Silver Lining:In Pitch Dark I Go Walking in Your Landscape
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| April 15, 2022 – Episode 1: In Pitch Dark I Go Walking in Your Landscape | ||
Characters Introduced
PCs
- Anton Florin Vasille - free spirited vagabond looking to see the universe
- Harris - a doctor with a mysterious criminal past.
- Ray aka U. Raynaud Tephford - A master mechanic; Charlie Daniels with a torque wrench.
- Seth Black - the new guy on board, and the ship's new pilot.
NPCs
- Silver Lining - The light freighter the PCs use to get around the stars
- John Carlos - Owner of the Silver Lining
Locations
- Arcturus Station - A massive space station of almost 250,000 people in the Arcturus system. The session starts here.
- Sargas - A planet where the PC's job will take them
Organizations
- Rabbit Couriers - A shipping and deep space communications contractor. They have a courier ship that's gone missing on its regular trip to Sargas.
Cold Open
Turn down lights, set bookshelf LED to "Twinkles" preset.
Begin reading this at the start of lyrics. The 5th paragraph should be timed with the song lyrics "there's always siren singing you to shipwreck".
You're floating in the cold void of space, between your ship and the broken remains of another. Debris is scattered all about, and you do your best to carefully ease your way through it. To make matters worse, as you approach the center of the debris field, you enter a bubble of vapors that swirl around the wreckage, and your zero-g suit's visor is covered in a thin layer of oil and water.
You finally get a good look at the wreckage in front of you - the back of the ship shows signs of a massive hull breach - from this distance you can't see a cause just yet, but a hole of this size would be enough to take out a ship - and its crew.
The crew - you can see the outline of something bobbing gently around, close to the opening. You're pretty sure it's a body, and not someone on EV or somone expecting to suddenly exposed to vacuum for that matter.
So there's your first obstacle, the body in the way. You steel yourself against the thought, fearing what you're going to find.
"Hey now," you hear your boss call over the comm, "be careful, there's always a siren singing in a shipwreck."
"Now you tell me" you think to yourself as enter the heaviest part of the debris field.
"Too dangerous to take the ship too close" is what you were told. Part of you wonders if maybe they're just hazing you or something. Muttering under your breath you finally get within an armlength of the hull and grabbing on toone of the many built-in hand holds as though your life depended on it. You attach a safety harness and let out a sigh.
"On the hull. Heading to inspect the opening."
"Opening!" a voice quips over the comm. "that's a hell of thing to call it."
You lift yourself across the ship's exterior to the hole - just wide enough for two people to barely squeeze through. A mangled corpse suddenly floats up into your helmet light. It's a gruesome sight, missing an arm, half the torso - what's left of the head is somehow attached still. That he body is frozen solid and not a pile of tepid goo is one small relief you can take away.
"Made contact. ID unknown. Deceased. From an explosion I guess."
"What are they wearing?"
"That's an odd question."
"No, it's not, what are they wearing."
"Uh... clothes?" you wince a little as you do your best to look but not LOOK. "Maybe... a tank top and shorts?"
You fumble a bit with the unfamiliar controls of the suit and the light on your helmet flashes brighter as you do your best to snap a photo, then gently push the body back into the ship for a better view inside.
You peer down into the opening, a black, inky darkness, and brighten your helmet lights. Despite having just pushed the corpse down there, the fresh light illuminating it still manages to startle you a bit. You probably won't get that image out of your head for a while.
"What part of the ship is that?"
"Donno" you mutter back. "I see computers and... blown off access panels. Holy shi-"
A warning alarm sounds over the helmet communicator
"FUCK! Contact. Coming up from the surface. 5 minutes out."
"Get back here now!" you hear panic in your boss' voice.
"What?"
"GET. BACK. HERE. NOW."
You scramble away from the derelict and fire your EV jets in the direction of your ship.
"Hey there, whoever you are. You turn over that pretty ship of yours or we'll have to blow it from under you. You have 3 minutes til we get there... so, surrent or we start shooting" a stranger calls out.
