Emissary Lost, episode 6: Closing In

The group took some time for prayers, offering heartfelt requests for help and guidance in the journey ahead.  The Dancer was a particularly popular choice, even amongst those born under different icons.

It wasn't long before they encountered trouble, in the form of a drone with glowing red eyes and metal tentacles.  Firing on it wasn't enough to disable it before it grabbed hold of Razaq, and worse, Tahir's shot went wide and hit a nearby pressurised steam pipe, which went off like a grenade.  This did make the drone drop Razaq and fly off, although Sayah got scalded by steam.  Once she'd patched herself and everyone else up a bit, they continued on into a larger corridor.

Khalil was getting that familiar headache again, accompanied by the pattern of five notes.  And now there was a song too.

Tahir thought he heard a whispering behind him, and looking round he caught sight of the edge of a shadow melting into the wall.  He knew what that was.  Yal-Shir, the ensnarer.  He advised not getting ensnared.  The group formed a defensive circle around Awl as the creature appeared, scaring everyone except Razaq who'd already had his fill of horrific experiences for the day.  Tahir's instructions on what to do next were not particularly coherent.

The fight was brief and distinctly one-sided, with those shots that did connect with the creature doing almost nothing as they bounced off its armour.  Awl spotted a crawl space and dived into it, closely followed by Sayah who was also trying to take a communicator message from Akouba Kosha.

"Status update?"
"Pursued by a hideous monster!"
"Don't mess about."
"This is not a good time!  Got to go, dealing with a ripped off arm."

As Tahir was having his left arm ripped off, the mad poet Bathos showed up again, and somehow lured the creature away.  Everyone took the opportunity to get out of the way, following Awl down the crawlspace.  Sayah treated Tahir's damaged arm, but it was obvious he was in no condition to continue.  Sayah called Akouba back to request a medevac for him.

Finally they found themselves closing in on the Real Sanitorium.  But first there was a corridor full of cameras to get past.  Sayah djinned her way into them and had a look at the hangar on the other side, while setting a loop on the camera so that they wouldn't be detected.

Khalil found a small ventilation shaft that he was small enough to get into and went exploring.  He found a makeshift temple, containing spiked ribbons and whips, an icon figure of the Judge in the form of the Martyr, and some distinctly Zelosian prayer rugs.

Over the cameras, Sayah could see stasis pods being loaded into drop ships of some kind and sent off into space.  Was this what was happening to people at the Sanitorium?  She sent a message to Akouba about it.

They needed a plan.  The temple meant that at some point, most people would probably be praying.  A good time for acting undetected.

Emissary Lost, episode 5: Wheeling and Dealing

 The group continued their journey downwards, soon hearing voices again.  This time they managed to listen in without immediately being spotted.  Four hunters and their human prey.  Razaq was not going to allow that to continue.  One brief firefight later, they were collecting the hunters' carbines, pistols and tabulas - with the exception of one carbine, now in the hands of their would-be target.  He provided them with directions before running away.

Down a ladder, and into the Third Sphere, which they rapidly learned was in the hands of Queen Elmeda.  Her guards, dressed all in red, asked if they had any goods to trade, as that was a requirement for entering her domain.  Conveniently they had a bunch of pistols and carbines going spare.  Tahir, Khalil and Sayah, as the members of the group least likely to say something inappropriate in front of an authority figure, went in.

Not everyone down here was human.  Rat-like Skavara children asked Khalil for treats.  He offered some slightly squashed baklava, which was accepted enthusiastically.  The Queen herself was accompanied by both wolfish Nekatra guards, and a huge snake - almost certainly a construct.  Tahir did the talking, offering the weapons as a gift.  He explained why they were there.  The search, for both Noor and the Emissary.

The Queen mentioned that they were not the only newcomers to the Third Sphere.  Others had been there, transporting people, and taking them beyond the Labyrinth.  They would need a guide, if they intended to pass that way themselves.  She could provide one, for a price.  The price was removing a Skavara merchant by the name of Awl, who had started a rival market that was costing the Queen's own market a lot of profit.

They decided they would have to talk this over with the others.  Doing so alone was going to be difficult though, as they had been joined by Frax, one of the Queen's Nekatra guards.  Of course this was also an opportunity to find out more about the Queen.  They learned that she had powerful family back on Kua.  The Queen's subjects were not allowed to harm each other.  The Skavara was not a subject though, and was increasingly gathering support.

Arriving at the Skavara's market, it was clearly very different to the Queen's.  Much better stocked, and with significantly more food.  No wonder it was growing in popularity.  Nobody much liked the idea of taking Queen Elmeda's offer at this point - but of course they still needed to get through the Labyrinth somehow.

Awl was soon located, and agreed to talk in exchange for a gift of technology.  Conveniently they had a bunch of tabulas going spare.  Awl knew the way through the Labyrinth.  Since the alternative was that we would have to kill him for the Queen, he wasn't too hard to persuade.  A deal was made though, to take him up to Ozone Plaza afterwards.  Awl's people caused a distraction to get Frax out of the way, and the group set out for the Labyrinth.

This was not a well maintained path.  Rickety bridges caused a nervous moment for Razaq, who almost fell, prompting Sayah to get out her hyper rope to get herself, Arin and Khalil across in relative safety.  Then there was a choice to be made.  Three paths lay ahead.  The safe path, slow but secure.  The cemetary path, faster, but not without its dangers.  Or the fastest route, that would take them close to the Beast.

For Tahir, there was only one choice.  The fast path, and never mind the danger.  And for once, Sayah backed him up.  Noor was in danger, and if that meant risking the fast path, then so be it.

At Awl's suggestion, they crept along in silence.  If they could avoid attracting the Beast's attention, they had a better chance of getting past it safely.  But after a while they heard a voice, singing a song about doors.  What did it mean?  They soon found the singer, who approached them and asked them if they were beings of darkness or light.  Beings of light, of course.  The group explained once more about their search for Noor and the Emissary.

The strange man knew the Emissary.  He had spoken to him.  He was a friend, but not as good at poetry.  He had passed through this way, accompanied by eight guards, who were holding his mouth, whatever that meant.  The strange man remembered one of the Emissary's poems.

When the unworthy speak without tongues
When sister betrays sister
When the light of peace nourishes the servants of darkness
When brother kills brother

Sayah immediately remembered the words from Ramas's data chip.  When he had asked Noor to explain herself, she had spoken words that seemed to echo the Emissary's poem.

"There will come a time when the darkness in invited in, when people speak without mouths, when sister betrays sister. Only they who live in the darkness will see the light."

Emissary Lost, episode 4: Going Down

Nobody had any intention of waiting until the requested meeting time to visit the Garden of Seekers.  Razaq and Sayah went for a scout around, with Razaq identifing a good spot for a sniper hide and making sure he was the one occupying it.  Khalil went to visit the artists' tent and chat to the jugglers there, where he discovered a complete lack of juggling ability, albeit with a will to improve.

When the time for the meeting arrived, only Sayah and Tahir waited at the meeting point, while the others looked on from their various vantage points.  Brother Ramas arrived a little late, and at the same time a number of suspicious characters appeared.  One of them pushed roughly past him on the bridge, and Tahir caught sight of a bright flash of light.  A few moments later, Ramas staggered and collapsed to the ground, reaching out to hand Tahir a data tag as he fell.

Tahir had his stun gun in hand in a moment, firing at the attacker while Sayah checked on the condition of Brother Ramas.  More new arrivals from the path above the artists' tent fired down at them, almost taking out Arin, who jumped into the lake to take cover under the bridge.  Khalil sheltered behind a tree.  Razaq fired from his hide, taking out another of the strangers.  Sayah joined Arin under the bridge, and once she'd confirmed he wasn't in need of urgent medical attention, borrowed his gun to fire back at his attackers.

It wasn't long before the shooting attracted the Coriolis station guards, at which point the attackers decided to make themselves scarce, the one Razaq had shot taking a moment to pick up his severed arm off the ground and take it with him.  Khalil scarpered in the confusion, and Razaq dropped a smoke bomb and vanished.

The other three were rounded up by the guards, where Sayah and Tahir were quick to explain how they were meeting their old friend from the Ghazali - an easy story to sell given Tahir's fame.  Tahir also told them about the weird behaviour of the attackers, specifically the bit where they picked up an arm.  After an uncomfortably long wait, word finally came through from the Judicator that they were to be released.

Khalil had an idea for how to track the attackers.  They'd all escaped - but one of them had escaped with one of his bullets inside them.  And he had a talent for finding things that had previously belonged to him.  He went into a trance and watched, seeing them regrouping in a building that looked like an abandoned hospital.

Once everyone was reunited, it was time to read the data tag that had cost Brother Ramas his life.  They began with the holo recording, where Ramas explained that a Martyr strike team from Zalos was operating on the station and attempting to wipe out new mystics.  They were being taken to the 'real sanitorium', somewhere down in the cellar.

Other files on the tag mentioned Noor.  She felt she'd been given her powers for some higher purpose, and the last time he'd seen her she was being escorted by the guard after being arrested in the Ozone Plaza.  She'd claimed to have a vision from the Emissary at Xene Station.  Ramas wasn't sure which Emissary she meant - the one on Coriolis or the heretical self-proclaimed 'Judge' from Xene.  She had a strange message for Ramas.  "There will come a time when the darkness in invited in, when people speak without mouths, when sister betrays sister. Only they who live in the darkness will see the light."  Not long after that she'd been taken down to the 'real sanitorium'.

They had to tell the Judicator everything, of course, and she was keen for them to get moving.  Chances are, this 'real sanitorium' in the Cellar was where the Emissary had been taken, and Sayah was equally keen to find Noor.  Should they take the route down through the Sanitorium, or use the guard elevator?  For speed, they went with the elevator.

Once suitably equipped with some armour loaned from the Judicator, plus some other equipment, they set off.  It wasn't long before they heard some people up ahead talking.  Razaq scared them off, and investigation showed they'd ripped out a nexus node, presumably to sell.  They found a screen, which rather unexpectedly was showing a news report from not long after the wreck of the Ghazali, specifically an interview with Tahir.  This couldn't be a coincidence.  Sayah djinned into the network, and confirmed it was being broadcast locally, not from the main station network.

