absorbed with the thing. So he's gonna hack into the system and download everything.

Bee/Polaris: Oh…

Zach/Zahn: Uh Oh…

Avery/GM: Okay, So Ollie, because this security is set up by another AI, I don't believe your defeat security system will work.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. So I'm gonna have to actually roll

Avery/GM: Yep.

Chris/Ollie: And use the foci that I invested in hacking. Okay…

Avery/GM: That's right. So I'll need a… I'll need a hack roll from you using intelligence.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Avery/GM: And then I'll… Which I believe is program, right?

Chris/Ollie: Yes.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So we'll do intelligence program, check for both Polaris and Ollie.

Zach/Zahn: Can Ollie get assistance from Zahn since we're at the same terminal?

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: Hey!

Avery/GM: intelligence program.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. By the way, I have nothing in program.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Well, I'm going to start using a lot of shit. So I'm gonna use augmented cognition, commit processing to up my intelligence to 18 for the rest of the day.

Bee/Polaris: Jesus tapped dancing Christ, dude.

Zach/Zahn: All right.

Chris/Ollie: so is that a plus? What is that plus two? Is that the max? Okay. And roll these, drop the lowest. So that’s 15.

Avery/GM: Zahn, what did… what did you roll for your help check?

Not that it's gonna matter, but…

Zach/Zahn: no. Yeah. I rolled a six.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah, you are, you are in the way.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. You're reducing my roll.

Zach/Zahn: as I see Ollie's fingers just flying across this keyboard. And like the matrix has turned into his visor. Like Zahn just steps away.

Avery/GM: Like you, you go to like, reach for like one of the like, like a keyboard and you and Ollie's hand just like jets out and slaps it real quick.

Zach/Zahn: And he's like ow, fine. Jesus.

Avery/GM: What… what did you roll ?

Bee/Polaris: So I have nothing in program, but I have one in intelligence, so that negates the negative one. But I did roll a 12 .

Avery/GM: Okay. So, so it's almost like the dueling banjos or something over here, like . You were both just typing like crazy, typing like crazy. Ollie just barely gets to the information first. And Ollie, you start downloading everything you need from Navi.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, Polaris isn’t… Oh wait, what were we doing? Okay, so like mid, mid typing. Polar is like, wait, what's the goal?

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will just reply data acquisition.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, delete the home world thingy. Okay. Yeah.

Avery/GM: So, yeah. So I was under the impression that Ollie wanted to download all the data about the home world.

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, not just the home world. Everything. Everything they've got on the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Yep. Okay. So Polaris is just gonna de delete the home world data. So once Allie is done downloading that, Polaris will just delete it.

Avery/GM: Sure. In, in the chat. Navi just says, “I can see everything you're doing in the system. Schedar, deactivate life support systems vent all oxygen from all sections of the ship.”

Bee/Polaris: Jokes on the, we have vac suits.

Chris/Ollie: There was no atmosphere when we got here.

Zach/Zahn: Just make sure you're not standing next to a hole.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: But you hear another voice come over the intercom that just says “life support, still initializing, unable to deactivate until life support functions are fully restored, cannot deactivate life support functions while organic beings are present.”

Zach/Zahn: Ha.

Avery/GM: And then, and then there's just like three dots in the chat and Navi goes silent.

Zach/Zahn: Is Navi the only actual AI in the other like VI?

Avery/GM: Pretty much That's, that's kind of the, it's almost like the others are like subordinate functions.

Zach/Zahn: Got it.

Avery/GM: Of Navi.

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm. I see. Navi is the CEO and the rest are assistants.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Zach/Zahn: does that mean that Navi gets a $60 million bonus at the end of the year?

Avery/GM: Yeah, Navi's got a golden parachute out of here. Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: And everyone else gets a pizza party. Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. The ship's gonna explode. Navi got a golden parachute.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris was just gonna send a gif of like a Fortnite dance at Navi

Zach/Zahn: Oh my God.

Bee/Polaris: By the way, Polaris can't read this language. So , he's, so, I don't know if the computer is like in the language.

Avery/GM: So it would, it would've been in, in the other language with a 12. What I'll, what I'll say is that basically is that basically like Polaris, you're wearing your helmet, right?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And so basically what Hermes does, cause Hermes is integrated into your helmet, is basically just like overlays the translation like on the inside of your visor so you can kind of see what, what's what.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet, Polaris sends a thumbs up to Hermes.

Avery/GM: So, Ollie, you have some information that I need to give you, and you don't have to investigate all this information right now, but essentially what you get from such a monster ass role is that the database indicates that this ship has traveled roughly 75,000 light years from its home, which is a further distance than anyone has traveled in the Moirae Galaxy because it's only 10,000 light years across… So.

Chris/Ollie: okay.

Avery/GM: Pretty, pretty dang far. It implies that the ship came from outside your galaxy, which has already been confirmed by Rho. And you rolled a 15?

Chris/Ollie: Yes.

Avery/GM: Okay. You also learned that this ship is part of a political entity called the Pan Solar Union, which appears to control most of the home galaxy that this ship is from. And you found some restricted files that you haven't quite gained access to yet.

Chris/Ollie: Right on. Hold on just writing this down. So after I download all this stuff Ali's gonna step away from the console and look up at Zahn and

Polaris and say oh, my apologies. I was preoccupied. Can I help with anything that's going on right now? as the AI's been yelling at us.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's heads just tilts.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris looks at Ollie and says yes, can you please continue to taunt Navi?

Chris/Ollie: He's going to cock his head a bit at continue, but say, certainly!

Zach/Zahn: Ollie, you just finished doing what we already wanted you to do. And he just gives you like the shoulder pat.

Bee/Polaris: Oh wow. Oh my God. Dad is proud of you.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, his eyes are gonna light up. I love it when a plan comes together.

Bee/Polaris: Navi’s like I would've blowed up the ship if it wasn't for you.

And you're meddling Robot

Avery/GM: essentially. So you're here. The ship has not blown up or been otherwise made inhospitable and Navi has gone silent on you, given you the cold shoulder, maybe trying to figure out how to circumvent some of these systems. But if, if Navi is doing that, Navi is doing that alone and silently Hermes comes on over everyone's audio device and Marty, you've been following Rho, and Rho has led you into the lab section of the ship. So Rho is kind of standing next to this ladder leading down when you hear Hermes come

through on everyone's comm system and just says, everyone, I feel you need to be involved in this transmission we are receiving from Bruce.

Caden/Bruce: Hermes, can you patch me through the rest of the crew? Hello, Polaris, Ollie, Marty, Zahn. Can… Can anyone hear me? Hello, it's Bruce. Chef Bruce. I'm talking from my blender.

Caden/Bruce: Yes, my blender… I know this is weird and this is unexpected, but I've been taken captive… Well, no, that's the thing. I don't need you guys to come and rescue me.

Caden/Bruce: I had to leave. I was approached by Agent Lazuli, the blue tiger, one of the Winstons, and they told me that they had all of our information. and unfortunately, I can confirm that that threat is true. They have our photos and they have our names, and they definitely know what our ship looks like.

Caden/Bruce: But the good news is that I have the data pad and I'm going to try and edit it and delete the original records. Obviously, I can't destroy the data pad and I don't think I can destroy absolutely everything on it, but I will try my best.

Caden/Bruce: They don't need to have our faces and they certainly don't need to be able to ruin our reputations or maybe it wouldn't ruin my reputation. But either ways I left in hopes of keeping everyone safe, and I would encourage us all to disguise ship as soon as possible.

Caden/Bruce: They warned me that the fate of the Winston's tracking us and finding us was well in their words, inevitable. But I have much more faith in you than they do. and I believe that that won't be the case. Anyways… I guess

I'm now embarking on this mission that well, they didn't tell me what I was going to do or where I'm going to go. All I know is that they didn't kill me right away. In fact they were impressed by my ability to hide in plain sight, me hiding in plain sight.

Caden/Bruce: But if it means that I'm here and that they haven't killed me, then at least that's one bonus. They also haven't tasted my meat pie yet, but I can assure you all that that is much more impressive talking of food, I implore you all to please eat properly. As much as I'm using the splendor for talking, you are more than welcome to use it and any other tools you may find to whip up food. I properly shouldn't say whip up food because Polaris might actually find a whip and try to whip up food not cook food.

Caden/Bruce: Hopefully one of you knows how to cook. I have prepared some dishes in the freezer that should last you at least a couple of days. There's frozen lasagna and a frozen casserole. There's multiple types of frozen soup. And if you check the upper cabinets, I do have a secret stash of Flies. They're dead flies, but you are more than welcome to have a few, or I guess all of them if you would like, I guess I'm no longer on the ship to stop you.

Caden/Bruce: And please someone encourage someone to eat real cheese, not just a simple singles. Anyways, I want to tell you all that I will be as safe as I can and that I hope you are all as safe as you can be. I trust Marty to take care of you all and to heal you when you need it, and Polaris to fly the ship and… Well, hopefully Zahn can craft away to disguise the ship so that the Winstons can't track us anymore, or I guess track you anymore.

Caden/Bruce: I promise to give regular status updates as I can. I'm not sure if you can talk back to me through the blender. Obviously, I do not have two

blenders, but I do have my communication device, and it might be two ways, but I'm not really a computer genius as all of you might know. I am after all a chef and hopefully they enjoy the meat pies that I have started to prepare for them and I will try to make time to give regular status updates. But as you can imagine, getting alone time is not as easy when you are held hostage. Well, not hostage. Again, I don't need you to come. I'm not saying that I don't need you to come and rescue me as code to come and rescue me. I'm saying it as give me this time to clear our names and our reputation.

Caden/Bruce: They promised me that if I can achieve whatever effort it is they want for their employer, whoever their employer might be, that they would indeed delete what they had of our records on the Winston. Now obviously I have the data pad. I can make fast work of that, but I am a frog of my word and I plan to do just that. I hope to talk to you all soon and that you all do take care.

Caden/Bruce: Polaris, Please do not eat your bars. Whatever you consider as food. It's not food. I trust you all to be able to make something that at least tastes half what decent in my absent. And I hope to see you all again soon. This is Bruce signing off. I hope to sign off. I'm not too sure how to turn this blender off.

Jenine/Marty: my heart!

Chris/Ollie: Bruce!

Jenine/Marty: King!

Bee/Polaris: My heart started hurting when Bruce offered to share his secret stash of flies!

Jenine/Marty: Yeah! Yep Yep Yep!

Avery/GM: And Hermes says, I'm sorry, but the transmission has cut out as the ship has now moved too far outside of the system to maintain connection.

Zach/Zahn: Hermes, are we in position to pursue?

Avery/GM: Not at this moment. The ship has been severely damaged by the automated defenses that were inside the hangar when I came in here.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah, we did do that.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn flies into a rage and he is like, what the fuck do you mean? And he like, as he is like throwing off a wave of curses, he suddenly bolts out of the engine room and starts heading for the hangar to check on the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris immediately starts looking for Bruce on the ship.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie as well. He's going to… Bruce had the earpiece, right?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Can I track like its most recent location?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, the watch?

Avery/GM: Yeah. The little communicator that you got from Alioth? Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I guess it was a watch.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it was like a watch slash earpiece. It's kind of just the vague whatever it needs to be.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. For spy purposes.

Zach/Zahn: The super… Yeah, the spy either talking into the wristwatch or holding finger to ear to speak.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, exactly.

Zach/Zahn: to boost Zahn’s speed, he's in such a flight that he actually activates his jet boots to like fly faster to the hangar.

Avery/GM: Okay, sure. You are in the hangar and you see that the ship has sustained pretty good damage. It is at 25% hp. In game mechanics.

Jenine/Marty: Yoinks! That’s bad y’all!

Avery/GM: you know, it has, it has five HP out of 20 so it's not doing

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Zahn is going to go aboard and run a system diagnostic.

Avery/GM: Sure. Polaris and Ollie you start looking for, for Bruce?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Ollie is doing it the smart way. Polaris is doing it The “owner has left house and dog is wandering around house trying to find owner” way like legitimately like walking around the ship and looking for Bruce.

Avery/GM: Sure. So Ollie, you being a smart boy robot person.

Chris/Ollie: Yep, cognitive boost it's big brain time.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You head to the mess hall and you see that it's actually still kind of messy in here. It looks like Bruce didn't really touch anything but out of the doorway or, or next to roll, rolling out of the doorway that leads out of the, out of the mess hall and, and towards this way. You see a little bottle of bay leaves rolling out of that doorway and into the kitchen as the artificial gravity has settled back down to normal.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. And Polaris hasn't made it in here.

Avery/GM: Polaris eventually come, comes in like, as you kind of like are looking down at this, this Bay Leaf bottle.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, Polaris probably would've gone to the kitchen first because that's where Bruce usually is.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, I probably didn't need to scan anyway. It's the natural place to look.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. Fair enough. I was, I, sorry, sorry. Bee I was, I was taking the, looking around like a dog, like at its most literal of just like going in every single room first. Like…

Bee/Polaris: no, no, no, you, no, you're correct. He would go to the kitchen first and then check the rest of the ship.

Avery/GM: Gotcha. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Then yeah, so you both, you both see this. This little bottle of Bay leaves rolling out of this, this room that no one actually has gone in yet, except for Bruce and Ollie. I, I will say that you see a label on, on the doorway above, and since you have the language translator, you can see that it says vehicle storage,

Chris/Ollie: the doorway above? Oh, so the It's rolling outta the vehicle storage room.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Well, seeing it rolling out and thinking that may might mean whatever happened was like immediately recent. He's gonna rush in to see if he can see any, anything, anyone.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will follow, but he'll pick up the, the thing of bay leaves.

Avery/GM: So inside you see the artificial gravity is kind of settled down and you see like the ships are kind of like, or the, the little vehicles in here are kind of just like everywhere cause they were floating.

Avery/GM: You see a control panel in the back that's all smashed cause the tire of one of these ATVs is just laying on it and you see this central teleporter pad. It has power now, but obviously it wouldn't have had power earlier when power wasn't restored. And you see a tiny little drained type a cell, kind of like hotwired into the, the teleportation pad and kind of putting two and two together, you realize that this is how Bruce sort of disappeared without anyone noticing.

Chris/Ollie: And the console is smashed, so I can’t get it… Hmm. Well I wanna… Ollie is gonna look around and see if there are any signs of struggle, blood, gunfire, laserblasts.

Avery/GM: Yeah. There's, there's no sign of any struggle or anything. You don't see any greenish yellow blood spattered anywhere.

Chris/Ollie: That's gonna take Ollie's panic level down a bit. Well, I guess all, all you can really do is try and work with this console to see if he can get any, any info about where this thing was used recently, if he can.

Avery/GM: Sure. Go ahead and roll an intelligence fix check.

Chris/Ollie: That is 11.

Avery/GM: 11. Okay, that's good enough. You realize that the damage is mostly superficial. Just to kind of the outer casing of this console, if you probably linked up like a portable data pad or something to it, you could probably access it just fine.

Chris/Ollie: He's gonna turn to Polaris and ask, I might be able to discern the teleportation location. I require your data pad.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will take off his helmet and hand it to Ollie . He doesn't have a data pad.

