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14.9.17 IX. Carsten 2
tl;dr: Tour of mine, encounter with flisters, rescue of miners and general heroism
Hi there,
On Thursday night we had our ninth installment of the once every other month(ish) in the pub play through The Traveller Adventure. Those who’ve been paying attention may recall that we’re on a two day stop over on Carsten while we refine our fuel and Jump on to Aramanx as quickly. Old man Oberlindes is on board as a passenger and needs to get there quick. [Not that ‘quick’ and the March Harrier with its two Jump 1s to do one Jump 2 should go in the same sentence.]
I *had* been going to elide over Carsten - which is
about as dull as Traveller planets go if you look it up on the Traveller wiki (http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/
Anyway, when I announced at the end of that we could move onto the next chapter (Wolf at the Door) next time, there was a cry around the table of ‘what about Day 2?’ So I’ve had well over two months to think of what might happen out at an archaeological site one of them wanted to visit. I failed to think of anything. Until last Monday, when it came to me a burst of inspiration as I tried to get back to sleep in the middle of the night.
As, unfortunately, a couple of our (6) players couldn’t make it, I’ve written this up fairly fully for the two who were missing and that’s what you’ll find below if anyone is interested.
You’ll note that NONE of this bears any relation to anything in The Traveller Adventure itself; this is effectively the ‘wandering’ between First Call at Zila and Wolf at the Door. We’ll be back on track next time.
I was also trying to fulfil the brief of the book which says not much happens on the trip to Aramanx, so the aim was not to be TOO interesting.
The handouts for the session consisted of Rob
Caswell’s wonderful graphic with a bunch of different air/rafts on it (https://www.deviantart.com/
https://docs.google.com/
I should perhaps explain. If you read the attached you’ll see that actually the mine plans are unnecessary. But one of my players, new to role playing never mind Traveller just 18 months back, has learned quickly and a session or three ago said something like “this must be the right place, there’s a map”.
Now it was tempting to have a rock fall or flood or explosion in the mine and have the PCs deal with that. However, I thought that rather went against the ‘nothing much happened’ stricture I was seeing if I could abide by and secondly it seemed too obvious. So I produced the plans really as a bit of misdirection and loved watching the players (and PCs) spend all of their time on the tour of the mine paranoid about what might happen and constantly looking for emergency exits and so on.
I added to the effect of this misdirection by really going to town on an NPC. I’m normally fairly poor at NPCs both in making them distinctive (I’m hopeless at accents) and keeping in character (it’s easier to lapse into reported speech).
So (maybe inspired by Jeff Zeitlin’s FT article http://www.freelancetraveller.
The other reason for all of that - aside from getting the players to think THIS is where the adventure will be - was to hide the mention of the Vemene in there. It doesn’t matter that Piotr was once an agent, so he said, but that the players get the idea that Tukera actually *have* secret agents as this becomes important later in The Traveller Adventure. I could have just pointed out some Library Data at the time it was relevant, but I thought this would be more fun and way more subtle. (In fact it might be too subtle, I’m not sure anyone was paying attention!)
I think there’s enough here, and perhaps in the last session, to use this elsewhere as a diversion on a rockball type planet, so if I have the energy and anyone’s actually interested, I might write it up as an adventure for FT.
all the best and safe travelling
tc
The
Traveller Adventure IX
Carsten - Day Two
Morning - first thing
Adah Bertrand turns up fairly early in the morning when breakfast is happening with some heartening broth for Fred who was laid up in his cabin with a rotten virus rather than at the Townswomans’ Guild dinner last night. [REF note: Fred’s player, Jane, missed the previous session]. In tow, almost literally, is her daughter, Anni-Peae (the Pretty Young Thing sat by the Captain at the meal). Fred receives the pair in the crew lounge and under the watchful eye of mother imbibes, with growing appreciation, some of her warming broth. His pale pallor improves as the others watch. Conspicuous by his absence when he hears that Mrs Bertrand is aboard, is the Captain who takes refuge in his stateroom from any further disapproval over his offer of a comm number to Anni the previous evening. In the lounge, the visiting ladies compliment Gvoudzon on his sleek looking fur [see, I got this in after all] and ask how he gets such a shine. Gvoudzon starts telling them about the waxing process he goes through and Tess and Fred start tittering. ”Do you think it would work on my hair?” asks Anni and Tess and Fred are now visibly shaking and trying to hold themselves together. ”I can go and get some,” offers Gvoudzon but before he can move there’s another chime at the main airlock.
