Such an exciting day! First, Widget had to rescue Ash, when he decided to pet the native wildlife. He’ll recover. Eventually. Then we followed markers, which took us on stairs downward for 60′. I saw lots of footprints: sandals small shoes (PactWorld merchants, so on the right track). Um, yeah. And the we also found the prints of large felines, and three sets of troll(?) prints. I know at least one set was troll for sure. We found a dead troll. Exsanguinated. I really hope that doesn’t provide the blood drinker with extra healing! Even, more, I hope we didn’t rescue some vampire-like creature! We only found Amber and Mez’chef, hiding in a room, looking much the worse for wear. Now, to get them back up to the dangerous surface world, onto the ship, and, hopefully, off this planet!
Rae
Ysoki Mechanic / Xenoarchaeologist
Welcome to the Jungle
What a day! And night. And another day! We took Amber’s note as truth, and aimed ourselves north. Or as close as we could manage without having to create a new path. We decided to just hide if we saw any of the hostile species. Once, as we did so, we saw a group of them riding the six-legged cats. One had two android heads clanking together as they hung from his belt. I recognized Damascus, but we’d have been outnumbered, even if we could attack without being noisy. The group also had kinda familiar looking weapons– I don’t think they look capable to producing combat rifles. I hope they aren’t loaded. Um, anyway we also saw a Tyrannosaurus lumber through. We also startled a simian with huge eyes while we camped by the we road. I swear everything on this planet wants to eat us, so not taking chances.
By the time we got back on the path, poor Widget had a few glitches, thanks to the magic defeating technology the longer we had to be here.
We did eventually make it north to a rusting, abandoned city. I recognized a glyph for “Starfinder” on one old sign, and a reflective marker/ribbon nearby. We found the Aurora crew! Almost. First, we had to defeat a scorpion like thing with tentacles and a gaping maw that was trying to eat Sresaka. I cast a Jolting Surge at it. Killed it handily. As tech is failing apparently magic is doing quite well. Argh.
Flying High Again
So far since our crew met back up, we’ve fought a giant slug (Widget scared it off), several flying feathered serpents (also scared off), several exsanguinated creatures, and a lot of coolant. Oh, and eventually the wrecked ship. It took a while, following debris, to eventually find the wreck. We’d already convinced Widget to fly up 100′ so we could make a map. He saw:
- Northwest: glinting metal a mile away– that would be the shipwreck.
- Northeast: partially collapsed track from a grav train.
- South southeast: wooden structures in the trees, about 2 or 3 miles away.
- Far north: rusted metal spires poking up through a jungle, at least 10 miles out.
- East: spires of another ruined city, 8 to 10 miles away.
When we finally found the wreckage, we discovered one of the crew had rigged up the emergency beacon with a simple solar-panel to keep the battery charged. The rest of the ship was obviously ransacked, but we didn’t find bodies. We did find a note which sorta looks like Amber’s writing, but it’s covered in mud. Hoping we can get it dry to read.
From what little we can make out of Amber’s note, the natives are unfriendly to hostile, so we are heading north, where we hope they went, to the … forbidden zone.
Walk the Dinosaur
This is terrible. We are fairly lost. I’ve contacted the rest of the crew, and they are heading towards us. We think. Meanwhile, our escape pod has become a toy for what looks like a tyrannosaurus. Guess Akiton isn’t the only planet lucky enough to have them. In spite of us staying perfectly still, the dinosaur insists on kicking the pod around. Brock and I-9 both managed to tumble out before we could reclose the door.
Once our friends got to us, we collected the bots. I-9 was, thankfully, unharmed. Brock’s robot body is somewhat flattened, but his virtual self will be back on the ship before we can get there. I-9 is a decent engineer; he and VI Brock can build a new body, while we look for the Starfinder Society crew.
It’s not looking good so far. We’ve seen some scary stuff. First we saw a large 6-legged wildcat up in a tree. Then, a dead primate (4-limbed), that looked like (had it been alive) it had membranes for gliding. It also had rudimentary clothing and a small metal knife. We left him as we found him. Just as we were leaving him, Sresaka turned to find a huge slug with what looks like rows of razor-sharp teeth in a 4-sided mouth. Hope it’s no faster than the normal garden snail. I think Widget has a salt cylinder. Hope he packed it.
Should I Stay or Should I Go
We spent hours getting the station set up to be safe. I needed more time to get the communication array working so I could report back to Venn. But I would likely have plenty of time. We said goodbye to our friends and made sure they made it down to the planet safely. They had a window of time when the magic barrier was thinner; we determined that their sun was the cause, so it was somewhat predictable. This current thinning was set to go several hours, and maybe I’d not hear from them for five days.
They were able to say, before they found a safe place to land, that they could see the wreck of the Starfinder Society’s ship. The PDSU was to land twelve miles away from it, on a plateau.
It turned out that it wasn’t too difficult to put the station in geosynchronous orbit. I will never know if that was what caught the attention of a Swarm scout ship. I did know that they were headed straight towards me, and would be here in nine minutes. I tucked the bots into the escape pod, set an auto distruct to blow up the station a few minutes after their arrival.
We snuck out the back, aiming our pod as best we could towards where our crew ended up. I do have a problem. I am having more trouble with contacting them. I think I’m landing halfway between the ship and the crew. I do know two tiny and one small bot will be difficult to carry, if the anti-tech (pro-magic?) field gets too strong.
And I have a second problem. We adjusted the coordinates to leave the station heading the other direction, and though we’ll land near the PDSU, I won’t find it easily without a compass or some coordinates. If I could see the station to… oh… yeah okay, I know where the station is was.