Chris/Ollie: It's all in the helmet. All right. Ollie will take the helmet and put it on over his robo-face and interface through that

Bee/Polaris: We can't only just patch himself into Polaris’ helmet into the computer

Avery/GM: I mean, yes.

Bee/Polaris: so that if Navi manages to turn off the life support.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. The life support . Well, she can’t turn it off

Bee/Polaris: That's true. Not yet Anyway.

Avery/GM: So you start hacking into this this console and or not even hacking in, you just access this console cause it's not secured or anything. You see that this, this transporter only has one log and that log is from about, it's now been about 30 minutes since Polaris got shot. So we'll say it's from about 15 minutes ago.

Avery/GM: And the location, like in like the sector map, that, that kind of projects out and shows where the transport went to. The projection is just in the middle of space and kind of putting two and two together, it must be that like there was a ship there at one point and that's where Bruce was teleported to.

Chris/Ollie: Damn. All right. Ollie's gonna transmit this to the rest of the team and if text could be mournful it would be a very mournful. He's gone dot, dot, dot in the chat.

Avery/GM: Oh.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris can't see that you have his helmet. . Polaris is currently pacing in a circle around this teleporter.

Avery/GM: Let's go back to Marty real quick. Marty, you, you hear the message from Bruce and Rose kind of standing at the top of this ladder and kind of looks at you and it's just like, I need to go down and say goodbye to some friends. Could you maybe not follow me?

Jenine/Marty: And like Marty just kinda like brushes a tear from her face as like she tries to brush a tear but can't because there's a helmet and she just goes, yeah, okay. Yeah. If you, I'm up here. If you need anything, if you need a hug, and like, does like a little kick to the ground.

Avery/GM: thanks. And she starts climbing down the ladder and is out of there and in the meantime you see Zahn just rocket boost through the room, behind you and like, Going somewhere followed by Ollie and Polaris, who are also like running around, like looking for Bruce. So you're having this very somber moment with, with this stranger and, and there's also other chaos going on around you.

Chris/Ollie: It's like Benny Hill in the background.

Avery/GM: a little bit.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, It's like the Scooby Doo sequence where one of us opens the door and the other one comes out on the other side of the door and it doesn't make any sense.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, here for it. Yeah. Marty just kinda like stands there and just like as people walk, as everyone like goes past her, she just goes, if anyone just wants a hug or anything, I'm right here!

Bee/Polaris: Is this after Ollie has sent the message in the chat that Bruce is gone or before?

Avery/GM: I think, I think that's before. I think it arrives like a couple minutes after, after Marty says that.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: She still, she still says it because of the message from Bruce.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So yeah. So we're about to cut forward a few days in time.

Is there anything anyone wants to do before we do the time Skip?

Jenine/Marty: Could, could I, Do, do I know anything about. Do I know anything about the Milky Way?

Avery/GM: You do not

Jenine/Marty: Could I try and Google through Hermes the Milky Way.

Avery/GM: Way? Yeah. You, you Google it and that phrase doesn't pop up anything locally. Are you also gonna like, try and search through anything on this ship or just or just Googling it through like local internet.

Jenine/Marty: Could I try using stuff on the ship to like figure out what that is? And then did I, did Ollie share what he discovered through his download of information, or was that not shared with the team?

Chris/Ollie: I would say he just threw it in a, you know, public Google drive on the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet!

Avery/GM: Yeah, you could learn about it through there, but yeah, it's not like an inst… unlike Ollie, it's not an instant download for you.

Jenine/Marty: Oh yeah. No, No No. I guess as Marty's trying to like, distract herself from everything that's currently like going through, she's just trying to like figure out more things about this other planet and this other galaxy and trying to get all the information that she can while she's just watching her friends run around and is also trying to like, help this random person that they just found.

Bee/Polaris: I think after we went to the teleportation place, we stopped running around, right? We, Zahn went to the ship, we went to the teleportation place, and then Ollie found out what he found out right?

Jenine/Marty: That's it, that's what Marty’s doing.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So Marty, you do start kind of sifting through some of this data that, that Ollie has shared with everyone and, and you learn kind of the same stuff. You know, the Milky Way is apparently the name of a Galaxy or the former name of a Galaxy, and it's about 75,000 light years away from you. You do realize though, that part of your exchange with Rho has inadvertently taught you how to read some of this language actually to read this language completely and so you, you start being able to see some of translate some of these symbols

that are on, like, these like papers and you kind of understand the letters that are on these keyboards and stuff like that. So…

Jenine/Marty: So I, I now know the information on this like little data pad that I swooped earlier.

Avery/GM: You swooped a data pad earlier that's right from the Med Bay?

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You would see that it is a medical report on. Test subject Rho. Oh. And it is essentially readings of like psionic brainwave patterns, blood pressure, all of her vitals basically and then a note that says subject ready for deployment.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: Overall though, medically speaking, this person is very healthy if they are exactly human like you are.

Bee/Polaris: Haha. Hee hee.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, so Rho is human based off of what I'm reading?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: Based off of what you're reading, Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Marty goes: I can work with this. I can work with this. I mean, I can work with anything, but like, I can work with this. This is okay!

Avery/GM: Zahn, you are on the ship and or on, on your guys' ship and you see that like there's no holes. The structural integrity is not compromised, but like, There's some good chunks missing out of your armor. One of the barrels on your laser beam is like smoking and charred might need to be repaired, and Hermes kind of landed in the bay a little crooked. So not the best job compared to what a team of humans could have done landing in the bay, but it's not a complete disaster.

Bee/Polaris: That's kind of wild because wasn't Hermes like a, a ship AI specifically to be the ship's AI.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Someone should teach Hermes how to fly.

Avery/GM: Hermes is used to flying big ships that don't go in anything. They just go through space.

Bee/Polaris: That is true.

Chris/Ollie: Sure. All, Hermes knows is go and stop really.

Avery/GM: Go and stop and shoot.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I guess you don't have to avoid obstacles when you're big enough to just ram through them.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: This is gonna get a little deep because Zahn is having an existential crisis at the loss of… loss of Bruce. Zahn hasn't let himself get close to or feel anything for anyone in a long time. And so he's like in panic mode. He rushes onto the ship to try and get like, Engines working thruster speed, like he wants to get the ship operating as quickly as humanly possible, which is not at all within any kind of reasonable timeline and as it as that, like revelation is setting in, he's just getting more and more angry and frustrated, and his work is like getting sloppy and like he's getting to a point where he is just like, oh no, he's, he's bottling and the the top is fizzling, kind of like…

Avery/GM: Hermes says Zahn, I am detecting several of your vital signs are elevated, Are you feeling okay?

Zach/Zahn: He just like, he snaps. He is like at Hermes. He's like, doesn't matter how I feel. Tell me the telemetry on the outward thruster’s capabilities and how much or how soon we'll be able to take off.

Avery/GM: Given the state of the ship, we should be able to take off in approximately three days of repairs.

Zach/Zahn: That’s unacceptable, I need 10 minutes.

Avery/GM: Calculating… 10 minutes is not enough time to repair the ship enough to safely pilot it into space. You should sit down. Your blood pressure is getting very high.

Zach/Zahn: run diagnostic on critical repairs that need to be done in sequential order to get shipped flying immediately.

Avery/GM: Calculating… and then a list pops up on like the computer that you're in front of and like the first thing that needs to be repaired is the spike drive, second thing would be armor, third thing would be weapons and fourth would be the landing ramp as the one of the hydraulic pieces is kind of loose from getting shot and so it won't seal properly.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn dives like headfirst into the, the spike drive and that's where he'll be for the next little bit

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Like working through tears and anger.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah… While Zahn's doing that, Polaris probably now, like now that, I don't know if, did Ollie say that out loud or just in the chat? Cause Ollie has Polaris’ Helmet.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, he also said it out loud. Well, After Ollie said that he stood up and started walking out with the helmet on.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Okay, cool. Polaris will follow because like, now that we know that Bruce has gone, Polaris wants to make sure that all of teammates are

still here. So he's gonna go find Marty and kind of like knowing that Zahn's probably on the ship by now he's gonna hold out his hand to Marty.

Jenine/Marty: How, how, how are you doing?

Bee/Polaris: He's not gonna, he's not saying anything. And his, he doesn't have his helmet on, so his like, his face is blank. He's just holding out his hand to Marty.

Jenine/Marty: and she just goes, stands up and just gives a hug.

Bee/Polaris: He just puts his head on Marty's head for a little bit until she lets go. And then he, like he, he's, he holds out his hand again.

Jenine/Marty: Oh well. Rho is downstairs with. Her… I don't wait her. Yes… Wait… Well she didn't really spec… with their companions, so we should probably wait and check in with them to make sure they're doing okay. Cause they also got a lot of heavy information. Are you, and like Marty's trying to like read the situation with, with like all the friends and like, hello, this might not be my specialty, but a hello!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like glances over Marty's shoulder at the, like, the hole down and then just kind of nods and says noted… She'll be okay, but you are needed elsewhere at the moment.

Jenine/Marty: And then like, Marty just like, goes above the hole and just goes, Hey, let me know if you still need any help. Just ah, and then just to, to Polaris. How, how do I connect like text messages with other people to make sure that like she's in chat with us. You know what I mean?

Avery/GM: Hermes overhears you and says, I can connect you if you would like.

Jenine/Marty: make sure you give a warn… We're gonna connect with each other just to like , to like stay in communication so we don't have to physically be here. But if you need anything.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will pull Marty away cause like she's grieving and he probably doesn't wanna be yelled at from the top of the hole. Polaris will like gently pull Marty away.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Marty's not fighting.

Avery/GM: Oh goodness.

Bee/Polaris: He's gonna lead Marty towards the ship and he is gonna get on the ship and like look around for Zahn and probably see Zahn running back and forth and stuff and at one point he's probably gonna like stand in front of Zahn and like, block his way and just kind of look at him.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is in a state where he doesn't see you. So either he, he walks around or just goes through. If you actually don't…

Bee/Polaris: If he starts to walk around, Polaris will readjust and put his hands on Zahn's shoulders and like, make him look at him.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn brushes off and, and his helmet's been on this whole time. Like you can't see him.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: He doesn’t want to be seen.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will keep stopping him and eventually like, try to lead him to Marty because Marty fixes things.

Jenine/Marty: Oh no! Oh, no!

Avery/GM: And actually Marty, when, when you're kind of standing here watching this Hermes' little hologram pops up next to and like, it's just like Marty, I believe Zahn is having a heart attack. His blood pressure is sky high and he is a bit manic.

Jenine/Marty: that that's not a Well, that's not okay. Well this is not it and then like Marty starts walking towards Zahn and just does like a Okay, okay. Wait, wait and like, tries to like do like the fun little, like when you keep stepping in front of someone when you're trying to exit, but it doesn't happen.

But like, Marty's purposely trying to like say in front of Zahn as much as she can.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is trying to hold him still for Marty.

Jenine/Marty: Hey (random mouth noises) Hey Zahn, Zahn (more mouth noises) down here, Hello! Hello!

Zach/Zahn: there will be like a split second where he actually like, looks down, acknowledges your presences, and then continues to try and push past towards the drive with a with like a re socket wrench of some kind.

Jenine/Marty: I pull the socket wrench out of your hand if able to.

Zach/Zahn: I've got a death grip on it.

Avery/GM: Contested strength.

Jenine/Marty: Oh no.

Avery/GM: or, yeah,

Bee/Polaris: I mean Polaris… Polaris is holding Zahn still for Marty. So like, he's probably gonna have to contest Polaris.

Avery/GM: Okay. A three…

Bee/Polaris: If he's trying to move away

Avery/GM: like a three-way contested strength… It's not punch, but like, that's the closest I can come to.

Zach/Zahn: I would say work,

Avery/GM: work, okay

Zach/Zahn: work, Maybe

Avery/GM: work is fine.

Jenine/Marty: Could I say it's a con connect strength contested, because I'm trying to connect in this way to Zahn?

Avery/GM: You know what, you know what,

Zach/Zahn: It’ll definitely be work for me.

Avery/GM: but yeah. Get it For work, for Zahn Connect for Marty, Polaris, Pick one or the two. One of the one or the other

Bee/Polaris: Am I being strong about it?

Avery/GM: I’m sorry?

Zach/Zahn: am I rolling two works or just one?

Avery/GM: Roll two cause you're gonna contest each one. And then…

Jenine/Marty: Oh narts! I roll 3D sixes and drop the lowest. But I rolled two threes and a one.

Avery/GM: Oh no!

Bee/Polaris: What am Wait what? What am I rolling? Can I argue for exert?

Avery/GM: Oh, exert I'm, sorry… yes. Exert would be, exert would be perfect for both you and Zahn.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Avery/GM: I'm still gonna let Marty keep the connect, but yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Is it strength exert or

Avery/GM: Yeah, strength exert. Unless you're doing it Dexterously, but this sounds more like you're trying to hold him in place.

Zach/Zahn: Oh wow. I just went from minus one to plus one.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, fuck. We've made him stronger.

Chris/Ollie: You won't like him when he is angry.

Zach/Zahn: So for, I don't know what order you want to go in between, I guess. Pulling wrench will be seven plus one, so eight

Jenine/Marty: Narts

Zach/Zahn: and then breaking away from Polaris will be a seven.

Bee/Polaris: Aw, sick. I got an Eight.

Zach/Zahn: Oh man. I should have gone in another order.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will just like hug him and dead weight like pull him into his lap and Crisscross applesauce.

Jenine/Marty: Yes!

Avery/GM: I love it.

Zach/Zahn: Now that he's like, stopped moving, you're actually able to hear him quietly, like muttering to himself.

Bee/Polaris: Mm-hmm.

Zach/Zahn: And it's like this almost chant over and over again. Never get close to someone. Never, never again, never gonna lose someone. Never again. It's just me against the world. It's me against the universe. It's just, it's like that over and over.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is like, essentially like he's dropped because Polaris doesn't know how to do things outside of combat. So he's trying to, he's trying to like turn something that you would do in close combat into a not lethal thing. So he essentially like pulled you like into his lap and is like holding you in place. So he is definitely hearing this and he just looks up at Marty.

Jenine/Marty: Marty, Marty sits down, crisscross across. Hey, hello. And like takes and just like holds her hands out.

Zach/Zahn: There is a button on the side of my helmet that'll make it go into my suit.

Jenine/Marty: Boop, She whoops the button.

Zach/Zahn: And you get the cool, you get the cool (mouth noises) as the, the helmet disconnects. And you see Zahn's face is like bright red and like tears are just like streaming down his face. But his facial features are contorted and just like frustration and anger as he is muttering this over and over.

Jenine/Marty: Marty holds her hands out. Yeah, Marty just like holds her hands out. Not like forcing it just goes and does, like the little doot doot! like, like, like, has it like motions to like handhold if needed.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn like blinks a few times, stops talking and then like slowly takes the hand.

Bee/Polaris: Meanwhile Polaris has his, like chin on Zahn's shoulder and is like leaning his head against Zahn's, against Zahn’s shoulder.

Chris/Ollie: While this is going on.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Ollie has my helmet.

Chris/Ollie: and Ollie didn't go with everyone. And I'm assuming Zahn isn't live streaming.