Ashwin Chooder turns up in smart casual clothing and asks to see Lily. [REF’s note: he’s an older chap - late 50s maybe who was sat one side of Lily, who is 34, at the meal last night and vied for her attention with a much younger man on her other side. Carsten obviously doesn’t see much in the way of visitors.]. It turns out he picked up at the dinner last night that the March Harrier will be leaving soon and wants to invite the former one time archaeologist on a picnic. He’s all charm but careful not to overdo it. Tess and Fred are still trying to contain themselves as the waxing conversation goes on. Lily, however, isn’t interested in a picnic, or isn’t interested in Chooder, or isn’t interested in a such a short term friendship - who knows? - and very politely turns him down. Ashwin is mature enough to take it in his stride and without missing a beat manages to exit the ship gracefully as though it wasn’t a setback at all. [REF note: pre-session email had established that Lily would react in this way although she didn’t give a reason.]
Day Trip
After breakfast, the crew of the March Harrier head over to a workshop-cum-hireshop where they pick up an eight seater open topped air/raft. It’s seen better days but is in good running order and it’s the only thing available aside from a wheeled ATV. The latter would take all day to get out to the mine site rather than the hour of the air/raft and while Gvoudzon eyes the beast appreciatively, for some reason Fred and Lily are rather against the idea of even thinking about it. [REF note: This is due to the fact that the three of them in our lunchtime games of a completely different adventure with the same characters - perhaps in an alternate universe - hired an ATV rather than an air/raft and encountered all sorts of adventures while running up a rental bill for an ATV that spent most of its time parked right outside the hire shop!]
The woman hiring out the air/raft checks over the paperwork and Lily’s licences etc and gets the Captain to sign for the grav vehicle on her hand comp. She looks rather bored and faintly amused as Tess carefully checks the diagram on the form for all the dings and scratches - there are a lot - and also takes pictures of the condition as additional insurance they’re not billed for anything they didn’t cause.
“Oh, and you’ll also need to sign for this side locker.” She opens it and shows them four pistols (with 4 packets x 50 ammo), one signalling pistol (2 x 6 flares) and one laser pistol (100 shots). ”We can remove this if it’s unwanted.” There’s some discussion over whether they need the extra risk of losing stuff and the possible extra cost of ammo etc but after being assured that they’ll only be charged for usage, Adma wryly comments “you can never have too many weapons”, they sign for those too.
No one actually asked her name, but Halla also mentions that if they could get a picture of a flister on the way out they could get good money for one. ”Maybe Cr100. But they’re rarely seen and fly pretty quickly so you’d be pretty lucky to even see one of the solitary creatures, much less get a picture of one.”
Tess immediately takes that as a challenge and sets up a 360° camera in the middle of the air/raft. There’s a discussion about whether to let the grav vehicle self-drive on the local grid but there’s no requirement to do so and in the end Lily smoothly glides it out of the ‘shop and away from what passes for a city on Carsten.
It’s only an hour out to the mine at the speeds they can manage across a fairly barren and dull terrain. But fifteen minutes out Loyd, sitting up front, beside Lily in the pilot’s couch, catches a glimpse of something flying a little above their heads down the port side of the air/raft and disappearing behind them before anyone can really react.
A Tour of a Mine
As they arrive at the mine, Lily skirts around a processed ore heap on the way in. It’s marked as radioactive on the maps they’ve downloaded and is at least a couple of miles away from the mine proper. The archaeological site they are interested in is a mile past the mine and the crew decide to save that for later. Well I say ‘they’ but it’s becoming clear that the exhibit in the Museum of Geology yesterday was about as much as most of the crew cared for. It’s Lily who’s the real driver for the visit. As it happens.
