J-001: Previously on Dominion Space…

Live Session [211.146]

Minor Vizier Richard Dicard is invited by Minor Vizier Frederick Salfield to lead a project team, a list of names has been prepared for him, comprising: 

• Oliver Star (AHE Cyber Security)
• Personal Security Specialist Chris Uddin
• Erin Malan (AHE Starship Engineering)
• Victor Fromm (AHE Medicine & Surgery)
• Operations Under Commander Master Pilot Alan Halcyon (Rtd) – Legion liaison specialist

The team members were mostly living on Aaran’s Pride in Octant 6 when they were recruited by the Vizierate using a combination of duress (Oliver, Chris, Alan) and ‘last chance’ psychology (Erin and Victor).  They were issued a small ship – Snark 416 – and told to report to the GRRAS facility in Octant 5.

Module 1 was worth 3 XP.

Live Session [~211.204]

The team arrive at the GRRAS research facility in the Riddle System.  They meet Vizier Frederick and his Office Manager, Vizant Melody Landmark .  They meet Victor – the only member who was not originally on Aaran’s Pride and get a little time to explore the facility.  Then the are briefed by Vizier Frederick:

Their mission is to travel to the planet Pristine in Octant 3 and fetch obtain a specific notebook from a man named Willard Argyle and return it to Minor Vizier Frederick.  They have been given a very large sum of Money with which to purchase the Notebook.

They travel to Pristine,

(Standard Route: Riddle -> Witnish -> Zargonia -> Argyropoulos -> Pristine, total distance 85.5 lights.)

During the long trip, they generally come to the conclusion that no-one likes each other very much.

Arriving at Pristine, Erin and Victor remain aboard the ship while the rest of the team do the mission.  They travel around and ask questions of the locals, which includes a trip to an operating mine site and a touristy-type hunting lodge.  They drive a hired crawler vehicle to a much more isolated and smaller hunting lodge to speak with a local character, but he is not there and they find Argyle instead, but he refuses to sell his notebook. The live session ended with everyone outside the lodge in the crawler, having been threatened with internal defence turrets, and Willard has retreated inside.

Module 2 was worth 3 XP.

Pristine [211.295]  3-001 to 3-044

The team are initially discouraged, and return to the touristy hunting lodge, which was on the way back to the spaceport, but then decide to try and get inside Argyle’s place.  They fly back in a rented AeroStat instead of the crawler. 

Pristine [211.295]  3-045 to 3-051

Flying back to Argyle’s lodge they discover it has automated defenses and the Aerostat takes a hit on a thruster pod.  Halcyon lands the vehicle heavily near the lodge’s front door and Chris does some internal acrobatics not being restrained, though nothing is injured but his pride.

Pristine [211.295]  3-052 to 3-060

Oliver picks the lock to the lodge and the team burst into the foyer, Chris opening up on an auto turret with his shotgun but taking a round in the torso for 9 damage.  Oliver leads Chris back to the Aerostat and does first aid while Alan and Dicard continue to cover the foyer.  Chris notes it’s quite dark and difficult to see well enough to hit the turrets.  The team regroup for a second attempt to breach the foyer, Oliver grabbing some flares from the Crawler this time 

Pristine [211.295]  3-061 to 3-067

Oliver tosses a flare in first before this attack, and somewhat unexpectedly the turrets open fire on it in lengthy bursts before it goes out without anyone taking further action. 

Oliver tosses in another flare and Chris blows one of the turrets away with his shotgun.  Some experimentation shows the other turret has expended all its ammunition on the flare.

Pristine [211.295]  3-068 to 3-083

Cautiously, the team enter the lodge foyer.  Light switches don’t work and the heating is off.  The doors to the rest of the lodge are locked.  Oliver picks one of the side doors, finding an uninhabited room beyond.  He fails on the other side.  The team decid to go deeper into the building, and arew fired upon by a turret in the next room.  They decide that maybe they could go around the back.

Pristine [211.295]  3-067 to 3-129

The trip outside reveals external cameras, solar panels and a steep slope up to rear windows of the building.  

Returning to the Foyer they discover how to unlock all the doors, activate and deactivate the turrets in this room – but not the next – and a set of stairs leading down to the garage.  With Argyle’s kitchen now unlocked, Chris and Alan make themselves sandwiches.