Zach/Zahn: He is not. He, he cut feed as soon as he got to the ship.

Jenine/Marty: I am still live streaming on my wristwatch. You're only getting audio and all you heard was a boop!

Chris/Ollie: Okay. So Ollie has some idea, but he's, Ollie is gonna run right back to the, was that just like a reactor room or was that like the actual control room where we…

Avery/GM: that was like the engine room. So that's where the main reactor is and stuff like that.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Ollie is gonna run to wherever he thinks is Gonna be the best place to search the ship for robots. He's gonna hope that a ship of this size is gonna have a maintenance crew of robots aboard.

Bee/Polaris: Ollie is looting.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Ollie, you're well, okay. Yeah, you've, you've gone into the hangar. So I will give you this, you, when you zoomed across the this hallway here you were in the Hangar Bay, you noticed against this far wall that there was like a little, not quite doorway, but more like a… almost like a garage door looking structure and now that you have the translation package, you kind of go back through your memory feed and you see that it says maintenance.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent.

Avery/GM: But there's no, there's no like lock or anything on this door.

Chris/Ollie: Wait, Oh, you mean it's just not locked? Okay.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it, it, it's down. But you don't see like a handle or a lock or any way to open it manually.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, it's like air locked. Is there a co… a console nearby that I can yeah, because other than looking in there, I also like, you know, wanna scan through the console to see anything I, I can find think any robot in the ship, like drone maintenance bot, anything. Barring that, I'd also like to try and hack open that door.

Avery/GM: Sure. The only other robot that you've seen so far was that little tin can robot that Polaris was playing with in the reactor room, which Polaris, what did you end up doing with that?

Bee/Polaris: He is in my bag.

Avery/GM: Okay, cool. Perfect. So go ahead. Roll a hack intelligence program check for this.

Chris/Ollie: That is 15.

Avery/GM: You unlock it, it opens up or you unlock the console and there's three buttons. There's open door, run, maintenance cycle, or closed door. Hmm. And closed door is like grayed out. You can't choose it, obviously.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Well, I'm just gonna hit the open. I don't know what the maintenance cycle will do.

Avery/GM: Okay. You open up, you see, like these robots aren't like, they don't look like anything you've seen from this galaxy, which makes sense. They're clearly robots and they have like a bunch of tools attached to their fingers, and they all have like, like treads for their feet, so they can kind of zip around

quickly and get into weird spots. But yeah, that is what these robots look like. But they are currently deactivated.

Chris/Ollie: How many are there?

Avery/GM: Four.

Chris/Ollie: Four. All right. I'd like to. Jack directly into them. Split my conscious and take personal control of them along with any other robot chassis I've got on the ship if I can hack into these robots.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. And so I want to like, along with my body, the four in there, and I think other than the dog including the two, no, I think just one robot chassis now because we cannibalize the others. All of them will in, in unison walk. Oh well, however much unison they can considering the treads. Walk up to the rest of the crew and say at one as all, as one in Ollie's voice, may I be of assistance and immediately start repairing the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris isn't letting go of on until it calms down . So Polaris is just kind of zoning out.

Avery/GM: Ollie, you get a transmission from Hermes that lists the repairs that are needed.

Chris/Ollie: Excellent and so as eight I think? No, it would be six Ollies.

Avery/GM: Yeah, six Ollies.

Chris/Ollie: Go to work.

Avery/GM: so Ollie, you start repairing the ship, it's still gonna take a while.

Chris/Ollie: Also full disclosure, that's also Ollie's way of helping is being like, let's go, bro. I got… I got six pairs of hands.

Bee/Polaris: Ollie is doing the shit repairs and we're coughing down on Oh yeah. Polaris hasn't let go of the, the thing of bay leaves. So he's still holding that as he's holding Zahn.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. As Marty's holding Zahn's hands, she just looks him in the eyes. Hey, hi. What's up? Do you wanna talk? Do you wanna talk about it? Do you wanna talk about we, you don't, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. We can just sit here, just take a couple breaths.

Zach/Zahn: He's like trying to calm down. His breathing, breathing. It's like, like it's the short, shallow shit of just being like super angry and it's slowly getting like more drawn out.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Zach/Zahn: And then after a little bit he's finally, like… after I lost my mom, before, went my entire past life, ran away from home, and promised I would never look back and then I came across you fuckers and somehow you guys managed to weasel into the ironclad rivets that I am placed around me. So this is not fun… we'll get him back. He starts nodding, like looking for agreement.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn: We'll get him back, right?

Jenine/Marty: Yes, we're gonna get him back. But based off of this transmission, it sounds like we just have to, and I hate to say this, we do have to wait a little bit for what he's doing, but I trust him significantly.

So right now we may, the best course of action is, oh my gosh, she's a kid, so she's just like scared…

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like sees Marty stuttering and he looks up over at her from over his on shoulder and says he left the bay leaves, he'll be back.

Jenine/Marty: He also left his favorite blender. He's gonna be back, so…

Zach/Zahn: Zahn just nods… and you like in, in your arms, Polaris. You feel him relax a little bit.

Bee/Polaris: and Hermes turns off the defibrillator.

Avery/GM: I was gonna say, Hermes does say, oh, Zahn's blood pressure is returning to normal. You must be a very skilled healer, Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris says… Oh speaking of, Polaris is back to full!

Jenine/Marty: yay.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris doesn't say anything to that.

Chris/Ollie: Yes. Polaris is a very good healer.

Jenine/Marty: I’m here. It's fine.

Avery/GM: no… and Herman's like, oh, Marty, yes, of course. You did, you, you did all the talking. So that was probably more helpful than, I'm, you know what? I am just going to not say anything. And then you see the hologram, like disappear.

Jenine/Marty: Hey Hermes, we appreciate you.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, where was the hologram?

Avery/GM:, like standing off to the side.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Avery/GM: Hermes has learned how to project his hologram all over the ship.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, great. Oh good.

Jenine/Marty: Oh I love that.

Avery/GM: I love that for him.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, a sweetie. . Yeah. After the little moment, Marty just like scoot, scoot, scoots in and just. Hugs, into a little group hug

Zach/Zahn: Aww.

Avery/GM: And as Ollie is repairing things outside the ship and in the ship our camera kind of zooms out on this group hug.

Yeah. Ollie came over for the hug too. just for the, just for the record.

Bee/Polaris: Yay! One Ollie. One Ollie walks over and then like sits in the group hug and then just powers down.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. He notices the hug and joins you.

(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 music produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by tabletopaudio.com and used under an attribution, non-commercial license from creative commons. The track used today was “Starship: Bridge”. Be sure to follow us on twitter and tumblr @FurthestPod. We’ll be back on April 15th with our next episode.

See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars!

Interlude - Bruce's Blender

Avery/GM: Hello and welcome to a very special interlude episode where we take a peek back at Bruce's past to see just where the heck that blender came from. And has Bruce been a spy the whole time, or was it just sheer luck? Enjoy.

Bruce, we go back to your graduation day from Chef school. do you recall what your teacher's name was? I know I had it written down somewhere.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, you did have it written down and I do not have it on me

Avery/GM: right now. That's okay. I'll look it up real quick. Viage

Caden/Bruce: Viage! I was gonna say I knew it started with a V.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So what does Viage’s graduation ceremony look like for, for, for her school.

Caden/Bruce: it's a large affair. Being a chef school, I imagine there's a big buffet on one of the side halls, and then in classic graduation style, there's like rows of chairs where those who are graduating will sit. And then behind them there's rows for if they have family member and such like that.

And then on the main stage itself is like a few, like more thinner, longer like metal cooking tables for people to like, walk alongside to get their diplomas and such.

Avery/GM: Very good. So this ceremony kind of goes off without a hitch. There's, you know, everyone's name is read. They are also accompanied with like a slideshow up on like a display of like some of their best dishes that they've made.

So some people, you know, have these, you know, very elaborate cakes that they've made, or some very fancy steak and vegetable plates that they've put together. When Bruce's name gets called, what dish is showcased?

Caden/Bruce: So the dish that showcased is what it looks like… It looks like a cake, but it's not. It looks like it has it, it's circular and it has many different layers.

But each layer is like, the bottom layer is some rice. The next layer is some shrimp. The layer on top of that is like some avocado sauce layer on top of that is, is something that looks crispy, but we don't know really what it is, But Bruce Wood, and then like it, it's just a stack of what looks absolutely delicious, but savory.

Avery/GM: Oh excellent! Yeah. You know, one of the things that Bruce notices, it's kind of hard not to notice, is that when everyone else got their name called, there were cheers from certain sections of the crowd, you know, family members, you know, rooting and, and hollering for people. Bruce being a loner didn't really have anyone in the crowd for him.

How does that, kind of reflecting on that, how does, how does that make Bruce feel?

Caden/Bruce: I think it was something that Bruce expected. It was something that, it's the kind of thing where it's just. He knew no one was gonna really come to this. So he was kind of expecting that. I don't know if he was expecting such loud applauses for other people, and that might have caught him by surprise, but he's proud of what he did, so.

Avery/GM: Good. Good. So yeah, so after the initial ceremony, the, the families and the people who, the, the classmates of yours all kind of go off to do their own thing with their own groups of people and deciding to spend one last evening in the kitchen of your school, Bruce decides to make himself just a nice comfort food before saying goodbye to this space for the last time.

What, what does Bruce make?

Caden/Bruce: I think Bruce is going to make a sort of mac and cheese, but instead of bacon, it has dried flies in it and it's just, it smells really good. He's like putting in cheddar cheese and another type of cheese, like he's, he's going all out.

Avery/GM: Oh, very good. Very. As you are preparing this dish, you are g grating some of this cheese. When you hear footsteps entering the kitchen and you hear Viage's voice and she calls from behind you and just like you, you know when, when people graduate, you don't, you don't have to cook here anymore if you don't want to.

Caden/Bruce: I realized I just figured one more meal before I hit the road so to say. Would you like a bowl?

Avery/GM: She sees the flies on the counter, like next to, to where you're gonna, you know, put them in towards the end. And she's like sure. Just hold, hold the flies on mine.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will nod and smile and be like, you really don't know what you're missing out on. It does add a crunch.

Avery/GM: She smiles and says, ah, what the heck? Okay, I'll, I'll try, I'll try it one time in honor of your graduation.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is beaming and he like adds in the flies with his tail.

Avery/GM: Yeah. And you finish making this mac and cheese doesn't take too long. And the two of you sit down at this table in here and she's like, you know, I'm, I'm really glad you stuck around despite Chef Jamie's behavior towards you. I know that probably wasn't easy to, to deal with.

Caden/Bruce: No, but you know. There's gonna be chefs like Jamie out there in the real world. So it's good practice dealing with them here as well

Avery/GM: Hmm. Yeah. I, I suppose so. By the way, this is really good with flies. Actually, I, I think I might try this again sometime. Did you use Brie in this?

Caden/Bruce: I did. Yes. And once you try it with flies, you never go back. It's it's a good crunch.

Avery/GM: Hmm. Yeah. You're, you're telling me. Bruce, you are a very talented chef. You know, I know that you're probably gonna spend a lot more of your time traveling like you, you did before you got here. So I, I got you a present and she lifts this box that is beautifully wrapped in like this silver wrapping paper and has a nice, bright red bow on it. She says, I, I, I don't know where your travels will, will take you, but I have a feeling that you're gonna need this. And she pushes it across the table.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce's eyes, if possible, go even bigger and he takes the box and he looks at her and goes, are you sure? I didn't get anything for you.

Avery/GM: Oh well first of all, you, you prepared this lovely meal and let me share it with you. But also no, it's customary that people graduating. You know, a a, a trade school like this or a college receive a gift from family members or,

or loved ones of some kind and Well, I, I know no one really showed up for you today, so I figured I could, I could be your gift giver. You know?

Caden/Bruce: I thank, thank you. Thank you. And Bruce will go ahead and start unwrapping the box.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You unwrap it and it is this beautiful. Top of the line model blender that you've probably seen in stores or in like a, a hollow catalog of different kitchen gear and, and appliances and whatnot for, you know, I I, if you ever intended on settling down to start a restaurant or something, you know, you were looking at different things to buy.

Avery/GM: And she says, now this blender is actually very special. It. Just a blender and she kind of motions for you to hand it over to her. And she, she takes it and she twists off the bottom of the blender and pulls out this little radio looking device. She says, I want you to keep this blender with, with you all the time, wherever, whatever ship you're on, whatever you know, hotel you're staying in, keep it there and keep this radio with you.

Avery/GM: If you're ever in any trouble, just hopefully you'll have someone around. Some people nearby that you can call and they'll be able to hear it from this, this blender. And she speaks into the walk to the radio device and you hear her voice come out of the blender and she says, also it makes a really good smoothie. Like I, I don't know. It, it blends the, the berries like so perfectly. So it's, it's kind of a twofer really.

Caden/Bruce: I mean, you can never go wrong with a good blender.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Well, I just, I, I, I just really wanted you to have this you're, I'm not supposed to say this, but you're one of my favorite students.

Caden/Bruce: Well, thank you. You are one of my favorite teachers.

Avery/GM: Well, I'm gonna take this bowl and head back to my room, but just make, make, make sure you clean up the, the dishes when you're done. I, you know that, that'd be kind of rude if you left a mess of dishes on your last day.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce laughs and smiles and it's just like, have I ever left a mess?

Avery/GM: Nah, I know better than that. Take care of yourself, Bruce. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Okay?

Caden/Bruce: Thank you. I will try not to.

Avery/GM: And she walks out of the room, and that was the last time you saw your teacher Viage. And the first day that you had your emergency escape blender… your emergency communications blender,

Caden/Bruce: the Comet Crusher 2.0.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Episode 18 - Repairs and Departures

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 18 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

(Intro music plays for 30 seconds, then fades down, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: So this chamber is sealed completely, but inside you see a woman with bright silver hair. She is either sleeping or unconscious, but she is wearing a vac suit, and it appears that this chamber is self-powered.

Bee/Polaris: Oh shit. Let's pop this bad boy open.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. . No touchies and can I, is there a way to like read, I don't know if there's vitals on the thing or this tablet that I nicely snagged. Can I read it slash Is there a way for me to read it and see if I can find whoever's in this pod? Question Mark?

Avery/GM: It is… So the data pad is currently written in that strange language.

Jenine/Marty: Mm.

Avery/GM: But Navi is still in your chat, so she might have some answers for you depending on how you, you know, what you ask.

Jenine/Marty: So now this is something that I forget that I do have this foci cause I have, I I talkie talk. Are we friendly with, with the Navi?

Avery/GM: I'd say so they're, they're hopeful that you can help them complete their mission.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing.

Bee/Polaris: Which is to blow up

Jenine/Marty: So what…

Avery/GM: Yes, Which at this point would be the blow.

Jenine/Marty: What, what is the NPCs uh, moral score? I asked this for the folk high on page 20. That's called authority, which I took. This is, this is, this is me asking, um,

Avery/GM: okay. Authority…

Chris/Ollie: Is that the one where you get like a whole squad of NPCS?

Jenine/Marty: Maybe?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Jenine/Marty: I don't know about, I (inaudible),

Bee/Polaris: but does that, does that work with Rob bits.

