March 18th Game-

A lot happened in yesterday's/last night's session.

* Captain Qulak managed to convince the GYS forces in orbit around Cold Home not to strip the ships down. He also heard from his first officer of an alien weapons shipment, and ordered Kitsune's assistance in determining their worth. He then entered a Sla-Mu tea ceremony as the council awaited the arrival of the salvage ship that Jake recently joined up with. The occasion was the discussion about purchasing the plans to the Dark Drive they have devised.

* Osyl Molen, in the Vae Realm, is about to break a door that has been magically sealed for over 1k years.

* Kitsune met Princess Nyx, the Patron of Negative Lightning, and was commissioned to send more folks Nyx' way, as she is bored and lonely. To facilitate this, a cache of Thl Lower Planar energy weapons was offered. Kit was in the process of investigating when the merchant's craft was shorn in two by a beam originating from a planet-side defence site. She managed to MacGyver/bodge together a ejection system for Akheron and herself, and it worked. Medics on route were also fired upon, as was her fighter escort which was engaging the site. The area is over or near a lake roughly the size of Superior, and thin ice was involved.

* Tyb, investigating the odd goings-on in the miscibility of the Elemental Planes, heard of a site named, Red Feather Hill, not far out of Aqqomen, that seemed promising. His recent g/f blurted out that he was affiliated with the GYS, and a stranger at the bar departed soon after that; followed by Tyb. The confrontation demonstrated that the stranger was, in fact, a damaged android with partial programming. Tyb called in Ashta to assist with the Red Feather Hill investigation...

* Jake went in search of his new crew-mates (who had been summoned to the Electrum Arrow), but became entangled in the Tyb/Ashta thread.

* Ashta arrived to take the android and Tyb aboard the Pearl while they made their way to the hill. Along the way, Ashta told Pearl to repair 'Smith'. This proved ... complicated when the restored android shot her in the back.

* The android and its companions in possession of the near comatose Jake explain that they had been left on the planet to guard it and that since its star system fell into the pocket universe, 'Cold Home' has been experiencing increasing fluctuations in the core's magnetosphere. These fluctuations, in concert with the Elemental miscibility, threaten to destroy the planet. The android plan was to kill the pair in the hopes of having the duo's nexial energies removed from the equation. It is later explained that the destruction of Orcus' Plague Sword in Tyb's possession, and Ashta's Pearl, would suffice, possibly even flinging Cold Home back into Mundane Space. Tyb decided to stay behind and make certain the sword was destroyed, while Pearl sent Jake and Ashta to her Aetheric fortress prior to Pearl's destruction.

* As Ashta appeared in her rainbow-mirrored redoubt adrift in the eternal twilight of the Aetheric Plane, she heard sounds in the place, with the word, 'Mommy?' uttered by the daughter created in an alternate timeline about 9 months ago.

We held the session there.

Jan 21st Game Session-

New batch of the bug.
--This one was nipped in the bud with a shot of Lysol, Airborne, and a Zycam Swab. Now it is just fatigue and occasional headaches.

I forgot to mention this last time: Both Officer Max Rockatansky, and Lt. S. D. Bob Plissken are aboard the Aelbaan shuttle and have a gaggle of semi-feral kids native to the Aelbaan Starship as their wards. These two are along for the ride, and have felt suitably upstaged by the PCs.
--This is the second time that the duo have appeared in one of my games.

After the Khem's tele-experiences on the planet, the Yirinn character who had been gifted with a Black Metal alloy seven-bulbed lamp-stand (decorated to appear as a braid of roses) lit the oil reservoir with Elemental Fire. This produced softly writhing fractal shadows that fell in a circular pattern around the device.
--With this effect, the Aelbaan Starship changed attitude and began to alter its course as almost palpable Shadow Plannar effects could be felt by Tyb.

The Aelbaan who had occupied one of the System Ships (in which the shuttle the PCs are occupying is located) began to launch the System Ship. The System Ship then re-entered 'normal space', which was anything but, and the craft began to shake and shudder as its relativistic velocity and the wrinkle in timespace they were immediately caught in did not mix well.
--The Aelbaan informed the PCs that they needed to jettison roughly the same mass as the loaded shuttle to act as an explosive charge in their attempt to break out of the rut of the rolling space fold. Quick calculations by the PCs suggested that they would fail.

I'd like to explain more, but the blog is a poor substitute for the detailed information contained in the forthcoming Vrun Players' Module product.

