Dead Suns #16: Beating a Dead Corpse

In a missing chapter of our tale, the party followed the Ministry of Eternal Vigilance’s leads on the Corpse Fleet. Their investigations brought them to a marrowblight outside the city. Their government vehicle became food for a gigantic irradiated ellicoth, which in turn became disemboweled by an over-eager android (a.k.a XI). The sniper continues the story. (-GM)

25th Day of Lamashan, 317 AG

The ellicoth

My heart had finally started calming down after the epic battle less than 24 hours earlier. XI added some new parts to his drone so that it could search the gargantuan leviathan thingy some more. He found some more weapons and items. He also found his fair share of dead animals and rocks and such. After about 2 hours, he returned to our makeshift camp and informed us that he got out all he could get. Since the party had no way of flying back to Orphys, we had to walk. As we walked we saw numerous piles of bones, some of them reaching 50 feet or higher into the black sky.

After 3 hours of trekking along in this arid landscape, my keen senses noticed something. There was a figure crouched behind a rock at the top of a 30 foot high pile of bones. Chee Kee also noticed the figure. We alerted the party that it was probable that we would be ambushed in the following seconds. As we suspected, the figure, Captain Zeera Vesh, stood up from its cover and began a speech about how its comrades had failed to kill us but it would and blah blah blah. I took out my ever-present bottle of Tequila and took a swig. I was thinking something along the lines of “Here goes nothing.”

During this long and drawn out proclamation of our deaths, Chee Kee was able to sneak up undetected toward her perch on the top of the bone pile. And, as always, jeopardizing the integrity of our mission, Nikolai yelled attack. At this point, we assumed that he would charge up the mound of bones, sword drawn, yelling some war cry. But instead he moved a single inch forward.

I realized that I would be as dead as **** if I waiting for him to get into range. I pulled out my rifle and activated the haste upgrade on my armor. I move forward and shot twice. Unfortunately this creature’s tough hide blocked most of the damage I dealt. By now, Chee Kee had flanked all the way around this now obvious sniper. He lined up his pistol just right and pulled the trigger.

A loud bang echoed and the sniper visibly jerked, the bullet dealing a great quantity of damage. During this, a group of 6 skeletons jumped out from hiding behind us and fired magical missiles at the party. Now the party was split because half of us were attacking the skeletons and the other half were attacking the sniper. Chee Kee kept pounding shot after shot into it. Meanwhile it was “cleanup on aisle skeletons” as XI and his drone mowed them down.

Chee Kee put the last shot home and the sniper fell to the ground, dead. As we suspected, she was part of the Corpse Fleet and was sent to ambush us and kill us. We looted everybody and found a decent treasure horde. Among these riches we found a datapad. XI hacked it and among other things, we found an un-edited version of the message telling the Cult of the Devourer where to go (which the Corpse Fleet had intercepted). They were to go to the Nejeor system to get the “key” to the “Gate of Twelve Suns.” We returned to the Ministry of Eternal Vigilance and told them what had happened and showed them all the information we had found. Ambassador Nor sent us each a substantial amount of credits for the work we had done. We said that we planned to go to Nejeor.

Now excuse me, I must rest up before our journey.

Signing off,
Your favorite drink,
Tequila (Paul)

=================================

XI, android mechanic 7
Chappie, android technomancer 6
Chee Kee, ysoki operative 6
Hector Hottie, halfling envoy 6
Tequila, android soldier 7
Nikolai, vesk soldier 7

Previous post in this campaign

 

Dead Suns #14: To Eox Plox

The party’s sniper, Tequila, reports back to the Starfinder Society on their progress hunting down cultists seeking what seems to be an ancient super weapon. (-GM)

23rd Day of Lamashan, 317 AG

Dear Chiskisk,

Now I know it has been many moons since I have written but I am sure the others have filled you in along the way. At least partly.