Jenine/Marty: That's what that's

Bee/Polaris: with AI bits.

Jenine/Marty: Well, it's npc.

Avery/GM: Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: it does say npc. It doesn't specify if, if Robit or Nobit.

Jenine/Marty: It's my only non squishy thing.

Avery/GM: your level for that foci is just level one.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yes. I would say that it, it will work as long as it is not outside of what her programming will allow.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Amazing. Amazing. So this is, this is your request. I'm gonna. So hi again… just wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about the, as as a medical profe…. prof professional…. I am a medical prof professional. I'm trying to say that with confidence. I am. I, I just got my license, so I am a professional. Anyways, that's me backtracking anyways. So could you tell me a little bit more about the, uh, cap… navigation captain?

Navigation captain? Uh, yes. Um, can you tell us a little bit more on about the medical state that I can also assist in that way, if possible? That is all typed out. That, that she does.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Go ahead and roll your charisma Lead check.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing. Look at me go! No, that’s charisma.

Caden/Bruce: When Marty's doing this, Can Bruce see if the pod is like movable or is it like in place?

Avery/GM: It is bolted to the ground.

Bee/Polaris: That's one laser blade that can solve the problem. That's a, that's a problem solvable by laser blade.

Jenine/Marty: Now that is an eight

Avery/GM: Okay. I put their morale score at a six, so that's perfectly fine. Yeah. So Navi says Certainly there are no classified restrictions on this information. This is the pre-cognition navigation chamber and it is sealed and will not open until power is fully restored to the vessel. It is currently being maintained with an independent power cell that will last for approximately 300 years. The person inside is in Cryos stasis until they can be recovered.

Jenine/Marty: Rec recovered by like their injuries or

Bee/Polaris: turn, turn on.

Jenine/Marty: I, I see, I see, I see.

Bee/Polaris: Like, yeah,

Jenine/Marty: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Taken out of cryo sleep.

Jenine/Marty: So, so there's no injur, no injuries? Question mark?

Avery/GM: They are unharmed… for now.

Jenine/Marty: For, for now.

Bee/Polaris: Ummmmm

Jenine/Marty: for now.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. The, the mission, the mission is to blow up.

Avery/GM: Once this ship self-destructs, they will perish but… that is our mission at this point.

Bee/Polaris: Once the ship self-destructs, they will be super harmed.

Chris/Ollie: But that is a price I'm willing to pay.

Avery/GM: They will be extremely harmed.

Caden/Bruce: I think hearing this, Bruce is gonna like, I don't know if Polaris said it out loud or not, but take out his little mini, um, knife. Like slicer, laser blade and like…

Bee/Polaris: sorry, whatever I say, goofy shit. P Polaris isn't saying it

Caden/Bruce: that's what, that's what I figured. But Bruce is just like gonna try. If he can like weld off these bolts to get this thing floating.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris's visor does a little sparkly eyes that Ollie did, caught like the same, the exact same one just in Polaris's blue And uh, he's gonna grab both his laser blades and he is gonna help Bruce.

Avery/GM: Uh, sure. That's not even a roll. You sever the bolts from, uh, from the, the mount and you see it, you see the pod kind of float up, and then you see like underneath the mount that there's like a string of like wires attached to… going into this mount and up to the bottom of the pod that are kind of. The power cell or, or feeding this pod from whatever power source that's powering it.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, is the power source in the mount.

Avery/GM: No, the power source is somewhere underneath the floor of the bridge.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna cut like a square into the hole. He's like doing the thing where like his tug is sticking out and he's like trying to, he's using both hands, trying to try and carve a hole into the floor.

Avery/GM: Roll a dexterity, stab check.

Bee/Polaris: Uh uh uh. Okay. Well away from He's doing it. He's doing it away from the...

Avery/GM: Yeah, totally. I'm just, I mean, there's a chance that you hit something so

Chris/Ollie: I mean, there's plenty of other stuff down there. It might not be the thing we're going for.

Bee/Polaris: That's true. Is anyone gonna stop Polaris from doing this stupid, stupid thing?

Caden/Bruce: Nope. Because Bruce doesn't know. Like Bruce just assumes this is a good idea. Bruce Trust’s Polaris

Jenine/Marty: Now do I… Do I know how to like get one of these out safely or because this is an alien ship. I don't know.

Avery/GM: I'm sorry. Yeah. It's this, like you've seen pre-cognition chambers before but this is a different design than you've seen

Chris/Ollie: Oh, also, yeah. By the way, also Ollie's on the way out to, uh, assist Zahn seeing that e everything's under control here.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, shit. Right.

Caden/Bruce: Everything's under control. Yup!

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Yeah

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. And now that there's no threat between us and him.

Jenine/Marty: True.

Avery/GM: Okay. You, you, so you wanna start heading towards the engine room with Zahn?

Chris/Ollie: Being the, the other fix boy on the team

Avery/GM: Oh wait, you've just… okay. Yeah, no, that's fine. Because yeah, you've destroyed the, the turrets.

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna bring all my drones with me too. Take my drones. Go home.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Polaris, go ahead and roll your stab check.

Bee/Polaris: I, I'm conflicted because now that Ollie is leaving, Polaris might follow. Now that we know that we get, like if we see the wire going into the floor, like we know this person's gonna be okay, but Zahn did, like, is is not here.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bee/Polaris: and Polaris was shot. So he's assuming that Zahn has also probably been shot within the timeframe.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Zahn has not reported having been shot so you have no reason to assume that.

Bee/Polaris: Exactly. But Polaris doesn't have like a normal line of thinking. So Polaris is just like, there are guns in this room, which means there are guns in every room and statistically Zahn has probably been shot.

Jenine/Marty: That's fair. That's, that's a fair point.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: No, but I also need you guys to stay there cause if I turn the engine. Somebody needs to be directly like with the AI to potentially stop it from self-destructing.

Jenine/Marty: This is true.

Bee/Polaris: Oll.. I mean, Ollie would be the best one to do that cause he hacks good and he's leaving.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, I could probably talk, I could talk to the AI from anywhere

Jenine/Marty: We're all talking. We got a group chat.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you're all fine.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Where, where would the self-destruct like override be?

Jenine/Marty: is it 1 of 5 buttons?

Avery/GM: It would pro…

(laughter)

Bee/Polaris: Every ship has five buttons.

Jenine/Marty: Sorry. Continue.

Avery/GM: Real… realistically, even though this is an alien ship, Ollie, you probably know that given if you were fast enough, you could probably hack into a nearby terminal and disable it.

Chris/Ollie: Hmm. But I would have to do it after power is restored.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Would it have to be up here?

Avery/GM: Not necessarily. There, there are consoles all.

Chris/Ollie: Then, yeah. I'm gonna, uh, head over to the engine room, but have, having seen the, actually were you streaming your helmetCam Zahn?

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. After seeing, uh, the stuff that he had looked over, but, uh, didn't stop like the armory and whatnot, Ali's going to, uh, stop by, take a look.

Bee/Polaris: Just out of curiosity is, does every, is everyone that has like a helmet cam streaming?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie is like 24 7 i r l.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, okay. P… cause Polaris always has his Twitch chat open. , Polaris always, always has his twitch open. Um, okay cool. So we know what all of us are doing. So Polaris would see Ollie leaving and then also probably doesn't, has not been shot So he's like holding up his laser blade, getting ready to stab into the floor and. Stand like sitting there for like a good minute or so, and then he just kind of like looks over to Marty and Bruce and then over his shoulder at Wally and then back to the other two.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will look at him and just be like, I don't mind staying here if anything goes sideways, I'm pretty confident that I would be strong enough to cut these wires and push this pod into our ship. So if you two wanna go, that's fine by me.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will give Bruce his gun and then follow Ollie.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce looks at the gun like he doesn't know what it is.

Avery/GM:. Marty, what do you do?

Jenine/Marty: Could I try and transmit another thought? Can I try and do a, what is it? Transmit thought level one. Just, just what's up? What can I throw into a little conversation? Or am I only getting a little drowning image?

Avery/GM: You're mostly getting drowning images. You do see in this next image of a person drowning, you do see like an extended hand grabbing towards this person, and then a second image of a hand pointing forward, almost like pointing at you.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, we haven't tried just opening it.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Wake this person up.

Bee/Polaris: We could laser blaze it. We, uh, Bruce could laser blade it open.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Could I, is there, this is okay. I think, is she gonna ask for permission? No, she's, is there a latch to open?

Avery/GM: There is. Navi did mention that it is sealed and will not open until…

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Avery/GM: …Power is restored.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Okay. Good, good. Great. I think I'll just like, cause I can also do… current thoughts… Uh, there's something about language and language does not impede me from like speaking with this being…

Avery/GM: correct.

Jenine/Marty: So I'll just, Saying we're here to help in like little images, maybe like, like an image of like handing flowers of like importance of like, oh, these are flowers. That means good. Something like that.

Avery/GM: Yeah

Jenine/Marty: And like saying it back and like different images of helping.

Avery/GM: Are you still looking inside the pod or no?

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: You see this person's face kind of like scrunch, like they're kind of thinking, you know, Like their forehead kind of furrows. And then you actually get words in your head. The words just say, I don't want to die here, please help me.

Jenine/Marty: Oh. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then I'll try and just communicate back. Is there anything, if we turn this ship on, will we have time to like get us all out quickly enough to get you out and to get the crew out? Well… my crew out.

Avery/GM: The voice comes ba… or not the voice, but the words come into your head and it says, activate all artificial intelligence except Segin. S-E-G-I-N.

Jenine/Marty: Okay so I, I immediately like, send that message out to everybody in, in the crew. Hashtag crew, um, group chat. Don't turn on this AI.

Bee/Polaris: Thumbs up emoji.

Chris/Ollie: So with the ais, are those activated with the core or do we have to activate them all individually?

Avery/GM: I was actually just gonna get to that. So…

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Jenine/Marty: Sick.

Avery/GM: Flashing back to Zahn real quick. Zahn, you come into the engine room here, you see several like power transformers that are dormant, obviously. And then there is a central reactor core basically here that is quiet and cold and dead and around the other side of this core, there is a computer system that has a faint amount of power that is flashing reboot question mark, Y/N. And it says it in that language that you don't, that you know

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Ah-huh .

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: I'm going to look over the core because, uh, Navi had designated that there were. Four of five wires not plugged in.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Um, looking over it more clear or more closely, you see there are four not wires. Like these are pretty like thick cables and you can see that four of them have been severed just through like some like shrapnel kind of hitting them. You know, a couple floor panels have kind of like, from the crash have kinda like stuck up from the ground and kind of sliced through a couple of these things. And so there are just some severed wires that given the right parts you could probably fix those Fairly quickly.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Gotcha. Am I able to tell what these wires specific or these cables specifically go to?

Avery/GM: Not specifically. You do see that they kind of like lead into the walls of this room and just sort of look like they branch out to different sections of the ship.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Gotcha. Then I will go to, The computer and hit y, enter.

Avery/GM: Okay. You start the reboot process and, you see, five names pop up on the screen and they read Archid, Schedar, Caph, Ruchbah and Segin. And that's when you get the message from Marty that says, don't activate Segin.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Noted!

Avery/GM: So It's a, it's, it's a good thing Marty asked those questions, huh?

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Right? So you get in the group chat noted. Dot, dot, dot .

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Right? As like you send a screenshot of your finger holding right above the activate Segin, like Good Timing!

Bee/Polaris: I mean it's being streamed . We're seeing all of this.

Avery/GM: And then you do get one other message from Navi in the chat with her that says, please reactivate Sagan immediately so that this ship can self destruct.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Yeah, we don't want that. Zahn says verbally as he starts activating the others, but not Sagan.

Avery/GM: Sure. So you activate our kid and you hear, actually nothing happens yet, but you do…

Bee/Polaris: hey real quick,

Avery/GM: yes.

Bee/Polaris: How do, how do you spell all these AI names?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: I'm sorry. I, I apologize.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Just like, I don't know if you have 'em written down in front of you, just copy paste ‘em into the chat or something.

Avery/GM: Yep. I will. Oops. Yeah, my bad.

Bee/Polaris: It's all good. I, I heard them all the first. Is like, wow, these are really cool names. I wish I knew how to spell 'em

Avery/GM: They are the star names for the Constellation Cassiopeia actually.

Jenine/Marty: That's why they sound so familiar.

Chris/Ollie: Nice

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Makes sense.

Bee/Polaris: My brain is thinking some thoughts.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: So wait…

Avery/GM: No… No.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Who’s Navi, if its not one of these five?

Avery/GM: Navi is another star in Cassiopeia.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: it's a nickname, but yeah, it's the nickname for the Star Gamma Cassiopeia.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Got it. That's cool.

Bee/Polaris: My brain is thinking thoughts.

Avery/GM: I don't know why

Bee/Polaris: I think you know why.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: I don't know why.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, you wouldn't know why, but I know why, and Avery knows why.

Avery/GM: After activating these AIs, You see a message that says nodes reactivated, awaiting power supply. After each one that you reactivate, and as you finish activating the one before Segin, in walks, Ollie.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: how did Ollie get past the hangar bay?

Jenine/Marty: We yeeted those.

Bee/Polaris: Remember? Hermes?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah Hermes Yeeted them

Avery/GM: Hermes came in and blasted them.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Oh.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, also,

Avery/GM: oh, you wanted to check out the Armory too, huh?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I also probably should check on the ship too, considering the ship almost got yeeted.

Bee/Polaris: Oh Yeah, yeah that’s true.

Avery/GM: this is true.

Chris/Ollie: So yeah,

Avery/GM: I'll, I'll, uh, so yeah, we can, we can back up a few things, a few paces real quick.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I'll put those detours in there.

Avery/GM: So, Ollie, you come into the Hangar Bay and you see there are quite a few scorch marks on the ship formerly known as the Minos. There's no hull breaches that you can see from here, but it is definitely seen better days.

Bee/Polaris: haven't we All ?

Caden/Bruce: Oh God. Zahn's gonna have a field day once he gets inside.

Chris/Ollie: Is there any, any like emergency repairs that we need to do?

Avery/GM: Not currently. Hermes would've communicated that if there was

Chris/Ollie: Ollie like…

Avery/GM: It doesn’t look great though.

Chris/Ollie: It's just, uh, oh my boy. Look how they massacred my boy. But he's gonna ask, uh, ask if everything's good and seeing as there was no, no message or anything, it's gonna be like, all right, that's fine and move on to the armory. Give a thumbs up to the, to Hermes in the ship.

Avery/GM: Hermes sends a, like a, a middle thumb, like , eh,

Bee/Polaris: what? Oh, oh.

Avery/GM: like, you know. Not a thumbs up. Not a thumbs down.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like neutral.

Avery/GM: Sorry.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah.

Avery/GM: I could have worded that better.

Chris/Ollie: I thought it was a middle finger. You were saying at first.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, me too. Me too.I was just like, when did Hermes learn how to cuss?

Chris/Ollie: We're gonna have to have a chat with you young man.

Bee/Polaris: My son, my boy!

Chris/Ollie: Who taught you to say that!