Scene 1 - Introducing The New Guy
Location - Arcturus Station
John Carlos sits before you, looking over the resume you provided. He is a large man with very short cut greying hair.
"Well, everything seems fine I guess. And Harris vouches for you, and we both know Harris is a tough guy to impress." He rubs his unshaven jowls and sighs. "Well, the pay is terrible and the work sucks, but... welcome to the crew. Do you have your own space suit?" you do not "Okay, then let's get you one.
The Silver Lining is currently docked at Arcturus Station, here to refuel, resupply and find work.
The station is a massive circular structure orbiting the star Arcturus, 37 Light years from earth. Since it was first built 30 years ago, a Hodge-podge of additional structures and modules have been added, creating a labyrinthine living space that holds almost 250,00 people. Only 3 jumps from Theta Boo Arcturus Station, all species of the United Worlds can be found here.
You follow John to from the docks to the open market. He walks laboriously with a cane through the crowded market place towards a ship with several different brands and styles of EVA suits.
The shopkeeper, a diminutive Macedonian looks up from a small computer console he has open on a workbench. He sets down his tools and calls out "Anything I can help you gentlemen with?"
John: Looking for a space suit.
Shopkeeper: I don't think I've got anything quite in your size, sir.
*record scratch sound*
Scene Break
Now is a good time to see if there's anything the PCs want to do/are looking for on Arcturus. Find out where they are, what they are doing and the kinds of things the would do when they show up on a station like this.
This is also the time for the PCs to introduce themselves, and for them to meet the new guy, and for the new guy to get situated and familiar with the ship. They are several weeks out of their last docking. During this time, John is checking around with people he knows in this area for job leads.
Scene 2 - Finding Rabbit Courier 13
A few hours later, John calls together the crew to brief them on a job he has found.
A Rabbit Couriers ship is two weeks overdue (so really, it's about a month or more late) in reporting in after what was supposed to be a 3 month round-trip circuit from Arcturus to Sargas, and then returning along a different route.
The Silver Lining has been contracted by the Rabbit Couriers to 1. find the ship, 2. render aid if necessary, 3. if the ship is a loss, they are to conduct recovery operations on the ship's Strong Box, along with any accessible computer core dumps, recovering any bodies, 4. performing a cursory investigation into cause and 5. leave behind a lagan buoy in the debris field order to mark the wreckage site as property of the Rabbit Couriers.
The PCs can choose one of two routes to go - following the original route the ship took, or going counter that route. Because interstellar communication is something that takes months, there are no good clues as to which would be the more efficient route to take.
The last communication the Company received was dated 2 months ago, which doesn't say much. Since it can take weeks for messages to make thier way back, and any communications on the return route would be carried by the returning vessel itself, it isn't unusual for a ship like this to have several months of operations 'in the dark' while it returned home.. This communication came via another mail/courier vessel that apparently encountered them. The contents of that communication, a manifest showing the crew, passengers and their origination and planned destination ports, as well as cargo and it's pickup and drop-off points can be found below:
Manifest:
Dt: 2353-06-11T23:33:05Z
DtCd: EUTC
Ship Detail:
Name: Rabbit Courier 13
Ship Model: Marsworks CX-3
Serial: CX17524CCSZX23
Owner: CourierWays PLC, London, UK Stellar, Earth
Registry: Alpha Centauri
Crew Detail:
Captain: Joseph Hunter
Executive Office: Sudhai Presad
Flight Engineer: Neema Juma
Flight Engineer: Zev Halkam
Load Master: Xun Lian
Load Master: Maddy Loren
Passenger Detail:
Passenger 1: Sayeed Mohammad
Embark: Arcturus
Disembark: Sargas
Passenger 2: Hanan Mohammad
Embark: Arcturus
Disembark: Sargas
Cargo Manifest:
100 lb Crate
Loaded: Stop 1
Destination: Arcturus
20 lb Box
Loaded: Stop 2
Destination: Arcturus
20 lb Box
Loaded: Stop 2
Destination: Sargas
10 lb Box
Loaded: Arcturus
Destination: Sargas
5 lb Box
Loaded: Arcturus
Destination: Sargas
3 lb Box
Loaded: Stop 3
Destination: Stop 5
1 lb Box
Loaded: Stop 3
Destination: Stop 5
Envelope
Loaded: Arcturus
Destination: Stop 5
Envelope
Loaded: Arcturus
Destination: Stop 6
Envelope
Loaded: Stop 2
Destination: Stop 7
Sargas is the fourth stop in the transit. Arcturus is stop 1 and stop 8. This communication, then, came some time after the ship had stopped at stop 3, but before making it to Sargas.