Piotr meets them at the mine site - essentially a half dozen buildings that appear to be situated in the middle of nowhere beside a substantial hill. Piotr is the guide they’ve arranged to show them around. He takes them in through an airlock entrance and respirators can be removed.
Piotr speaks with a heavy local accent - he’s been on Carsten for many years - and has a habit of scratching the light stubble on his chin with four fingers quite regularly. But even more immediately noticeable than that is the scarring that covers a lot of his face and neck and possibly more under his clothing. He’s beaming when he sees the visitors, however, and although he stops short of an actual bear hug for them all, he’s obviously pleased to see them and have a change from routine. He hands out helmets with lights in them but for the several crew who’ve clearly visited lower tech mines in the past, there’s no bulky battery belt. At this tech level what batteries are required are all built into the helmet.
“Welcome to Nadiya mine,” he says thickly and adds “I have no idea why it’s called Nadiya - I have girlfriend one time called Nadiya - but you very welcome.” He seems completely oblivious to the fact that it’s actually called the Nadir mine.
“You can see we have full airlock so we can work without, um, cumbrance. You can remove respirators but keep them on belt in case we find bad ... gas. Ventilators very good. Top-of-line. But you never know.” He passes out high tech badges. ”Here are radiation monitors. No problem, but for safety.”
“Any qvestions?” He pauses and there’s a shuffling, embarrassed moment when no one has anything to say but eventually he gets enough head shakes or silence to continue. ”I can see you look at me. Everyone asks about this,” he says in complete contradiction to the evidence. ”You might zink it was radiation scarring that did diis,” and he rolls his Rs like he’s going to smoke them, “and you’d be right. But not from mine. From my time as agent with Vemene.” He looks round conspiratorially. ”Shhh. I not say that.” [The Vemene are the covert security branch of Tukera Lines, a merchant line in the Spinward Marches]. ”When I had to rescue girl from reactor leak. Very pretty. The girl that is, not reactor leak.” He laughs as if he’s told the funniest joke. [IIRC the March Harrier were just looking bemused at this point.]
“Diis is one of largest mines on Carsten - we have 40, 50 people here working in co-operativa. Many years now. Goes back hundred years or more. No problem.”
“Grav elE-VAY-tors [REF note: note the English making something slightly ‘alien’ by dropping in an Americanism!] also top of line. Take ten people, half minute to lowest level. Can evacuate all mine in 3 minutes.” One of the PCs asked about failure and safety and even before Piotr could reply to the same effect, another PC pointed out on the complementary mine workings plan they’ve all been given that there is a secondary entrance in a smaller shaft with its own lift. ”Yes, it smaller but very safe. No problem.”
Piotr leads them along a tunnel in the cold and damp until they break out into a magnificent cavern. Gvoudzon wants to know if it’s natural. I suspect the others were all thinking, well it looks pretty natural.
“Yes, this is natural cavern. We explored mining out the other side, but it no good. We not bother.” After they’ve peered into the depths of the, actually rather pretty, cavern for a short while, Piotr leads them down the number 2 shaft and back along another tunnel which looks well travelled. They meet a miner coming the other way.
“Ah. Toly. Dees visitors to Carsten, I give tour - see you topside in hour. Your turn to buy.” Toly nods to the PCs politely, nods to Piotr and hurries away.
Down in the deepest level of the mine, everyone’s consulting their maps to work out where they’ve come - without the plans it would be hard to keep track - and just how deep they are. ”Diis is deepest level, we now 300 nanuks underground. [REF’s note: about 600-700m. I thought it might be fun to have a ‘local’ measurement system to keep the players on their toes. In fact, they weren’t that fussed and it just became a pain for me to keep straight whether I was halving or doubling measurements. Won’t bother again.] It is indeed considerably warmer than the upper levels. ”But diis part no good for ray-dio-actives so we not develop. But we find, diamond here one time. So some miners come look for more. No luck.”
Gvoudzon particularly, but Tess as well, seem to be studying the plans of where they are very intently. When they swap notes with each other, Fred, Adma and the others can hear mentions of ‘collapse’, ‘way out’ and ‘alternative route’. Something seems to be exercising them. Perhaps it’s the air down here.