Up ahead they could hear an oppressive thrumming noise, which when they got closer turned out to be huge ventilation fans.  Sayah spotted something stuck on the underside of one - a Vulcan carbine held aloft by the airflow.  Below them, on the hub of a fan, was a body.  He looked like a Coriolis guard, but with a shaved head and some increasingly familiar face tattoos.

Khalil was getting a headache, and not just from the fan noise.  He heard the crackle of a stun gun and smelled ozone.  Just like he had in the Emissary's residence.

Could they retrieve the carbine?  Tahir had a hyperrope, and felt quite confident in his ability to get hold of it if the others held onto the other end.  Khalil had a better idea though, using his mystic power to attempt to wind the end of the rope through the gun.  Instead the rope got caught around the fan and ripped out of his hands.  Good thing that wasn't Tahir.

Emissary Lost, episode 3: A Few Polite Conversations

Khalil had a vision.

He was standing in the room.  The room where the attack had taken place.  Five people were attacking him.  A wave of force burst out, deflecting the bullets.  And then came the knife in his chest, and the vision ended.

He made the decision to trust the others.  None of them seemed to have any prejudice against mystics, and the more informed they all were, the better.

Sayah, Razaq and Arin went to a weapon shop to investigate the silenced bullet they'd found, soon learning that such things were not sold on Coriolis - at least, not in respectable shops like this.  They were used by rebel groups down on Kua though, so could have made it onto the station if brought up by smugglers.  Sayah took a look at the knives, to see if there were any that resembled the one in Khalil's vision, but there were not.  She bought one anyway, to be polite.

Which turned out to be a good choice, as shortly after leaving the shop they were attacked by a group of stevedores.  They fought them off and made a hasty departure, but soon ran into Jeyla Kuhari, the reporter, once again, and had to avoid sharing the story with her.

Khalil and Tahir, being the more social and less paranoid part of the group, went to visit the ambassador.  Not to make any accusations, but because as the last person seen on the camera, he might have caught sight of something important without realising it.  His room was an imposing sight - a group of servants carried potted plants, which Khalil recognised as being a particularly poisonous variety with sharp leaves, where a single touch could prove deadly.

The ambassador spoke briefly.  He'd been given a tag to put into the emissary's music system, as somebody 'wanted him to hear a message'.  He'd since examined the tag, and to nobody's surprise found it infected with a data meme.

The local news was reporting more murders.  Sayah asked Judicator Akouba about them.  The one mentioned as happening at Wahib's was a woman called Kohmina.  Sayah remembered her well - the mad woman with the crystal ball that was really just a ball of sugar, who wanted to go down with the Ghazali because it was the will of the icons.  She'd been saved by Lila's intervention.  Sayah did not know what had happened between the two of them, and did not want to.

Once Khalil had complimented the ambassador on his taste in plants and Tahir had got his assistant's comm address, the two of them left to meet up with the others again to pay another visit to the sanitorium.  Tahir and Sayah went looking for their old friend from the Ghazali, Brother Ramos.  Instead they were introduced to Sister Robwah.  She confirmed that Ramos had met with Noor, and after some prodding, Ramos himself appeared.

They discussed the mystic's disease, and convinced Ramos to talk about Noor once they told him what had happened to Aram.  Noor believed that she was chosen by the icons to perform great deeds.  Specifically, she was chosen by the Martyr - the Zelosian name for the Judge, and according to their beliefs, the only icon.

Razaq had had enough.  Enraged by the constant claims that mystic powers were a disease in need of a cure, he stormed out.  The others followed, but Sayah had had a communicator pressed into her hand as she left, with just one message.  "Contact me."

A meeting was arranged.  That night, in the Garden of Seekers.

Emissary Lost, episode 2: Dinner and a Show

Sayah could only stare in horror at the bloody mess in front of her before the others hitting the deck prompted her to join them in taking cover.  But there were no further shots.  Clearly the killer had found their target.

While Sayah, Razaq and Khalil made themselves scarce, Arin distracted the reporter while Tahir made a quick search of Aram's body.  He found some gambling chips in his pocket, along with a communicator and a couple of thousand birr.  He talked to the authorities when they arrived, learning that they believed his death was due to gambling debts.  Aram's parents got the sad news.  He'd been keeping quiet about having the mystic's disease, out of fear that his parents would loose their bakery concession if it came out.

The group regathered for some tea and to eat the baklava they'd got from Aram's parents, which was really excellent.  As they were eating, Khalil suddenly heard a loud sound in his head.  Five notes.

Checking out the local news feeds, there was clearly a lot of discussion of the mystic's disease, and a lot of disagreement, which was sometimes spilling out into violence on the streets.  Then a news alert came up.  The emissary was missing, having failed to show up at the council meeting.  Crowds were forming in Spring Plaza, wanting to know what was going on.  There were claims that the emissary had been sighted, but could reports from down in the Cellar really be trusted?

But the group found themselves with more pressing things to worry about when they were hand delivered an invitation to dinner with a judge.  Sayah assured everyone she could help them find suitable clothing.  This wasn't the first time she'd had to dress people for dinner.  Razaq declined.  He had no intention of going anywhere near a judge.

Dinner was in the evening, and they had plenty of time before that for both shopping and trying to make sense of what had happened to Aram.  They had two leads - the gambling chips and the communicator.  The former were quickly identified as belonging to the Oporium.  The latter proved more enlightening - point to point encrypted, with the other end point being somewhere near the Sanitorium.

Sayah and Tahir went to follow up on the communicator.  While the Sanitorium was next to the library and the museum, it was in the entrance to the Sanitorium itself where they found their target.  Her name was Sanna Torm, and she was expecting to meet Aram.  She recognised Sayah, much to Sayah's alarm, although she relaxed on learning that Sanna had seen her in a vision.  They quietly told her about Aram's death, and advised her not to go into the Sanitorium, but to stay with her family (who were sufficiently rich and powerful for Sayah to recognise their name.)

While Sayah gathered anyone willing for a shopping trip, Razaq went in search of the street children again.  He asked them about the Cellar.  They hadn't been there, and claimed it was full of shambling jelly monsters.  However, they thought if he really wanted to visit, the stevedores might be able to help.

Minus Razaq, the group got dressed and went for dinner with Judge Nigelia.  It was obvious she'd done her research on everyone, as her veiled comments were enough to rattle at least some of them.  She had a job for them: look into the emissary's disappearance.

Once a suitable fee had been negotiated (9000 birr and a weapon license for everyone who didn't already have one) they all headed to the emissary's lakeside residence, accompanied by Judicator Akouba as the Judge required.

It was a strange sight.  Blood all over the living room and trails of it down the hallway to to door.  And yet the rest of the house was almost uncannily clean.  It was as if the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen had never been used.  The only item that seemed out of place was a hand fan by the bed, decorated with First Come religious iconography.

Sayah went straight for the data console, wanting to keep her mind off the blood for as long as possible.  She found it infected with data memes, and after a brief flashback to the horrible time when she'd had to do a system restore on Suleiman to remove an infection, she realised that the codebase was familiar.  The Order of the Pariah.  A group strongly opposed to the Icons - and presumably, by extension, to the emissary.

The security footage had cut out before anything particularly useful could be seen, but there was one familiar face that appeared before that.  Johar Quassar, the ambassador of the Hegemony.  The last thing to be visible before the footage cut out.

The group examined the sitting room.  Its walls were decorated with a mosaic, which had been seriously damaged.  Some examination revealed the cause to be a vulcan carbine on autofire.  On the floor was a Miran prayer rug, heavily stained with blood, much to Tahir and Sayah's distress.  It was a terrible thing to happen to any kind of soft furnishings.  There were books lying around with cut pages, looking like they'd been slashed with a dura knife.

There were also bowls on the floor.  One had contained water, one incense, which had burned a hole in the rug.  One contained couscous and one held candles.  All four were decorated with religious symbols, and their contents and design seemed to link them to Miran and Algolan representations of the four states of all things.

Closer examination of the floor found a series of hairline cracks, and looking at the walls again found a similar pattern.  It was like some kind of wave of force had hit the room, deflecting even bullets.  A single vulcan round was found embedded in the wall.  A noiseless vibro round, not the standard model.  Black market gear.

They questioned the Judicator about the blood.  Six individual sources had been identified, although the biocode analysis was not yet complete.  What they knew so far was that five of them were likely Zelosians.  The sixth had behaved oddly in analysis.

There was one last desecration of soft furnishings - or clue, to those of the group who weren't from the Aliya.  A bloody right hand print on the rug.

Emissary Lost, episode 1: Missed Meetings

 Neither Tahir nor Sayah were particularly keen to leave the Aliya, both being rather attached to it - if not for exactly the same reasons.  But sometimes you didn't get a choice about these things.

Sayah had no intention of hanging around on Coriolis for any longer than necessary, but Tahir knew people, especially pilots, and managed to find a ship willing to take them on.   But before they'd actually managed to ship out again, Sayah got an unexpected message.

Sayah had always got on well with her cousin Noor, who shared her rebellious streak, but had lost touch with her after leaving home.  So she certainly wasn't expecting to get a message from Noor, needing help and asking to meet up.  Not trusting anything family-related not to be a trap, she asked her new friends to go in first to check things out.  But arriving at the tea room, there was no sign of Noor.

What there was, once everyone was settled down drinking tea and eating dates, was a woman none of them recognised, pursued by what first appeared to be station guards - except unusually well armed.  She seemed to know who she was looking for, launching herself at them, sending candied dates flying in all directions.

While Tahir, Razaq and Khalil distracted the guards, Sayah, Arin and the strange woman slipped quietly away until they were able to vanish down a side passage and get some answers.  The strange woman's name was Althea and she was a friend of Noor.  Both of them had the 'mystic's disease', as she called it.  Noor had been in contact with another mystic, Aram Yafa, and had contacted Althea a week ago, wanting her to come and meet him.