Avery/GM: But yeah, coming into the next room and you pass by the armory. Something shiny kind of catches your eye, poke your head in. You see kind of like stocked in here. You see like a rack of like six, like automatic rifles of some kind. A second rack of like laser pistols and then some armored vac suits as well. There's about eight of each item here.

Jenine/Marty: Ooo Snazzy

Avery/GM: Probably, probably some like standard issue for like crew. I will say on the bridge you did not see any bodies.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. And like none the entire way back here.

Avery/GM: Right. Just the bodies that have been in the sleep pods.

Chris/Ollie: Mm-hmm. All right.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: I mean, it has been three months. They could have been vacced into space.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Pirates could have saved ‘em.

Avery/GM: I just forgot to say that earlier. So,

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: ah

Chris/Ollie: and these are projectile weapons I’m guessing?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. So Ollie's going to put some dollar signs in the, in the chat, he's gonna load up on, he's gonna take a combat or their, what'd you say? Auto rifles?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Combat rifle.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Ollie's gonna take one for himself and equip his bots. I'm gonna take the thermal pistol and the laser pistol out of the… his drones Equip them with that and as much ammo as I can carry.

Avery/GM: Okay. Sure.

Chris/Ollie: I don't really think I got much inventory space for all this stuff, so I'll, I’ll let it…

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: well, you do have a couple extra cavities now, ?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I do. I do.

Bee/Polaris: Gross!

Chris/Ollie: but I…

Avery/GM: oh no. Oh goodness.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: In his chest. Geeze louis!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I know. I'm just being a stinker.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, I don't know. We never said where he got shot.

Avery/GM: Shot in the buttocks.

Bee/Polaris: Why, out of curiosity, why would the hegemony, why would the hegemony employ robots that have a fat dumper?

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Esp, especially for janitorial purposes.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. He, he's a janitor bot. He's got the dump truck coming through.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God.

Chris/Ollie: So, yeah. Ollie’s gonna leave the equipment for, uh, anyone to come claim if they want it. And he is gonna move on to the, uh, that laboratory.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, Polaris. Isn't Polaris followed Ollie

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay.

Bee/Polaris: so he's like . He's been lurking in the shadows.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Uh, so Polaris, you're also seeing these same, same things that, that Ollie is seeing as well. .

Bee/Polaris: Sorry, I'm still stuck on it. I'm still stuck on Ollie having a fat dumpy

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah. Same. Its distracting.

Bee/Polaris: this crew has more cake in more ways than one

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. We've had cake from day one.

Caden/Bruce: cake has always been here.

Chris/Ollie: This cake ain't no lie

Bee/Polaris: Bruce wasn't the first one to bring the cake.

Avery/GM: Oh gosh. Cool. Uh, so anyway, coming into this advanced lab, oie, you see the same thing that Zahn saw a lot of papers. Uh, documents and stuff kind of sprawled around here. Actual physical documents, not like data pads.

Chris/Ollie: Hmm.

You also see tools that are kind of hard to clearly identify what they are. Like there's some that are like pretty universal, you know, screwdrivers or screwdriver, stuff like that. But like there are some tools that look like they probably do some very specific task that you're not quite sure of, but yeah, there's not much here. I will say in the workshop, one thing that you two do notice is a, a little tin can Looking robot

Bee/Polaris: Polaris picks him up.

Avery/GM: Get back to that section.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I'm picking, give me my new son, give us our, our new child Hermes is gonna have a sibling.

Avery/GM: Uh, it is currently unpowered, but it's pretty light and pretty, like, it feels like it's almost made out of like Tin or Aluminum or something. Like it's, it's very, it feels very fragile when you pick it up.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh. I can crush this thing in my hands, but I'm not going to.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's probably like a foot and a half tall and. Eight inches wide. It's very, it's a very tiny robot.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris holds him up Triumphantly towards Ollie. Like, look!

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's gonna get some, uh, like little heart eyes looking at him. I'm a assuming it's like a, an A-powered cell for him. Or is all this like technology kind of foreign?

Avery/GM: It's all kind of foreign.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Dang. We'll have to power him up somehow.

Chris/Ollie: And everything else is de powered like the terminals in here. So I can't download anything for right now. Yeah. All right. Well I guess Allie is just going to like start looking through the documents.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: He can't read any of 'em, but he's imaging them.

Bee/Polaris: Just scan 'em for later

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Marty, Bruce, you are still back on the bridge. What are you two doing?

Caden/Bruce: It's a good question.

Jenine/Marty: Excellent question. , is there anything else in this room?

Avery/GM: Not currently With everything powered down

Caden/Bruce: that didn't sound ominous at all.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. No, I just, sorry, I just mean like there is nothing of note because everything is powered down.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Cool Cool Cool.

Avery/GM: Once power is restored, you might find something useful, but

Bee/Polaris: like more guns, more turrets.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I love that. Thanks.

Bee/Polaris: Me too!

Jenine/Marty: Is there a way for me to try and get this thing trans, like the, the, the tablet translated If, if, if Hermes was able to give translation to AI, Can that translation be done in digital? In like, like if I put Google Translate glasses on, is Google translate glasses allowed?

Avery/GM: Yeah. So you don't have a helmet, do you?

Jenine/Marty: I have eyes.

Bee/Polaris: You have a watch?

Jenine/Marty: I do have a watch.

Bee/Polaris: But

Avery/GM: if you…

Bee/Polaris: my only concern would be if it's like not from this general Galaxy, would this like program put in place by this galaxy have any way to Extraterrestrial languages like that, you know?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. No, no, no. I get you. I get you. I'm just, I was just wondering if it is, is there Is there?

Avery/GM: so I will say that, um, if Hermes could Sweet talk Navi. And so Hermes taught Navi the local language here.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: if Hermes could somehow sweet talk Navi into teaching him her language. Then yes, that would be possible.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, okay.

Bee/Polaris: Make Hermes this rule to flirt.

Jenine/Marty: Wait, no, no, no. I got this.

Avery/GM: But I will say that for you to get Hermes to translate this document, uh, you would need to be somewhere where Hermes could look at it in some way.

Jenine/Marty: So I'm gonna, I'm just gonna message hers real quick. So her is, this is your lesson in flirting

Avery/GM: Oh God.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: I didn't know, uh, Marty was such a player to be able to give classes.

Jenine/Marty: Marty isn't Marty's just charismatic? And it's like, okay, wait, let's back up. Not flirting, but talking to someone nicely in a way that they can be friends if you want it to flirt, I don't know, added a little bit of sauce. That's what people tell me.

Bee/Polaris: add a little bit of massage. Hermes is gonna take that. Literally.

Jenine/Marty: Marty. Essentially just was like, okay, so could we trot, I know that you taught Navi how to speak our language. Do you think you can ask her if she can teach you how to speak her language so we can get a little bit more about their wonderful language question mark?

Avery/GM: Certainly, I will be happy to ask.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing. Let me know if you need any help. I have some really good ways of talk. I've, I, I learned a lot about talking to people. It sounds like I might not be good at it, but I promise I'm good at it. You got this buddy.

Avery/GM: Hermes just says, Navi, I would like to speak your language as well. It would be easier to communicate than using a language you are still familiarizing yourself with.

Avery/GM: And Navi responds back and says: oh, certainly I'll be happy to teach you. And you see like in the chat, like you see like a little like transfer bar, Like status bar going across

Avery/GM: and Hermes just says, Marty, I should have this language transferred to my memory very shortly. What do you need me to know this language for?

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: What is very shortly to Hermes?

Jenine/Marty: Excellent question. Um, but oh, I just, there's this little tablet that has like, I think it has the medical, I mean I found it in the Med Bay or what I think is in the equivalent of Med Bay, so might have the medical records of the people that are on this ship or the beings And maybe want to learn a little bit more. And if there's other documents that we find throughout here, it'd be nice to have the translation.

Avery/GM: Excellent. If you bring what you need translated onto the ship, I should be able to translate them.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing. We're gonna head there after everything gets set up because we do not wanna leave our friend here. Oh, I also then I'm like, oh shit. I rule number one, you gotta learn names. Um, and I just got like to our friend that's in the little pod and I'm like, I'm Marty, what is your name? Completely, completely changes conversation.

Avery/GM: conversation. You get a picture in your mind, a boat rowing, and you get the impression that her name is Rho.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I thought it was gonna be Rowan

Avery/GM: R-H-O.

Jenine/Marty: R-H… Ooo cute. Amazing. . Oh, this is fun. Thank you.

Bee/Polaris: How do you, how do you image project the name Marty?

Chris/Ollie: Back to the future?

Jenine/Marty: No, I… You do like a, like a store? Like a little, not a big store, but like a little store… a Mart. and then, um, Oh shoot.

Bee/Polaris: I guess you, I guess you could get like smarties the candy and just tear off the S.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Smarties.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that's it. Just like a little Mart.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Smarty, arty.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Put together

Caden/Bruce: As this is happening, Bruce has gone back into the other room cuz he feels bad about his cake and he's trying to clean up the mess, but it's going poorly because he's floating.

Bee/Polaris: Aw,

Avery/GM: sure. Yeah. You float back into, how far do you float?

Caden/Bruce: I, where the tart was, I guess, where my cake smashed up against the wall.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. No, that's, that's the same room that Marty's in.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Cause you were on that was on the bridge.

Caden/Bruce: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Marty came. Yeah, Marty came in to, yeah,

Jenine/Marty: to do the heal heal.

Avery/GM: Bruce, as you're sitting here kind of mourning your cake, you get a private message on your little communicator. Watch it just, We need to talk smiley face, cat emoji. And then it says go into the next room and then through the med bay, take a left down the hallway and go past the kitchen. Or your friends won't make it out of here.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will read that message. Uh, look up to Marty and be like, I'm going to go and see if there's anything I can, um, borrow from this kitchen that would make our kitchen better… and head that way.

Jenine/Marty: Uh oh. I'll be here. Okay.

Caden/Bruce: And Bruce will swim. . also, he is using his tail as like, like a crocodile, I guess does in the way.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was just about to say, I imagine Bruce like swimming through the air. Like a, a gator.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, that's cute!

Avery/GM: So, yeah, Bruce, you come into this kitchen and you do see like a trail of spice containers leading into this next room , and there's like some really rare spices. There's like some saffron here and you know, some like gold boon and stuff like that. Like, there's like some, like, that's not a spice, but you know what I mean. Like there's just, there's like some like fancy cook stuff like floating here, like leading you into this next room.

Bee/Polaris: That's pretty hilarious that they're Hanseling and Greteling you.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is probably just sweeping this up with his tail though as well on the way, just like kicking it out to his hands and like as he's swimming along, you just see like Everest soft and like a spice jar just being added to the collection as he's starting to hold.

Avery/GM: Very good. Yeah, so you come into this room past the kitchen. it is clearly a vehicle storage room of some kind. There are a bunch of like floating vehicles here. You see some hover bikes and some Atmos fliers and some gravtanks. There's like two of each of these things in here, like you're kind of wondering like why Zahn hasn't checked this room out, cuz this is going to make his day. But as you come into this, Uh, you hear over your personal intercom that no one else can hear, and this voice just says, “took you long enough. I really thought the spices would've drawn you in sooner.”

Caden/Bruce: I don't particularly like the sound of where this is going. Um, can I help you?

Avery/GM: It's not a question of can you help me? The question's already answered. You will if you don't want your friends to meet the fate they deserve.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: We don't deserve that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. It deserves a strong word.

Avery/GM: This is not the GM casting judgment on y'all. This is.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I know, I know, I know.

Caden/Bruce: That's a pretty big threat coming from someone who's not even showing their face.

Avery/GM: You hear a, a soft chuckle and you see floating from behind one of these grab tanks. A dark blue tiger. And they have in one hand a laser pistol trained on you. And in the other hand they have a data pad of some kind and they say, you are a clever little Scaph, aren't you, Bruce? I mean, I know how to hide. I know how to make my ship disappear from radar and you know, ghost stealth but to blend in, in plain sight. That is something that few can do well.

Caden/Bruce: I mean… I am only a chef. I, if you're impressed by that, you really should try my cooking. that's much more impressive really.

Avery/GM: Oh, we will get to that. Don't you worry? But you and your friends have made some powerful enemies, haven't you? Namely the Winston family. My Family. And while they may not know your face or your names yet, your ship is well known and it's only a matter of time until they track you down. You know that, right?

Caden/Bruce: So you have not come to track us down and kill us. I mean, that seems to be where my logic is going. But yet you have a gun on me and you’ve not yet tried to shoot. I mean, I am a pretty big target

Avery/GM: to miss. Oh yes. If I want you dead, I, I will take care of that when the time comes. But for now, we actually might have a common interest, well, not common interest, but a common goal that we can work towards. If you want to keep your friends safe, I have need of your little blending in skills that you so gloriously showed off on Bragos. And I can't give you all the details until you agree, but let's just say this. If you come with me, you do the missions that me and my employers need you to do, and in return, I don't hit transmit on this data pad and send all of your names and faces to my cousin Violet.

Caden/Bruce: It sounds like you need me a fair bit, so I'll make you a counter offer. I'll come with you, but you'll hand me the data pad first.

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll a charisma connect check.

Caden/Bruce: That's a 12.

Jenine/Marty: Let's go!

Avery/GM: They shrug. And float the data pad over to you and they're like, you're gonna come with me one way or another. Why not?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is gonna take it and, uh, when he's able to delete all the information and replace it with fake shit.

Avery/GM: sure, you probably won't be able to do that right in front of them, but…

Caden/Bruce: No, I, I, I'm just, that, that eventually will happen. Like Bruce is smart enough not to just break the tablet like over his knee or something like, but he just is just like, okay, this information, if it goes out, is gonna be completely wrong.

Avery/GM: Brilliant… and they say, okay, we've got a deal. And they kind of gesture with their, their pistol towards the, the very large teleportation pad that's in this room on the floor. They just say, Stand there for a minute. We'll beam back over to my ship.

Caden/Bruce: All right? Just, um, just know that if this ends poorly for me, it can also end poorly for you. And Bruce will do that.

Avery/GM: They just smile at you and they, they still have their pistol trained on you, and they kneel down and they pull out like a power cell that has like some like wires and stuff attached to it and it looks a little kind of complicated and they attach it to this teleportation pad and like fiddle with a few wires and you see the pad light up for a moment and then they look up at you and say, have you ever teleported before?

Caden/Bruce: I don't believe so. But before they go, Bruce will like subtly drop one of the spices to the floor.

Avery/GM: Very good. They say, okay, well just know that it can be very disorienting and you might throw up, and then they hit a button on this little jury rigged power cell and the teleportation pad flashes and you both disappear from this ship…. back over to Zahn.

Bee/Polaris: No! No Bruce! I knew it was gonna happen, but it still hurts.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Not even the chance to say goodbye.

Bee/Polaris: I know. Just with nothing. Nothing left to say goodbye except for one spice.

Avery/GM: Out of curiosity, which spice?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. What's,

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Is it? What's kind of spice?

Caden/Bruce: I think it's like a bay leaf.

Bee/Polaris: No, the most universal spice.