Along yet another tunnel. ”Here we have collapse, maybe 30 years before.” Which explains why there’s an explosive looking icon on the plans which has concerned Fred ever since he first saw it topside. [REF’s note: this stems from the infamous time, running only my third ever game at TravCon, I managed to hand out the referee map marked with ‘secret enemy base here’ at the climax of the adventure. The players were concerned I’d done the same thing again.]
Piotr continues, “no point clearing. This part, how you say it, played out, anyway. No problem.” There’s the sound of an explosion a way away. Piotr pays no attention.
At an opening out of the tunnel where there’s room for a large group to congregate, eat together and take a break, the crew meet a group of miners. They’re in good spirits and they tease Piotr about baby-sitting. ”You’ve told them about the diamond, yes?” There’s much mirth.
As the PCs and Piotr move away he explains “Dere are some who think diamond is frowd [fraud]. Cheat, you know? It is real enough, but some think it was planted as, what is it, practical joke? Yes?”
“An expensive practical joke,” someone comments.
As the tour appears to be winding down and they’re heading back to the surface there’s a light failure. ”Do not worry.” And sure enough emergency lights take over. ”No problem. And grav lifts on separate system. We very safe. No one die here in 10 years.” Somehow the crew don’t look overly reassured at this. In fact, several of them seem to have expected the whole place to explode, collapse, be flooded with water, all three, or something worse for the last 20 minutes or more. Piotr is oblivious.
“Qvestions? OK, I show you back to pit head. You have goot tour, yes? Give me goot rating? No problem.” Loyd tips Piotr generously. [We felt that was in character despite the fact you’ve paid him as well.]
Back on the surface you enter one of the accommodation blocks where there’s a cafeteria. Fred is ready for a comfort break and after the ride out to the mine and perhaps 90 minutes underground, you’re all ready for lunch. Taking seats at the tables with food that is cheap and cheerful but hearty and filling, you end up close enough to J’mina for her to strike up conversation with you. She confirms much of what Piotr has been telling you and fills in details where his excitement has missed out some of the facts. She even admits, on the subject of the diamond, that she can vouch for it existing, as she actually saw it, but can’t tell you whether it was genuinely found in the mine or not. Adma notices that the Captain has gone and sat down at another table where there are three female miners enjoying their lunch together. [REF’s note: Adma’s player only joined us last time, taking over the medic who until then had been played as an NPC. He’s not yet used to the Captain’s ummm, little ways….]
The Archaeological Site
After lunch, you take the short ride out to the archaeological site. Lily’s excitement breaks through her usual cool. But that initial excitement begins to fade fairly rapidly as she takes in the sight. Gvoudzon hasn’t been able to see the attraction at any point in the day and is genuinely curious why Lily is interested at all. [REF’s note: perhaps she can explain it next time]
The site has pretty much been cleared. There are several trenches and a number of pegs still mark out some of the ground. There’s a small hut with basic airlock attached. Nearby there are a pair of vacuum rated storage boxes and another one on the other side.
Lily and Gvoudzon check out the hut. The latter wishes he hadn’t as he gets a snout full of the interior. A final meal of the researchers working here hasn’t been cleared up so the aroma is, well, interesting to say the least. There are a few unopened food tins on shelves, a row of spare respirator masks hanging on the wall opposite the basic cooking facilities and some clothes and tools lying about or in lockers.
Outside, Fred is sitting in the air/raft feeling the effect of the exertions of the morning so soon after being unwell. He’s wishing he’d brought some of the broth Adah had told him he should have for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But it’s back on the March Harrier and will have to wait. Tess is also in the air/raft reviewing the camera recordings. She *does* have an image of one of the flisters but it’s basically a great shot of just a wingtip. However, she can observe that the wing looks leathery rather than feathery.