The Party bickered a bit, but ultimately, the shuttle was jettisoned and sucked directly into the Charged Vacuum Emboitment. This was no surprise to the Khem, whose ancestor had heard that the other colonists had experienced the same event which led to their finding the curious planetary system.
--Debris started to cling to the shuttle's hull as Ashta saw a swirling multitude of possible timelines and past/future events.

Players had to leave early for various reasons (a date, and us fetching C.'s and M.'s sister at work), and so we called it there.

Playtest Campaign, etc.-

Last week I was ill and there was no session.

Previous session amounted to the group having a combat that they won in perhaps 3 Rounds (I can't roll Initiative for my NPCs to save their lives), which then granted the whole kit and caboodle of them (including the Blue Tree and the Humanoids) to gain the system-ship's shuttle.
--Ashta took control of the shuttle's escape pod, to make up for the loss of 'the pearl' that had been converted to Void and subsequently piloted by Delver Denab.

Thursday I spoke with one of my Players who is newer to the group, and who, although possessing two characters roughly on par statistically with the rest of the veteran PCs, is behind the curve as far as raw weirdness and power. We talked out a few of his Khem fencer/bodyguard's off-screen activities, and that opened up a few pertinent facts about the path the Aelbaan starship is taking, and why that is likely inimical to their continued existence.

The character was gifted by the Santa-soldier with a sort of glass harmonica which evoked a genetic memory of an ancestor upon a human starship, who narrowly escaped to a habitable (and inhabited) planet.
--We discussed how the differences between the ancestor and the descendant blurred even on the causal level, and that concerns about 'simply repeating the ancestors actions' proved unimportant as the actions the character in the present would want to undertake are the actions the ancestor apparently did take. More than simple glimpses of scattered ancestral memories, the Khem is experiencing an entirely different life at a rate of days and weeks on the planet to hours on the constantly accelerating starship.

I wonder if I'll have enough time to one day write the secrets of the Khemesh origins?

Weekly Game, Pt. 20-

:: Longish, but fun ::

Having utilised the Void bubble to pierce the Aether-effect Force Fields protecting the System Ship Bay, Tyb had Ashta pass through as well. While in transit, she saw the suit of armour she had been wearing in alternate realities as Xholte, the Death Goddess, and touched it. When she appeared in the bay, she was wearing the armour (+3 Defence, 2d6 Armour || -3 AC bonus, -1d4 per Attack in AD&D terms). Tyb was surprised, having seen those alternate time streams, and noticed that she had been gone for slightly longer than normal. Tyb's Player made a comment about Ashta having received some Christmas goodness, and then decided to fiddle about in the Void bubble and grasped coniferous tree branches. At this point, the players began to smile and make their 'guesses' as to what was happening.
--Tyb passed back through the bubble, holding onto the branches as he went, and occasionally felt fur somehow intermingled with the pines. He emerged to a snowscape forest with sleigh tracks leading off in the distance to where a curious looking vehicle (minus the pulling animals) and a man wearing glossy red armour and shiny black leather boots stood ready to kick the sled.

Tyb then slid towards the shadows cast by the vehicle and man, and listened in as the fellow in the red armour was becoming increasingly flustered about his tight schedule. Other voices, over a comm unit, could be heard: I took the opportunity to include Cheech and Chong, Elf 232, and 'Rudy' as part of the sleigh-driver's network of very well informed and dimensionally-savvy remote crew.
--It seems a Void-effect passed through the sled and vaporised an entire circuit board. Imagine that.

The gang fixed it and as a test of the vehicle's repair, the fabricator produced gifts. Ahni (Tyb's eldest daughter) and the Dryvv battle maidens he carries in his shadow emerged, and Ahni was the first to open a present, while the man in the glossy red armour stood by. She opened it and was amazed at what lay within, but quickly grew half-sullen. It appears that her gift was something called, 'Good Intentions', which began to work a change in the otherwise ... salty nature of the Vae-girl. One of the Dryvv maidens opened hers and was confused by the three lumps of coal she received.
--Nick, the man in the armour, warned Tyb, Ashta, Ahni, and the maids that they were on the naughty list, and that the longer Ashta wore her new armour, the naughtier she got. Ahni seemed genuinely distraught about the change she was undergoing, and the coal girl seemed to treasure the gift although she, too, was a bit puzzled by it all.

With the sleigh repaired, the skids retracted and he admonished them again before tearing off into the sky and disappeared in a flash of glitter.