Avery/GM: So Zahn, You're here. Ollie and Polaris… Are you still in the workshop area or are you coming back down to the engine room?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, if I've gleaned. All the info I can, I'm gonna head down

Bee/Polaris: Polaris. Polaris is going to, nah, Polaris isn't smart. Polaris is gonna follow Ollie.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay. . I think Polaris is very bright.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, he's okay. He's bright, but not in the like logic way of like, oh, this makes sense to do and this is a good idea. Let me do this. But more a, let me do this out of the box thing.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. If we need a ship drifted, we know who to go to.

Bee/Polaris: I got you. I'm your guy.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: You know, we have yet to drift a ship

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I know. I'm so mad about that.

Chris/Ollie: Wait, we didn't do any drifting in that race? No.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: No!

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, we could. I mean, there wasn't much drifting opportunities.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I don't think Hermes would've, uh, I've done the drifting too well, too.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. how do you, I was gonna say, how do you roll a, uh, like the shuttle in space, if you try to drift? I don't think there's any negative, you know, consequences to attempting to drift in space.

Avery/GM: No, you just swing really far. .

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Zahn, You have activated these, uh, AI nodes or you've, you've reactivated them, but they don't have power. And Ollie comes in as you read the last one that says, please provide power source, or power source required.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: So I take it, it's uh, just a matter of reconnecting these, uh, big old cables so that they can get powered. They're distributed throughout the ship, whatever, right?

Avery/GM: Yeah. And in walk Polaris and Ollie.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: as he turns around from the computer and sees, uh, , the two of you come in, he's like, he claps his hands together and like rubs 'em together. And he is like, and then finger guns, both of you. He's like, perfect.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris holds out his Tin Can son and says, look.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will…

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Oh, nice. He may make, he'll make good, uh, spare parts to get this thing working.

Bee/Polaris: No! Polaris holds him away from… Holds him away from Zahn and like a mad emoji comes onto to the visor.

Avery/GM: Zahn. You will note that probably just some electrical tape. And like some good firm, like, like holding these two cables together and like some electrical tape will probably get the job done.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Oh, I know

Avery/GM: Oh, okay. Zahn was just being funny… I see.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Yes, even though he said that completely deadpan , it was like somewhat reaching out for your robot as you extended it to him. , you could see. Slight shivers in his, under his suit from him like

Bee/Polaris: holding laughing. Yeah. Polaris is, Polaris is holding his son away from Zahn and fully believes that Zahn intends to murder his son

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Yeah. So he's gonna look to Ollie and be like, all right, I need you to hold thi… this cable in this place and he is just gonna like step by. Go through it, put all these, uh, cables back together.

Avery/GM: Sure. Go ahead and roll a dexterity fix just to see how quickly you can get this done, because you'll get it done, but

Chris/Ollie: Oh, should I roll to assist?

Avery/GM: Oh, yes, please.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Eight.

Chris/Ollie: oh, no, I got a good modifier. I got a seven.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: I got an eight.

Avery/GM: Okay. Polaris, do you help at all or are you still just holding your, your tin son away?

Bee/Polaris: No, Polaris is holding his tin son and probably like watching them work while like laying on top of one of Ollie's, drones, like kicking his feet, laying on his stomach and kicking His feet while he holds his son.

Chris/Ollie: Like you’re a cat sitting on a Roomba just floating around.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but he's like laying on his kind of like surfboard, but like his legs are up and he's like kicking 'em back and forth.

Avery/GM: okay. It takes probably about an hour to, to get all these cables back in, but as you're plugging them in, you do hear like the rumble of like distant systems kind of coming back online and then you plug in this last one, get it taped up and stuff. It's not perfect. It. It will need to actu… The cables will actually need to be replaced at some point. But you do hear Navi announce through the loudspeakers that are now working

Avery/GM: “power restored systems coming back online. Archid… Online, Caph… Online, Schedar… Online, Ruchba… Online, Segin… Offline.”\

Bee/Polaris: Oh my god

Avery/GM: Self-destruct sequence, still disabled. Unable to complete mission objectives.

Chris/Ollie: Ooh, okay. , because I was thinking

Bee/Polaris: oh my God.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, they're, because they're not gonna blow it until all of 'em are on.

Bee/Polaris: I thought. Okay. I thought it was like going down the sequence and rebooting all of them, regardless of what Zahn did.

Avery/GM: No, no. No. Okay. Oh my gosh, my, my poor little eyes. If Zahn had activated Segin, then yeah, then you would've had to probably try and hack some shit, you know?

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: Two minute countdown or something like that.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Or this would be the end of season one and Season two would be Bruce assembling the team.

Bee/Polaris: Right?

Avery/GM: reassembling the team.

Bee/Polaris: Bruce is Nick Fury.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Does Bruce get an eye patch?

Caden/Bruce: Yes. . . No hesitation.

Bee/Polaris: We all come back as like, uh, different. Winstons .

Caden/Bruce: Oh God.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Oh God.

Avery/GM: And Navi says, I can still not activate artificial intelligence notes. Segin, please activate Segin so that we can complete mission objectives.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts, oops, smiley face and chat.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Zahn just puts no.

Bee/Polaris: Heart.

Za

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: No! Thumbs Up!

Bee/Polaris: We probably shouldn't have admitted that to the AI that controls the whole ship

Chris/Ollie: after activating most of it.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And Marty, you are still in the bridge, right?

Jenine/Marty: Ye

Avery/GM: Marty, You see, as soon as the power comes back on, you see a. Shoot up towards the glass of this case, uh, from this person, and they're like, gripping at the glass.

Jenine/Marty: I'm trying to open it.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you, you find the, the latch and it actually responds to your touch and you lift it open and you see this person sort of still flailing their arms a little bit and then kind of stop and, and sit up and kind of like shake their head. They're, they, they seem very disoriented at the moment.

Bee/Polaris: You freed Hatsune Miku.

Avery/GM: Gosh. Okay. Note of self, don't use anime girls for the avatars next time

Bee/Polaris: And if you do use Hatsune Miku

Avery/GM: and our camera shifts perspectives. To outside of the Cassiopeia, we see a small two person craft uncloak and start pulling away from this system. Bruce, you get teleported and maybe feeling a little queasy from the teleportation and Lazuli just kind of left you there. Went to the pilot chair and started piloting away.

And so you kind of have like, there's basically like a door separating the cockpit. This transport area that you're in, and you have just a few moments to yourself.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce Rummages around and his, uh, chef suit that he's wearing underneath his Vac suit and pulls out his mini walkie talkie and presses to engage.

Avery/GM: Perfect… And our camera pants onto the ship, formerly known as the Minos and zooms in on a blender. It starts turning on.

Bee/Polaris: What the fuck?

Jenine/Marty: Oh,

Bee/Polaris: what?

Jenine/Marty: I'm sorry?

Bee/Polaris: what? What? That's awesome. has Bruce been a spy this whole time?

Caden/Bruce: All you hear over the blender is just Bruce's voice, just being like, hello? Can anyone hear me? And that's it.

(background ambience fades out, outro music plays, then fades down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a one-up podcast network production. Be sure to check out more of our shows at one-Up podcasts.com and follow us on Twitter and Tumblr at Furthest Pop. Intro and outro Music by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by tabletop audio.com and used under an attribution non-commercial license from Creative Commons.

Tracks used include star forged – Vault, Deep Space EVA and Covert Ops. We'll be back on April 1st with our next episode. See you out there beyond the furthest stars.

(Outro plays out to the end)

Episode 17 - Ship Exploration and Crew Injuries

Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 17 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

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

Avery/GM: Let's roll initiative.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, sure. How, what is it Just D 20.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: How? How Initiative works? Okay, cool.

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, this is our like first like real party fight

Bee/Polaris: initial initiative

Zach/Zahn: Like Party initiative. Initiative, yeah.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah, I was gonna say, do we add anything to that or is it just a straight up D 20?

Avery/GM: I believe it's just a straight D 20, but I will double check because now I have to Actually,

Caden/Bruce: we never done the combat thing.

Zach/Zahn: I know.

Jenine/Marty: Is that all of us? That's rolling?

Avery/GM: Oh, I'm sorry. So initiative is actually a D eight and you add your dexterity modifier.

Bee/Polaris: Sick. Cause I rolled garbage on the D20.

Caden/Bruce: That's a five for Bruce

Bee/Polaris: plus dexterity Modifier?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Eight.

Chris/Ollie: Nat eight.

Zach/Zahn: I kind of wish I gone to the bridge. Dang it.

Avery/GM: Maybe not.

Jenine/Marty: Do other friends who are not at Bridge have to roll initiative or not?

Avery/GM: Not yet. Um, but you do hear the commotion going on.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, not yet. Terrifying.

Avery/GM: Okay, so either Chris or Bee go for it.

Bee/Polaris: So, okay. How are they? Are they like free running around? Like are they just like free range, or are they?

Avery/GM: No, I, I meant to add them to the map. I apologize.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay, okay. Okay.

Avery/GM: They are fixed positions in the wall.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Can I get to, uh, this guy right here?

Avery/GM: Yeah, probably.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Uh, I'm gonna get to that guy and I'm gonna un sheath my laser blade and I'm gonna sever from the wall.

Avery/GM: Sure, go ahead and roll on a tech roll, which would be a D 20 plus your relevant stat for the weapon, which I believe for that I put as decks.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. that's gonna be a 20.

Avery/GM: Okay, Cool. Yeah, that definitely hits,

Bee/Polaris: that's gonna be 14 total. Oh wait. Plus is it plus anything.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, you get into tech modifier based on your level. If you're not a soldier, it's half your level rounded up or down. I think it's down.

Bee/Polaris: down. Oh, okay. And then 16.

(light sword waving sounds)

Avery/GM: Cool. Yeah, you sever it from the wall.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet And I'm gonna try and get behind here to not be shot.

Avery/GM: Sure. Make a dexterity exert skill check.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Do I have anything to exert? I do, surprisingly. Okay. Eight.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Okay. We'll say that you make it behind that little panel there. Next… So that turret is out! (makes a pew sound) there you go! See, this is gonna be easy. Y'all got this. Next up is the turret, though, over here on this wall, and it is gonna open fire on Bruce. Does a six hit?

Caden/Bruce: Uh, no, it does not.

(Laser blast miss)

Avery/GM: Oh, great. cool. Uh, yeah, it goes wide and blasts the hole into the wall, and I believe that means…

Caden/Bruce: I’m a pretty big target to Miss . It's a little bit embarrassing for the them.

Avery/GM: Its fine.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, for the, the robot only born to shoot

Caden/Bruce: It's like a storm Trooper

Avery/GM: Chris, you are up . Basically it rolled an eight as well, so I just, you know, split the difference.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, makes sense. Uh, at this point though, I'm pretty much just, uh, just gonna shoot 'em.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna save all my point-os So, uh, Ollie's just going to, uh, pull out his gun, which is a laser pistol.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: And, uh, without taking cover or seeming concerned at all, after looking down at the smoking holes in his chest, he's gonna say, I really did not appreciate that. And just, it is just full on walk face first towards the nearest, uh, this guy.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: As far as I can go and just open fire on him.

Avery/GM: Go for it.

Chris/Ollie: Uh, . So it's D 20 minus your shoot, or well plus your shoot right.

Avery/GM: For a fired weapon? Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, Four.

Avery/GM: Oh, that does not hit. (Laser misfire) Yeah, it just, it blasts into the wall underneath the turret. Caden, you are up next.

Caden/Bruce: How do turrets see, are they computerized or do they have like cameras?

Avery/GM: Uh, they have like a little motion sensor on top of them That glows red.

Caden/Bruce: Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Can I physically walk up to any of these turrets?

Avery/GM: Yeah, we'll say you can close the gap easily.

Caden/Bruce: Sweet. I'll walk up to the one that Ollie missed and uh, with one of these Like… with the cake I made, just smush it into the turret.

(Cake smoosh)

Bee/Polaris: no.

Jenine/Marty: Yes!

Bee/Polaris: The cake

Jenine/Marty: I love this.

Chris/Ollie: It's not worth it. No.

Bee/Polaris: No. Oh god.

Chris/Ollie: What this battle has taken from us.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my goodness. Oh, we've lost so much.

Avery/GM: I don't even know what to make you roll for that.

Bee/Polaris: would that even be a role? The turret is stationary.

Avery/GM: I don't think so. I think it would just. I think you just do it.

Bee/Polaris: also can a turret fire if there's cake jammed in it?

Caden/Bruce: I don't know, but I'm hoping it'll mess up Its motion sensor.

Avery/GM: It can fire, but it won't know where it's firing at.

Bee/Polaris: That's probably not good.

Caden/Bruce: It'll just try and fire and they'll just be like chocolate just goozing out of it. It'll just smell like fondue.

Bee/Polaris: No! The Cake!

Chris/Ollie: It's aim will still be better than mine.

Caden/Bruce: debatable.

Avery/GM: There is now goop all over this, uh, this turret that is sitting here.

Bee/Polaris: Delicious. Delicious. Goop.

Avery/GM: The, that turret's turn is next though, and it is going to try and shoot at whatever is in front of it, but it is gonna roll with disadvantage. Oh. Does a seven hit?

Caden/Bruce: No.

Avery/GM: Didn't think so.

(laser blast)

Caden/Bruce: Which is considering the large target in front of it, it probably just like…

Avery/GM: well the cake is still warm, so it's really throwing off the heat sensor.

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

Bee/Polaris: Is Bruce warm blooded?

Caden/Bruce: Probably not.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. So probably Would it be able to sense Bruce?

Avery/GM: Uh, no, but it probably sensed the cake when , if Bruce was carrying the cake around

Bee/Polaris: I mean, yeah. Oh true. So Bruce, you're now invisible .

Zach/Zahn: No, it's more like Bruce is, While Bruce might be Cold blooded.

Caden/Bruce: It can still sense…

Zach/Zahn: His temperature would still be different from that of the rest of the vacuum.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's true. Fair. Yes.

Bee/Polaris: No… No…

Zach/Zahn: unless you're saying Bruce is as cold as space on the inside.

(Combat music fades out, ship ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: Flashing back to the other room. Marty and Zahn, Navi says, “your friends appear to have entered the bridge. They should be aware that the automated defenses are activated and without the other artificial intelligence nodes powered back up, I cannot shut them off.”

Jenine/Marty: What… that… Wow.

Chris/Ollie: And then I imagine you hear gunshots.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Gunshots. Some like splattering sounds.

Caden/Bruce: The smell of chocolate.

Zach/Zahn: So Zahn is going to ask for directions to how to reengage the other whatchamacallits.

Jenine/Marty: AIs?

Bee/Polaris: Nodes?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Sure. Navi answers and says to reactivate Archid, Schedar, Caph, Ruchbah and Segin you'll need to reactivate the engine, which is located at the very back of the ship.

Caden/Bruce: Of course it is.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah

Zach/Zahn: well, I mean, that's where engines usually are. Uh, what's the status of the engine?

Avery/GM: offline,

Zach/Zahn: Zahn says as he is, like motioning, uh, Marty to follow him,

Jenine/Marty: she's just trying to swim towards you.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is going to take a… like a zip line. And attach it to Marty's belt and attach it to himself, and he is just gonna walk.

Jenine/Marty: like a kite!

Zach/Zahn: Yeah

Caden/Bruce: I was thinking of more of like one of those child leashes.

