| Date, CC61 | Events | Session |
|---|
| Gambler, 24th | Caliban Crow reaches Ghodar after 1 1/3 days flight | 1 |
|---|
| 25th | Party stopps overnight on Ghodar Station (+6 hours, |) | 1 |
| 26th | Party explores the area around the target valley and rests overnight before entering (+6 hours, ||) | 2 |
| 27th | After their investigation of the target valley they return to Ghodar Station and stay overnight (+6 hours, |||) | 3, 4 |
| 29th | Party stays overnight on Ghodar with inhabitants of a Watcher Village after rescuing them from a nekatra horde (+6 hours, ||||) | 5, 6, 7 |
| 33rd | 4 days journey to Abouelkassem asteroid and part of the day spent there 'taking care of business' | 8, 9, 10 |
| 37th | 4 days back to Ghodar with a small stop off at the star of Ghodar to drop off an evil sorcerer spirit | 11 |
| GM note: there's supposed to be an 'extended rest period' here at the end of each segment but I'd lost track of the calendar - no ill game effect though, as the PCs joined a party at Bakhtiyar Yazdan's house, which could well have been part of a rest day... | |
| 37th | Party ends the day at Bakhtiyar's (+6 hours, |) | 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 |
| The Founding | Khamzi is freed on the day of 'The Founding', giving new meaning to the holiday on Ghodar (+6 hours, ||) | 16 , 17, 18, 19, 20 |
|---|
| Deckhand, 1st | Caliban Crow leaves Ghodar and takes a 1 1/3 day journey to its star | 20 |
|---|
| 2nd | Party drops Avihu into the star of Ghodar | 20 |
| 3rd | Caliban Crow returns to Ghodar after 1 1/3 days journey | 21 |
| 4th | Caliban Crow is given over to the care of the Yazdan household, which flies it to Ghodar Station for repairs and where secret work on fixing Caliban can begin - repairs will take a 9-day, completing on the 13th (2 extra Coriolis days for a Ghodar 9-day) ; a true estimate of the repair time and cost for Caliban itself will be ready at this time - full repairs could take a lot longer
The party takes one of Bakhtiyar Yazdan's shuttles out over the nekatra mountains in search of Seekers | 21 |
| 5th | The party spends a Ghodar day taking care of business after finding a Seeker who'd escaped a Legion strike on their sanctuary: the party mystics get a lessons in mysticism whilst the others return to the Seeker santuary to liberate some artifacts before the Legion can stumble across them (+6 hours, |||) | 22 |
| 6th (and effectively the 7th) | The party meets with representatives of one of the Xinghur desert tribes, the meeting arranged through Nuha Mifsud in return for releasing her from Colonial Agency blackmail; at the meeting the party agrees to deal with the Abouelkassem spirit-research facility on Ghodar, once and for all, and if things go well will be invited to join the Xinghur as they head into the deep desert to the City of Brass
After the meeting the party investigates the Xinghurs' Crossroads location and spends the night (+6 hours, ||||) | 23, 24, 25 |
| 8th | The party infiltrates the 'Valley of Madness' under the guise of a Foundation science team
They free the spirits trapped in the abandoned Abouelkassem laboratories, destroying the facility with Xinghur mining explosives as they leave
On the way out they rescue 3 Seeker initiates from the Legion
The party then spends the night at the village beneath the Northern Falls, dropping off the rescued initiates with the Seeker Souhaila (+6 hours, |) | 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 |
| 9th | Contacting friends in The Oasis starport, the party leaves advanced computer parts for transport up to Ghodar Station for Caliban's repair
Party heads to the Crossroads, the meeting place of the desert tribes and interacts with its AI | 32, 33, 34 |
| 10th-12th |
- Returning to the Yazdan household, the party gets some rest, only briefly interrupted by learning that the Black Sparrow is there with them, but she gets away
- Masruq schmoozes the court of Juldizin Demalisi and arranges to meet Khamzi on the 13th
- Party speaks to Khamzi: they get the political lie of the land in Juldizin Demalisi; Khalil and Khamzi exchange knowledge on Abouelkassem field theory
- Yazdan engineers fly the Caliban Crow down to Ghodar before the Harir arrives and its interference blocks Ghodar Station operations and communications
- Story of the Princess Who Lost Her Heart told to a crowd at the palace of Juldizin Demalisi; recorded and broadcast by the reporter Samala Hafi-Joahn
- Party makes a deal with the Black Sparrow: in return for Zarzur removing her hack from the Black Sparrow's systems, she tells the PCs what she knows about Professor Nasralleh, ARRCA and their connection to the PCs, particularly Zarzur - whom Nasralleh refers to as The Key - and Murad
| 35, 36, 37 |
| 13th-15th |
| 38 |
| 16th | - Caliban Crow heads to meet the Great Caravan on the edge of Deep Desert
| 38 |
| 17th-22nd | - The party fights off a Legion attack on the Great Caravan
- During this time the Demon Ship would have arrived at the site of the destroyed Abouelkassem facility in Yesheriti Diri and had time to make it on to Ghodar...
