Silver Lining:In Pitch Dark I Go Walking in Your Landscape

<episodenavigation> name=In Pitch Dark I Go Walking in Your Landscape date=4/15/2022 episodenumber=1 </episodenavigation>

Characters Introduced

PCs

1. Anton Florin Vasille - free spirited vagabond looking to see the universe
2. Harris - a doctor with a mysterious criminal past.
3. Ray aka U. Raynaud Tephford - A master mechanic; Charlie Daniels with a torque wrench.
4. Seth Black - the new guy on board, and the ship's new pilot.

NPCs

1. Silver Lining - The light freighter the PCs use to get around the stars
2. John Carlos - Owner of the Silver Lining

Locations

1. Arcturus Station - A massive space station of almost 250,000 people in the Arcturus system. The session starts here.
2. Sargas - A planet where the PC's job will take them

Organizations

1. 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.

Musical Inspiration
Song:	There There
Artist:	Radiohead
Album:	Hail to the Thief
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