Avery/GM: Oh geez. Sure.

Zach/Zahn: Precisely

Jenine/Marty: yes.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So the status of the engine is offline.

Zach/Zahn: Awesome. I meant. I meant, uh, damage status.

Avery/GM: Unknown. but the last status update before it went offline indicated that four out of five of the cables connecting it to the rest of the ship systems had been severed.

Jenine/Marty: Okay…

Zach/Zahn: Zahn shrugs and like pops his… pops his knuckles. He's like, oh, that's not, that's, that's child's play. Let's, let's get to this.

Avery/GM: Sure. You're gonna start exploring the rest of the ship.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Uh, cautiously, as you know, the automated defense systems are still active.

Avery/GM: Yeah, definitely.

Chris/Ollie: I love how it's just like automated defenses (makes gun noises with mouth) and you guys are like, all right, see you!

Avery/GM: Dip.

Chris/Ollie: They got this.

Zach/Zahn: Well, I'm g I'm on my way to go. Turn them off for you. It's okay.

Chris/Ollie: No, it's just, uh, funny visually .

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: You just see the, like the, the flash of the lasers going off, like from the out of the frame of the door and Zahn just turns the opposite direction.

Chris/Ollie: Cool guys don't look at explosions.

Avery/GM: So Marty, as you're floating through this next room, uh, attached to Zahn at the hip, you recognize this room is probably a medical bay, but just kind of at a first glance, you notice that a lot of the tools and a lot of the equipment is not like standard issue stuff you've ever worked with. And…

Jenine/Marty: I like pull back and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What else is in this room? what is cool?

Zach/Zahn: It’s okay. Marty. We can look once we've turned off the automated defense system, so we're not having to worry about getting shot at alright? We, we, it's not going anywhere

Jenine/Marty: As we’re like quickly going by. Can I see if I can grab like a tablet that possibly has like medical records of the people on it.

Avery/GM: Yes, so, so there's one right on like the edge of this like table right here. So go ahead and roll an exert check a Dex… a strength or dexterity exert check to see if you can just reach it as you float by.

Jenine/Marty: That's just a D20?

Avery/GM: No, that would be two D six plus dexterity and exert,

Zach/Zahn: exert skill.

Bee/Polaris: Ahaha, you mean minus?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, That’s Sexy, that’s two-5s so its’s a nine.

Avery/GM: Oh, perfect. Okay. I put it at eight. So yeah. Uh, you, you, you just barely kind of tip it into your hand and grab it as, as you and Zahn are floating on into the next room.

Bee/Polaris: Aw. Marty's on her tablet while Zahn's carrying her around.

Avery/GM: So back to the bridge, I believe next up was Polaris

Bee/Polaris: Howdy. Do I have enough movement to get to that other deterrent that doesn't have cake on it?

Avery/GM: I would say probably with another dexterity or strength exert check, You could definitely get there.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. I'm going to Dex exert that, that that boy. Oh, perfect. Uh, it's gonna be a 12.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You made it. Boom.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet. I'm gonna kick off the wall and fly towards that guy and I'm gonna sever it from the wall as well.

Avery/GM: Sure. roll your attack.

Bee/Polaris: 13.

Avery/GM: 13.

Bee/Polaris: Yes.

Avery/GM: Yeah, go ahead.

Bee/Polaris: That's gonna be a nine.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you take a good chunk out of it. but it is clearly still functional.

(Laser sword woosh sound)

Bee/Polaris: Okay. I'll sh… I'll get him next time.

Avery/GM: I didn't make these things too strong, but you know,

Bee/Polaris: they're turrets, ya know.

Avery/GM: This turret is going to fire. Oh, sweet. Uh, that's a Nat 20.

Bee/Polaris: I'm dead, guys. I'm dead.

Jenine/Marty: No

Bee/Polaris: I am going to die.

Jenine/Marty: No.

(laser blast)

Bee/Polaris: I'm going to have a hole in me.

Zach/Zahn: Marty won't allow it.

Jenine/Marty: No.

Chris/Ollie: you just gets sprayed in the face.

Avery/GM: 23.

Chris/Ollie: Oh!

Bee/Polaris: awesome. I'm still alive. Barely This thing freaking shoots me in the lung.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. It's fine. It's fine.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I have three hip points left. It's fine.

Jenine/Marty: It's fine. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Don't worry about it. I got it. It's fine. I think… I'm going.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, you're being dragged away,

Avery/GM: so Ollie

Jenine/Marty: No. Do I sense a disturbance? Do I sense a disturbance in the force? Do I sense a disturbance in the force?

Bee/Polaris: Can I just put in the group chat: ouch.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I imagine there's just a big ow in group chat.

Zach/Zahn: No, it's the, the cross bones. Skull and Cross bones. Blegh!

Avery/GM: Ollie, you are up next.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie didn't like seeing that. Could I grab Polaris and make an attack or is grabbing gonna use up my action? If not, I'll just, uh, put myself over Polaris and bit. In the line of fire.

Avery/GM: So there's not a, there's not like a specific action. There's pick up an item, but whether a person could be considered an item is arguable.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, if it's a corpse , I'm almost a corpse. Does that count?

Avery/GM: Um, that would be part of your move action. So I think, I think with an exert, a dexterity exert check, you could probably make it there and, grab Polaris.

Chris/Ollie: but what happens?

Avery/GM: You wouldn’t have any movement afterwards.

Chris/Ollie: What happens if I fail?

Avery/GM: Probably crash into Polaris. Knock you both down.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Basically, you two would be tangled up in mid-air because you are fighting in zero G, so,

Chris/Ollie: oh, that's right.

Avery/GM: Hence why I'm also giving y'all a little bit of extra wiggle room with the movement stuff, because

Chris/Ollie: Let’s just jump, jump and go.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Well, my, uh, dexterity and, uh, exertion is awful.

Bee/Polaris: You can just attack the thing. If you, I mean, if you destroy the turret, then that's one less shooty. That's one less turret.

Chris/Ollie: You know. Oh yeah. He's also pretty damaged. So I'm gonna use all my movement to get in between the turret and Polaris if I can.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: And then make my shot from there.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: for a three.

Avery/GM: Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Bee/Polaris: I mean you got shock damage?

Avery/GM: That's only for melee attacks.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, only for melee, which,

Bee/Polaris: oh,

Chris/Ollie: and I'm looking at the, I probably should have gone for a melee attack.

Avery/GM: Uh, you can change that if you want, if you wanna roll with the.

Chris/Ollie: No, I, I mean, I already rolled.

Avery/GM: Okay. And you rolled a three?

Chris/Ollie: Yep.

Avery/GM: Okay. yeah, that misses.

Chris/Ollie: I'm like, point blank.

Avery/GM: You know what though?

Chris/Ollie: Stick the pistol in 'em and it, it misses.

Avery/GM: No, I wa… since you're point blank, I, I would like, I would like you to roll with advantage cause Yeah. That's a prime position.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. That's a bit better. 16.

Avery/GM: Yeah, that definitely hits.

(laser blast)

Chris/Ollie: Okay. And then I. I do a big whopping 1d6 six for… three damage.

Avery/GM: \Well, in addition to what Polaris did earlier, that's just enough to destroy it.

Chris/Ollie: We're saved. Oh no. We still got a cake turret.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you still got cake

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Which

Zach/Zahn: I just want Bruce to like rip it off the wall.

Chris/Ollie: Hulk Strength!

Avery/GM: Caden, it is your turn. It is Bruce's turn. So…

Caden/Bruce: I was gonna say that is also Bruce's idea. Having seen Polaris rip the other one from the wall. I think Bruce is just gonna get his hand in there and just pull this thing out

Avery/GM:. Sure. So that would be…

Chris/Ollie: He is Bruce. He is large and green.

Bee/Polaris: Chaos.

Chris/Ollie: Just hulk strength it right off the wall.

Avery/GM: let's go with, let's go with strength and exert as a check. Unless you'd rather roll it as a melee attack, It's up to you.

Caden/Bruce: That's fine. That is an eight. It's not, not great, but I mean, an eight's an eight.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Luckily, you're not rolling against their ac. Um, an eight is perfectly fine. That does it. You rip this turret from the wall. It has no power now. Uh, so it's just kind of in your arms and Yeah,

Chris/Ollie: It does the “ow wowowowow”

Avery/GM: Yeah. Ahhhh.

Caden/Bruce: I think Bruce just like, kind of like throws it across the room and just like tries to like swim over in the air to Polaris.

Bee/Polaris: was it like a laser shot? So like is the wound cauterized or is Polaris bleeding?

Avery/GM: no, it's cauterized. Yeah, it was a laser, laser blast. So,

Bee/Polaris: okay, sweet. So Polaris, who , who is a weirdo, is like sticking his finger in the hole and like, Ooh, Yikes.

Zach/Zahn: is, uh, is Polaris's Vac Suit Compromised?

Avery/GM: No. It's gonna be very uncomfortable when Polaris tries to take it off though, because like the skin and the suit have kind of fused, so there's, there's still an airtight seal, but it's gonna hurt.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris sends a picture to, to the group chat and is just like, this isn't good, is it?

Zach/Zahn: Oh no. Poor Marty. gonna freak the fuck out.

Jenine/Marty: Marty is just doing the, let me go, let me go. Lemme go! like trying to swim away.

Avery/GM: Back over to Marty and Zahn. Uh, you do get that little image in your group chat.

(Notification Sound)

Avery/GM: You are currently here in the east Wing.

Caden/Bruce: Oh, there's a kitchen.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, that's a nice kitchen. We gotta steal this ship.

Jenine/Marty: Is it a good idea to steal this ship? Hmm.

Avery/GM: And you sort of float down this hallway from here. To here, uh, you can, obviously you can't see the kitchen area, but you do see a sign in some weird language. And Zahn, your brain just translates this and it says kitchen and then you see another sign on this wall, uh, that points and says, engine room.

Zach/Zahn: Have we encountered any hostilities on the way down here?

Avery/GM: No, not yet.

Zach/Zahn: Then I am going to unhook Marty.

Jenine/Marty: She's going to swim as fast as possible away.

Zach/Zahn: do your thing Marty!

Jenine/Marty: Cool, cool, cool. Lemme know if you need any help. She's just going,

Avery/GM: sure. Zahn. Which way are you going?

Zach/Zahn: with his, with his headlamp on. He like reads over the signs, shakes his head a little bit, that he's able to read them and then proceeds on to engine.

Jenine/Marty: Can I, can I go reel back? Um, I do give you like one of the medical patch things that's on me. Just in Casey's. So you can, you can, I'm gonna give you a med kit before I leave.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, sweet.

Jenine/Marty: Actually, I'm gonna give you a lift cause that's the thing that I have a shit ton of. So, uh, here's a lift. Um, okay. Bye.

Zach/Zahn: I don't know what a lift is, but Yay!

Bee/Polaris: Drugs.

Avery/GM: It's, it's, it's drugs.

Jenine/Marty: It’s a healing drug!

Zach/Zahn: right. Marty… Marty and their drugs.

Jenine/Marty: I don't know what drugs you're talking about. And then she goes, sorry not to… she wants to give you some healing before she leaves

Zach/Zahn: He, uh, holds it up and gives the cheers and turns around and hits, hits on towards the engineer… Engine Bay.

Avery/GM: Sure. So Marty, we will get to you in just a moment, Zahn, you come into the next room, which is not the engine room yet, and there are a bunch of boxes here

Zach/Zahn: and Broken Mechs.

Avery/GM: Yep. And, uh, yeah. So I am sorry to do this to you cause this was supposed to be taken on by your ship. But there are two big turrets that pop out of the ground and are trained on you. I need an evasion save.

Zach/Zahn: They just immediately pick up on my butt.

Avery/GM: Yep.

Zach/Zahn: Oh no. Oh, no, Zahn just gets vaporized in one shot.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, gosh, guys.

Zach/Zahn: Oh good. I beat, uh, I succeeded.

Avery/GM: Okay. How By how much?

Zach/Zahn: By two! My evasion is 10 and I rolled a twelve

(Big laser blasts)

Avery/GM: Yeah, you make it about halfway across the room. Um, you just quickly push yourself off of the wall

(Jet Boot Sounds)

Avery/GM: with your jet boots and are jetting across the, the room. And yeah, go ahead and roll. Initiative.

Zach/Zahn: What I would like to proceed doing, do I see where the next room needs to be for, uh, the engine room? Is it just, uh, this top northwest?

Avery/GM: Yes. And you can see that it's kind of blocked by some boxes that are kind of floating in the way.

Zach/Zahn: Got it. Its 1d8 right… 1d8 plus Dex?

Avery/GM: Mm-hmm.

Zach/Zahn: That's initiative. Oh, fuck me. Okay. A two.

Avery/GM: Well they rolled three and six, so I guess you're going last.

Zach/Zahn: I guess so.

Bee/Polaris: As it turns out, this is the season one finale.

Jenine/Marty: Rip! Rip!

Bee/Polaris: The real campaign is in the afterlife.

Avery/GM: No, you were clones the whole time. Your real bodies are back.

Bee/Polaris: Oh God. We wake up and we're back on the fucking Eos!

Caden/Bruce: this was all a dream!

Zach/Zahn: It's Groundhog Day.

Avery/GM: No.

Zach/Zahn: but we wake up with all of our experience

Bee/Polaris: Oh, that'd be so fucked.

Avery/GM: Zahn Does a six or an 11 hit?

Zach/Zahn: No.

Avery/GM: Okay. They blast.

Zach/Zahn: My AC is 18, so,

Avery/GM: oh, good. They blast some big shots at you and they just kind of hit the wall and blow some holes into it, but…

(laser misses)

Zach/Zahn: So I took… I took the iron hide foci a while back. Whether through uncanny reflexes, remarkable luck, engineered skin fibers or subtle kinetic shielding. We're gonna go with the luck and reflexes.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: You have natural defenses equivalent to high quality combat armor. So you have innate AC of 15 plus half your character level rounded up.

Avery/GM: Not a bad feat to take. I'll tell you that.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, that’s great

Bee/Polaris: Oh, that is definitely the next one. I'm taking .

Avery/GM: Cool. So what do you do on your turn and then we're gonna get back to Marty.

Zach/Zahn: So I don't know if you're familiar at all with the gameplay of, uh, dead space.

Avery/GM: Not at all.

Zach/Zahn: In the first one, since there wasn't the whole jetboat thing yet, the how you got around in the zero G areas that were destroyed was: Isaac had mag boots and he would jump from platform to platform.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn: So he's going to jump to the ceiling and then jump to the wall and then like he's just basically evading these guys while jumping from the ceiling.

Chris/Ollie: He's going full anime on them.

Zach/Zahn: And then he is gonna try and jump through like the gap between the, so he is gonna be like boom, boom, and then back to the ceiling and then through there.

Avery/GM: I'm gonna need some dexterity exert.

Zach/Zahn: It's a good thing I put points into exert, so that is 10.

Avery/GM: just barely perfect.

(Jet Boot Sounds)

Avery/GM: You make it through these boxes and you are through the wall or through the, through the door and onto the next section of the ship.

Zach/Zahn: As I get through, I put in the group chat. Hey, two giant Anti-ship turrets in the, uh, landing cargo bay, FYI.

