WttSS session 48: 'A Kharatuk Welcome'

Session report - Whispers to the Star Singer campaign

Written by Doctor Weather

General Summary

GM's notes to self:
Without these reports being properly read, they're being used more as a reference to keep future plot consistent than as a story, so:

• Challenge 1: 1000 words max
• Challenge 2: write a report, not a narrative

Things I learned from the last report:

• Points of note could be merged into one section for easy future reference
• For section format: keep the summary and then bullet details but commit to the idea of a fuller short summary and keeping the events to key points

Last time

• The Portal Builder AI declared enough was enough and commenced a massive energy build up in and around the hexagonal chamber
• The PCs were forced through the portal, whilst the Xinghur and Nasralleh's Legionaries were forced to retreat back into the mountains
• Jihan forced Murad out of stasis to deal with another AI, this one kharatuk, come to greet the PCs

Flashback: what about the Legionary prisoners and the marmosets?

GM note: I totally forgot about these as I had the PCs running for stasis, so we dealt with it in flashback:

• The 3 Legionary prisoners were deemed to have always been in stasis, the Caliban Crow lacking any better form of containment room
• Khalil used his cursed flute to lure the 2 Yazdan marmosets into a stasis pod and slammed the door shut on them
• Zarzur succeeded a Medicurgy roll to make sure the stasis was right for them

Tracking note: 153 words already...

Something happened on the way through the portal

Jihan had to wake the party. They weren't waking by themselves, as for some reason the ship's stasis protocols had failed to kick in. Though the cause of this fault was not fully established, related system failures were soon discovered across the ship, some more serious than others. All the PCs were pulled safely from stasis but the action of doing so triggered further degradation of the stasis pods through a power surge.

• The power surge that broke one of the stasis pods turned it to ash
• Life support, stasis and personal comms had power but the rest of the ship was turned off
• An energy was pervading the ship, similar to the energy that lingered after the Crossroads' attack on the Yazdan shuttle
• During the battle described below, the power was restored to the ship and the energy dissipated - normal power was restored
• When power and control was restored, the fusion drive blinked back into full operation without needing to go through a standard hour's-length build up
• All weapons systems - ship and personal, including the spirit rays - were rendered inoperative
• Their internals had been disconnected but left together as a collection of parts
Primitive weapons, with no moving parts, remained unaffected
• Murad's kharatuk blades were unaffected

Murad was the first to wake and did discover the faults in the system. He had a short conversation with the projected image of a kharatuk AI, learning of the kharatuk outpost on the cliff face overlooking the ship's current location. Deciding to head there to find help, he also witnessed a flying, spirit creature battering against the outpost. It was at this point that Jihan also woke Zarzur to help out with waking the other PCs.

• The kharatuk was taller than Murad and had a different distribution of limbs compared to Murad
• Murad's extra arms are based in the middle of his extended back, closer to his upper arms
• The kharatuk's extra arms were more equidistant from his upper arms and feet
• The kharatuk was taller again than Murad and stood upright, despite the legends talking of a being that walked on four legs
• "Light of the Icons shield you and the systems that hold this message in readiness for more of us that come"
• It gave a warning about predecessor safeguards - "as you will likely have already noticed"
• They seek out and neutralise technology deemed dangerous to the valley's operations
• (A) tech and weapons are disabled, as are any vehicles that could be a danger to the valley's buildings
• They are also a target for the valley's clean up and maintenance robots that take such for reclamation and re-processing
• "Head to our monitoring station on the cliff face and have your technology and registered as safe to use as we have done - your blade will already be recognised as one of our own but the remainder of your technology will be quickly targeted"

Tracking note: 638 words

Cleaners and alien life forms

Taking full stock of the situation, the party found themselves up against two three problems: the lockdown of their ship, the ghostly creature battering the kharatuk outpost and an inbound Portal Builder cleaner robot. By this time, Murad had successfully climbed up to the outpost and activated the systems inside it, with the help of the AI projection. Here he found out how to influence the inbound cleaner robot and the valley's defence systems. For the most part the party left the spirit creature alone, Murad only needing to fend it off once. At the end of the encounter, the spirit creature was exorcised and the robot went away of its own accord, having completed its task.
Kharatuk outpost and systems