Meanwhile, the others are poking their noses into the three storage boxes on site. In the pair of boxes there are some samples of what’s been found on the site. All pretty uninteresting, dull or damaged. Or all three. Clearly the good stuff has been removed leaving just this - or maybe it was just waiting to be taken away and perhaps been forgotten. Lily’s expert opinion is that there’s no way this is an Ancient site with Ancient artifacts or, indeed, ancient artifacts. It looks, from what she can see, as if it’s most likely from a settlement dating from the Long Night - no more than 1300 or 1400 years ago. Not uninteresting in its own way to historians of that era, but nothing like the interest or value of the Ancients from hundreds of thousands of years back. As she relates some of this history, it seems to chime with some fiction Adma’s familiar with that included precursors of some sort. He makes a cultural reference no one else gets. Lily finds a couple of notebooks in the bottom of a locker that confirm her suspicions but add very little other data of interest.
In the storage box on the other side Gvoudzon finds some tools. Shovels, picks, trowels, that kind of thing. Hairy sticks he thinks looks like large pastry brushes or maybe some kind of toothbrush until someone points out their scientific use on recently dug up artifiacts. He also finds a well-used medical kit that he passes to Adma and, in a very battered leather satchel, a flare pistol with a pack of six flares. Rather idly he hefts the pistol and fires a signal flare into the thin air. Everyone’s attention is caught by the report before even in the daylight a green light shines out bright above them and slowly drifts downwards.
The general response from everyone is pretty much along the lines of what ARE you doing?! There are cross voices raised at the vargr about the attention he’s drawing to them. Rather inexplicably a paranoid voice - or was it two? - chirps up about “don’t do that, what if the pirates see it?”. Pirates?!? It would appear that between an abandoned meal and a forgotten, or was it hidden?, flare pistol, at least one of the crew think the site is being used by nefarious ne’er-do-wells. These fears are given credence when a minute or three later a red signal flare can be seen off on the horizon in the direction that would take the PCs back to the starport.
Heading back out
While discussing their next moves and the possibility of heading in exactly the opposite direction. The air/rafts comm chitters into life. ”Is there anyone there?” ”Thank goodness we saw your flare, we’d given up trying to raise the mine. Not answering for some reason.” [REF’s note: the mine is a small enough concern that I imagined timed comm contacts rather than a continually manned comm station]. The voice sounds rather dazed and shocked which gives Adma some cause for concern. ”Can you help us? Our air/raft has broken down.”
It’s actually only a short ride in the grav vehicle over to their location, perhaps about five miles from the mine. A small four person, enclosed air/raft is grounded with three figures standing rather disconsolately nearby. Two men and a woman. The latter is wounded and clutching her shoulder. All of them seem rather dazed and start gabbling together. Out of the incoherence the crew of the March Harrier work out that they appear to have run into a flister. No, not one of them. But a flock, or murmuration, or crowd, or something. Adma takes a look at the woman and finds two pairs of puncture wounds high on her shoulder. Tess sets to and takes a look at the grav raft.
Adma’s able to apply salve and dressings to Rozlee Tews’ wounds. She’s not in any immediate danger and under Lewes’ ministrations, she seems to be coming out of her funk. Roag Hetri and Barko “Delver” Awinson also seem to be coming out of their shock slowly. No one actually asks their names however. There isn’t time. Just as Tess diagnoses a power coupling transmission failure which will take maybe six hours to repair there’s a sound in the distance. At first it’s not obvious what it is but soon it begins to sound rather distinctive and a moment after that it’s obvious it is wing beats. LOTS of wing beats. And coming closer at some speed.
Attack of the Flisters
All of the March Harrier crew and the three miners race to jam themselves into the small air/raft. The enclosed air/raft. It’s a tight squeeze with standing room only and Gvoudzon quickly realizes that all their weapons are back in their own air/raft and not very handy. Tess manages to squeeze round to the dashboard and activate external cameras to see that there indeed not just hundreds but possibly thousands of winged creatures approaching the air/rafts and some of them even hit the bodywork. It’s possible to see that they’re fist sized animals with what look like inflated bladders on their backs and a wingspan of maybe a foot or more (30cm). [REF’s note: I wasn’t sure about this size of flying creature on a world with a very thin atmosphere, although the gravity is only half that of earth, so perhaps it’s not a problem. The bladders therefore were supposed to help them fly and make them a little different from the bats they might otherwise have been described as.]