But Althea hadn't found Noor.  All she had found was Noor's communicator, where she had seen the messages Noor had exchanged with Aram, and also the final message that she'd sent to Sayah.  And then the guards had found her, and she'd had to run, dropping the communicator in her flight.

The group met up again once the coast was clear, and headed for Noor's home.  The student apartment was tiny, with barely room for the five of them.  Searching wasn't going to take long.  They soon found a pamphlet from the Samaritan Sanitorium offering help for people with the mystic's disease.  General group consensus was that being a mystic wasn't a disease.  But still.

Sayah spotted a loose floor panel, and soon had it pulled up, revealing a transactor and of all things, a paper diary.  But before anyone could get a look at it, they were interrupted by the apartment building's senior studeont, Ekvias Memoxes, who had serious opinions on the subject of all these strange people being in Noor's apartment.  Khalil swung into action, with a torrent of fast talk that soon had Ekvias on the back foot, allowing Sayah to pocket the transactor and diary and put the floor panel back in place.

Arin went a couple of doors down the corridor to talk to another student.  The girl who opened the door wasn't entirely helpful, but had seen a mysterious tattooed man recently.  She couldn't say exactly what the tattoo was of, but her description did resonate with those of the group who'd had a good look at the guards at the tea house.  Facial tattoos were no more a common sight among the station guards than those carbines had been.

A second trip to Noor's neighbour and some rather circuitous discussion managed to extract Noor's communicator from her, at the cost of a rather extortionate 'reward'.  On it they found another message in addition to the ones Althea had had time to read - one from Aram telling her to show up an hour earlier than planned for the meeting with Althea.

Back down in the more concealed parts of the station, Sayah took the lead hacking into the station security cameras.  There they saw Noor arrive at the tea house, where she was grabbed by three guards, possibly using a stun pistol, then handcuffed and dragged away.  No sign of Aram, but some street children did see what happened.

After a chat with the street children (and a bit of shopping), they headed for an address where they had found the name Yafa, if not Aram.  There they found a bakery, and some headed inside for baklava and a chat.  Tahir, waiting outside, ran into a reporter, and managed to keep her occupied when Aram himself showed up.  Gathering outside, they had just enough time to ask Aram about what was going on and what happened to Noor, when they saw the red light of a laser sight, and a moment later Aram's head had turned to red mist.

Crew of the Aliya, part 17: Send In The Baboons

The card contained a video file.  It showed the opening of a space station, which looked a lot like the one we were currently on.  A number of scientists were present, and Gurgeh was able to recognise one of them - a Professor Darim.  Based on the data on the card, Darim was also the name of the man we had found.  Perhaps a younger relative, looking for his lost family member?

Our Darim had been drugged into unconsciousness.  Lila and Karim took him back to the Aliya and Professor Wana, while the rest of us continued our search of the station.  The med bay was our next stop.  Here we found more control panels, and decided to have another shot at getting information from them.  Gurgeh and Sayah worked together to get enough power into the computers to be able to download some information.

We found some notes from one of the scientists who had worked here.  They told of self-sustaining gardens, where the boundary between animals and plants no longer existed.  Beautiful oases where travellers could find oxygen.  She planned to use DNA manipulation to recreate these gardens, and based on what we'd seen on the space station, it looked like she had found some success.

There was also a passage from the writings of a prophet, describing how the flowers of light could be corrupted.  What did it mean?  We weren't sure, but it was certainly ominous.

Another eyeless child appeared.  Sayah joined Alqadi searching the med bay for drugs to distract herself from it, but Gurgeh noticed it did not seem to be particularly hostile.  It reached out a hand towards him.  He took it.  For a little while they held hands.

The next new arrival was significantly less disturbing.  A woman, with clothes and all the normal body parts.  Her name was Wahina, and she was pleased with how we hadn't murdered the creepy children.  She wanted us to come up to the bio-dome, as mentioned in the notes we'd found earlier.  She also looked suspiciously like a younger version of one of the scientists in the video file.

Tahir wanted to have a look at the engineering section of the station before we went anywhere else, but as we approached it we found it was significantly overgrown with plants.  Getting through would involve hacking our way through the plants, and that didn't seem like a great idea right now.  We made our way to the lift shaft instead.  More eyeless children appeared, accompanied by baboon dogs.

The shaft was crowded with creepers.  Gurgeh put a hand on one, and when he took his hand away there was an eye looking back at him.  While Sayah quietly freaked out, he got the lift working again.  We all huddled in the middle of the open platform, and the creepers moved out of the way as we ascended.

The bio-dome was a mass of plant life and feathered monkeys, but we also had something else to worry about.  A message from Suleiman, telling us that a light battlecruiser was approaching the station.  The Legion were here.

Wahina lead us to what she called the heart of the station, which turned out to be a plant with a face.  Wahina's face.  She wanted our help.  Not with the seeding of the asteroid belt with the seeds of life to create the gardens, which apparently she could do quite well by herself, but to stop the team of Legion soldiers from blowing up the entire space station with a bomb.

Sayah: "They've got three soldiers and a demolitions expert.  We've got two soldiers and two nerds."
Gurgeh: "But we are great nerds."
Sayah: "The best nerds."

After a trip to the armory to pick up some supplies, we approached the area where the legionaries were setting up the bomb.  At the end of a long corridor, an auto gun had been set up.  The two nerds worked together to deactivate it, and then sent in Gurgeh's drone for recon.  Tahir used the feed from the drone to identify the closest target, fly down the corridor past the auto gun, shoot the target and take cover behind a makeshift barricade made of gym equipment.

Alqadi ran in, firing on full auto.  He was followed by Sayah, who took cover behind a riot shield and fired a single shot, only to discover she'd forgotten to reload after the previous fight.  Gurgeh held back, to try to communicate with the plants and get us some backup.

Gurgeh: "Send in the baboons!"

Despite the hail of ammunition flying in both directions, we weren't making much headway and Tahir was close to dropping.  But then Tahir managed to stun the legion commander, Gurgeh took control of the auto gun and turned it on the legionaries, and Sayah's reloaded carbine took out the bomb setter.  We had won.

Even with the opposing forces all dead and being assimilated into the plant life along with a couple of baboon casualties, there was still the matter of the bomb to deal with.  Gurgeh and Sayah got to work.  Gurgeh offered a prayer to the Faceless as he opened up the casing, and when faced with the electronics inside, Sayah prayed for the luck of the Gambler.  The bomb was defused.

We cleared up a few remaining breaching charges and collected up the auto gun and other legion tech.  It was time to go.  Had we done the right thing?  Wahina had shown genuine remorse at the deaths of the scientists on the station, and her motivations seemed good, but who could know what the consequences of unleashing this entity upon the Rimward Reach would be?

Still, it wasn't like it was the first time we'd unwittingly released something upon the universe without knowing the consequences.

Wahina made us an offer.  To implant each of us with a seed that would bring some benefit to us.  Gurgeh agreed at once, in the spirit of scientific enquiry, and was keen to gain powers of regeneration.  Sayah chose the same, reluctant to take such a risk with her own body but feeling it was the will of the Gambler.  Tahir and Alqadi both wanted to be better looking.

And so we went on our way, a cloud of plant matter concealing us from the legion battlecruiser as a path through the micro black holes opened up ahead of us.  We could see the space station breaking up behind us, with plants drifting off in all directions.  Wahina was seeding herself.

Questions still remained.  What were the corrupted flowers that the prophet warned of?  What was the real purpose of the Loom of Heaven and the flower-adorned nodes that seemed to control it?  What had happened to Lavim?  And would we ever catch up with the Fatima's Bounty and avenge our soft furnishings?

Crew of the Aliya is now on hold, so the GM can play for a bit, but may return...

Crew of the Aliya, part 16: Space Moss

Lavim had been sent off to (hopefully) safety with Maliki the union rep.  We didn't entirely trust her - she was being altogether too helpful - but we were running out of options.

Above us was the starry void, but now it was starting to fill up with ships.  Not modern ships, but ones we realised were part of the rimward reach nomad swarm.  From the walls of the rift, concealed doors opened and people emerged, heading for the ships above.

After some discussion, we decided that we needed to go too.  Having overstayed our time down here, and already somewhat unpopular due to Lavim's actions, we decided it would be a good idea to bring the Aliya to us rather than going back through Djachroum.  Sayah djinned into the ship's controls, and with some assistance flew it out of the dock and around to the rift.

Lila got a message from Doctor Wana, who was unexpectedly in the area, wanting to know what we'd done.  It was rather hard to explain.

We left a message for Jinna, who hadn't been on the ship when it left the dock, explaining why we'd had to leave and where Lavim was.  Hopefully she would be OK.  Unfortunately we were in no position to go back and check.

Doctor Wana had been visiting the archaeological institute on Djachroum, but now she had a job for us.  A trip to Station 18, a small space science lab which had gone quiet.  With our excellent track record on retrieving missing people, having managed to find Lavim multiple times now, she thought we might be the crew to do it.

It was a three day journey to Station 18.  Gurgeh and Sayah gave the exosuits we'd picked up on Djachroum a quick MOT and service in case we needed them again, then recalibrated the ships sensors to detect Hawking radiation from the field of tiny black holes that surrounded Station 18.  There were some dicey moments as Tahir flew us in, but we made it within exosuit range of the station without any damage to the ship.

Something strange was happening here.  Sayah's scans brought up a warning that this was a forbidden area due to radiation, but also detected low levels of radiation and multiple bio signatures.  The station had suffered severe damage to the habitation unit, and seemed to have some kind of plant life growing over significant parts of it.  After some initial experiment with throwing things at it, Gurgeh sent his drone to get a sample.  Lila did some analysis, and concluded that it was vulnerable to acids and fire.

With this in mind we donned exosuits, and with Tahir in the lead, made the space walk across to the portable airlock that had been installed on the side of the station.  A control panel inside looked promising, but despite their best efforts, Sayah and Gurgeh couldn't get enough power into it to get it working.