So we were all on a small asteroid that was known as a Cult of the Devourer outpost. We had defeated some guards around the place and looked on all of the computers. We found a recording of a high ranked official in the Cult of the Devourer say that “everybody should converge on *KSHHHHHHH* immediately.” At the exact time where he said the place, the screen and audio had blurred into static, completely negating our ability to figure out what place he was referring to.

 

Dead Suns #13: Devour Machine Broke

The party explores an… empty hideout of the Cult of the Devourer. The party muscle/vesk narrates. (-GM)

23rd Day of Lamashan, 317 AG

We emerged into a big dark room with a computer in the center, as well as a ghast that had been cut up into cubes. Chappie decided to hack the machine, and while many of us helped him, I was unable to participate due to my thick fingers. The computer was some sort of settings board, with buttons that switched “Temperature,” “Pressure”, “Lights,” and “Big Scary Devour Machine” on and off. After turning on Lights so we could see the room, I suggested we turn off the Big Scary Devour Machine, but was informed that decision-making was to be left in hands with sleeker digits than mine.

There was a door in the wall, so I decided to open it. As I was walking, a big laser blasted me and started sliding around the room. This was the Big Scary Devour Machine? I was unimpressed; it was barely a Medium Scary Devour Machine. XI and the others broke it easily, and the devastator-impersonator fizzled into nothing. I continued to the door and opened it, determined to not let the puny heat skewer obstruct me.

The door opened to a big U-shaped hallway with a bunch of other doors. We went to the door at the far right, and found some living quarters. The next room had three robots, which we dispatched. There was some inferior light armor, which my companions fawned upon while I knew not to stray from the true armor. One of the dressers was actually a fire trap, and after we triggered it we found some unlooted loot, like an electrostatic field which I got. Also among the loot were some necrografts and a datapad with a video of a verthani mentoring some gnome. They were singing some song that contained the phrase “Nyara knows.”

 

Dead Suns #12: Dead Rocks

Our heroes seek out the Cult of the Devourer to stop their destructive plans. This takes to them the Pact Worlds’ asteroid belt called the Diaspora… (-GM)

23th Day of Lamashan, 317 AG

Because their captain Alera Okwana was not an idiot, they agreed to talk.

After we traced the signal to the Field of the Lost, an uncharted and dangerous part of the Diaspora, we decided to go shopping on Castrovel and upgrade our starship’s armor, power core, computers, defensive countermeasure system, and weapons. We got a persistent particle beam on a turret mount.

When we finished upgrading our starship, we traveled through the Drift to the Diaspora. As soon as we exited the Drift, we encountered some space pirates who were part of the Free Captains. We intimidated into giving us information. Because their captain Alera Okwana was not an idiot, they agreed to talk. During the conversation, we used our amazing diplomacy and knowledge to learn that the Corpse Fleet had passed through here not too long ago. After the conversation, we thanked the pirates for their time.

We decided to continue to the asteroid where we had tracked the cultists. The asteroid was known as K9204. When we arrived at K9204, we found that most of the asteroid’s surface was jagged and rocky except for one area that was flat. We decided to land on the flat part and explore. It wasn’t too long before we encountered a Sarcesian sniper which proceeded to shoot my drone so we shot it until it died. We then proceeded to loot its corpse. We noticed that some of the sand was a different color and looked like it had been disturbed, so we sifted through it and found a corpse and some money.

The skreesire

As we continued exploring the rest of the flat area of the asteroid, we noticed similar looking patches of sand. When we searched through the other patches of sand we found some dead sarcesians, a trap door and some skreelings which we dispatched easily; however, one of them killed my drone. Above the sand where we found the trap door there was a skreesire. The skreesire put up a good fight but in the end it was not able to surpass the strength of the party.

-XI (Torin)

=================================

XI, android mechanic 5
Chappie, android technomancer 5
Chee Kee, ysoki operative 5
Hector Hottie, halfling envoy 5
Tequila, android soldier 5
Nikolai, vesk soldier 5

Previous post in this campaign

Next post in this campaign

 

Dead Suns #11: Temple of the Eleven

Last we left our heroes, they had entered the ancient elven Temple of the Twelve seeking a lost researcher and the secret behind the lost language. Oh, and they were about to get ambushed. (-GM)

1st Day of Lamashan, 317 AG

I didn’t really buy into Dr. Solstarni’s story, because if she had been taken by Devourers, then why wasn’t she eaten?