- The Great Caravan makes it to Ghodar's City of Brass mountain range
| 39, 40, 41 |
| 22nd | - Zarzur and Kerman capture a Legionary spying on the Great Caravan
- Murad, Khalil and Masruq make it to the gates of the City of Brass proper
(+6 hours |)
| 42 |
| 23rd | - Zarzur and Kerman destroy the Legion assault ship that was part of the force following them using Khalil's lightning canon but in doing so overload the mountain's lightning system
- Murad redirects energies from the mountains outside the City of Brass into the engines of the Harir 5th's ships, destroying them all
- The Great Caravan reaches the entrance to the City of Brass and makes a defensive camp nearby, for safety not going into even the hexagonal chamber at this time
- The party investigates the portal chamber leading to the City of Brass and is ambushed by Nasralleh's forces: he threatens to attack the Great Caravan unless Zarzur opens the door for him; Khalil turns the Orb of Ghodar on the Legionaries
- Nasralleh orders the Harir 5th to attack the Great Caravan and they fight to a standstill: the Xinghur suffer heavy losses but so do the Harir 5th; 213 Xinghur are killed with another 54 wounded and they lose around 40 vehicles, including 4 large crawlers; the Harir 5th is all but wiped out and any surviving Legionaries either return to join the 6th or are lost in the mountains
- The party defeats the Legion strike teams in the portal chamber and repels Yochanan when he appears, opening the poral to the City of Brass in the process
- As the Harir 6th and the Great Caravan move up on the now open portal they catch each other in a firefight
- The overall damage to the City walls and surroundings causes the City to defend itself, forcing the Harir 6th and Great Caravan to retreat and the party to enter stasis and jump through the portal
| 43, 44, 45, 46, 47 |
| 34th | - Jihan wakes the party, as they have been stuck in stasis for 11 Coriolis days and the system wasn't going to fix itself - Zarzur manages to pull people out safely, though 1 bed was lost to an unknown corruption that turned it to ash
- The Caliban Crow has been set down on the other side of a portal, on a ledge overlooking a forested valley wherein the atmosphere is slightly too blue
- The crew quickly discover that all non-primitive weapon technology has been tidily disassembled by Portal Builder science - a technology that also removes Kerman's capability to commit violence when the party experiments with him firing a rifle
- Murad receives an invite to kharatuk towers that monitor the valley by the towers AI system which seems to be suffering from the same corruption that affected the Caliban Crow's stasis beds
- A Portal Builder sphere of mercurium arrives to confiscate advanced technology and anything it deems 'a danger to the experiment' - the party rushes to use the kharatuk hacks to add some of the gear to a 'safe' list, losing only the shards of funky crystal and the parts of a chair of spiritual energy transfer - all subsumed by the robot
- The party's gear is now safe from confiscation, though what's dangerous to the experiment has not yet been tackled, trapping the Caliban Crow on the ledge and forcing grav-bike usage to remain below the tree canopy
- The party makes contact with the Great Caravan again through Masruq's system-wide comms gear, learning the mountain the other side of the portal rearranged itself, pushing Xinghur and Legion back away from the portal and establishing a new labyrinth in the way of accessing it
- In the valley the party discovers spouts of mercurium springing up from the ground and a host of ethereal plants and animals living naturally amongst the trees with their corporeal cousins
- Masruq cleanses the kharatuk towers of their corruption after confirming it as the remnants of Yochanan's presence but the same explosive exorcism resulted as was seen at the temple in Juldizin Demalisi when they freed Khamzi, destroying the tower containing monitoring data of the Poral Builder experiments
- During the cleansing, Masruq and Kerman were overcome by the Icons' calm, feeling the presence of the Traveller - this later caused problems as Jihan claimed the aura harmful to her people - Masruq relinquished his calm but Kerman did not and Jihan warned her people would not be happy - djanna then started appearing across the ship
- After securing Murad's promise that he'd protect the information from the First and Second Horizons, the kharatuk AI agreed to let Murad download its databanks to the Caliban Crow
- Murad and Kerman took a late evening grav-bike ride out towards the kharatuk fabrication tower and saw first-hand the damage done there by Yochanan
- The party experiments with the power cube given to it as a present by the Deep Desert and broadcasts the Plantation Owner's Daughter out over the City of Brass
