WttSS session 53: 'In the Mind of Zarzur' - p1

Session report - Whispers to the Star Singer campaign

Written by Doctor Weather

General Summary

I ran this session as an interconnected double-encounter: Zarzur interacting with her own mindspace, whilst the party dealt with the consequences of her headpiece messing with their ship. As the two encounters allowed for intercommunication though, whilst the actions listed below came with a lot of back and forth between scenes, it's easy to write them up for later reference as separate.

Zarzur's mindscape

The theme of Zarzur's mindscape is Tron. Within this world Zarzur could sense the presence of herself spread through various locations at 'a distance', some near, some further away. When travelling, she engaged a simulated bike and moved towards a location but the location never so much got closer from a distance but always just felt like it was suddenly at different ranges: far, near, about to appear and there. Whenever she wanted to move to 'there' a place would then construct itself from the ground up around her. When she left, it deconstructed itself, people and all, back into the Tron landscape.

• A prison for the Portal Builder AI - a Zarzur dressed exactly as she was, as in her visions before - took the form of memories of her time growing up in the Arrca laboratories
• Her happy place was a garden
• Her views onto the real world were chasms, like the meme of a black hole drawn on a gravity plane but extending beyond 'far' to her left and right, impassable

Zarzur journeyed twice to the prison, either side of going to see what was going on the ship in the real world. The first time was the first thing she did, seeking out her own voice crying for help.

• The 'prison' was a lower floor of the Arrca labs, with stairs leading up and away from a corridor of rooms, one of which Zarzur just knew to be her own
• Scientists moved up and down taking readings onto tabulas but none saw her walking passed, as she had donned a Draconite chameleon suit
• In one door a figure wearing scientists robes took readings at an open door, through which came Zarzur's voice, asking for help
• The figure also shared Zarzur's body, though it was comprised of the blue lines of the landscape
• Sneaking up on the digital Zarzur, our Zarzur grabbed its arm but it had always known she was there and did not defend itself, just dematerialised its face and rematerialized it to look instead at Zarzur
• Inside the room, Zarzur saw the Portal Builder AI version of herself being dissolved into light by another line-drawn Zarzur
• Though she started a rescue by trapping the first line-drawn Zarzur in a cage, it was about now that the party tried to sedate her body in the real world and she had to leave to try and intervene, the line-drawn her simply waiting her out, as the drugs on her body seemed not to affect it

Reaching the chasm that showed an image of the ship's bridge around her body in the sky beyond the chasm, she saw that the bridges that would allow her to cross back to the real world were broken.
Here I think I made a mistake as a GM in not helping the players to understand my metaphor. I had planned to have Zarzur interact with this area to regain a way of speaking to the main party, or at least regaining control of an arm or something - I had considered perhaps by having Zarzur repair one of the bridges or just shouting over the chasm... In the end, Kerman communicated directly with the headpiece AI - the line-drawn Zarzurs - and the situation was resolved another way.
On the second trip to the prison, Zarzur came to rescue of the Portal Builder AI. It was here she met a little boy who said "I know a secret".

• By this point Kerman had the headpiece Zarzur completely distracted, so Zarzur ran in, scooped up the Portal Builder her and made a run for it
• The little boy was in the corridor when Zarzur returned, moving freely without being stopped or spoken to by anyone else there
• When he said "I know a secret", Zarzur asked to be shown it and the boy bade her follow him to the chasm over which a sky-image of the present-day Nasralleh could be seen

At the chasm beyond which Nasralleh could be seen, the boy indicated that Zarzur should try to cross it. In doing so she gained her mystic power of 'mind walker', choosing to enter the mind of the scientist Ormazd Nahanashah who was standing nearby.

• She asked if the distance across the chasm needed to be so far and the boy smiled
• Imagining the distance simply being smaller... the GM missed the chance to have her shrink the chasm to simply have her step over and used a daft flying moment instead - he regrets this and will use the reduction of the chasm in the future
• On board the command and control ship, Zarzur saw Nasralleh controlling a reduced Legion operation that was at the hexagonal chamber near the entrance to the City of Brass, still sending drones in for now but getting ready to launch the Harir 6th too

JUMP TO CONTENTS

On the bridge of the Caliban Crow

Zarzur's headpiece AI created an array of trouble for the PCs to deal with in the hope of freeing itself to communicate with Nasralleh.

• It first sat quietly, hoping the party would let it go about its sabotage without interference by:
• Turning off security in the stasis chamber
• Freeing the Legionary prisoners - and marmosets
• Overloading the stasis beds to prevent Zarzur being put in stasis
• Turning off security monitoring on the bridge
• Overloading the security systems across the ship so it all blew out without an easy repair option
• The headpiece also tried to get Kerman to let it go about its business of using the ships comms by telling him that if he didn't let it then it would have to make him - he said he like to see it try, so it set off the fire control system to hamper the PCs - and here the GM forgot that Kerman was Xinghur with the talents to operate freely on sand-swept Lubau, so Kerman was unaffected...
• The party did then manage to drug Zarzur's body but the headpiece combined Zarzur's own desire to re-engage with its control of her adrenaline to keep the body going
• Under restraint it then tried to use simple requests for comms access, though without revealing to whom a message would go, also biding more time
• With another hack of the engine room - combined with physical sabotage from Legionaries - the PCs were forced to send people to deal with a threatened engine breach - they sent Masruq and Khalil

Kerman stayed on the bridge with Zarzur's body during the combat that followed, bolstering Zarzur's internal battle with the headpiece. He appealed to the headpiece AI's sense of self, trying to get it to realise that it didn't need to serve Nasralleh but could operate for itself. Using intimidation to force it listen and speeches to encourage its independence he managed to enthral the AI long enough for Zarzur to rescue the Portal Builder AI. ... "This action will have consequences..."
JUMP TO CONTENTS

The ship's engine room

Masruq and Khalil ran to the engine room, first going passed the workshop to pick up some tools. There, they observed a terrified marmoset. Kerman remembered that the party had placed the monkeys in stasis but no-one twigged that this might also mean the Legionaries were also free. Fortunately the two active Legionaries rolled so poorly in combat that, even with surprise, the party's non-combatants fared very well. They were still injured though. The third prisoner was also free but had suffered a different kind of damage from Khalil's use of the Orb of Ghodar.

• Masruq downed a Legionary with some serious skill of the Al Sharaf blade, so good that it again asked him "is this what I should do?", this time using the broken Legionary's voice
• Khalil was grappled by the second Legionary but subsequently freed by Murad
• Before Murad could join them, the headpiece's final gambit was to nullify the gravity on the ship
• Murad still managed to use his halberd to free Khalil, pushing himself and the second Legionary into engineering
• Masruq was left free - floating still but free - to investigate the third Legionaries loud prayers to the Judge, as she used spare parts to smash up the ship's service station

JUMP TO CONTENTS

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

06 Aug 2022

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Contents

• General Summary
• Zarzur's mindscape
• On the bridge of the Caliban Crow
• The ship's engine room