Some additional details the PCs could possibly find:
Personal messages send from members of the crew - this would involve somehow getting the info Arcturus' central mail processing servers. this would be Hard task to accomplish. There isn't much useful information, beyond a passenger saying they were excited to be getting to Sargas in a few days.
If the PCs go the same route the courier ship took, they would be able to intercept follow up messages from above, up until the ship reach Sargas. At Sargas they may Challenging be able to get in contact with the passengers who disembarked there. The passengers would comment that the crew was nice but didn't socialize with them much. They would also mention that while the trip was nice, the last few nights they had trouble sleeping because of knocking or banging sounds they could hear reverberating through the bulkhead of their room, which abutted the engine compartment. They told one of the flight engineers (they don't remember any names), but don't know what came of it.
In short, going the opposite direction of the origin flight would be the fastest option, but the PCs have no way (or proof right now) of knowing this. If they go that way, they can Challenging find messages from the ship showing it reached Sargas and dropped off it's passenger (in the form of follow-up manifests) but the ship goes dark after that.
If the PCs follow up Challenging on the ship model, the Marsworks CX-3, they will find it's a type of light courier ship built for these types of long-range deep-colony courier missions. The crew compliment is (relatively) small, and it has some passenger space as well. Further digging turns up a few news articles and engineering bulletins regarding recalls on these ships - they are prone to a structural failure on the H3 power plant that causes electrical arcing along the water cooling jacket surrounding the generator. This electrical charge in the coolant causes the water to electrolyze into oxygen and hydrogen bubbles, which build up to dangerous levels over hours. If the coolant is purged of these bubbles, one of these sparks can cause a deadly explosion. The first sign of one of these failures is a loud banging or knocking from the engine compartment from the electrical arc.
Once reaching the system just past Sargas, the group will be able to pick up the Debris field, in orbit over an uncolonized jungle planet, which leads to a question - who is going out to investigate the wreckage. Right now the PCs can see the ship has no power - in fact, if not for the debris accreted around the wreckage they might not have found it. No running lights, engine glow, not even an emergency beacon is broadcasting. There debris field surrounds the ship about a kilometer out, and a hole can be seen on the dorsal side of the vessel situated near the aft end. John doesn't want to take the Silver Lining too close at first, so it will park a km away while someone goes to take a closer look, which leads to the Cold Opening, and subsequently
Scene 2 - Pirate attack
A group of pirates are staked out, living in the long forgotten wreckage of a container/cargo ship that crashed on the planet below. They were able to pick up the signature of the Silver Lining, and likely wouldn't have attacked they had moved on. A ship like the Silver Lining moves a bit fast, and the pirate ships, which are about as sophisticated and as big as enclosed motorcycles, aren't the fastest. The pirates subsist off the planet and supplies they've been able to scrounge from the container ship wreckage. Ultimately they want to leave this place but don't have the means. They didn't have anything to do with the destruction of the Rabbit Courier ship, but did steal some things from it. But that's not important right now. Right now they want the Silver Lining.
| Pirate Attack Mooks | ||
| A group of about a dozen space pirates, their vehicles are modified asteroid mining vehicles, barely more than an enclosed motorcycle, refitted with guns. Thy will not fight to the death, instead running and retreating back to the planet after taking a few losses. | ||
| Mob Traits | Rating | |
| Swarm | ||
| Agile | ||
Scene 3 - Wreckage Investigation
After the pirate attack has been dealt with, the PCs can safely investigate the wreckage and begin salvation operations. Some details of what they will find, and challenges to overcome:
- The courier ship is without power. There is an external power bus on the ventral side of the vessel that can Easy be connected to draw power from the Silver Lining, so that the derelict will have power. If this is done, an automated emergency beacon will start to pulse, as well as particulates will slowly start to eject from the hole on the top of the ship, as the environment systems turn on and attempt to circulate fresh air. THis is also a hint that whatever took the ship out cut off the power supply and any backup systems.