The next hallway snaked around a large room in the center. That was clearly where the boss was, so we saved it for last. We concerned ourselves instead with a group of cultists messing around with explosives. They used very advanced technology, such as a machine gun that fired from every barrel at once. However, it seemed they were in over their heads, for their “explosives” did not explode when I fired at them. Noobs. Everyone knows explosives are supposed to explode.

We found Dr. Solstarni tied to the wall. Apparently she had been captured by Devourer cultists and they were researching some relic. I didn’t really buy into her story, because if she had been taken by Devourers, then why wasn’t she eaten? I decided to watch her carefully in case she turned out to be conducting more than just research.

I wasn’t going to let a few bullet wounds stop me from completing our mission, but the others were fragile and wanted rest. We found a room with one of those constellations the elves shouldn’t have known about, and decided to sleep there, pretending it was the night sky. Our delusion of the outdoors failed when the stars activated their fire beams and tried to kill us. The fire cauterized our wounds, and within minutes we had regained our stamina and were ready to assault the boss room. No matter that I left a trail of my own blood; that was probably just indigestion.

 

Dead Suns #10: Love at First Sight

Our party was in the middle of fighting at the giant statue of an elven lady looking at the sky, hunting for a lost researcher to find more clues about the strange language they found on the Drift Rock. (-GM)

30th Day of Rova, 317 AG

The sniper

Jumping right in to the action, XI pushed the flying jellyfish off his head as Chappie miraculously got over his sickness. We ran to the large statue to try and evade the sniper, and heard shots go off. Chee Kee shot her, and she tried to escape by jumping but broke a leg.

We took the stairs. We decided it would be a good idea to interrogate her for information, so we bound her hands and feet.

“If you answer our questions, we won’t hurt you,” I lied. She refused. Nikolai started to reason with her but I kicked her in the head and intimidated her. She yelled about how her life was meaningless because of what’s to come, how the Devourer would destroy everything, how inevitable our defeat is. (Incredibles reference). I sensed that she wasn’t telling us something, but she wouldn’t talk. So I kicked her into some sacred pool of blah blah.

We them searched through the statue and found something odd. Drawn inside of the head were some pictures of constellations that had only been discovered in the past few hundred years, yet these markings were about 3000 years old.

 

Dead Suns #9: Jungle Fever

The party braves the dangers of Ukulam and find… the other explorers?? (-GM)

27th Day of Rova, 317 AG

Jungle. That one word describes the last 48 hours of hard trekking through the wilderness. We were constantly pushing through ferns and large trees covered in vines. The journey today had been uneventful but suddenly an ugly creature barged out and ruined everybody’s day.

(Purple as well as other colors, as pictured. -GM)

It was too early in the morning to be whipping out your guns and shooting some strange purple creature. Now don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against the color purple. But this thing was purple and dangerous and it being purple was not enough of a reason for us to be friendly. We shot it a couple of times but it ran away.

It would have been better if it had just tried to fight us. Because it ran off now we were constantly on edge. Having your gun out, scanning the surrounding wilderness for purple monsters, and pushing through dense jungle can slow the party down a bit. The creature appeared two more times before finally picking a fight with us. It shot some weird dart thing at us from far away, but this time when it tried to run Chee Kee chased it down and killed it. XI told us that the spikes it shot at us had a kind of poison that if we died it would make more of them. He made sure that everybody who got hit was very careful with cleaning and taking care of the wounds they received.

The rest of the day was fairly boring. We killed a dinosaur. No biggie. The good news about killing a dino was that we could cook its meat to have more food. We made camp at sundown and had people rotate through shifts keeping lookout.

