An Offer of Employment
The party finds themselves in a cafe near the spaceport in Maon, the planetary capital of Samsara. Lee is at the card table, sitting in a cloud of sweet-smelling cigar smoke, winning more than they lose. Lyra and Aeila (the latter in her Maradonian civilian clothes) watch a half-Ranathim dancing girl perform. In a corner, Luckpicker watched Lee, pointing out to its master, Cero, that the androgynous figure is cheating. Around them swirl rumors: that the blockade of the planet is due to a crackdown on antiquities dealers, or the hunt for a psionic criminal, or the key to a superweapon, or that it has something to do with the new Imperator-class dreadnought overhead.
A woman steps onto the cafe’s terrace, a desperate expression on her face. She approaches Aiela, recognizing her as a member of House Kain, and asks the giantess for help finding and rescuing her daughter. She introduces herself as Ardent Shane and says that her daughter Trinity has been abducted by the Red Eyes, a gang employed by Atrin Khalli. She is willing to pay in money and a trip through the blockade.
Lee overhears the conversation and both they and Aeila notice that there is something false in Ardent’s words. Lee gets an empathetic sense that the woman is not kind, loving, or even nervous. Aeila, meanwhile, detects manacles and a slave collar within her belt pouch.
Lyra, Cero, and Luckpicker (who terrifies the woman!) all take interest in helping Ardent, and so Lee gathers everyone around a table at the back of the establishment. Before proceeding, however, they confront Ardent, backed up by Aeila. With little choice, she comes clean: her real name is Terrilee Jones, and she is a bounty hunter who works for the League of Zang. Someone higher up ordered her to retrieve Trinity. Apparently the girl is a powerful retrocognicist. Her wife really is a smuggler, so the offer was real, even if the motives weren’t. The group tentatively agrees to assist her, but once she is gone they broach the subject of double crossing her later. After all, working with a slaver’s minion doesn’t really appeal to any of them.
Armed with a photo of the girl, they set out.
Grey Shadows
As they exit the cafe, they notice a cloaked figure trailing them. Aeila does a deep scan to find a middle-aged woman dressed in battleweave and carrying a strange force sword. Following Lyra’s advice, they lead her into an alley, but she detects their ambush and only steps in far enough to speak with them.
The woman reveals herself as a member of the Dark Vigil by the name of Vienna Grey, and warns them that Terrilee and her wife are known slave traffickers. Vienna requests they bring Trinity to her instead. She offers them no money, but alludes to the Vigil’s own smuggler ships. Lyra grows irate, as everyone repeatedly insists that the girl matters because of her ‘psionic powers’ instead of anything real. The others are hesitant for other reasons. After all, the Dark Vigil is not a name to inspire much confidence in any of them. Vienna does not push much for now, instead slipping on a porcelain mask and disappearing back into the crowded street.
Ultimately, the party decides that the only real option available is to continue the investigation.
Strange Signs
In the working class shopping district Terrilee had directed the party to, they saw street performers in the middle of a scene from what Cero recognized as Shisameer. Meanwhile, a flock of strange, ominous birds surrounds the ill-featured Ranathim youth and his Gaunt servant, drawing unwanted stares. Some pleasant reactions from various merchants and restaurateurs to the charisma of both Lyra and Lee yielded useful information: the Red Eyes have a small warehouse by the closest canal. A noodle shop owner even mentions that Trinity was last seen heading in the direction where both her home and the warehouse lie.
To be thorough, however, they also check her home, a townhouse rented by her equally missing father. Luckpicker hauls Cero to the roof to act as lookout while Lyra picks the lock and leads the others inside.
The inside is somewhat cramped, but comfortable. Trinity’s bedroom is ordinary, though with some pamphlets from the local Domen Sefalina temple stashed under her mattress. Her father was an antiques dealer, however, so the lower floors were filled with curiosities. Amid the temple masks, replica khopeshes, and mannequins dressed in Tyrannic fashion they manage to locate a secret compartment hiding eight reddish-gold coins and a journal written in Kelen. Cero later identifies these as Mithanna blood-gold, and asks to keep ahold of them. Finally, in a few family pictures they note that Trinity clearly has a different mother, and that her father knew Vienna Grey at some point.
