WttSS session 33: 'Adventure at the Crossroads'

General Summary

Before leaving The Oasis starport the PCs receive a message from the Yazdan household fixing their ship: Thanks for sending the advanced computer parts, that'll considerably reduce the repair bill, but said bill is still 17400 birr; how much would the PCs be wanting to contribute? PCs offer goods in kind to be kept or sold on as the Yazdan household sees fit - offering the weapons of the Dance of the Red Veils pirate crew:

• 2 accelerator carbines - 6000 birr
• 6 accelerator reloads - 100 birr
• 1 Vulcan carbine - 2000 birr
• 3 Vulcan Scorpions - 3000 birr
• 5 Vulcan reloads - 250 birr
• 4 Dura knives, with 6 cells - 2300 birr

...total: 13650 birr. Even with some loss in value through being second hand this is a fair proportion of the outstanding bill and the Yazdan are pretty happy.  

The Crossroads

  Continuing on in the borrowed Yazdan shuttle, the party heads into the desert, arriving near the Crossroads - the desert-tribe meeting place - in the morning, hoping to avoid the heat of the later day.   Kerman and Murad disembark and head out across the sands in thermostatic suits, leaving the party mystics safely on the shuttle, landed a fair distance away from the rock. Entering the rock's empty corridors, the two non-mystics see it just as they left it: devoid of life, not even an insect or moss on the stones, no presence of even bird droppings, implying no life comes anywhere near the rock any more, not even flying over it.   They also hear the echoing music of the wind within the rock, louder than it has any right to be given the calm of the desert, still playing pleasant notes as would a series of wind chimes but here made of the gently flowing air of flutes. As assemble a rope however, to climb up into the upper corridors, the noises take on the sounds of voices - as they did before perhaps but this time the voices of the party members, echoing the events they were last here:

• "Do you think it's safe to stay here?"
• "I really think we should go up there"
• "Get Khalil out of here!"

  Murad experiments with the sounds a little, speaking out "one, two three, seven" but the echoes remain only those of the previous visit and random in occurrence. Seemingly not in danger from the sound, Kerman and Murad continue upwards. The rest of the party listens through comms in the shuttle but with a kill switch ready in case any of them should begin to succumb as they did before.   In the shuttle the mystics also keep a scan of the area up, wary of anyone approaching during the investigation and Khalil sends out a drone to watch the rock from above. Within the rock, Kerman and Murad use the party's spirit glasses to keep an eye out for otherworldly intruders too. Nothing disturbs the party's plan however, the rock remaining deathly still and undisturbed.   Heading through the upper corridors, up slopes, round corners and through passageways, Murad and Kerman approach the small opening containing the obelisk he found before but this time activating it by placing four hands against the impressions on the face of the obelisk and standing in the floor grooves; and the obelisk responds.  

An old AI

  The planet's chain lightning gathers above the Crossroads, quickly building to levels that could easily destroy the shuttle but that discharge down into Murad's obelisk without causing any damage. Instead, the energy floods into the obelisk, lighting up the pink seams and causing them to dance across the rock face. Now charged, the rock connects with Murad's brain.   He hears a voice in his head but speaking no language he knows. He senses feelings but ones not his own. Both grow in his head as something pushes and searches around, building until they become painful; but the presence seems to detect this and backs down immediately, trying different things to find the borders of what's safe.   It settles on showing Murad three images. Each appears in a pink light on Murad's eyes that persists as if he'd spent too long looking at a bright firework. The shapes are:

• A series of animals greeting each other, showing happy stances, showing deferral, in conflict and so on
• Animals fighting for territory, dominance, and so on
• A series of things: the sun, then a plant, then an animal, then another animal, which then dies and falls into the soil

...which the party manages to work out is the rock trying to build a language to communicate in, as when Murad asks the party for help, the first image triggers a happy success feeling and vanishes from the list. The remaining trigger by Murad punching a fist into another palm and then taking some food.   With this the rock manages to create a connection with Murad's brain that allows the two to communicate safely, if in a limited fashion: They can share emotions by projecting feelings towards one another and can draw each other shapes in the pink firework-light. To begin with the rock gives Murad three options to select:

• Hypnotising image of overlapping sin waves
• Series of spheres that can be entered (with a controllable ascent or descent through concentric layers of spheres orbiting an unreachable centre) and that are connected by wavefunctions
• Hexagons dropping and building up like a Tetris game

...plus, an open space in which to free draw.  

Mystics don't get it easy here

  During this time, the rock activates other functions. Kerman first hears a sound of stone sliding across stone, which Khalil's drone later reveals to be a two-and-a-half metre tall humanoid creature forming of the pink-seamed rock. The beast solidifies into a crude shape that resembles neither human nor kharatuk but a rough approximation of a 4-limbed being with either muscles, fat or both, bulking it out to proportions that would allow stone claws to do much damage.   A second effect builds above the Crossroads, more energy gathering but this time not lightning as before but matching the signatures that Khalil has observed the Abouelkassem tech using. The rock uses these first to sweep the nearby kilometres of land around itself, passing a fan of energy in a circular sweep over the land. The party assumes, or hopes, that this will be as friendly in nature as the interface seems to be with Murad, but they are wrong.   A third burst of power from the Crossroads disables the shuttle, locking out all systems by swamping them with a charge that won't dissipate. A fourth then pounds against the very spirits of the mystics themselves, with a strength never felt before. Blessed by the Icons, Masruq resists, sensing out to feel a power that is neither Icon nor Dark but with the seeming strength of both.   Khalil and Zarzur, not being so spiritually strong, suffer under the assault: Khalil is left with a frustration, as if every experiment he ever conducted ended inconclusively; Zarzur is left terrified, as if the Legion were right there to experiment on her once more. Between them, the mystics manage to restore a few of the shuttle's systems but it is clear they are at the mercy of the Crossroads should it choose to continue the attack.  

A compromise and a challenge

  Throughout the onslaught, Murad tries to persuade the rock that his friends are the rock's friends; if it would serve him then it should be free to help, not hinder them; but the rock is terrified of the party mystics. It sends the rock creature to attack them and stubbornly refuses to drop its attacks. In turn it tries to convince Murad that his mystic allies are not full of the pink energy makes up him and the rock in their drawing but constructed of, or filled by, a Dark void, lacking in energy and colour. Moreover, it is convinced their void will consume Murad too, and that it is only trying to protect him.   Their argument continues long enough that Kerman feels he must take action and he runs through the Crossroads corridors to see the rock creature dive into and merge with the sand and rock of the floor below, seemingly able to pass through it as a shark speeding through the water. With a running leap he lands in the disturbed sand, which roils up around him until he is arm's length from the beast, but at least stationary now.   Murad argues the rock until a compromise: it shows Murad two possible futures and gives him the feeling of a question of what might happen. In the first the rock creature attacks the mystics and they defeat it by using their void to destroy it. In the second the mystics still defeat their attacker but using only pink forces, never void. And the beast tries to turn to attack the shuttle again, though Kerman of course gets in the way...