Mostly however, they seem to circle round in a large flock, or was it crowd? The two male miners and Adma seem to be dazed by the experience and say nothing coherent. Everyone else is trying to analyse the flisters’ movements and the chances of getting back to the mine. They can’t all travel in a four person grav vehicle even if Tess could get it fixed. [REF’s note: I’m not entirely certain that it couldn’t have managed a limping, very slow trip back to the mine even crowded with 11 people, but where’s the fun in that?! There’s certainly no rules on the subject.]
[REF’s note: I’d worked up some rules whereby the flister’s stun prey with a mild psionic attack which affects human females who fail a 6+ roll, human males on an 8+ roll and vargr not at all. For those who’d rather maintain Traveller’s treatment of genders being completely equal, you could replace this with a roll over intelligence or something. But I wanted to (fractionally) reward players who’d chosen NOT to default to playing males as so often happens.]
After a little while, the flisters seem to lose interest and disappear in the direction they came from. Tess has been analyzing the grav vehicle’s trouble from the dashboard diagnostics but got no further than confirming that it is indeed a power coupling transmission failure. She might be able to fix it with the tools she has to hand. Maybe it will be less than six hours.
The decision is taken to send everyone back to the mine in the open topped air/raft except for Tess who is going to try to affect repairs and hope it’s a quicker job than she thought, Fred who is ready to attack the things with his bare hands if it comes to it, and Loyd because it’s the Captainy thing to do. Indeed, he gets up onto the roof of the smaller air/raft to mount a proper guard and watch out for any return of the flisters. This time however, they’ll be armed and while Fred has a revolver, Loyd picks up the laser pistol. [REF’s note: not sure Tess ever specified picking up anything than her tools.]
Not long after the departure of the open topped air/raft, there’s the sound of the flisters once again and Fred pops off a couple of shots at the approaching critters. He can hardly miss a cloud of the things and indeed, for every shot he fires, they can see a flister fall to the ground. Loyd manages to get off a shot and two of the things appear to go ‘phut’ and fall to the ground. But there’s very little time with the ranges of their weapons before they need to be back in the ‘raft and closing the door.
Meanwhile, back at the mine, the other PCs have delivered the miners back to their comrades and have a story to tell. One of which is drawing more and more of the miners around them as word gets around about what’s happening. They explain about the downed air/raft, the miners not being in good shape and the novel behaviour of what everyone thought were solitary flying creatures.
Back at the downed air/raft, Tess persuades Fred to go and collect a couple of the flister bodies. ”If they’ll pay Cr100 for a photo, what would they give us for an actual carcass?” Fred seems to be up for this and Loyd takes up his overwatch position again while Fred hurries across the ground. He’s just picked up his second body when they hear wingbeats once again and he races back to the air/raft before they catch up with him. It’s a close run thing. Loyd gets in ok and with Tess holding the door ready to slam it closed while she yells at Fred to “Hurry!” ”I am hurrying,” he shoots back but saves any further breath for running and just arrives at the air/raft with flisters right on his heels, manages to trip over the door frame and collides with Loyd so hard that he knocks the Captain to the floor where he lies dazed and unable to function. [REF note: Yes, Fred rolled a ‘2’ at the crucial moment.] In the melee, three flisters flap through the door before Tess slams it shut. Fred immediately has a flister latch onto his shoulder and dig its claws in so violently he starts bleeding and the thing can feed, at last! But with a flash of his knife manages to burst the thing’s sac and it flops down to the ground where Fred stamps on it. Tess tries to punch one out of the air with no success at all.
Meanwhile, back at the mine, the three miners who were originally attacked seem to be recovering somewhat and giving their version of events. There’s quite a crowd round them by now and the cafeteria is filling up quickly. Gvoudzon, starts trying to raise the air/raft on the comms but there’s no response. Are the trio dead, dying or merely distracted? While he waits for some response, he starts tackling a crossword. ”R _ L _ X _ _ G” ”Ah, this is the life,” he thinks. Glad to be out of range of any nasty flisters taking an interest in his fur. The miners give him the most odd looks. The other Harrier crew are quizzing the miners about the local environment. ”Is there anything you’ve changed recently that might have caused this behaviour change?” Adma asks, wheels turning almost visibly behind his eyes.