On we went down the corridor.  The plant growth got thicker, dark tendrils with small purple flowers snaking under our feet.  As it grew thicker, the floor started to feel spongy, and it seemed like the plants were eating through the very fabric of the space station.  Something crunched under Tahir's feet, and examination proved it to be bone.  A small ribcage.  Nearby Lila found a similarly diminuative skull.  Was it human?

But dead bones were hardly our biggest concern.  Somewhere up ahead Tahir saw movement - some kind of bat with human hands for wings.  Alqadi, bringing up the lead, spotted a figure behind him.  A child, it initially appeared.  But when it turned around it had only smooth blank skin where its eyes should be.

And there was a sound.  A whimpering that might actually be human.  Tahir climbed up into a nearby ventilation duct and started crawling along.  He attempted to stun a blue snake that was crawling down the tunnel ahead of him, but instead it turned around to look at him with human eyes and open a mouth full of thankfully not human teeth.  Tahir fired at it, splattering it into bits.

Further down the duct was a man.  Clearly scared as even our voices were enough to spook him, but hungry enough that an offer of ration packs and the removal of the snake corpse was enough for Karim to lure him out.

He was wearing the remains of an exosuit, and a card, which was handed to Sayah for scanning.  So far all this station had given us was questions.  Now, perhaps, we could get some answers.

Crew of the Aliya, part 15: Deja Vu

We made our way down the tunnel, and it wasn't long before our first encounter with the machinists.  Karim was supposed to be taking the lead talking to them, but somehow most of the group ended up getting involved.  Most, but not Sayah, who was busy trying not to look at the dead body on the ground.  A victim of Lavim - or whatever was possessing him.

The stone with the flower design was still with us, and the machinists recognised it.  A node stone.  They wanted to know where we found it, and we described the asteroid.  The node itself was part of something much bigger.  Something that was both a tool and a weapon.

We were allowed to pass through the hall.  We were heading for the rift now.  Fortunately the machinists had exosuits we could borrow.  None were missing.  Had Lavim brought his own?

The tunnel we were following brought us to a deep trench in the asteroid.  Above us we could see stars.  Below was the bottom of the trench and a lot of floating rocks.  Remembering our previous efforts at crossing ravines in microgravity with a lot of floating rocks, most of us were in favour of walking (or at least, crawling) to the bottom and then up the other side to get to the mysterious black ruins on the other side.  Tahir, unsurprisingly disagreed.

The machinists had been kind enough to loan us a bolt gun, given that the only weapons most of us had on us were stun guns.  A little modification by Gurgeh turned one of the bolts into a piton, and after attatching some hyperrope to it, it was fired across the chasm to create a safety line.

We were only part way through getting everyone across when something started shooting at us.  Gurgeh, Karim and Sayah spread out to look for where the shots were coming from and relayed the information to Alqadi.  A shot from the bolt gun destroyed the target.  Lila collected up the pieces and soon identified them as ancient firstcome armour.  Alqadi was berated for destroying a priceless artifact - although in a decidedly appreciative fashion.

Up ahead was an airlock.  Behind it, we were confident, we would find Lavim.  But when Gurgeh sent his drone closer to take a look, he found an artificial gravity field that dragged the drone out of control, damaging it as it smashed into the rocks around the airlock door.

Alqadi offered a heartfelt prayer to the judge, aimed his vulcan pistol at the control panel by the door, and fired.  Gravity returned to normal.  Not, as it appeared, due to the incredible pistol shot, but due to his mystic powers allowing him to manipulate the controls from a distance.  Not that most of the crew knew that, of course.  We were merely incredibly impressed by his extraordinary shooting prowess.

Safely through the airlock we found Lavim, once again seriously injured, and some kind of console.  Lila and Sayah got to work to figure out what it was, what it was doing, and how to stop it.  It had been transmitting some kind of signal to an area of space we were quite familiar with - the one currently occupied by the Legion fleet.

Lavim needed medical help, and fast.  Treating him was challenging due to him still being in an exosuit and the lack of oxygen.  Gurgeh dumped out two oxygen canisters into the room to provide enough atmosphere to keep Lavim alive while he stabilised him.  Then we tied him up very thoroughly with hyperrope, and made a note to tell whatever doctor ended up treating him not to take the ropes off.

Once again, we were feeling ill, much like when we were returning from the asteroid, and Lila was getting a nosebleed again.  It was definitely time to leave.  Although, having been away for significantly longer than the hour the guards had allowed us, what was going to be waiting for us?

Crew of the Aliya, part 14: Pursuit

The doctor had finished working on Lavim, and assured Alqadi that he would be asleep for the next couple of hours, and he might as well join us in the cafe for a bit.

We ordered some food, and watched a performance from a dancer with a snake in a basket.  Tahir was entranced, and asked the waiter if he could buy a drink for the dancer.  Sayah took the opportunity to steal his snacks.

We were interrupted by a call from the doctor, however.  Well before he should have been waking up, he had awoken, injected himself with enough stimulants to kill most people, caused a lot of property damage and run off.  We went to investigate.  The doctor wanted us to pay for the damage he had done.  Karim reiterated that we were not financially responsible for him.

We investigated the scene, finding out what drugs he'd taken and watching him behave strangely on the security cameras footage, cutting something out of his forehead before running away.  He had also been shouting as he went - the old name for the Judge that we'd seen before, and which according to the doctor was banned from being spoken in Djachroum under pain of having your tongue cut out.

Alqadi had a quiet word with Tahir, and then lead the way to follow Lavim away from the doctor and into the heart of Djachroum.

We found ourselves in the souk, and were almost delayed by encountering vendors offering some lovely soft furnishings, but assured them we would come back for tapestries and cushions later on.  Where would Lavim go?  Given his behaviour in the surgery it seemed likely he might be looking for more drugs.  We tried a pharmacy, but no luck.  Lila suggested we visit the arena.  This was more promising.  Sasaya's Arena played host to fights between lizard cats, which were being injected with stimulants to make them more aggressive before each fight.

The place was crowded.  Alqadi ploughed his way through the crowds while the rest of us followed in his wake, occasionally purchasing items from the local vendors when they got in the way.  Finally Alqadi and Tahir made it as far as Sasaya while the rest of the group went round to the trainers' entrance.

Lavim had been there, and recently.  We made chase, but as he bounded his way up walkways and bridges in a way that seemed almost superhuman, none of us could catch up.  Lila came closest, but not even the blessing of the Gambler was enough, and he slipped away.

Gurgeh asked Tahir if we could get a pet lizard cat for the ship, but he insisted we had other things to do.

Back on the trail we followed him across Djachroum, realising that he was heading into the machine hall, home of the station's life support system.  The idea of him causing damage down there was pretty horrific.  Purple guards blocked the entrance to the tunnel, but with some fast talk we managed to get ourselves allowed in for an hour.

We descended the tunnel until we reached a point where gravity was minimal and large floating rocks lay between us and the other side.  Tahir was immediately keen to jump across and show off his zero-g skills, but fortunately was made to tie a hyper rope to himself before he went.  After bouncing between rocks for a bit he was pulled back in.  Should he try again?

Then someone approached.  A man in a flowing purple kaftan, who floated effortly across the gap despite being blindfolded.  After we expressed our admiration for his smooth moves, he offered his help in exchange for a song.

Sayah offered, having been practicing, but between the odd circumstances and the rest of the crew insisting on being the backing track in the absence of her oud, the song of love and betrayal she performed didn't go down particularly well.

He was still willing to talk, however, and asked if we had any food.  Karim had a bottle of beer left over from our cargo run, plus some snacks he'd purchased at the arena, and the beer was enough to get the strange man on our side.  Our search could continue.

Crew of the Aliya, part 13: Rescue

Pulling the ship's log had revealed something important.  This wasn't actually the Fatima's Bounty - just a very simliar looking ship.  We were actually aboard the Akander.  Perhaps we could leave the cushions after all.

There was still the matter of the crew, however, one of whom was dead on the bridge, having failed to get his spacesuit closed in time.  Looking down the corridor that lead to the other airlock, we found a second body.

Gurgeh sent in his drone to observe, and confirmed that the body was definitely dead.  We could see now that the second airlock had become damaged, and wouldn't close.  Past it was a corridor leading into the asteroid.  Once again the drone took the lead, finding some strange writing on the wall.  It looked a lot like the writing we'd seen on the towers on Kua, but Lila confirmed that it was a more modern version of that script, unlikely to be used by portal builders but potentially the work of the first come and around three hundred years old.

Alqadi took up a defensive position near the writing, to ensure we had cover as we approached the end of the corridor.  There it widened out into a small hall.  Another body lay on the floor, dead and burned according to Gurgeh, while another floated in the minimal gravity.  This one was different, however.  Not only did a green light on his suit suggest that he was still alive, but when we checked the name tag on his suit, it read 'Lavim'.

Above the bodies was a strange black inverted dome, depicting some kind of white flower that Sayah recognised as a Zarak flower.  Gurgeh recalled that they were said to have healing properties.  But this wasn't the time to hang around admiring the scenery.  Lavim was badly injured, and we would have to work fast to get him back to the ship.  Sayah was getting increasingly on edge from the number of dead bodies, reminding the others that last time she saw this many corpses they'd got up and ripped Lila's arm off.  Along with the worrying messages she was getting from Suleiman about something trying to affect his systems, she was keen to leave, and nobody disagreed.

Gurgeh took Lavim down to the med lab while Sayah took Jinna up to the arboretum to keep her out of the way.  It was obvious that Lavim needed a proper trauma lab if he was going to survive, so Gurgeh stabilised him and put him in one of the stasis pods to keep him alive while we flew back to Djachroum.

Tahir took the helm, and the rest of the crew settled down to various activities.  We were maybe ten hours into our journey when we got a sudden warning message that we had strayed into Legion space and were required to change course immediately.  Tahir made the course change and tried to find out what had happened.  We shouldn't have been anywhere near Legion space on the course he'd set.

We consulted Suleiman.  He didn't seem to think anything was amiss.  He was following the set course.  Everything was fine.  Finally we got him to compare the position of the stars with where he claimed we were and what appeared on the maps.

"The stars appear to have moved."

