Captain's GLoG - Session 10
My micro-campaign group continues to run roughshod through Desert Moon of Karth by Joel Hines. We're using a homebrewed scifi GLoGhack. You can find our previous session here. As ever, steer clear if you want to stay perfectly spoiler free on the source material.
Following the Ghost
The crew was sneaking across the Dunes towards the gates of Larstown under cover of darkness. They were:
- Captain Belee Vanda - ex-politician, now smuggler and bounty hunter.
- Hora Tilly - vagabond and explorer.
- Associate June - rebellious and expert bureaucrat.
Lambro Das stayed back to guard the Condor with their passenger, Dr. Fayed (their player being unavailable).
The plan was simple: the crew would use the chaos caused by the Lady in White, the incandescent ghost they had encountered across Karth, to infiltrate town. Hora would duck into Dr. Fayed's clinic to recover a stash of wigoy powder and potentially a sample of the fresh wigoy they had killed recently. The rest of the party would approach the manor and finally kill Reverend Oboku - the man responsible for their long stay on Karth.
As the crew approached the main gate, they saw that it was guarded by two MEF marines. They debated sending someone to cause a distraction or undermining a wall on the far side of the compound, but they didn't need to. They heard gunfire from the direction of the governor's compound and the two guards ran inside the gate to investigate.
At the Clinic
The crew split outside Dr. Fayed's clinic. June and Belee going north to loop through the hagfish farm. Hora ducked in through the saloon-style doors.
The clinic looked like it had been ransacked. Broken glass covered the floor. Cots and carts were scattered around. Hora noted that the locked medical cabinet at the back of the main room was still intact, though turned on its side.
She turned on a flashlight and moved into the backroom where Fayed kept their lab equipment. It looked badly dented, battered. The clear pod where the android had preserved the wigoy corpse was cracked open and empty.
Hora heard a wet plop from behind her as something huge dropped from the ceiling. Instantly she was slammed from behind and thrown onto the centrifuge in the center of the room. She turned to see the strange wigoy, still light blue with regenerated tissue towering over her.
The wigoy unfurled its lily-like head, revealing the top of its esophagus. As it did so, she heard a voice in her head: "Oh, it's been so long since we've spoken with a Learner."
Playing for time, Hora responded while readying her telekinetic powers. Who are you? What are you? What do you mean Learner? The creature didn't answer, asking only to be greeted appropriately.
Hora tried repeating her questions in her mind. The creature loomed in closer, patiently instructing, "Not quite. Focus. Use your First Lesson and we will speak from there." She closed her eyes and focused, seeing the glowing motes that made up the wigoy's consciousness. Then she felt a jab in her chest, as it quickly stabbed her with one of its barbed appendages.
An Interview
June was the first to make it back to the clinic. Belee and he had seen the creature over their shared bodycam / HUD rig and doubled back immediately. He wavered at the front door, thinking maybe discretion was the better part of valor. Belee ordered him to get in there over comms.
As he moved inside, he heard Hora scream in his head. He readied his amped-up taser and snuck towards the door to the back room which was still ajar.
His sneaking was interrupted as the white wigoy surged into the doorway, readying its barbs and lunging towards him. He braced himself for impact, but before it could attack it suddenly was pressed flat against the ground, as if crushed by an immense weight. Hora emerged from the back room, holding the creature down with her newfound psionic powers.
Belee caught up soon after, appearing in the door. Seeing the creature, she fired a shot at it - a glancing blow that did little harm.
What followed was a tense interview. It became clear that Hora had lost the ability to speak - her tongue was fused to the floor of her mouth. However, she had gained the ability to communicated telepathically. She was using that ability to grill this creature.
Hora asked a barrage of questions. The creature identified itself as a (or the) Bleached One. It shared that wigoy had a collective consciousness known as a "Seedmind." As a result of that relationship and their longevity, they also had perfect memory. To insulate that perfect memory from trauma, any wigoy that was expected to regularly do violence was cut off from the whole. That was this one's fate.
June snuck into the back and secured the Doctor's hidden supply of wigoy powder - about 32 doses (or 32kcr in orbit). A little rattled, he and Captain Vanda agreed they would press on for the governor's compound while Hora interrogated the creature.
Breaking and Entering
Belee led the way. They skipped the hagfish farm, cutting around the corner and up to the perimeter fence around the manor via a main street. The yard was curiously empty - no guards, little sign of a struggle. A single searchlight had been mounted on the manor's veranda, but now it hung lazily with no guard to operate it.
They entered through the garden on the northside. Empty again, but here they found the charred remains of an MEF marine. The ghost had come this way. Belee grabbed the marine's pulse carbine and tossed her pistol to June.
They split up. June ducked into the garage, finding it empty as well. He took a fuel canister off the wall and spread its contents across the floor before ducking up a flight of stairs to the second floor.
Belee went directly to the second floor, passing through the portrait gallery there. She opted not to go towards the governor's office, instead opening the door into her private quarters. She found a well appointed apartment, cramped but air-conditioned. June caught up a moment after.