Jenine/Marty: Oh!

(notification sounds)

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will send the thumbs up Emoji.

(notification sounds)

Zach/Zahn: I also added a screenshot of what they look like, so that maybe somebody can identify the model or something.

Chris/Ollie: A screenshot of them shooting at you?

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, a screenshot of them shooting at me.

Bee/Polaris: you send… you send two pictures. The first one was an accident. It's like a laser just going past your face, and then the second one is actually the location that you wanted to share.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Mood.

Avery/GM: Marty, you arrive in the bridge and the first thing you notice, and all of you have noticed now that combat has kind of ended, is at first You see Polaris wounded over there. he's not looking great.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris is currently like sticking, like trying to see how far he can stick something into the hole to see if it comes out the back.

Jenine/Marty: Stop it! Marty just like Marty, just like

Bee/Polaris: it's cauterized. So like if it's smaller than the hole you’re pretty much just playing Operation

Jenine/Marty: Marty does that thing when your mom, when you're trying to reach something, your mom just goes, no, like Marty does that to you. stop it. stop.

Bee/Polaris: Like it hurts. But Polaris is not like emoting that it does. The most you got from him was ouch In the group chat.

Avery/GM: and Marty, the second thing you notice is this pod here is the only thing in the room that still has power and it is glowing with like a bluish light. And you sense that that is where that conic energy was coming from.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, cool. Great. Before… before I interact with this, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna, we're just gonna do a quick med kit real quick.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie will say, ah, fortunate timing. I do not think organics are supposed to operate under such circumstances. And he's also gonna stick a finger into the hole.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris is also!

Jenine/Marty: Stop it. Stop touching things!

Bee/Polaris: Polaris like turns around and is like, do you think you can, do you think we could touch our fingers through this hole?

Chris/Ollie: Ollie’s immediately gonna hop behind you, try and reach the other side

Avery/GM: I don't think it was a through and through shot.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah. I went from 26 to three.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Med kit stuff, cause we're. Systems strain stuff right now. There's also something with my healer thing… Wait.

Bee/Polaris: While Marty is trying to figure this out and like sorting through her bag. Polaris is trying to see if he can touch a bone.

Avery/GM: Oh!

Jenine/Marty: Uh, every so often you see Marty like going in the bag, but also just slaps your hand as you're touching things. Stop touching. Cool.

Zach/Zahn: Marty's had it up to here with your shit.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Cool, cool, cool.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris's, laser blade is also just floating miscellaneously around while it's still on.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. How does, how does this work? I, I'm looking at the healer foci and just says, I can do heel when heel scale. I can roll 3D six and drop the lowest dye I could, but that also puts system strain on you.

Avery/GM: Okay. So a PC who wants to heal a friend can use their main action to attempt an intelligence heel or dexterity heel skill check. Um, using whichever modifier is best. And if you have a med kit, the difficulty is eight. if you expend a Lazarus patch, the difficulty is six.

Bee/Polaris: If it helps, I have zero system strain. If you wanted to actually give me subs strain or if you needed to.

Jenine/Marty: which one will give me more? Which one would give you more hp, I think is the, the question that I'm asking.

Avery/GM: So

Jenine/Marty: cause this the first time I'm actually Heal Heel?

Avery/GM: Yeah, I'm, I'm reading the Healing Rules. Basically they regain one hit point every 10 minutes. So if you succeed the skill check, basically they'll, they'll, uh, Polaris would start healing over time with the help of the med kit. So basically like the med kit would probably be like a pack that you probably like attached to the wound and it basically like does some mechanical surgery or something.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, lovely.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Yeah, let's. And if I just did like my psionic stuff, I can also, that just,

Avery/GM: that would just, does that also be straight up heal

Jenine/Marty: Would that also take 10 minutes?

Avery/GM: No, that would straight up heal the, I believe that heals immediately.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. So

Bee/Polaris: what if both,

Jenine/Marty: what if, yeah, that's about, that was gonna be my next thing. Could I do both?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing. So I'm gonna roll 3D six for, uh, plus my intelligence for heel, plus my heel. Just lots of numbers. Those are two 6s So what's gonna be a

Avery/GM: Yeah

Jenine/Marty: I pass it because I also do have a med kit, so

Avery/GM: okay.

Jenine/Marty: 13… 14!

Avery/GM: 14 Healing?

Jenine/Marty: intelligence… 14 heal. And I'm gonna get rid of one of my med kits

Avery/GM: Okay.

Jenine/Marty: and then we're gonna do, well no, that's, that's the, that was me succeeding. Okay. Cool. Cool, cool. And then we're gonna, we're gonna do some fun Healing! Cool Cool. Gonna expend one of my little, little things. We're gonna use one.

Avery/GM: Okay!

Jenine/Marty: and then we're gonna do my heals up to 2d6 plus two. So you're at, you get a plus 5, 3, 10 points.

(Healing magic sound)

Jenine/Marty: You get 10 more points of hp, so you're no longer in the single digits. That's exciting. And every 10 minutes you get another… you get another hit point.

Avery/GM: Okay, so the…

Jenine/Marty: ooh, and then system strain!

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. How, how many hit points did I get back total? Just 10?

Jenine/Marty: You Got 10.

Avery/GM: yeah, 10 Plus you'll heal one every 10 minutes or so in game time, which I will try and track accurately.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, Cool.

Avery/GM: And then system strain.

Bee/Polaris: Give me that good, good strain.

Avery/GM: Yeah. So essentially if you have system strain that exceeds your constitution score, anything else that would add to your system strain fails. So if Marty tries to heal you too many times with the, the heal, the psychic healing, or if you try to use like a, a pharmaceutical that would increase your system strain, but also do some kind of cool effect if, if it's high, if your system strain is higher than your Constitution score, it won't work and you. You lose system strained by getting a good night's rest.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. How, how much system strain did I get from this?

Avery/GM: Uh, just one.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. Not bad. Not bad.

Avery/GM: Bruce, what were you doing while, um, while this tragedy was unfolding?

Caden/Bruce: Probably like pacing, but since he can't paste because they're floating, it just kind of looks like a helpless, like when lizards like sprawl with like all arms out and tails out. That's just kind of what it looks like.

Jenine/Marty: Aw. My heart.

Avery/GM: Polaris, the wound has healed up.

Bee/Polaris: Does it look cool? Does it look like my, like time is reversing on the wound or, or something cool like that? What does it look like?

Avery/GM: Yeah, so like the big, like the skin is still fused to your vax suit, mostly. Probably cause Marty wouldn't have wanted to completely heal that because then your, your vac suit would've been compromised.

Bee/Polaris: Isn't, don't the vac skins like regenerate.

Avery/GM: Oh, do they?

Bee/Polaris: I am pretty sure, hold on, let me, let me search it up in the thingy.

Avery/GM: it suffers tears the same way a normal vax suit does ha-have self-healing exterior that conceal puncture wounds caused by bullets, arrows, or energy beams. So were you wearing a vax suit or a vax skin?

Bee/Polaris: A vac skin. Unless we were required to wear a vax suit, then I guess I'd just be doubling up. .

Avery/GM: Yeah. So a vax skin or a vax suit would've been required. Not necessarily both.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. All right then. Yep.

Avery/GM: So Bruce, you are pacing here.

Caden/Bruce: Flailing pacing. Yes.

Avery/GM: Flailing pacing, yes. Uh, Marty Ollie and uh, Polaris. You are all kind of huddled together getting healed up except for Ollie, but that's okay. You're safe here for now, and you have this glowing pod sitting here. Let's go back to Zahn real quick. .

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. How's your solo campaign going?

Avery/GM: Yeah, ,

Zach/Zahn: we're just, uh, we're just trucking along, you know?

Avery/GM: Yeah. So Zahn, you're here in this hallway.

You see, you see a sign and you see, you see five things list, six things listed here. Uh, you see, um, and they're all pointing down the hallway in the direction you're going. Cabins, Workshop, Research Bay, Armory.

Zach/Zahn: Oh shit.

Avery/GM: Core and Engine room.

Bee/Polaris: I just realized if you bring the engine back online, wouldn't that also mean that they could self-destruct the ship?

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

Avery/GM: Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is gonna make his way to the core, seeing that he's on the right track to that direction.

Avery/GM: Sure. That's this little dude dad right here,

Zach/Zahn: but that means I gotta look over all the cool stuff as I go to it too. Sweet.

Zach/Zahn: Uh, yeah. So you pass by this room here, you kind of peek in and you see that there's like, you know, some basic security type weapons, you know, some shock batons and stuff. You see that there's some locked chest, you know, foot lockers in here. You pass by this, this door reads “Engine Room”. As you pass by coming into the lab slash workshop area, you see a bunch of tools and like computers and they're all slightly, like, they're not standard issue like for like what you see on like Republic or Hegemony worlds or even some of the independent systems you've gone to and all the tools look like they're made for like slightly different appendages, you know, some to accommodate like tentacles or,

Zach/Zahn: or those fingers. Yeah. Tentacles,

Avery/GM: Yeah, you know, different, uh, webbed hands, things like that. There are some notes that are written on actual paper, which is kind of weird. Considering Space.

Zach/Zahn: I will definitely go ahead and pocket those.

Avery/GM: And you do recognize a few words on them as you're pocketing them. You know something about research and something

about modifications, but they're all written in that weird language that you don't 100% know, but you just recognize some of these words.

Zach/Zahn: Do I know, does Zahn know, like the origin of this language?

Avery/GM: You know that it is a language that was spoken and written in sometimes by your mother?

Zach/Zahn: Yep.

Avery/GM: Yeah. But anyway, you want to go down into the core?

Zach/Zahn: Yes.

Avery/GM: Colony core. Here we go. So you come into the Colony Core down the ladder, and you see row upon row of these floating cold sleep pods.

There's about 144 of them,

Jenine/Marty: 144?!

Bee/Polaris: That's a lot of dudes.

Avery/GM: And there are these three large engine coils that look like at one time they were probably providing independent power to this cryostasis chamber having gone dormant, there is no doubt that the occupants have met their fate quietly and unknown to them

Zach/Zahn: among the better ways to go, I suppose.

Avery/GM: But yeah, that is what you see down here. There's just a whole bunch of people.

Zach/Zahn: Uh, can I investigate one of these, uh, personal generators?

Avery/GM: Sure. Uh, what would you like to try and learn from them? Like to see like what, like how they powered down or, yeah. Go ahead and roll a intelligence, fix check

Zach/Zahn: 10.

Avery/GM: You're kind of poking around a little bit at first trying to see like, okay, did some wires get cut? Did you know what happened here? And you look at the base of this generator and you see that there are these two sort of handles at the base that look like they're attached to

like some sort of like tube or whatever. You pull on one of these handles, out pops what looks like some sort of like large plasma cell, but it looks like it's completely drained.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha.

Avery/GM: Kind of putting two and two together, you just realize that Yeah. Eventually the-the power cells ran out and there is nothing much that could really be done.

Zach/Zahn: Gotcha. See, when, when it said core, I was expecting like core power sell for the whole ship

Avery/GM: Gotcha.

Zach/Zahn: And this is not at all what I was expecting to find out here.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. You just got a bunch of dudes.

Avery/GM: Yep. It's the colony core. Sorry. I thought I, I thought I, I specified colony core. My bad.

Bee/Polaris: It's the dude storage.

Avery/GM: Dude storage. Come on down to dude storage.

Bee/Polaris: Get your dudes

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's just gonna mutter up poor bastards and then, uh, head up to the engine room.

Avery/GM: Sure. Chris, you were saying something.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie, at this point, after seeing the, uh, the picture of the turret, he's gonna use his, uh, commit a processing to activate drone command and bring his, uh, three drones onto the ship and send the void hawk after Zahn.

Avery/GM: Um, sure.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will also just tell Hermes to shoot into the to shoot the turrets. Into the, the docking bay

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah. Just, yeah, just land in here. Uh, be prepared to shoot .

Bee/Polaris: No, not even land. Just like aim gun by door in fire. shoot from the outside.

Avery/GM: Hermes sends you the, the star eye emoji.

Zach/Zahn: Oh no.

Bee/Polaris: target practice.

Avery/GM: Yeah. I guess I'll roll some shoot for hers.

Bee/Polaris: let's let Hermes clear it out.

Zach/Zahn: You've, you've, you've allowed Hermes to murder

Avery/GM: three D six. Hey, that's not bad.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Hermes and the star eyes emoji

Avery/GM: 10. Okay. He takes out the first one,

Bee/Polaris: Get 'em Hermes

Avery/GM: seven, nine. Almost takes out the second one, man. You're making me play dice against myself, okay?

Bee/Polaris: Yep. Hey, you blasted a hole in me. It's only fair

Jenine/Marty: It's a fun game.

Avery/GM: 12. Okay, well your ship's taking some damage.

Bee/Polaris: Uh oh. We'll fix it later.

Chris/Ollie: Wait. How much health does the ship have?

Avery/GM: *laughs* one

Bee/Polaris: the, the ship has one health?!

Chris/Ollie: the ship is taking some damage. .

Bee/Polaris: I'm kidding.

Avery/GM: What about that? But Hermes comes out on top barely and destroys the other one before it can do too much more damage. Yeah. Your, your ship has one HP right now.

Bee/Polaris: I thought you meant the ship, like as total, like total.

Avery/GM: No, no, no. One out of 20

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. Sweet. Oh wow.

Avery/GM: Oh wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Hold on. I forgot to take into account your armor, which is two. So you'd actually have four D five health left.

Bee/Polaris: Yay.

Avery/GM: Okay. You're not totally screwed.

Bee/Polaris: Sweet Well, the custodians are company in a couple of days.

Avery/GM: Yeah. You feel some like shaking from the ship a little bit.

And Hermes is just like “mission successful, damage taken.” So yeah. So Zahn is heading into the engine core. Back to the bridge real quick. What are the four of you doing?

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is just gonna tap on the glass

Jenine/Marty: Oh, okay. Let's not do the tapping. what? Hands. Hands to self. Marty's going full mom mode now. No touching anything. Everyone, keep your hands to yourself. Keep all hands, arms, feet and legs inside of your person at all times.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris does a thing where like he crosses his arms, like tucks into like a ball and is just like floating and slowly spinning off since he can't touch the thingy

Chris/Ollie: zero G salt.

Bee/Polaris: yeah

Avery/GM: Do you look inside the glass?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, I do. What’s up?

Avery/GM: Okay. Inside the glass you see a person-

Bee/Polaris: anime. It's an anime girl.

Avery/GM: It's an anime girl. Um, mostly cause I just looked for a random avatar and found one . Sorry.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: So this, this chamber is sealed completely, but inside you see a woman with bright silver hair. She is either sleeping or unconscious, but she is wearing a vac suit, and it appears that this chamber is self-powered.

(Ambience Fades out, Outro Fades in, plays, then fades down)

Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1Up Podcast Network production intro and outro by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by tabletop audio.com and used under an attribution non-commercial license from creative comments tracks include Star Forged Frey, and Star Forged Fault.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter, and Tumblr at Furthest Pod. We'll be back on March 15th with our next episode. Thank you so much for listening.

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