C-001: Previously on Dominion Space
Minor Vizier Frederick Salfield,
based at the Vizierate GRRAS research facility in the Riddle system pulled together a project team
– largely against their will – and put them under the leadership of Minor Vizier Richard Dicard.
Initially charged with traveling to Pristine
to purchase an object described as The Argyle Notebook from a man named Willard Argyle
for a large sum, the team eventually located Argyle but found him unwilling to co-operate and he fled from his isolated home after threatening the team. The team investigated the abandoned and booby-trapped residence,
recovering items such as Argyle’s computer and a library of his journals before returning to Vizier Salfield to report. Oliver Starr,
the team’s cybertechnology specialist (and alleged cyberterrorist) took a lead role in the investigation of the Argyle materials.
On the return journey the ship was subjected to an unusually intense customs inspection by a Legion Commissar Commander Usher,
who interestingly, knew Oliver’s mother – herself a Legion Officer. In an interview in a Legion Cast at Zebulon Station in the Zargonia system, the Commissar convinced Oliver to make contact with a Legion member stationed at GRRAS and that, perhaps, something was not all above-board with the Vizierate project.
On returning to GRRAS, Vizier Frederick held a debriefing
at which he was dismissive of the team and handed over future operations to Minor Vizier Lilith Saden-Ejder – known as ‘Nanny’. Nanny considered that Oliver’s research into Argyle’s activities revealed Argyle to be a substantial security threat to the Dominion and instructed the team to return to Pristine to pick up Argyle’s trail and recover his Notebook; said Notebook was apparently not among the materials the team had recovered.
Prior to departing from GRRAS, Oliver was contacted by Legion Under Officer Felicity Lazar-Opes – the contact mentioned by Commissar Usher during Oliver’s interview.
Felicity put Oliver through a series of aptitude tests
and determined that he was most suited to becoming a Commissar were he to become a Legion member – and he agreed to become a Special Recruit and an informer for the Legion placed inside the Vizierate.
The team, with Nanny coming along, departed GRRAS and travelled aboard the Vizierate Research Ship Illuminator as far as Zargonia. During the trip, Oliver had a romantic encounter with Minor Vizier Mallory Harrison, a Vizierate expert on alien races who cautioned him about working with her fellow Viziers Nanny and Frederick.
Arriving at Zargonia, the team travelled to the city of Snow Lake where they interviewed a former member of the Overlord’s Household, Alec Bronze-Stepping, who Nanny said apparently knew Argyle. However, Bronze-Stepping informed the team that he knew an identical looking man named Abbas Lozenge-Sok
With the security board interested in the outcome, the team were issued a new ship, a Vizierate Maldemar Class Sloop,
and travelled on to Pristine leaving Nanny on Zargonia. During the journey, Oliver continued the research into Argyle’s work, incidentally including watching some of his video collection.
Consequently, Oliver believes he has discovered how to do something that Argyle was apparently trying to accomplish – send hidden messages inside the Dominion’s communication network. He has not shared this discovery with anyone.
Arriving on Pristine, the team returned to Argyle’s hunting lodge to discover the place had been cleaned out by what they would later discover was a Legion military raid, and that the Legion has fallen foul of some of the booby traps. During the investigation Dicard was seriously injured by an animal that had taken up residence in the abandoned building.
Oliver was invited to meet with the head of the Vizierate on Pristine, who stated their mission was obviously important and appointed him as a temporary Vizant 4 – a position of some authority and prestige – to help avoid bureaucratic obstructions while Dicard was unavailable.
The team visited the local Legion Cast to ask questions about the raid, and discovered that it involved Commissar Usher, who had taken possession of the remaining equipment that that team had left behind previously, including Argyle’s chip emulator that Nanny had specifically asked them to recover.
Following clues obtained by Oliver from Argyle’s journals they went to a nearby mine site where they uncovered evidence that Argyle’s former contact at the mine was murdered. They met Joel Cagnotti, a mine employee who knew Argyle and who Argyle apparently gifted his snow mobile before disappearing from sight. The team pieced together Argyle’s movements after he left his home, determining he used his computing knowledge to hack the mine’s and the spaceport’s systems to leave the planet undetected. They uncovered evidence that Argyle had help in his departure from an unknown group of people smugglers.
The team then split up, leaving Dicard to recover from his injuries
and then with the help of Fromm to investigate the people smuggling lead.
Meanwhile Oliver will take the sloop and the rest of the team to Zarg’s World, the most current known location of the ship on which they believe Argyle left Pristine.
“Halcyon, I wanted to bring up hierarchies while we have a moment.”