• 3 towers of the same type the party saw used as a Seeker Sanctuary in the Nekatra Mountains adorned the cliff face to the right of the portal
• The creature battered the leftmost tower, allowing Murad to climb safely up the rock to the rightmost one
• Once it crawled its way over to try and prod him with some tentacles but he cut the end off one and the creature withdrew
• The tower was abandoned of small items and decoration but retained stone carvings in the shape fixed furnishings that might be seen elsewhere in the Horizon
• Murad was able to activate a stone console, at which point it produced holo-images necessary to give him display screens and a 'touch' interface
• Murad was able to use the kharatuk hack of the Portal Builder technology to go through the PCs' equipment and mark it as not for clean out
• Safe:
• Caliban and the Caliban Crow
• Zarzur's headpiece
• Al Sharaf blade; Orb of Ghodar; cube from the desert; Dana's mystic compass
• Spirit glasses
• Legion exo suits; mercurium dagger; thermal pistol
• Masruq's database and translator unit; Khalil's spirit traps and advanced tools
• And anything else the GM forgot about...
• Ran out of time:
• The shards of funky crystal - subsumed by the robot
• Parts of a chair of spiritual energy transfer - subsumed by the robot
• Spirit rays - but these were ignored as having been disabled already
• Note: nothing has yet been done about marked things as not dangerous, just as 'not for clean-up'
• The kharatuk blades are already marked as safe on both fronts
• The system reported an energy problem before the operation was completed, saying it could continue but a catastrophic overload was getting more and more likely, so Murad shut down the whole system to protect it

Spirit creature

• A floating creature of many segments, where the segments seemed to have different biological purposes and somewhat randomly placed
• See-through like a jellyfish, sporting the same hanging tentacles
• Flatter than a jellyfish and shaped more like a woodlouse overall: 10m long and 2m wide
• Recognised by the kharatuk sensors as 'local wildlife'
• Its cries - not identified with a particular emotion as yet - were high-pitched to most people but uncomfortably triggered Masruq's inner senses
• Masruq recognised it as a beast not a demon but was nonetheless able to exorcise it and sent it fleeing back out over the valley below's forest-scape
• The creature was visible in the spirit glasses through the lens that showed the Deep Desert winds and one other lens

Cleaner robot

• A flying sphere of advanced mercurium reminiscent of the kharatuk-blades' material
• Projected several tentacles to attempt to interact with what it was to clean up
• Broke the rules of momentum and inertia in its movements and travelled at high speeds without any obvious means of propulsion
• When damaged it appeared to be able to retain 'splashed' metal within a gravitational-like pull around itself until the pieces could be reabsorbed
• Khalil and Zarzur pulled the advanced components out of 2 Legion exo suits to use on a catapult as distraction material to lure the robot away from Kerman
• Kerman engaged the device in full melee
• He actually managed to hold his own and resisted all its attempts to take his armour and equipment
• He only managed one good hit in return but, calling out "betcha no-one's ever done this before" as he swung his mace, it did hit hard enough to stun the device, even if it fully healed straight away afterwards
• He was correct that no-one had done so before at least
• Also, the stun did give the party a few more moments to mark their equipment as safe

Tracking note: 1407 words
...I like this style of report but next time I'll try to be more concise with it

34th day of the Deckhand
Campaign: Contract: Whispers to the Star Singer
Characters: PC group: Whispers to the Star Singer
Timeline: Campaign timeline: Whispers to the Star Singer

Campaign

Whispers to the Star Singer (concluded)

Protagonists

Report Date

15 May 2022

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Contents

• General Summary
• Last time
• Flashback: what about the Legionary prisoners and the marmosets?
• Something happened on the way through the portal
• Cleaners and alien life forms