- The ship has a door on the port side as well as a loading ramp aft that lead into the cargo area. Both are closed and locked, and without going inside (through the open hole) the doors can be hacked Hard to allow access through them once power has been restored. If a PC uses the hole to enter the ship, both doors can be opened from the bridge or cargo area, once power has been restored.
- If power hasn't been restored adding a complication Pitch Dark to any checks while attempting to do work within the ship isn't a bad idea.
- The inside of the ship has two levels
- A lower cargo level, the interior is unadorned, exposed metal, with hand holds and cargo attachment points and strapping built into the structure:
- About 10 feet high.
- Recessed in the wall next to the side door is an access ladder which leads up to the top deck. The two decks are separated by a small airlock system, meaning the top deck can be sealed away from the lower deck, allowing the lower deck to be exposed to vacuum, however the airlock system is currently opened. (This is not a malfunction).
- The cargo area is mostly empty, except for a large crate secured in the middle of the cargo space. The crate has been pried open but it's contents, some piece of industrial equipment, appears to be untouched.
- There is a Loadmaster's desk against the wall opposite the ramp. Here the most current cargo and passenger manifest can be found. See below (no passengers are listed). All items are missing, including the envelopes, except or the 100 lb Crate.
100 lb Crate Loaded: Stop 1 Destination: Arcturus 20 lb Box Loaded: Stop 2 Destination: Arcturus 10 lb Box Loaded: Sargas Destination: Arcturus 5 lb Box Loaded: Sargas Destination: Arcturus 3 lb Box Loaded: Stop 3 Destination: Stop 5 1 lb Box Loaded: Stop 3 Destination: Stop 5 Envelope Loaded: Arcturus Destination: Stop 5 Envelope Loaded: Arcturus Destination: Stop 6 Envelope Loaded: Stop 2 Destination: Stop 7
- The upper level is the operational level of the ship, and is where the crew & passenger quarters and facilities, as well as the engineering deck. This deck is decorated with clean white acrylic paneling.
- The flight deck, found all the way forward, has a single corpse partially strapped into the pilot's chair. The seat has a 4-point harness which is half-way undone. It appears as though the pilot was attempting to free himself when he died. The pilot is Executive Oficer Sudhai Presad
- Attached to the flight deck is a kitchen, utilities and bathroom area (this is where the ladder from the below deck comes up).
- Attached to the utility area is the living quarters, 6 small bedrooms total with a central hallway. In the hallway is a corpse, Zev Halkam, a Cydonian along with an unopened toolbox.
- One bedroom, the captain's quarters, contains the corpse of Joseph Hunter, ship's captain.
- One bedroom, the Executive Officer's quarters, is empty.
- One bedroom has a several bunks in it for crew. It is empty. (but it looks like the crew was using individual bedrooms while there were no passengers on board. Only if there were passengers would they start bunking in the same bedroom)
- One bedroom, a passenger quarters, has the body of Load Master Xun Lian in bed still.
- One bedroom, also passenger quarters, has the body of the other Load Master Maddy Loren, dead of a also still in bed still.
- The last bedroom is empty
- A doorway leads from the living quarters to the engineering area. The door is twisted in the bulkhead it normally sits within, and needs to be pried open.