Exploring the garage they find security cameras but no turrets.  Plenty of tools, more flares a couple of vehicles.  They also find some steel plates, one of which Chris carries upstairs as a shield.  With the help of the plate and another flare they explore and run the next room’s turret out of ammunition. 

Pristine [211.295]  3-130 to 3-139

With the turret taken care of, Oliver spies a computer in the far corner and heads into the room, halfway across hitting a trip wire that sets off a fire trap that sets him on fire and destroys the computer he was heading for. He has a couple of nasty burns but is otherwise ok.

Pristine [211.295]  3-140 to 3-155

Fire extinguished, the team find one of the exits from the now burned-out room leads to an indoor shooting range.  Chris is briefly excited but all he finds is some spare ammo for his pistol and a small needle rifle.  There is evidence of ammo and accessories for a larger weapon but it is not present.

Trying another door they find a communal bathroom with one sink, one shower cubicle and one toilet showing signs of use and the rest rusty and dusty.  Dicard spots some evidence of disturbance in the dust in the far toilet stall and they find an access panel leading to a service duct behind the wall with evidence of recent movement.  

Oliver unlocks the last set of doors out of the burned out room, then returns to the bathroom and he and Chris go through into the service duct leaving Dicard and Halcyon to cover their rear.

Pristine [211.295]  3-156 to 3-170

Chris and Oliver head along the service access, finding a smaller, but still traversable pipe heading off at an angle at the far end.  The pipe runs several hundred metres, with several twists and turns.  A claymore stuck on the pipe wall at one point gives them pause, but it appears to have been disarmed.

The pipe run ends in what looks to be the lodge’s waste processing area and a small empty garage with an open door leading outside.  There’s evidence of a vehicle track leading out into the snowy night.

Chris and Oliver head back to the bathroom.

Pristine [211.295]  3-171 to 3-206

They head deeper into the lodge, finding the rest of the layout was a long corridor with rooms off it.  They circumvent the turret at the end of the corridor and begin checking the rooms, finding a supply storeroom, an in-use bedroom, a tanning room where hunted animals have been processed, and a shielded electronics lab that causes Oliver to have a minor nerd-out.  There are also some totally bare rooms and a cluttered storeroom full of furniture and boxes, including several boxes of handwritten notebooks.  At the end of the corridor was an entertainment/living room with high-end equipment and a bar.  There was also an office where Oliver spotted another trap and monkied across the furniture to retrieve the computer without setting the trap off.

Pristine [211.296]  3-207 to 3-247

They decide to take the computer and the boxes of notebooks.  Then the question of how best to deal with the ant-air turrets on the way out.

While Chris hauls boxes, Oliver checks out the computer terminal in the waste room, Halcyon checks the garage and Dicard the rest of the lodge.  Oliver finds the lodge is running under ‘ABANDONMENT PROTOCOL’ he also finds a small metal box full of more notebooks.  Oliver gets the lights back on for a while but then plugs the recovered computer back into the network and everything goes on alert again.

Having carried everything he was supposed to carry, Chris sits down with the bottle of booze he’s looted and begins playing with the security monitors.

Oliver, Halcyon and Dicard go outside to see if the AA Turrets are disabled.  That takes a little while, and when they return, they find Chris dozing in the Aerostat with an empty bottle beside him.

When Chris awakens they’re back at the Downport, not far from the ship.  Dicard tells Chris and Oliver to go find Fromm to see to their wounds and he and Halcyon will take care of the recovered items and the damaged Aerostat.

Chris and Oliver return to Snark 416, Chris is still intoxicated from quaffing the spirits.  Engineer Erin greets them – Fromm has been staying off ship but she has a contact number.  The plan is to return to the GRRAS facility once a few loose ends are tied up on Pristine.

Module 3 was worth 4 XP.

Pristine [211.295]  4-001 to 4-023

Back aboard ship, Halcyon is tired after being up all night and herding the damaged Aerostat through dark snowy skies to the ship and so Snark 416 remains stuck at the Downport while he sleeps.  Fromm returns from wherever he’s been and Chris is poked, prodded and surgicalled by the cold-mannered physician into recovering from his gunshot wound.  Post-surgery Fromm sedates Chris to speed his recovery and he’s unconscious for the take-off.

