Session 2: The Carinae (Pt. I)

The four of you stand at the entrance to a hexagonal shuttle, parked at the somewhat dilapidated spaceport on the outskirts of the city of Highport on Niner Moon. You are responding to an advertisement for crew members you found on a job board in a dingy bar called the Mucky Duck. You, Lomion, and you, Kriskain, are searching for the same person, a mysterious half-orc wearing a ruby amulet, although for very different reasons. Val and Gal, you two are both looking for a way off-planet, also for very different reasons, and joined forces with Lomion and Kriskain in the Mucky Duck. Together you’ve fought a pack of kobold bandits. Kriskain, you have in your possession kobold meat because you’re curious to the point of apparently eating sapient species?

  The shuttle surprises you, as passenger ships rarely have shuttles. That said, they are more common in the outer quadrants where spaceports aren’t guaranteed. Val, you know that shuttles are common amongst smugglers, intelligence, military and diplomatic vessels, and Kriskain, Lomion and Gal, you’ve all seen them on explorer and settler vessels.

  Before you stands a uniformed gnome the colour of verdigris (ie the greenie colour of weathered copper), looking very, very unimpressed. Unlike most gnomes you’ve met, he has a thin beard which is braided. Moments ago, although it feels like many, many months, you introduced yourself to him.

  “Ugh, tall people.” He spits on the ground. You hear another voice, inside the shuttle and out of sight, snap, “Sir, really. We need all the help we can get.”

  The first voice says, "You deal with them then.”

  A dragonborn woman emerges from the depths of the ship. She wears clothes that approximate the gnome’s uniform, but were clearly not made specifically for that purpose. It looks like they’ve been dyed and modified. She’s got two huge ridged horns that run along the top of her skull, and her frilled ears are full of piercings. When she talks, you can see her tongue is pierced as well. She’s sapphire blue. She smiles a little at you and holds out her hand.

— Session introduction

  The party are invited to board the shuttle by Meritt, who advises them to strap in. Oroton pilots them to the Carinae, which is an unpleasant trip for most involved. Gal is the only person to watch through the window as the shuttle approaches to dock, and sees the ship isn't in the best condition. They think they see a flicker of movement on the damaged side of the ship.

  Once aboard, Meritt leads them to the medical bay via a convoluted route, despite the fact the hangar seems to connect directly to it. Lomion gets his face stepped on by Oroton when trying to work out where the asshole is going ("up" is about all he deduces). The party quickly realise that the ship is in a state of disrepair by the medical bay's scratched floors and lack of any real equipment. Oh, and the huge patched hole in the side of the hull. That too. The hatch connecting the hangar to the med bay is too damaged to be of any use. Also, Val tries every single door she comes across, but only one is unlocked - the one leading to the Supply division, which the party have to traverse anyway when Meritt leads them down to the mess hall. They very briefly meet Theodrik.

  In the mess, the party meet the ship's only surviving engineers, Adriella and Gillotti, as well as the ship's cook, Karida. The party are told in no uncertain terms to avoid doors with white chalk crosses above them, because those doors could well lead into the void of space, as about a third of the ship is missing. Meritt splits divvies the party up: Gal and Kriskain with the engineers to conduct repairs, Lomion to the bridge to relieve the helmsgnome, and Val with Meritt to do the work of about thirty.

  Val interrogates Meritt while they inventory the armoury (one of the locked doors) and do supply runs because the DM can't for the life of them remember their military days. She fails to nick some weapons. She discovers that the gnomes' supply of big weapons were all lost in whatever happened to the ship.

  Lomion goes on a power trip as he works the helm, keeping the ship in orbit around Niner Moon until Oroton reappears with the navigator, Fekitoa. Lomion has a very weird sexuality crisis about the new, drunk, elfish gnome. His power trip continues after Oroton gives the order to make course for Terminus Station; he effortlessly opening Dimension Door and it's wonderful. He manages to get a fair bit of classified information out of the inebriated Fekitoa, including the fact the ship was recently attacked by "an aboleth but waaaay bigger and space".

  Gal and Kriskain play with some power tools and blowtorches for a while, and then are sent off to work. They quickly realise that, being neither of them gnome-sized, the space suits they were provided with are inadequate, to say the least. They head to the kitchen looking for, for some reason, garbage bags, and find Karida, who offers to fix them up the way he fixed up Meritt's approximation of the Science Corps uniform. He leads them up to Supply and gathers the materials he needs, then shoos them off while he works his magic.

  The Lawful Duo decide to check out the bridge, but then realise they could also go....up and find out where Oroton initially went. They do that. They break open a door at the top and find themselves in a laboratory they weren't shown on their tour of the ship. The laboratory is comprehensive, and they find themselves in the biological sciences part, and quickly jump into the lab with rocks in it instead, which they assume is the geology lab. They keep exploring and find themselves in a corridor which they determine to be outside the kitchen, although they can't find a way into the kitchen. Instead, they find the corridor leads to a dead end into space, with the vacuum of the void kept at bay by a purple wall of magic. Gal sees that the wall goes beyond the edge of the corridor and breaks through a damaged door with a white cross on it.

  The Lawful Duo find themselves in half a menagerie, filled with broken cages, most which seem to have been damaged in the hull breach. Gal sees the flicker of movement again, but Kriskain is the one to spot the creature, which probes them with telepathy and tries a psychological attack, but doesn't approach them. Kriskain thinks it looks like a baby Beholder, but Gal disagrees, thinking it looks more like a Lesser Beholder. They skedaddle and return to the lab.