Presents were brought back through and we handed them out to the entire stable of PCs. Nyqolas' was a peppermint-flavoured mercury-looking potion that sped him up to the point that everyone else was frozen in time, and even the passing proto-stellar matter outside the ship was slowed a tad. He used the time dilation to go to the bug-hive and kill as many of them as he could reach in the very large cubic chamber filled with multi-tier jungle.

Osyl was gifted with Turkish Delight by a frosty looking woman who contacted Ahni as she was leaving the snowy forest scene (with lamp post and a pair of cloven hoof marks in the snow) ;D Lady Arctise was able to contact Osyl when she ate the sweets, and the Lady urged her to make certain to take the upcoming planetary-system detour.

The Khem PC's gift was a peculiar circular 'harmonica' that seemed to trigger genetic memories of a Human starship's destruction, and his ancestor's last-second travel to an inhabited world with that man's mate.

--After much bickering about their actual plan and how to carry it out, the System Ship was once again being explored -- this time by the Black Pearl's Void probe. An Aelbaan couple spotted the probe (which looks like a coal-black disc at any PoV), and these two activated the psychic alarm, and power on the main bridge (where everyone else was) began to shut down.

Delver began searching for a large enough interior space in the System Ship for him to pull the Black Pearl through the probe, because it seemed as though the Aelbaan were preparing to at least isolate it from the rest of the ship.
--The best calculations predict that there will be no planets in range for 3 months, ship-time.

HappyMerry folks. :D

The Weekly Game, Pt. 19-

Attempts to reach a System Ship within a launch bay proved difficult, not only due to the Seeder Ship's odd (re)arrangement of any given section of the ship (each internal section like a cargo container), gaps in the line, but also the fact that a mess of Aelbaan have taken that particular launch bay.
--Delver helped Tyb to cross through the Aether-based Force Field (using Black Pearl's Void-Effect stuff) and we held that portion there.

They also determined that the ship's trajectory was Coreward; had already travelled an enormous distance into the galaxy from the Rim; and the ship's fuel supply is condensed dreamstuff. As the Aelbaan are not a sleeping species, they also do not dream (without Tiape, the Dreaming Blend -- courtesy of Brian Penn), but instead abduct and raise dreaming species aboard their craft for the purpose of cultivating the dreamstuff.
--Kitsune entered the consensual reality of the Aelbaan Psychic Network, and found that it was piggybacking off of a much larger system network operated by an Aelbaan-like species, but much stouter and perhaps more removed from Human concerns. The individual encountered was, "watching for Dragons and Shorrannin Hive Ships.", and was too busy to really aid her except to warn Kitsune she was in danger.

Indeed, more 'bug' warriors appeared in an explosion of Smoke, accompanied by six 14Fight Die (14HD) beetles the size of small delivery trucks. Nyqolas entered into melee and was horribly abused, being literally squashed by the bug for oodles of damage. He had to rely upon aid from Prince Lucent to regain enough wherewithal to reach the gravitic field Darius was using to keep Qaya's corrosive Smoke-magick in place as an active deterrent.
--Once Delver's lighting arm device and Osyl's use of the subterranean repilmalian lightning crystal were brought to bear, the bugs started to die in satisfyingly explosive ways --save a warrior that managed to disappear elsewhere on the bridge levels.

Playtest Campaign + Mutants of Marnharnna Mashup (Pt. 18)-

The foretold Black Moon has risen, and it is the Pearl, changing from Aether-aligned to Void-aligned. The attempt to change it to anything but Void resulted in a Water-alignment, and Pearl was about to become Princess Wave's new toy, but it was reverted to Void and was piloted by Delver Denab (Ashta being unable to utilise its Void-tech).

[The Governors of Doran (Tyb and Ashta) have been ousted, and the Kherstic League has taken control of the island nation it purchased from the WICE only a year or two earlier.]

Aberrants, Dokirin warriors and shaman, and Humanoids, as well as the Blue Tree, were all pulled along into the Void, and Delver took the craft up to the Aelbaan starship in orbit in the High Aether. Being Aether-based tech, the Void craft was undetected by passive sensors, and allowed the Black Pearl and all of her occupants to become noncorporeal and slide through both Force Field and Hull. As undead, the crew and fighters acted to take control of the main bridge, and in three Turns (30 minutes) had secured that second-most important position on the ship. However, before the last Aelbaan collapsed from Vampiric fields, he was able to launch the craft on a predetermined emergency course.
--As soon as the more powerful Aether-effect drives initiated, the Black Pearl and her crew/etc. became corporeal and were taken along for the superluminal flight out of the Av system, and already unknown stars distant.