There’s some discussion and shaking of heads. Until Piotr asks, “what about damper out at tailings? We never replaced that when it failed did we? What was? Quite many months back.” ”Well, we need the other three here,” others reasonably point out, “and it’s taking a while to get a replacement from Aramanx.”
Back at the air/raft, the two remaining flisters both happen to attack Fred at the same time and he ends up with one on each shoulder. In a show of strength and not able to wield his knife against both, he shoves himself backwards in an attempt to dislodge the creatures by mashing them against the dashboard. He’s kind of successful in that he does indeed dislodge them and one drops to the deck unmoving, but at the cost of hitting his own head so badly on the dash that he slumps to the floor [REF’s note: Yes, he’s back on the double ‘1’ again]. Tess is able to stamp on the one that is still flapping about around her feet. She gathers up the five corpses she has and puts them all in a sample box which she checks is sealed before tending to her two would be saviours. Loyd is picking himself of the floor and the pair of them are able to get Fred sitting up and groggily coming round.
Soon, the three of them are joined by a dozen miners in four enclosed air/rafts and they’re loaded up to return to the mine. But not before one last pass by the flisters which some of the miners take pot shots at. One with a rifle manages to take out a couple, several with revolvers take out a few more each, but the most success is had by a miner with a signal pistol who judges the range just right and before they’re too close, he fires off a flare which takes out several dozen of the things.
Two and Two
Back at the mine as everyone is reunited, Adma has been putting two and two together. It would seem that the flisters have been nesting at the processed ore dump. Are the alpha particles providing helium for their flight sacs Tess wonders? It would appear that the radiation at any rate has changed them from solitary creatures to flocking creatures. They seem to have a slight psionic ability to disorientate victims so they can dig their claws in and suck blood. Although it’s pointed out that they might have had the psionic ability before for their usual prey of insects and small Carsten creatures but it wasn’t apparent when there was only one of them at a time.
Back at the port, news will have spread (from the miners if nothing else in the way of reports) and there will be much interest in the PCs’ encounter. What passes for a local research committee on Carsten offers them Cr1000 for their specimens and, to be fair, now rather excellent collection of photographs. Tess accepts this before heading off to check on the last of the fuel refining operation. Loyd fronts some of the March Harrier crew giving a press conference with the local media in a meeting hall. Adah turns up - to the delight of the gathered cameras - with Anni in tow as ever and makes it clear that she now rates the Captain as quite heroic enough to reconsider a formal tryst with her daughter. The Captain blushes and feels obliged to take Anni on a date, properly chaperoned of course. Adma and Lily are stood several rounds of drinks in a local bar knowing it’s not long before they’ll be taking off. They’re able to tell their story to a very appreciative and agog audience although there are a couple who are dubious this is just a tall tale until someone shows them the live feed from the press conference. The Head of the Townswoman’s Guild invites them to another dinner to share their story but Oberlindes, rather amused by the whole affair, reminds them that they’re under some time pressure here and he wants to be off as soon as the refuelling has been completed. Tess has told him and all but one of the crew it will be five hours before they’re finished. She’s told Loyd it will be four hours. Oberlindes is, however, impressed with their adventures. ”I could wish all my crews were as resourceful.” No one hears him add “and lucky” under his breath.
Turning up with payment for passage to Aramanx, is Ashwin Chooder. ”It’s rare to find a bloom so fair,” he says to Lily, “even in a well-kept garden. Here,” and he gestures at all of Carsten with something of a shrug, “you’re the brightest light I’ve seen in many months. I have leave owed to me and if nothing else I have relatives on Aramanx I should look up, but if you’d allow me to accompany me you perhaps for one evening, my time would be well spent. I believe there’s a performance of Retian and Juenaire on at the Astoria which has been well received.” We’ll find out how Lily responds next time...