There was nothing for it.  Something had gone badly wrong with Suleiman and we were going to have to do a restore from backups.  Out in a particularly dicey bit of space didn't seem like the ideal place to be doing it, but it was the best of the available choices.  Fortunately Sayah had come down from her latest opor high, and was ready for work.  Essential systems were switched to backup, and the reboot began.

Without Suleiman to help, it was down to Tahir to pilot alone, but even his skill wasn't enough to avoid a huge ion cloud.  We could only watch helplessly as electricity and radiation coursed across the hull.  The Aliya was well shielded though, and it looked like she was going to weather the storm.

And then the light on Suleiman's console went out.  Sayah's scream could be heard throughout the ship.

Of all the Aliya's parts, Suleiman was the only one that wasn't a good fit.  He hadn't been made for light freighters, and even after having to leave parts of him behind on the Ghazali, his installation was very much a case of shoving bits in wherever they vaguely fitted.  With Gurgeh busy monitoring Lavim, it fell to Sayah and Tahir to locate and repair the fault.  A few fervant prayers later, Tahir had spliced the damaged cables back together.  Sayah waited with bated breath until finally the lights came back on.

Suleiman was brought up to speed on recent events.  Tahir set a course for Djachroum.  Sayah spent the rest of the journey hugging Suleiman's data cores.

We made it back to Djachroum without further incident this time, although it was obvious the ship was going to need a full service before we could risk flying again.  Karim managed to get us booked in for repairs at a reasonable price, but soon had other problems to deal with when the harbour master complained that the mineral extractors we'd sold were defective, and also refused to let Lavim out of the ship without paying his debts.  The situation was only resolved when someone from the Union showed up and browbeat the harbour master into letting us through.

Alqadi and Karim took Lavim down to the local surgeon, accompanied by Jinna.  They were treated to the unsettling sight of a spider doctor robot opening up Lavim's skull and doing extensive work on his brain.

Lila had more interesting things to think about.  Lavim had had a small stone in his hand, decorated with the same white flower as the dome we'd seen on the asteroid.  Unfortunately, despite heartfelt prayers to the Gambler, she was unable to learn much about it.

Back at the ship repairs had been carried out and the Aliya was spaceworthy again.  It was time to get answers to some questions.  Why had we felt so ill on the journey back?  What was causing the nosebleeds?  What had happened to Suleiman?  And most of all, what would Lavim have to tell us?

Crew of the Aliya, part 12: Breadcrumbs

The crew spent some time on Coriolis, restocking the ship.  Hamsa had business elsewhere, so had disembarked, taking his collection of spare parts with him.  While shopping for replacements, Tahir ran into the person who'd sold him his second hand environmental scanner.  He was quite keen to get off station in a hurry, and we were very much in need of someone better at negotiation if we were going to keep paying the mortgage.  Karim joined the crew.

We had already been looking at the Rimward Reach after our experiences on Kua, so when Jinna contacted us, worried about Lavim once again, we were ready to listen.  She'd had a message from him, giving coordinates out in the Reach, near Djachroum station, and while it looked a lot like a trap, we weren't going to miss out on an opportunity to get to the crew of the Fatima's Bounty.

The mortgage was still on our minds, however.  It was a three week journey, and it made sense to pick up some cargo to take with us.  Karim got talking, while Sayah searched online, and between them got us some work transporting a cargo.  Good pay, no questions asked.  Karim managed to squeeze an extra 2000 birr out of the deal.  Along with a few tons of mineral extractors that we were confident would be an easy sell at Djachroum, and a surveillance mission to carry out on arrival, we'd covered the cost of the journey with some profit on top.

Jinna was keen to come with us and see for herself what had happened to Lavim.  There was some initial doubt about whether it was worth bringing her, but after she auditioned as ship's cook by making us a three course meal, we were finally convinced.  She also saved us the trouble of getting a pet for the ship by bringing her own cat.

The three week journey passed uneventfully, and we arrived at Djachroum.  Jinna was keen to get going, but first we had cargo to deal with.  We unloaded the 'no questions asked' cargo and picked up our pay, and found a buyer for the mineral extractors.  We were tempted to stay longer and investigate the supposedly haunted part of the station, but Jinna was very insistant, and with no real reason to delay, we set off again to the coordinates she'd given us.

When we arrived we found only a signal buoy.  Tahir spacewalked out to pick it up, and Sayah extracted the message.  Another set of coordinates and a message that he hadn't been able to wait any longer.  It was looking more and more like a trap.  But we weren't deterred.

We found the Fatima's Bounty, attached via airlock to an asteroid.  Something wasn't right here.  The ship was dark, and as we approached, the sensors failed to locate any life signs aboard.  Closer inspection revealed the ship didn't even have atmosphere.

We suited up, and attached the Aliya to the ship's other airlock.  With some help from Suleiman, we got aboard.  There was some debate as to what to do with the ship given our history with them.  Sayah's suggestion was that stealing their cushions seemed appropriately petty.

Karim: "Do you know how uncomfortable it is trying to fly in a ship with no cushions?"
Others: "Yes!  And it's all because of them!"

All the same, there were probably people in trouble here, and unlike the Fatima's Bounty crew, we weren't the kind to abandon people.  After sending in Gurgeh's reconnaisance drone, we made our way to the bridge.  Power was down, but Gurgeh managed to rig up enough power for Sayah to pull the final logs from the ship's computer.

It didn't make for comforting reading.  Two boarding parties had been sent out.  Both had lost contact after only three minutes.  Not long afterwards, something had started affecting the ship itself, causing it to fire one of its torpedos with the torpedo bay door closed, and finally an infection of data memes lead to a complete shut down.  Gurgeh told Suleiman to separate himself from any of this ship's systems immediately.

We could walk away, taking the ship's cushions and abandoning the crew to whatever fate had become of them.  But that (apart from the cushions, at least) wasn't who we were.

Crew of the Aliya, part 11: Doing Good

Tahir flew the Aliya close to the Sogoi village and made his usual perfect landing.  Gurgeh and Alqadi made themselves look as medical as possible, and accompanied by Lila and Sayah in case they needed better conversationalists, went out to meet the locals.

The smoke turned out to be from funeral pyres.  The village was suffering from blood fever, a disease that was disproportionately targetting children.  We met with one of the warriors and the shaman, who were a little suspcious of the two obvious Zenithian women, but Gurgeh and Alqadi managed to convince them we were there to help and got to work examining the sick, while Lila and Sayah worked on sampling and analysing the well water.

Tahir noticed another Zenithian in the area, and went to talk to him.  He was a priest, there as a missionary to attempt to convince the Sogoi to update their icon worship.  Tahir was rather suspicious of him, but he didn't appear to be actively hostile at this point.

Testing revealed the well water to have parasites that we definitely shouldn't be drinking, but which the locals were most likely adapted to.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  The medical team were getting more useful results, discovering an abnormality in the bone marrow that seemed to be affecting blood production.  Alqadi was taking a spiritual approach to things as well, and found out that a shadow creature similar to the one we had encountered at the towers had been in the area.  Could there be more to this disease than the merely physical?

Sayah suggested using the spirit glasses, so Lila put them on and went to take a look at things.  There was a shadow clinging to many of the sick children.  Something here was badly wrong.

Tahir went for a look at the riverside grove where the children were known to play, accompanied by Sayah in accordance with the four eyes protocol.  He used his jetpack to fly across the river, leaving Sayah behind on the other bank and was starting to take a look around when he heard a shout from behind him.  "Look out!"  He was being rapidly pursued by nahangs - large reptiles that had crawled out of the river.  Under the trees he couldn't fly straight up to escape them, but he still managed to use the jetpack to evade them and land back on the opposite bank with all his usual flair.

The final verdict regarding the disease was that the proper treatment was a combination of broad spectrum antibiotics and an exorcism.  We asked the shaman to take the lead, but also invited the Zenithian priest for some extra spiritual power, offering him the chance to endear himself to the Sogoi.  We watched the shaman as she lit a sacred brazier, and all prayed to our own icons while offering up the talismans that Tahir had made.

It was a long and grueling process.  The shadows were eventually driven out, but by the end we were all exhausted, and our two mystics, Alqadi and Lila, had been particularly drained.  As Gurgeh was attempting to do something about their nosebleeds, we got a message.  People on grav bikes were heading our way.  That had to be the Asturban guards.

At Sayah's insistence we made a hasty return to the ship, leaving the grateful Sogoi behind.  Once we were all safely aboard, Sayah was finally convinced to explain why she was so afraid of the Asturban.  She explained that years ago she'd been vetting some potential suitors her parents had found for her.  After reading their Spinder profiles and Spoogling their names she'd next turned to the Web Between the Stars, where she discovered evidence of strong connections between the noble family of one of the suitors and the Syndicate crime organisation.

So the space mafia were after her?  Sayah hadn't even considered that, although now she came to think about it it was another thing to worry about.  The problem was that she'd found that information in places that she absolutely should not have been djinned into, without even having used a VPN.  She'd packed her bags and fled, convinced the Asturban would be on her tail at any moment.  Recent events suggested they were finally starting to catch up with her.  The ship from the plateau was also heading our way.

Gurgeh turned off the ship's transponder and channeled power into the engines.  Lila, as first officer, took command, while Tahir took the helm.  When the pursuing ship failed to get a target lock on the Aliya, Gurgeh redirected power from the sensors and weapon systems into the engines, and with Tahir taking evasive maneoevres close to the planet's surface, we escaped and headed away from Kua.  We needed to refuel and resupply, and set a course back to Coriolis.

Once we were well clear of the planet and Gurgeh had turned the transponder back on, Sayah took Alqadi and Lila to the arboretum for some R&R through the medium of oud music and recreational substances.  They enjoyed the music, but both declined the offer of opor.  Gurgeh was more receptive.

Once we arrived at the station (and Sayah and Gurgeh had both come down from the opor high) we got to work, selling the supplies we'd picked up on Kua, maintaining the ship, purchasing new equipment, updating Doctor Wana, and in Sayah's case, restocking on opor.  We had a long journey ahead of us.  The Rimward Reach was waiting.