They passed through the room to the back door they knew was there from Dr. Fayed's floorplans. It opened onto the strange corridor full of cables and ducts that descended into a hole in the wall. As they entered they heard a whimper from the office, and saw the top of a blue helmet disappear around a door frame, but decided not to investigate.
Down Below
Belee and June peeked into the hole. A ladder descended several floors down into the darkness. Belee wore night vision goggles, but June was just following along in the faint light that came through a nearby window.
They descended. The ladder dropped into a circular room of white oldtech ceramic. There were doors to the north and southwest - MEF bulkheads that had been crammed into the ancient architecture. The coil of cables and ducts split and snaked towards both doors.
They went north first, finding a small and austere apartment - a bed, a trunk with an alarm clock, a punching bag hanging from a tripod. Belee astutely noticed that the cables turned and traced the wall before disappearing behind a slightly raised panel. They opened the hatch and moved inside.
The space beyond was filled with computer terminals and server stacks. Gridded glass screens divided the room into rows. A small but durable looking safe was wedged in one corner. June immediately jumped to work, patching into one of the terminals using Belee's hacking rig. He found intel - coded transmissions, maps, dossiers on Karth's other factions. More than could be assessed without spending some time.
Belee left him to it and continued the search for Oboku. The lack of guards was palpable at this point. She moved back through the halls to the ladder room and then tried the door southwest. It opened into the tattered remains of an inflatable airlock. Hazmat suits lined the walls as well as emergence decontamination equipment. Two more doors headed southwest and southeast. The door southeast had lights playing underneath it and Belee could hear two voices arguing from behind it - one high-pitched and stentorian, the other terse as if straining with effort. She threw on a hazmat suit.
Belee opened the door. In the middle of a small laboratory Reverend Oboku was standing in his grey tunic. He seemed to be concentrating, using the same powers Hora had. He was holding the Lady in White in place psionically, but also had crushed some 16 blue-coated marines against the rooms walls.
Captain Vanda fired. A spray of pulse carbine shots took Oboku by surprise. His concentration broken, he tried to scramble for cover. The Lady in White surged forward, keening "you!" She reached out towards the blubbering Governor Tanaka who staggered backwards. With a touch to her cheek, the ghost incinerated the governor.
As June came running, a cracked flare in hand, he heard another burst of laserfire. By the time he had arrived, Vanda had finished off Oboku.
Getting Out of Dodge
The two crewmembers pressed themselves to the side as the ghastly apparition turned and walked calmly towards them. She still wracked with grief, but she seemed not to notice them, walking out of the room through the airlock and away. Belee and June shrugged and got to work.
Reverend Oboku had nothing on him and the Governor's remains were too charred to salvage anything meaningful. Belee poked her head into the neighboring room, finding a dissection lab. Inside were the remains of what appeared to have once been another live wigoy, separated into thin translucent sheets for study.
On their way out, the duo went back to the intel bunker and June got to work cracking the safe. It took a long time, but eventually they opened it, finding the ignition key to a starship, a rack of golden credit chips loaded with 500kcr, and a familiar white resin form - an orbital access badge. The crew realized the one they had stolen previously was probably a fake.
They returned to the surface to the sound of approaching footsteps. Three figures in blue power armor were approaching through the yard. One had a minigun slung in front of them. They didn't seem to be in a hurry. Still, June ignited the fuel he had poured out earlier, setting the garage ablaze. He and Belee fled out the back and ducked back through the hagfish farm to make their way back to the main gate.
By the time they reconvened at the Condor, Hora had led the Bleached One aboard. Dr. Fayed, ecstatic, was furiously making notes and taking recordings.
GM Notes
I'm writing this session report a few days after the session in question. As a result some of the exact dialogue and sequence of actions is probably a little off, but this gets the gist of what happened. What a climactic session!
We discussed wrapping the micro-campaign here, but we decided that there was enough still to explore that we would keep going. Hora wants to return to the wigoy spire to investigate further, plus repairing the ship and getting into orbit still leaves some unresolved question.
I ran this session on a couple of timelines. Without spoiling details for the players, there was the ghost, the Governor and Oboku, and a third timer. The players managed to thread the needle, arriving just after most of the direct danger in the governor's compound had subsided, but before a new danger emerged. The result was a great narrative beat, even if it wasn't a hugely dangerous encounter in game terms.
Hora continues to advance down a sequence of Δ templates. I am really liking the way that I have handled them in this game: leaving the sequence opaque to the player, but leaving in fiction characters to guide or push the character along the path. If a character is going to have access to a whole branch of abilities, I'd rather those abilities come at a steep cost and require actual narrative beats to develop, not just busywork.
I felt a little underprepped for this session. I had drawn a map of the manor previously, but not in the level of detail that I really needed to run it at the table. I found myself tripping (joke unintended) over the cables a few times in play, since I had noted them but failed to follow through on where they actually lead. I also was relying on encounter roles for any other occupants (since the keyed guards had been called elsewhere), but then none showed up. So be it, I suppose, but it feels like there is room for improvement in my prep here. Towards that end, I might try running a straight up dungeon sometime soon - not necessarily a mega-dungeon, but something big enough that I can stay with that GMing problem and practice that skill.