- Zarzur's headpiece tries to take over the ship, instigated by Nasralleh's first drone coming through the portal, but is stopped by Zarzur and Kerman
- Murad and Masruq defeat the Legionary prisoners previously held in stasis when the headpiece let them out and destroyed the stasis beds
| 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 |
| 35th | - The Legion form a beachhead on the entrance ledge to the City of Brass and prepare to move out further
- They set up a network of drones across the valley and install a communication hub that allows the Harir to scan the City of Brass valley - the PCs interfere with the drone network, destroying 2 drones and slowing the pace of the Legion movement
- The party rescues their prisoner legionaries from assault by hungry djanna and then free the Legionaries on the ramp leading up to the entrance ledge - the Legionaries are taken unconscious so they can't return to the Caliban Crow
- The party makes its way to the waterfall and passes the Portal Builder locks to enter the experiment caves beyond the falls - they retreat before causing any trouble for the guardian rock monsters
- The party gets Zarzur's headpiece AI to agree to move into one of Khalil's tabulas
- The party re-enters the waterfall and heads to the operations chamber
Portal Builder experiments
- The party battles Yochanan in the waterfall's operations chamber and in mirror space, all the while seeing his corrupting energies disassemble the Portal Builder AI therein
- The AI sacrifice themselves by putting all their energy into downloaded the Portal Builder experiment data into Zarzur's headpiece, with her permission, after which they are destroyed in the battle
- The party later analyse this data to discover that the Portal Builders were investigating immortality, specifically why the mind or spirit still seems to degrade even in an immortal body
- Their experiments into the nature of life in the valley had failed and they were attempting to reset Ghodar system to study the evolution of the beginning of life - Yochanan's damage to the system in standby would have left the energies to restart a solar system go out unchecked if not brought under control
Yochanan and the djinn
- Yochanan corruption of mirror space in the waterfall sent the energies throughout the Portal Builder system, initiating its collapse
- He is then captured by the party and offered to the djinn in negotiations
- A surprised Jihan gets to clear her final favour to the party in negotitaions between djinn and humans:
- The djinn will stabilise the Portal Builder experiments and prevent them from reworking Ghodar system
- They will move the valley into their own world, preserving plant and animal life there, and keep the Portal Builder wonders for their own home - humans will all leave and the djinn will do their best to hide the valley from future foolish explorers
- Jihan will provide Zarzur's 'sister' with a mercurium body
- Her people will cure the 4 sorcerors in the system, the demon ship and by association the spirit of Niv trapped within it, allowing them to be collected by the Lady of Tears - she does this only on the assurance from Kerman's communion with the Traveller that the sorcerers will not escape judgement, the Icons will carry this out
- The PCs will take the responsibility of removing Nasralleh and the Legion from the valley - the djinn could kill them all but this is an unnecessary stain on their souls - Jihan will fix the party's stasis pods to allow them to portal away
- A consequence of the negotiation would be the removal of chain lightning from Ghodar, preventing human colonies there from using it as a power source and forcing them to update their lightning-bug farming - that rellied on the lightning - to some artifical method but this was considered a reasonable cost
- A diplomatic channel would be left open between Jihan and her people and Masruq and whomever he determined to be his people within Ghodar in the future (potentially the humanite colony the party had come to establish, the Jangahir and the Xinghur tribes already here) - Masruq to determine this and 'put his name to it' in the days to come
Kharatuk AI
- Khalil takes an inert sphere from the waterfall, which later turns out to be an excellent place to store the kharatuk AI that need to leave their monitoring station before Nasralleh's operatives remove the computer cores for later study
Finale
- The djinn take the valley, cure the 4 sorcerers, the demon ship and Niv and give Zarzur's 'sister' a body
- The Ghir-3 mining platform retains some corruption and the demon ship is still out there - as a djinn ship...?
- The Legion escape their contract through the 'stupidity clause' and return the Seekers to Juldizin Demalisi
- A shamed and humiliated Nasralleh is returned to Coriolis
- Check out WttSS session 61 - The Final Finale for the party epilgoues
| 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61 |
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