With Tech-Level-9 medical care under the supervision of a technically skilled physician (even if this physician’s bedside manner is terrible) and nothing to do but rest, Chris will be fully healed within a few Cycles.  By the time the ship goes into hyperspace, he’ll be feeling pretty good and fully healed by the time the ship comes out the other end.  Fromm will either minimise the scar or leave it depending on whether Chris thinks it looks cool.

Pristine to Argyropoulos [211.316]  4-024 to 4-039

On 211.316 the Snark arrives at Argyropoulos.  Everyone assembles for customs inspection.  These are usually routine, especially as this is a Vizierate ship, but this one goes a little differently.  For start there is a Commissar of Commander rank present and the customs officials are quite aggressive.  Somewhat surprisingly, the Commissar knows Oliver’s mother, who is apparently a Legion Navy Officer of some sort.

When the customs official reaches Engineer Erin, he says, “I see your Engineer’s Licence was cancelled a kiloCyle ago.”

She says steadily, “My license is current and valid.”

He looks down at his data pad again, “of course.”

Chris manages to hold his tongue during the inspection, which completes without further incident.  

Everyone meets in the common room to discuss the inspection and be clear on next steps.  Dicard apparently wants some time off-ship so has decreed the ship will stay in port for a Cycle (he won’t admit it but everyone suspects it’s because he gets space-sick and he wants a break.) 

Chris intends to go off-ship but doesn’t reveal much about his intentions.  He returns to the ship nextCycle a bit before scheduled departure and we didn’t learn in play what he got up to.

Argyropoulos to Zargonia [211.322]  4-040 to 4-046

The Snark departs Argyropoulos for Zargonia.  After it exits jump it turns out that the jump is off slightly and it will take longer than expected to reach the planet.  The time in play was focussed on Oliver and he spent most of the time in his cabin working and barely seeing the other crew members at all.

The ship arrives at High Transit Zebulon (usually just called Zebulon Station) on 211.329.  Oliver volunteers to stay behind and look after the ship.  There’s some back-and-forth between Oliver and Erin, about her coming back so he can go onto the docks, but I suspect Chris doesn’t pay much attention.  He heads onto the station… 

Chris at Zebulon Station [211.322-211.331]  Not in Play

Because Oliver spent his time being a misanthropic loner workaholic in his cabin, and rarely interacting with his crewmates he never really found out what they did on leave.  I assumed Chris would go drinking and partying.  However on his stopover at Zebulon Station (which may have included a trip down to the planet) he met an attractive woman who seemed interested in hanging out with him for a bit.  She was personable enough, if a bit aloof and nerdy for his tastes (? up to you to confirm), but she was interested in listening to him tell stories about himself.  If he was drinking, she was happy to join him.  I had a default response for what happened but now you’re playing catch-up, you can suggest to me if he was interested in spending time with her or blew her off?

Zebulon Station [211.331-211.346]  4-112 to 4-120

Whatever Chris was doing, he’s in a bar singing along to a karaoke machine with his eyes shut and nursing a drink when Oliver appears with news that Dicard suddenly wants to leave. Chis tries to borrow money from Oliver for some travellers, but settles for buying a six pack with the last of his own coin, apparently realising sadly that they’re not going to last the full trip.  Whether deliberately or by accident, Chris was sitting in a surveillance blind-spot when Oliver found him.

They return to the ship and Dicard tells Chris to go sleep off his drunk.  Chris is snoring away in his acceleration chair in the ship’s small Office when the ship departs.

The ship spends 10 Cycles in jump to Witnish and Dicard uses some special Vizierate authority for them to not have a customs check and the ship jumps straight out again as soon as Engineer Erin has finished messing around with the drives, or whatever it is that engineers do, though that takes her nearly a whole Cycle.

It’s another 5 Cycles to their destination of the GRRAS research facility in the Riddle system.  It’s unclear whether the enforced absence of alcohol was an issue for Chris.

Dicard informs everyone that they and their ‘loot’ from Pristine will be escorted to Vizier Frederick by a cordon of Vizierate wardens. He tells everyone to secure the ship and grab their gear.

Presently the crew, their gear and a trolley-load of exercise books and Argyle’s computer are clustered in the Snark’s main airlock, ready to disembark, with Dicard looking queasy from his space-sickness.

Module 4 was worth 3 XP.