The First Fight
Moving on to the warehouse, they approach cautiously and see armed Ranathim men working there. Aeila attempts to deep scan, but something in the building’s masonry just jars her the wrong way, so she lends Lyra a sensor. The catgirl operates it adroitly, locating eight figures within the building. Quickly, she formulates a plan of attack, with suggestions from the others.
Aeila’s part comes first. She moves to a side wall, close to where four of the figures are working, and draws her grand force sword. Between her strength, the mediocre construction, and the massive blade, she shears an opening through onto to be met with four pistols pointing her way. Due to her truly ludicrous strength, she is capable of carrying her sword in one hand and her I-99D Imperial Carbine in the other like some kind of anime character. Two of the gangsters actually hit her, which hurts but also just makes her angry. By the time the rest of the party catches up, three of them are segmented and she is drinking blood from the body of the fourth.
Backing up a bit, as soon as the wall goes down, Lyra leaps through the window of an upstairs office, right behind the lone Ranathim up there. She simply knocks him out with the butt of her pistol. Meanwhile, Luckpicker and Cero emerge from the canal entrance, the Gaunt having scuttled along the outside wall carrying its master. One slam and one blast of necrotic power finish the two gangsters they faced. To Luckpicker’s joy, the one Cero psychically rotted is now quite palatable.
Lee takes a different approach as they stride up to the one out smoking by the main entrance. They pull a massive pistol out of seemingly nowhere and scare the gangster off, preferring a less lethal solution.
With five gangsters dead, two unconscious, and one fleeing, the party reunites and interrogates the one Lyra captured, Luckpicker’s man remains out cold.
It does not take much coercion to break his resolve. He tells them that they did indeed abduct Trinity and sent her to a specific room down in the aft engineering of Jetuni Zakon. Lyra promises his freedom, then Cero kills him anyway. The man admitted to being a kidnapper and trafficker, after all. He killed the other for good measure, and Luckpicker body bagged one as a snack for later.
Waiting for the Ferry
Declining to use the gang’s speedboats due to a lack of skill, the party instead agrees to meet at the ferry in an hour. Aeila shows up accompanied by her robot, a Shieldmaiden who carries her armor. Lee also has a robotic aide, a suitcase with spider legs.
As they wait in line in the orange evening light, the party witnesses an anti-slavery student protest which Lyra and Lee decide to join in. The leader is a young Ranathim woman waving a sign disparaging Mithna Khalli. A group of Imperial policemen approach and the party tenses for a confrontation, but instead a young officer asks the girl, Megara Metria, to go home. Her mom is worried about her. Megara is defiant at first, but the party convinces her that protesting against Mithna Khalli practically on their doorstep might not be the wisest plan. When her mother, Rita Metria, arrives to bring her home, she does with only a bit of sullenness, encouraged by advice from Lyra, Lee, and Cero to organize a better, safer protest in the future.
The session ended there, with the party boarding the ferry to Jetuni Zakon at last.
Lessons Learned
The biggest lesson we learned was “le feu tue” — “firepower kills!” Aeila took damage to the torso that would have threatened the life of anyone else besides Luckpicker. Between the combat Gaunt and the cyborg vampire, I feel fairly confident attacking those two, but I worry about what will happen when the rest of the party starts getting hit.
Another lesson is that I still need to work on my pacing. Feedback I got from the session was positive overall but did point out the lack of time to explore interparty roleplay, some iffy choices on my end surrounding the townhouse sequence, issues with people speaking over each other, and some of the players annoying others. I feel that all of these were due to my fairly modest skill as a GM, especially with voice games which I have less practice with.
Final Scores
Dancing Girls Spotted: 2
Gangsters Murdered: 7 out of 8
Anti-Slavery Protest: Shut Down
Lives Saved: Approximately 0
Luckpicker-Induced Freak-Outs: 1