Everybody was up by sunrise and had finished eating and packing up camp by the time the sun was peeking over the treetops. The day up through lunch was boring. Nothing came at us to fight. But at around 2 o’clock we found a body. The body was recent and was an insect… I mean Lashunta. We gathered that it was one of the ones we were following. XI noted that it had one of those thorns in its leg and that its stomach had exploded. He informed us that this was what happened if you did not clean your wound properly. We looted the body and moved on.

Toward sundown we came into a very large clearing:

 

Dead Suns #8: Illegal Teleportation and Lots of Walking

Seeking more info on the Drift Rock with its strange language, the party treks across a wild continent to find a lost elven city and a doctor studying it in our next installment of Dead Suns! (-GM)

25th Day of Rova, 317 AG

After we left the restaurant, we talked to Professor Muhali, asking how we could get to the nature preserve island in a quick and hopefully legal way. She said that the only legal way to get there was to get a permit for an elf gate. But the problem was we didn’t have much time since we’re chasing someone, so we had to get fakes. We went to the place the guys in the bar said that we could find the person who made the fakes for doctor Solstarni. It took a few days but we eventually got them.

Then we went to the building containing the elf gates and hoped that the fakes worked, which fortunately they did. We said that we were security for a Dr. Khair al-Nuaf on the island and of course the people in charge of the elf gates believed us. So we got the key to the room containing the specific portal and teleported to the island. We arrived and were greeted by Dr. al-Nuaf. We said that we were a backup for doctor Solstarni’s expedition and that we didn’t listen to the briefing so have no idea where they are. He pointed in the direction of the forest that was past miles of large open plains and said that way. Then he grumbled about stupid mercenaries.

So we headed out through the plains. After a couple days, we were walking when we heard a gunshot go off, and then felt the ground shifting beneath our feet. Yaruks, giant six-legged creatures that seemed peaceful when we’d seen them at a distance were charging at us. We scattered, trying not to get trampled. We all tried different things to escape, like making noise to scare them or just running away. Eventually we escaped and they left, but we were all tired.

As we kept walking, we seemed to be followed by strange monkey mosquito like creatures. We fired some warning shots and they seemed to back off a bit. There was a lot of screeching coming from them and then about 5 started flying at us. We shot them down easily and kept moving. We found a large monolith that was in Elven that only Chappie with his spells could read that said basically turn back and some other nonsense that us powerful super strong charismatic and amazing adventurers don’t need to worry about. (Some stuff about approaching “Loskialua, monastery of starsong, embassy of the spheres, and temple of the twelve,” paying respect, messengers from beyond, an academy, and “interpreters of the beacon.” Oh and Tequila almost died. -GM)

Some monkey creatures still followed us later and we scared them off. We kept heading on, hoping that we’d find Solstarni soon because we needed to get off this crazy island.

-Hector Hottie (Enzo)

=================================

XI, android mechanic 3
Chappie, android technomancer 4
Chee Kee, ysoki operative 3
Hector Hottie, halfling envoy 3
Tequila, android soldier 4
Nikolai, vesk soldier 4

Previous post in this campaign

 

Dead Suns #7: Public Relations

The party discovers that the ambassador/mediator was not the only one watching their adventures on the ship and the asteroid. The party’s investigations into the “asteroid”s origins take it to the nearby planet of Castrovel. (-GM)

16th Day of Rova, 317 AG

The party was exhausted. We had battled our way through countless monsters, fought other spaceships, and had not gotten any sleep for 22 hours. The last thing we needed was a huge crowd greeting us when we got off the ship back at Absalom Station. They were all shouting about how great Nikolai is but we ignored them because we know he is not. We dragged the parcel to the Eoxian embassy and gave it to the Eoxian ambassador Gevalarsk Nor. XI looked around the room, noticed 4 people, and said the number 4. That makes the list of people the party ignores 2 now.

He was happy to receive the parcel. We asked some questions about the language around the embassy but he did not know much. He said that the asteroid ship thingy was part of a much bigger ship. We learned that was a mere section of the power core.