Crew of the Aliya, part 10: Monkeying Around

As the creature dissipated in a cloud of smoke, Lila collapsed to the floor, unconscious.  While Sayah panicked unhelpfully, Gurgeh rendered medical assistance until she came round.  Utterly confused, she didn't remember anything after putting on the spirit glasses.

Attempts to patch up Alqadi from the creature's assault proved less successful.  The armour got in the way.  Instead Gurgeh retrieved his crushed drone and recruited Hamsa to help him get it up and running again.

We realised that despite the shrieks we'd heard from the monkey, there was no body.  Tahir went looking, and found it, alive and well, in the workshop.  It had got the lid off one of the cylinders of presumed grey nanite goo and was now wearing it on its head.  Gurgeh threw a piece of jerky at the monkey to see what happened.  Not much.  Tahir removed the cylinder and the monkey ran off.

There was one unopened door left, and with some work and fervent prayers, we got it open.  Inside were a number of storage containers with radiation symbols, their contents confirmed by the clicking of the environmental scanners.  One container was open and empty.

In the corner of the room was a lift shaft.  Alqadi and the archaeodrone went down first to scout, and reported that there was a reactor down there.  Gurgeh and Hamsa followed to investigate the machinery.  With some effort they got things working and lights started switching on.  It seemed a bit unstable, but Gurgeh managed to get it stabilised.

Lila and Sayah went back to the temple so Lila could meditate with the memory stone.  A series of visions flooded her mind, showing the people who had once been here going about various activities.  Following their example, Lila went back to the workshop and got to work with the CNC machine and the nanites.  An error message flashed up, mostly incomprehensible, but mentioning dwarves.  Was that a reference to the monkeys?  There was a strange buzzing in the air, but soon Lila had produced a hollow cylinder and a carved cube.

Zhar Baghram had mentioned being short of hot dust.  Sayah had assumed that meant nanites, but perhaps he was referring to the radioactive fuel?

Alqadi, now returned from the reactor room, decided it was time to finally let the monkey go.  After all, no possible harm could come from releasing a monkey with a head full of nanites onto an unsuspecting planet, could it?  He opened up the hatch and shoed it outside.

Lila and Sayah went back to the office to think about solar system calculations.  Sayah pulled a date off the computer - it was 350 years since anyone had been here.  Lila took off the spirit glasses, and started drawing on the whiteboard, running her fingers through the dirt.  Sayah recognised the state she was in as similar to when she was meditating with the stone.  Was this another memory surfacing?

Gurgeh was concerned for her health, and despite not being able to identify anything wrong with her, decided to take the stone off her.  She woke up again, confused, and tried to take the stone back, but Gurgeh stepped out of reach.

Sayah looked at Lila's drawing and recognised the solar system once again, as seen in the other caves.  Lila assured Tahir that she was fine, which was enough for him to order Gurgeh to give the stone back.  Drawing resumed.

The lights were getting brighter.  Hamsa and Alqadi went back to the reactor.  It was making odd noises, as if something wasn't quite right with the machinery - something clogged or misaligned.  They returned to the control panel to try to get some control.  Was it time to leave?  Not with Hamsa and Gurgeh's skill.  They managed to return the reactor to its original state, and while the lights went out again, all seemed quiet.

We decided to get some sleep.  While the mattresses in the bedrooms had long since disintegrated, the rooms were more comfortable and provided a little privacy - although we all still shared rooms to keep an eye on each other.  It was not a restful night.  Everyone had strange dreams.

When we awoke, we got a message from Professor Elhana.  Strange things were afoot at their dig site.  Our ship had been surrounded by Astûrban guards.

We established communication with Suleiman and started transmitting the information we'd retrieved so that he could start computing.  He assured us that the Astûrban guards had not been inside the ship.  Sayah had locked the doors really well.

What next?  There was some debate regarding whether the guards were real guards or pirates, although Sayah, who'd been getting increasingly twitchy, seemed pretty convinced they were real.  Suleiman informed us that another ship had landed nearby, on the plateau where we had originally landed.  Tahir suggested using the ship's remote control to fly the ship to the towers.  Given the alternative meant a walk through the jungle and then confronting the Astûrban guards, this suggestion got universal approval.

Sayah took control of the ship, and with Tahir's help, guided it towards them.  As it came close, Tahir used his jetpack to fly into it and drop a ladder.  Everyone climbed up, except for Lila with her still recovering arm, who got hauled up on the end of the ladder in a thoroughly undigdified fashion.

With everyone aboard, Tahir flew the ship a little closer to the towers, in the hope of knocking off more of the sandstone cladding to test his theory.  Lila and Sayah yelled abuse about this being bad archaeology until he finally decided to fly away from the towers.

Gurgeh took blood samples from everyone, concerned about potential exposure to nanites.  He got inconclusive results from Lila and himself.  Tahir, Alqadi and Hamsa were all clear.  Sayah was free of nanites, but he did find traces of illicit substances.

Tahir took the Aliya back towards the plateau, where we saw a smaller, class 2 ship.  Long range scanners detected another ship approaching at range.

Tahir was finally persuaded that the best thing we could do was leave.  But then the sensors picked up signs of combustion around the Sogoi village.  Was someone attacking the native people?  We had to rescue them!  But then Suleiman spoke up.  He'd fitted together the information we'd transmitted.  The people here had been attempting to find a good communication window to the Lady of Tears sector of space.  They were trying to make contact with something or someone on the outer rim.

Despite Sayah and Lila's enthusiasm to follow up on this, we agreed we would at least check on the natives first.  We weren't the kind of crew who would leave people to die.  But after that, the cloud awaited.

Crew of the Aliya, part 9: Door to Door

It was clear that we could benefit from the mechanical and archaeological talents of our absent crewmembers.  We sent them a message to come and join us.  With a trail already blazed through the forest, Lila and Hamsa effortlessly dodged the cliffs and macro-wasps to join us in the underground complex.  We spent the time waiting for them making a thorough search of the rooms we'd unlocked so far, and found a very old skeleton in the corner of the temple, plus the remote control for the entry hatch.  With some power cells and duct tape we got it working again.

Tahir explained his theories and ideas about the towers.  Lila was insistent that under no circumstances were we going to destroy this ancient site by ripping off the sandstone rings.

Gurgeh made further use of power cells to get the door leading out of the workshop unlocked, and found some kind of office.  Whiteboards hung on the walls, the writing on them obscured by dirt.  Lila tried to remove the dirt, but couldn't do so without damaging the writing as well.  But using the archeodrone's cameras, she was able to get some pictures.  Shelves held some books.  Hamsa tried picking one up, but found it to be on the point of crumbling into dust.  A control panel was on the wall.  Something to look at later.

We got another door open - the one leading from the storeroom where we came in.  This lead to a long corridor with a number of doors.  The first lead to a decent size bedroom with en suite facilities.  The second was a canteen, with a dining table and chairs.  On the wall was some writing.  While he couldn't read it, Alqadi did recognise amongst it the iconography of his own icon, the Judge.  Lila took a look at it, and identified a word - Kahan - that sounded familiar in a religious sense.

We split up to investigate the remaining doors.  Behind the third was a bedroom.  Sayah looked around and spotted something in the wardrobe.  An oud, similar to her own, but ancient and richly decorated.  The strings were on the point of crumbling into dust.  She decided to leave it where it was for now, in case the wood was similarly fragile, and come back later when she could take proper care with it.

The fourth door also revealed a bedroom.  Lila searched the room and found a chest, and despite shouts of 'mimic' from the other rooms, opened the lid.  Inside was a pair of glasses that she recognised as spirit glasses, that would allow you to see things beyond normal vision.  She took them with her.

Door five was another bedroom.  Hamsa searched, but initially found nothing.  Something about the wardrobe raised suspicion, however.  He kicked it, and noticed a hollow sound.  After a prayer to the icons for guidance, he pushed on the clothes rail, and found the back of the wardrobe swung open to reveal another room.

Inside he found a pair of scimitars, and a pair of rifles, both clearly very old, and a leather pouch.  Inside was a stone, a good size for holding in one hand, decorated with engravings.  Being very careful not to touch it he called for Lila to take a look.  Her professional opinion was that it was a memory stone, and that the stored memories might be recoverable through meditation.

Behind the sixth door, Alqadi had found another bedroom with a desk and a shisha pipe, and most interestingly, some writing.  It was in an unfamiliar dialect, but close enough to our own language that he could read it.  He took a picture so as not to damage the fragile paper, and shared it with the others.

But before we could take a proper look at anything we'd found (or open the final door), the proximity sensors went off.  Something was in the storeroom.

Gurgeh dispatched one of his drones to have a look, while Alqadi released the monkey that he'd been carrying around in a bag.  It scampered back down the corridor.  Moments later we heard a horrible shriek.  Gurgeh looked at the camera feed from his drone.  Nothing clear, but some kind of shadow was visible.

Lila donned her spirit glasses and followed Alqadi and Tahir down the corridor.  They saw only a strange wisp of smoke, but she saw a curious long limbed creature that she recognised as a sentinel.

"Friend or foe?"  Alqadi asked Lila.

"Foe."  Alqadi immediately opened fire.

In the spray of automatic fire, a hint of the shape of the beast began to appear for everyone else.  It was reminicent of the shadow creature we'd seen on the video from the cave.  Tusks.  Claws.  Dripping with mucus.  And throwing itself at Alqadi.

Lila fired her stun gun, but the shot fizzled out on the creature's carapace, leaving a stench of rot.  Sayah ran down the corridor to grab Lila and drag her out of the creature's reach.  Gurgeh turned on the lights of his drone to cause a distraction while Alqadi attempted to fight back.

Alqadi missed.  The door to the storeroom went flying off its hinges.  And a sudden wave of fear and dread swept across us.

Hamsa and Sayah fired, but both shots bounced off the creature's carapace.  Lila took cover behind Sayah, and fired her stun gun again, this time managing to aim into a soft spot.  Not enough to stun it, but enough to slow its movements.  Gurgeh rammed his drone into the beast.  It stumbled - and then stepped on the drone as it went for Alqadi again.

