Session Log 20

Stars Tier

• In the end construction of the courier missile proved surprisingly simple and the high acceleration chase somewhat anti-climactic. The sentinels were able to transfer with only minor freefall difficulties to the “Disco Inferno” and hack the workbay hatch to gain access to the ship. Once inside John 117, Kru and Terry quickly transferred from their spares, and reinstantiated their compatriots, into a collection of synthmorphs. They then armed themselves against unknown threats with various kinetic and plasma-based mining tools.  

• While searching the ship the party discovered most of the crew had killed each other in a bloody rage. While assessing the carnage the party was attacked by one apparently insane young Tenorio, who they quickly dispatched. As John 117 collected stacks from the bodies he found that several had already been crudely harvested.

• Piv jury-rigged the fuel delivery system into a self-destruct mechanism and had to be talked off the ledge by his exasperated teammates. While this was going on the sentinals felt the characteristic hull vibrations indicating that the “Disco” had docked. Rushing to the bridge they discovered that the closest airlock had just been cycled and that someone - or something - had left the ship.

• Leaving the ship the team found that the main facility airlock had been subsumed in a mass of jerky-textured meat - a hardened covering of flesh that made an esophagus-like throat out of the lock tunnel. The party opted to access Blackrock through a smaller, auxiliary personnel hatch.

• Once inside, the sentinels discovered that the exurgent meat infestation had enveloped perhaps only 80% of the station. Using old station plans provided by Piv’s salvage buddies from the “We Come to Probe You” the team did what it could to avoid the meat while finding it’s way to the comm/ops center. Comm/ops was a large hollow sphere with work stations on the inner surface and on a smaller sphere suspended in the center of the larger. Unfortunately most everything was encased in exurgent flesh.

• The fugitive Oz-4 ego was at a station on the center bulb and seemed to be doing something with a collection of a dozen of the artificials manufactured back on Thoughtcrime when it took over the autofactory. As the party moved to engage it a defensive force of humanoid meat puppets jerked out of the shadows to intercept them - fleshy marionettes controlled by sinewy tethers that connected their headless necks directly to the greater meat mass covering the wall.

• The fight was clumsy and brutal with only mining tools as improvised weapons and the jerky marionettes attacking from all directions. It seemed the focus of their attacks was to somehow plug themselves into their targets systems and hack them from within. Both Nikolas and Rentlov eventually went down. Piv - instantiated in a pair of morphs - took out the Oz-4 and then joined John in killing - or perhaps more accurately, deactivating - the local infestation by destroying a trio of fleshy, fluid-filled nodes arrayed about the room.

• During the fighting, Kru hacked Blackrock’s main system to cut power in an attempt to prevent whatever Oz-4 was up to. He met strong resistance by an almost overwhelming TITAN consciousness and it remains uncertain whether he was successful. Whatever success he had was only possible because Nikolas sacrificed himself to defend the captain.