Session Log 13

Mercury Tier

A lone gorilla lumbers across the baked surface of the smallest planet - not a refuge in sight, oxygen supply rapidly depleting. Should he use his comm gear? Is there anyone in range? What if Firewall is listening? Will it send Rentlov after him? Or will someone else, with even darker intent, find him first?

Mars Tier

The Blood Red Soil of Mars

As the shuttle’s gangway settles on the ground a small cloud of fine red dust puffs into the unusually still Martian air. As you move and cover your way towards the strange structures in the distance, you are struck by their alien appearance. Not stone, not plastic, almost organic, like the black shells of vast mollusks that died and fossilized here in the desert. They jut from the ruins of a pre-Fall habitat dome, lost then forgotten when the region was infected by the Exurgent virus.

The infamous winds of Mars are constant across its dry, red surface but today the air is still, and as you move forward the silence is as eerie as a directionless wail. You can see the perfectly straight track the advancing disk left in its wake, leading like a lethal road back into the heart of the complex. Up close it is smooth and your enhanced vision shows you where it cut through every intervening obstacle like monowire through biomorph flesh. More troublingly, it also shows you radiation levels well above background readings. Though safe inside your vacc suit, it tells you that strange and dangerous forces were at work here.

As you approach the nearest structure, your tactical network lights up. Somebody’s system caught sight of movement at it was not one of you.

Roll initiative...

• After landing the shuttle perhaps a little too close for tactical comfort the party made it’s way into the complex of alien domes - some sneaking, some using cover and movement, everyone paranoid.

• Their Ares System™ tacnet caught sight of movement and called the whole system’s attention to the possible tangos. The pack hunters from the site of the frozen Go-cycle apparently made their way to the complex and set up a crude ambush in and amongst the buildings. They began firing some kind of integrated, shoulder-mounted mortars, the shells of which ruptured on impact, dispersing disassembler nanites as area effect/denial weapons.

• As numerous and potentially lethal as they were, the hunters could not stand up to withering plasma or Nikolas’ dead-eye sniper fire. Though Terry almost suffocated as his suit was eaten from off his body, and Piv had to dodge between the deadly raindrops like some kind of dancing monk, the sentinels made surprisingly short work of the creatures. The team gave the resulting corpses wide berths.

• John 117, avoiding contact with all tangos, snuck his way into the only building with an opening large enough to allow entrance to a standard morph. It was the same building from which the disk appeared to have originated, as indicated by the strangely smooth path that began at the dome’s wall.

• John quickly lost comms as he entered and detected radiation across the spectrum, emanating from inside. There was a single, dome-shaped chamber in the otherwise featureless building, the floor of which - after some crude experimentation with a smart rope - proved to be some sort of heretofore unknown but active gate technology that was displaying an unknown star field.

• The party also discovered that the disk - whatever it is - seemed to have molecularly sliced it’s way out of the chamber and through any intervening object along its lengthening path.

Stars Our Destination Tier

Launch Day

Debauchery. Glorious, unfettered, uninhibited, genuine debauchery. That’s the only word that fits, and it fits perfectly. Debauchery. Launch Day on the Stars Our Destination. Pure, double-refined debauchery. And it is awesome.

During the political chaos and warfare of the Fall, many corporations pushed their orbital work forces to the limits. Already suffering under extremely poor working conditions, the primarily synth-sleeved and indentured workers of Hindustan Aerospace Limited (HAL), working in the shipyards stationed in Lunar orbit, called a general strike. Aided by the Chinese anarchist human-rights collective Chı ̄chı ̄ He ̄ he ̄ Cào (literally “Eat-Drink-Fuck” - named for what they believed every person was entitled without interference), they seized control of most of the production facilities as well as the armory.

Precipitously, the corporate headquarters of HAL on Earth was overrun by the TITANs shortly afterwards, the corporation’s assets were thrown into disarray and no attempt was made to unseat the strikers. As the situation on Earth deteriorated and a full-fledged evacuation was initiated, the strikers voted to retrofit the aerospace manufacturing facilities with more powerful propulsion systems and move the station from Lunar orbit to a high Earth orbit. Many refugees had jumped aboard anything capable of boosting itself into orbit without any consideration of where they would go once they were free of Earth and were being turned away by other habitats that were overcrowded, feared infection, or who simply didn’t want to let “undesirables” on board.

The strikers, scavengers and anarchists worked feverishly to keep the makeshift HAL facilities in working order, and over a period of eight weeks these efforts saved the lives of thousands who might otherwise have been left to die. Eventually they had no more room for refugees and reluctantly pulled back, avoiding the worst of the TITAN-spawned orbital counter-strikes. Taking everything they could salvage from the factory and every ship at their disposal, they launched a flotilla towards Mars. They sent out a call to other scattered refugees in and around Earth and Luna and invited them to join, dubbing their fleet The Stars Our Destination, after an old science fiction novel.

Launch Day, the anniversary of the fateful decision of the newly formed Swarm to break orbit, is the largest, most anticipated, most raucous, most uninhibited celebration of the year in a culture known for its debauchery and abject lack of inhibitions. Launch Day is the Platonic ideal of what it means to party.

How are you going to celebrate?

• The party was swept up in the departure of the Swarm from Lunar orbit and the preparations for the upcoming Launch Day celebrations - Terry in particular getting invited to everything and planning just what events to attend.

• Kru decided to send another cryptic message to his mother, though he still refuses to identify himself directly. John 117 decided to keep his head down and investigate his options.

• Quest #6 - Damn, Girl! - Unlocked

Nikolas was accosted by Angel, the woman most of the party knows as Angel Whitegate and who is also apparently his lover from before the Fall. She coily told him she knows all about the Song Cai Flower and Firewall and the team’s “mission”. She wants to bring Nikolas and the rest of the team “in out of the cold” and have them join Project Ozma. She says she knows everything and that the team is hopelessly outmatched by both the Song Cai ego and Ozma. She said she would give him some time to think and communicate with the team.

• Rentlov, backed up by Kruger and John 117, conducted a more or less effective, often bizarre and brutal, interrogation of the Whitegate backup they stole on Progress Station.

They learned a number of interesting things:

- Kru established that Whitegate does not know (at least yet) that he is responsible for the death of his only son during that fateful evacuation run.

- John 117 learned that at least this iteration of Whitegate has no idea who he is.

- Rentlov confirmed that he is an artificial intelligence built on the cognitive architecture of Whitegate himself. He learned that he was created aboard the Song Cai Flower as part of a series of pre-Project Ozma research projects being conducted aboard the secret laboratory ship. He was apparently conceived as a digital throttle program intended to create a human-allied TITAN.

RENTLOV = Recursively Enhanced & Networked TITAIN-Linked Operant Vitae

Rentlov was supposed to be artificial ego with true human motivations and instincts to protect the species. Whitegate claims to have no idea which version of the program this Rentlov represents as there were apparently thousands.

The assumption is that somewhere along the experimental trials the TITAN fragment that the RENTLOV project was being built to control broke free and took over the Song Cai Flower - which lead to the series of unfortunate events in which the party now finds itself entwined.

Mercury Tier

Labored breathing. One more step. Tunnel vision. One more step. Gasping. One more step. Is that a star glinting on the horizon? Step. Leading me home? Step. Leading me back to the jungles of Earth?

With no atmosphere to waft it into the non-existent air as he hits the ground, the glitter-like, black dust simply twinkles as it settles around the gorilla’s large, unconscious, suffocating form. The star shines in the distance.