But while other shots went wide, Tahir got one solid shot into a weak point, breaking the creature's arm and driving it into horrific shrieks.  A claw flew past Alqadi's face, barely missing him, but Alqadi had got his rifle reloaded and unloaded straight into the creature's eye.  And with that, it dissipated into smoke.

Crew of the Aliya, part 8: Open Sesame

We spent some time shopping while still stuck on the station, picking up protective clothing for Gurgeh and Sayah just in case of another corpse attack.  Sayah also restocked on opor.

Gurgeh took the hair samples that Sayah had retrieved from Jinna's room, and compared them with the samples he'd taken from Lavim Tamm's corpse in the cave.  Definitely not the same person.  He then compared them to samples from when Lavim had been on our ship, being treated for radiation poisoning.  The hair samples had clearly got mixed up with hair from Jinna's roommate, but he was confident that the Lavim who'd been there was the same one we'd had on our ship, and the earlier samples didn't match the corpse.  No identical twins here.  One of them was a fake.

The adjudicator dropped by again to let us know that with no evidence of a connection between us and the death of Merez, we were free to leave.  Gurgeh felt that there was no sense flying an empty ship down to Kua, so while Sayah negotiated a good price for the delivery of supplies to the other dig site, he put out an advert and got some passengers.  A Coriolis guard and a civilian.

Sayah looked up the civilian based on facial recognition, and found out that he was a witness in a Syndicate case.  She passed that on to the rest of the crew, then went to hide from the guard in her cabin for the duration of the flight, only emerging after we'd dropped off the passengers in the nearby coastal city.  After a meal of gumbo, we returned to the valley.

Tahir once again made a perfect landing at the dig site, and we unloaded the supplies.  Professor Ilhana invited us to stay for dinner, so we had a pleasant meal and a chat about the local conditions.

Some of us had concerns about the local wildlife.  The river was reputedly full of big toothy reptiles called nahangs, the place was known for the semi-sentient primates known as Ekilibri, and even worse, there were supposedly djanna out there - spirits that would use glowing lights to lure people away into the forest and then feed on their fear as they died.

Lila, still not able to use her new arm, made the sensible decision to stay on the ship for the moment.  Hamsa also stayed behind, to do some running repairs.  So it was Tahir, Gurgeh, Sayah and Alqadi who set off together into the jungle.  Gurgeh lead the way, using his environmental scanner to watch out for dangers.  He successfully avoided leading us through a nest of fire ants or a hive of macro-wasps, and stopped us just in time to avoid falling down a massive hole.

Somehow we had managed to forget about the massive worms that also inhabited the jungle.  It was obvious from the damaged foliage that it had been here recently.  Tahir wanted to investigate the hole, but everyone else insisted on pushing on towards the stone towers.

We reached the towers shortly before dark, and had a quick look.  They appeared to be constructed of giant rings of sandstone, and were covered with glyphs.  They were similar to the ones we'd already seen on the amber cylinder, but more rounded, as if they'd been carved in a different way, or came from a different time period.  The one thing we were sure of was that they definitely weren't the work of the first-come.

Looking around the base of the towers, we found footprints that doubtless belonged to Zhar Baghram on his previous visit to the site.  They lead into a shrubbery, dotted with small stelae.  Tahir used his jetpack to fly to the top of the towers.  On top of the right hand tower was a dip, and inside it a large cube of a different type of stone, much harder than sandstone and also slightly cooler to the touch.  The stone at the top of the tower was damaged and unstable, so he didn't hang around for long.

We made camp near the base of the towers.  Gurgeh set up some motion sensors around the camp, and we kept watch in shifts.  There we passed an uneventful, if noisy, night.

In the morning we investigated the footprints again, and after clearing away some of the shrubs we found a large octagonal plate in front of the tower.  It was divided into triangles, alternately marked with scimitars and large gemstones - red, blue, white and black.

Gurgeh examined the stones.  He found that the triangular segments looked like they could fold downwards, and that there were residues in the recesses around each gem.  The red one appeared to be blood.

We looked again at the poem in Zhar Baghram's journal.  He'd found enough clues here to get this door open.

One war took, led to his death
One a bird lifted over the high sea
One the hoary wolf broke with death
One, bloody-cheeked, a warrior hid in a hole in the ground.

Four keybearers.  Surely this had to match up to the four stones?  And one already mentioned blood.  Tahir applied some of his own to the red stone.

Blue must be the sea.  Would plain water do, or did it have to be salty?  Gurgeh thought it might, and managed to get himself to shed enough tears to apply to the blue stone.

Sayah spotted the mention of the hoary wolf, possibly referring to frost.  An ice pack from the first aid kit supplied that easily enough.

But what about the black stone?  The first line of the poem was not particularly enlightening.  Did black mean ash?  Did we have to burn something?  There was plenty of wood around, but wood ash did not have any effect on the plate.  Did the mention in the journal of fighting a flying demon mean we needeed something with wings?  Nobody fancied chasing down the macro-wasps.  Alqadi thought it might be necessary to use one of the Ekilibri, and headed into the trees to catch one.  The general party feeling was that we were morally opposed to killing these creatures, however, and we should at least try something else first.  Surely there would be evidence left behind of how Zhar Baghram had opened the door?

We searched, and found the decayed remains of some kind of rodent that was missing one leg.  We weren't sure entirely which part of it was required, but applying the remains to the black stone did result in the eight segments folding down to reveal a shaft with a platform some way below us.

Gurgeh sent down a drone.  It looked fine - just some furniture.  Tahir immediately climbed down, and found himself in some kind of ancient storage room, lined with shelves.  Footprints on the floor showed the presence of the previous team.

On the wall was a control panel.  Gurgeh and Sayah had joined Tahir, and Gurgeh tried pressing buttons to see what happened.  One started closing the door.  He quickly pressed it again, and the door opened again.  Another button caused a wheezing noise, that appeared to be to operate the platform as a lift, although the platform itself didn't move.  The last button did nothing.

Alqadi cleared up the remains of our camp and joined the others down the shaft.  Leading off the room was a corridor on one wall and a metal door on the other.  It looked old, yet the design appeared modern.  There was a button beside it, but pressing it didn't open it.

The wide corridor led into a room full of workbenches.  We saw the remnants of strange looking instruments.  Were these some kind of ancient computer?  We also found white stone cylinders and metal cubes, and a lot of stone and metal chippings.  They put us in mind of the carved cylinder and cube that we knew were used to operate the frame in the other cave.  Prepared blanks, perhaps?

There were also canisters.  Inside was something grey and moving.  These were quickly closed up again.  Sayah wondered if that was what Zhar Baghram had meant in the video when he mentioned 'hot dust'.  There was also the worrying prospect that this stuff might be responsible for the extra limbs we'd seen on Islir and Lavim's corpses.

The next room we found had a ring of eight pillars with a ninth in the centre, some of which had figurines on them.  It wasn't exactly what any of us thought of as a temple to the icons, but nevertheless that was what it felt like.  We looked cautiously at one of the figurines.  A black monkey with wings.

Zhar Baghram had been on a time limit.  There were doors here he hadn't opened.  We were going to try to take a look.  However, knowing that there was a fake Lavim Tamm on the loose, and that we'd potentially come into contact with the mysterious grey stuff, we agreed that none of us could be alone from now on.  The idea of one of us being replaced by a clone seemed far more plausible than anyone was comfortable with.

Crew of the Aliya, part 7: The Plot Thickens

Hamsa carried Lila out of the caves and back to the ship, where Gurgeh got her into a stasis pod to keep her stable.  Tahir checked his email, and found a general broadcast from a Professor Ilhana requesting aid as her party's supply drop hadn't arrived and they were short of food.  Sayah vanished into her cabin to 'do unwise things'.

Tahir flew the Aliya across to Professor Ilhana's camp to drop off a couple of days' worth of food.  He got the name of the person who should be delivering their supplies, who they'd lost contact with - Nivrod Motiwali.  He then set a course back to Coriolis, where we could find both Motiwali and some high level medical treatment for Lila.

Once we'd docked at the station, Gurgeh managed to wake Lila up for long enough to get some emergency contact details from her.  He contacted her family to arrange transfer to a suitable facility, and managed to convince the people who came to collect her that he needed to go with her.

Sayah emerged from a slightly smoky cabin, looking significantly less stressed, and plugged the camera drone they'd retrieved from the caves into Suleiman.  With his help she was able to retrieve further video from it, from a few minutes before what they'd been able to watch already.

Not quite trusting her own perception in her altered mental state, Sayah called Tahir and Hamsa over to watch it with her.  It showed the team getting the drone into position to fly around the frame, moving the large cylinder that we'd seen pictures of close to the frame, and plugging in the cube.  There were a couple of notable points.  First, Zhar mentioning not knowing how long the 'hot dust' they found would last.  And second, something odd in his eye, like an inky black cloud passing across it.

Hamsa contacted Jinna and learned that Lavim had gone missing.  Just walked away, right after dinner.  Along with Sayah he went to visit her to see if they could look learn anything there.  After a brief and unenlightening chat, Hamsa asked for the toilet, in the hope of being able to retrieve DNA samples while he was in there.  Unfortunately, Jinna insisted on accompanying him to show him the way, but this did mean Sayah had the opportunity to collect some hair from the pillow.  With Jinna's hair being green, it was easy to know which bed was hers, although there was no way to be certain whose hair we'd actually picked up.

Jinna mentioned one odd thing. Lavim had been demonstrating a new interest in the rimward reach.  Magdan was found there, used for anti-gravity, along with some very old ships.

Tahir went to talk to the port officials to see if he could find out if Lavim had left the station. With some guidance from the Traveller he was able to learn that he'd left on a private ship - the Fatima's Bounty.

We met up again back at the ship, but when we arrived, adjudicators were waiting for us.  They had questions about Merez.  He was dead, and appeared to have grown some extra limbs.  Tahir told them what little we knew, being sure to mention the Fatima's Bounty.  We were given instructions not to leave the station for 48 hours.