- The engineering is a bit of a disaster zone. The corpse is still here, floating around in zero-g if power hasn't been restored. This is what remains of Neema Juma,flight engineer, who was woken up by the loud electrical discharges coming from the engine room, and had come to investigate. She had called for Zev to come help, and was trying to remove the heat shielding around the coolant tank when a spark caused the built up hydrogen gas to blow. The explosion was powerful enough to blow a hole out the top of the ship, and killed her instantly
- The explosion also cut the power, as well as severing the power lines coming attached to the backup system, which accounts or the normal safety systems (pressure bulkheads that should close automatically, no emergency becon) kicking in.
- The ship's Strong Box would have been located here, locked in a protective cage. The cage door has been cut open and the Strong Box removed.
- Investigation Challenging of the power plant can give a clue to the reason it failed.
- Investigation Easy of the computer systems is only possible once the power has been restored. In short, there's no indication of much issue until a few days before the flight reached Sargas; when the passengers complained of loud noises from the engine room. Zev and Neema attempted to figure out the issue, but couldn't find one. It wasn't until Neema took the room next to the engine room that she started to hear the sounds herself.
- All of the crew members died rather quickly from acute hypoxia caused by exposure to vacuum, except for Neema who died from her wounds.
- A lower cargo level, the interior is unadorned, exposed metal, with hand holds and cargo attachment points and strapping built into the structure:
- The PCs need to collect the corpses (the Silver Lining has cold storage where they can be kept), gather up info from their investigation, and move the crate to the Silver Lining and dropping off the lagan buoy, they will be done here.
Scene 4 - Pirates Planet-side
To recover the Strong Box and missing packages, they will have to find the pirates planet-side. The pirates have made their camp in the debris field caused by the crash of a container ship several decades ago. The PCs should come up with some way of approaching/infiltrating/attacking their camp. It consists of several containers stacked on top where they stow their ships and use as living quarters. One of the stacks has a heavy weapon on top the pirate captain, Harman, will use to defend the camp if needed.
If the PCS sneak up to the camp without being detected, They will stumble upon the scene of Harman attempting to bring the remaining pirates in line. He's facing a minor revolt after taking a beating from the Silver Lining
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Scene 4 - Return to Arcturus
The trip back to Arcturus is uneventful, but gives the PCs plenty of time to do extra physical investigation on the remains (to find cause of death of they wish, though this is not strictly necessary), as well as finding information they didn't on the initial trip (for example, they recall of the ship and it's known mechanical issues)
After getting back to Arcturus John will ask the PCs to bring the information to the contacts at the Rabbit Couriers while he handles turning the remains over to the local authorities.
The two (Rabbit Couriers Actuarial Rabbit Couriers Executive ) contacts will listen quietly to the information and the Executive chimes in "So you say there were pirates who attacked the ship?" If the PCs push back, they make it clear this isn't a negotiation, and ask for the materials. They will simply point out that any official investigation still needs to be done, and that letting any details out would mean breach of contact, and not receiving payment.
John's opinion on this: If the players feel strongly enough about releasing the real details of the wreck, he's ok with with that. He points out that he's the one who isn't going to get paid - the Silver Lining has enough money to cover its expenses for now, and the PCs pay was going to come out of the fee from The Rabbit Couriers.
If they PCs do wish to release the info, John has a contact with a local reporter, Scrim Mi'kiloj , a short macedonian with chestnut colored hair,who has lived on Arcturus most of her life. She is dedicated to rooting out corruption wherever possible, and would lap up this kind of information. Scrim is happy to meet the PCs at her favorite dining establishment, an 'earth cuisine' diner. It doesn't take much convincing of Scrim to get her to run a news article in the Arcturus Mail, especially after looking over the details. She recognizes a name - the captain's, as someone she knew back when she was a war correspondent during her younger days.
Wrap up and Reward
For successfully completing the mission:
If the PCs chose to instead release the information to Scrim, and expose a possible cover up of the real cause of the wreck, they will gain Scrim Mi'kiloj as a possible contact they can call upon later (assuming it makes sense, however they will forfeit the reward.
| Musical Inspiration | |
|---|---|
| Song: | There There 
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| Artist: | Radiohead |
| Album: | Hail to the Thief |
| Listen online | |
 Spotify
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