As we were walking out of the building we got a call from Chiskisk of the Pathfinder Society. They told us that the language on the ship resembled something from some pyramid ruins on Castrovel. We were informed that there was this one “scientist” Halkueem Zan who studied them a couple of centuries ago. Zan was an explorer and his notes and someone might know more at the University of Xenoarcheology, also on Castrovel. We decided that that would be our next stop but first we went shopping.

 

Dead Suns #6: I Get Abducted by Aliens (Clickbait!!!)

EXCLUSIVE! A lot of rumors have been circulating about what Hector Hottie has been up to ever since his live stream went dark. Well, Hector Hottie sat down and wrote to us HIMSELF, folks. Are you excited? Because WE surely are! *squee!* (-GM)

12th Day of Rova, 317 AG

While everyone with a working brain started thinking of ways to find and use this “weapon,” Nikolai put on one of the dead guys’ uniforms. Why? I have no idea. He said something to us about talking to the worm, but i was focused on a more realistic endeavor. About a minute later he came back, in pain. What other outcome did he expect? I mean it’s a giant worm with crazy mind powers. With Nikolai’s idea out of a way, we proceeded on.

We felt like it was a good time to rest, so we started by making makeshift beds blah blah blah. We were then confronted by four people. They seemed to be quadruplets or something. One took out a laser pistol and did some kind of sneak sneaky stealthy thing and shot at us. We fired back quickly and hit one of them. It dissolved Into thin air. It seemed that it was an operative we were up against, who had some kind of replicating ability, making herself multiple images so we didn’t know which one was the original.

We chased after her. We got to a cavern where the artificial gravity stopped, and she tried to escape. Drifting out, she got stuck against the wall and three of us managed to get guns to her head. She dropped her weapon which started floating away and said, “Alright I give up I can’t win.”

We brought her back tied her up and started to interrogate her, why she was here and what she was doing. She was an android named Clara-247. She answered most of them pretty poorly, I would say.

Instead of interrogating her, I thought it was a good idea to make a deal. She would help us fight the Giant winged mindworm. She agreed to that if we a let her live, gave her back her stuff and also paid her 500 credits. We agreed to the deal — the worm seemed too strong for us to defeat. So we tied her up and we started to rest again.

All I remember about that night was falling asleep in the corner and having a strange dream. I was a child again, and my little sister held out her hand. I took it, and then we started walking toward a forest. Then i woke up floating out to open space and a bright light while a small grey creature with big buggy eyes went limp while holding my hand.

According to my crewmates, it went into my mind and did some Pennywise s*** to make me follow it. It was probably trying to bring me to the light, probably a spaceship, and study me. But luckily we — oh, and by we I mean my crewmates — killed it before it could do anything.

We went back to sleep again, and in the morning found the operative we had passed out on the floor somehow getting a hold of some kind of alcohol. We decided to brave the Mindworm anyways. We opened the door and it immediately attacked us, and by us I mean Nikolai. We shot it a bunch of times, somehow wounding it. The barrage of spells from Chappie as well as our relentless fire forced it to try to escape, but we done it down.

With the space worm dead, we looked for a way onto the Sunrise Maiden. Once on, we proceeded to check every inch for hostile life, but found no life at all.

Figures.

We went back to the original ship and got the package for the Eoxian diplomat. Once aboard the Sunrise Maiden, we set off, hoping to get back to Absalom Station. While flying through empty space, our scanners picked up something moving out at us at high speed. It was another Eoxian ship. We didn’t ask questions — we fired first. We were unstoppable in our new ship. With me at the helm giving directions, XI and Chappie patching the shields up, Chee Kee flying the ship and making crazy maneuvers, and the insane accuracy of Nikolai and Tequila, we blew a hole straight through them, suffering one small shot to our hull. Then we sped off towards Absalom Station, ready for whatever the future had in store for us.

Signing off,
Hector Hottie (Enzo)

=================================

XI, android mechanic 3
Chappy, android technomancer 3
Chee Kee, ysoki operative 3
Hector Hottie, halfling envoy 3
Tequila, android soldier 3
Nikolai, vesk soldier 3

Previous post in this campaign

Next post in this campaign