Not long afterwards, Gurgeh got a message that Lila was on her way back.  She now had a bio-sculpted arm, and instructions not to use it for the next six days.

We had some time to fill.  Sayah did an image search for Islir's tattoo but couldn't find anything. Gurgeh had a look at the samples from the mutated body parts we'd found in the cave, and found that they still appeared to be human.  He checked himself to make sure. Still definitely human.

For once, we were on Coriolis at the same time as our patron, Doctor Wana.  She invited us to dinner, and we told her about Merez and the shadow monkey.  That was when we found out that Merez didn't get our name from her - which made sense, given his syndicate connections. We also told her about the dig site and the frame. Lila explained her theory about it being portal builder stuff, and showed her the cylinder and the camera video. Doctor Wana agreed on seeing the glyphs.

We told her about how we believed there was a second dig site, based on Zhar Baghram's journal.  We talked about the keybearers that it mentioned, and she told us about a strange sect with that name, and showed us a keybearer symbol that we recognised as Islir's tattoo.  We also told her about Merez and his unfortunate demise.  She wasn't entirely upset about that, and said he worked for our Nemesis, Lea.

Many questions still remained.  What was the mystic plague we'd heard about?  Where were all these extra limbs coming from?  Who was the Z.K. who'd been emailing Islir, and was he also a keybearer?  Why were there two Lavim Tamm's and what did the alive one want on the Fatima's Bounty?  What was in Sabetha's crates of 'medical supplies'?

And how were we going to occupy ourselves for another day on Coriolis when most us were itching to get back to the dig site but weren't allowed to leave?

Crew of the Aliya: A friend in need.

Another between-games vignette.  I write these to get a deeper insight into my character's motivations, whereas the main write-ups are more about the story, and reminding us all what happened at the previous session.

The Gambler holds out a hand, inviting you to roll the dice.  To take a risk.  To take a chance.

She'd taken a risk, going down that tunnel.  She'd taken a Vulcan carbine too.  But it had been going pretty well until they found the first corpse.

Was it the first dead body she'd seen?  Right now she wasn't even sure.  But it was definitely the first one she'd seen with a third arm, scaly and clawed, growing out of its chest.  She'd hung back while the others investigated, and managed not to throw up, although if she hadn't been distracted by that damaged tabula, it might have been harder to avoid.

By the time they got to the third corpse it was almost a relief.  Just a dead person, stabbed, with no abnormal appendages.  And by now Lila had found something that interested her, and her infectious excitement was enough to keep Sayah going.

But then Tahir started acting strange.  Cautious.  And while Sayah hadn't noticed anything else untoward, Mr Reckless himself acting cautious meant something very bad was about to happen.  She tried to stop Lila doing what she was doing and get her away from there.  But what was the point of trying to get between Lila and portal builder technology?

And then the corpse started to move, and every instinct was screaming at her to get away, but it was already reaching out for Lila.  And so she had embraced the Gambler.  She took a risk.  She took a shot.

Her hands were shaking.  The gun felt heavy and unwieldy.  She couldn't afford to miss now.  At best, the thing would keep going, and at worst, she could hit Lila.  She offered a desperate prayer to the Gambler, to let this risk pay off.

The shot landed.  Not good enough.  The thing was hurt, but still moving, and now it had Lila by the arm, teeth and claws rending through flesh and sinew.

Take a risk.  She fired again, and this time there was no wavering.  Her aim was true, and the thing collapsed back to the floor, even as Lila was going into shock as the blood poured from her ruined arm.

A voice, which turned out to be her own, screamed for Gurgeh.  She didn't even care that there was another mobile corpse that the others were dealing with.  It didn't take a medicurge to see that Lila was bleeding to death.

After a few of the longest seconds of Sayah's life, Gurgeh was at their side, staunching the flow of blood.  She let out a breath she didn't even know she'd been holding.  Lila was safe, for now, so long as they could get her back to the ship straight away.

Which was when the first corpse made another appearance.

Her first shot went wide.  But by the second she'd found her eye again.  The others had weakened it, and her shot found its mark.  The corpse fell, lifeless once more.

She had embraced the Gambler, and the Gambler had blessed her.  But Lila had not been so lucky.  Sayah wasn't strong, but Lila was slight enough for two people to carry her between them without too much strain.  Blood spattered and sick with both worry and nausea, Sayah was already thinking longingly of the Aliya.  The medlab, and the washroom, and the chapel.  And her stash.

She hadn't expected to need it.  This should have been a nice quiet archaeology expedition.  It had been a moment's whim, while out shopping for an oud, that had sent her in search of less wholesome pleasures than music.  Now she was grateful for that whim. Relief awaited them on the Aliya, in the medlab for Lila, and for Sayah, in the sweet smoke of the opor pipe.

Crew of the Aliya, part 6: Going Underground

Amongst the possessions of the dig team, we did find one interesting item.  A diary.  It described finding and opening an entrance, finding the shadow monkey statue that Lavim had had, and also a cylinder covered in writing that was described as Builders' script.

We decided it was time to investigate the third tunnel.  Leaving Alqadi behind, we descended into darkness.

We first came to a large diamond shape room, which lead into a corridor.  The floor appeared to be some kind of black marble, streaked with blue.  Our path took us down a series of long curved paths, with either pebbly, blue streaked or gold streaked marble, and short straight paths of plain black stone.  It seemed like we were doubling back on ourselves several times.  There were also some sticky pads and tape on the floor, as if someone had been trying to leave some kind of marking.  What did it mean?

The corridor walls were extremely smooth.  No tool marks, no seams.  It seemed like the stone had somehow been melted and moulded rather than carved.  Who had the technology to create something like this?

Remembering the game of Dungeons and Dragons they'd played while in transit on the Aliya, Sayah suggested it might be a gelatinous cube.  Did those really exist?  We all hoped not.

Lila deployed her environmental scanner, after noticing some odd features of both the tunnel and the sticky pads.  She found that there was a slight heat differential between the wall and the floor.  We were beginning to suspect that somehow these tunnel sections could move.

Gurgeh's drone was scouting ahead when its camera picked up something unusual.  A corpse.

Tahir, wearing his exosuit, went in to investigate.  The man was dressed for digging in overalls.  He looked dry and dessicated, but more obviously, had a third arm growing out of his chest with scaly greyish skin and three long clawed fingers.  The name badge he wore identified him as one of the dig team, Islir.  There was also a strange tattoo on his arm, which Lila thought looked familiar, and a small amber cylinder in his hand with markings that Gurgeh thought looked like those on the stone cylinder that the dig team had found.

Gurgeh and Sayah, the latter of whom was refusing to get any closer to the corpse than necessary, found a damaged tabula on the floor.  With some work they managed to get it up and running sufficiently to break into its messaging app.  The tabula had clearly belonged to Islir, who had been messaging someone identified only as Z.K.

Z.K. appeared to have some kind of ulterior motive, whoever they might be.  From the messages, it looked like they were paying Islir to scare away the others once the artefact had been found.  Islir's instructions were to activate a cylinder, then wait for the others to panic and leave.  Islir was concerned that whatever it was might not prove effective on the guard, but was reassured by Z.K. that he only had to fire on the others to make them fear Sarcophagoi  and flee.

Obviously things had not gone according to plan for Islir.

We were approaching the centre of the spiraling tunnel now.  Tahir thought about the Kuan system, and realised that the long curved passages could match up with the planets and asteroid belts orbiting the star.  Realising that the tunnels with the pebbly floors matched up with the asteroid belts convinced us that he was correct.  Perhaps this entire tunnel system could move?

We had reached the centre.  A large, long room with eight tall pillars, and at the end of it a strange frame covered in glyphs.  And more corpses.

The first was by the first pillar.  A gun lay beside him, and one of his legs had turned into a tangle of tentacles with hooked suckets.  It looked like he'd attempted to shoot the tentacles, but judging by the marks on his throat, the tentacles had attacked and killed him.

More worryingly, he looked exactly like Lavim Tamm.

The second corpse lay by the frame.  A woman this time, presumably Frolia from the dig team.  No extra body parts on her, just a massive stab wound.  And nearby we found a camera drone.

The battery was almost dead, but Hamsa had one in his knife that would do the job.  We watched the recording.  Islir shouted something about something being 'in the walls'.  Then a shadowy form appeared, stabbing Frolia, attacking Lavim and Islir.  And Zhar falling out of the picture as the lights went out.

Something terrible had happened here.  We needed to find out what.

Lila, fascinated by anything related to the portal builders as usual, examined the frame.  The glyphs looked familiar, similar to the ones on the amber cylinder.  There was an indentation on the frame, meant to hold a cube, and the video had shown a cube on the frame.  Sayah suggested searching the two corpses to see if they had it (while refusing to go near them herself).  No luck, but with some careful use of the cylinder, Lila managed to get some of the glyphs on the frame to light up.

Tahir and Hamsa were struck with a sudden sense of foreboding.  Sayah felt fine, but seeing the normally fearless Tahir acting nervous made her worry too, and she attempted to persuade Lila to put down the cylinder and walk away.  But it was too late.  The corpse of Frolia sat up and grabbed Lila's leg.

Frolia wasn't the only corpse to wake up.  The tentacled remains of Lavim got up and went for Tahir, who was very glad to still be wearing his exosuit.  While Gurgeh and Tahir battled Lavim, Sayah shot Frolia, but was unable to stop her from biting off Lila's arm.  Hamsa joined the fight, and Sayah finally finished off Frolia while yelling for Gurgeh to come and help Lila.

With Lavim's corpse dealt with, Gurgeh dashed over, and with the aid of Tahir's trauma kit, was able to stabilise Lila.  All the same, it was critical that we got her back to the Aliya's medlab as soon as possible.  So it's unfortunate that at this point the corpse of Islir came charging into the room.

Everyone (except Lila) opened fire.  It threw itself at Hamsa, but being made of slightly sterner stuff than Lila he survived the assault long enough for the others to finish taking it down, destroying one of its legs in the process.

We were still a corpse or two short of a full dig team.  We would just have to hope we didn't meet any more of them before we got back to the Aliya.