If there is one thing I learned from these last couple sessions is a mission isn’t finished until we are back at HQ doing our report. Yes, that means there was another surprise waiting for us on the trip back.
And now that I said that I could see my DM doing something in the future so not even doing that is a guarantee that the mission is over!
One correction from last session’s notes: the prototype weapon wasn’t destroyed. Our attack was just enough to disable it but damaged it in the process.
Anyway, here is my usual disclaimer before I begin the recap properly:
English is not my native language. Although I can write and read it without issues, hearing and speaking is a different matter. I’d say I am at best 90% skilled at those. Also I have a terrible memory.
What this means is that there may be mistakes here. In case my group corrects anything I will make a note about it here later and in the next post.
The Session
The first thing we did was to follow up from last session and discuss how to split the crew between the two ships.
We also discussed how to split the prisoners since we didn’t want to have both of their biotics together for safety’s sake.
The result ended up looking like this:
The Plankton
- Kronk
- Lorik
- Lylid
Biotic prisoner: The krogan captain
The Varren1
- Labor
- Linus
- Sidona
- Destin
- Seraph
- Gunner2
Biotic prisoner: First mate
Anyone that wasn’t listed above remained in the Plankton. The non-biotic prisoners were split equaly between the ships.
We also decided to eject the second container with husks into space. Linus also programmed a timer for the container to open once the ships were at a safe distance. This way if another ship pass through this area later and tries to pick it up they won’t have a nasty surprise.
Next on the list was how to keep the biotic prisoners in a way that they wouldn’t be a threat.
Kronk immediately suggested to put them on a space suit then drag the prisoners with the ships. Linus liked the idea while Lorik shot it down by pointing out there might be war laws against that.
Now that I think about it that idea had a flaw too, since we would need to get them back inside the ship before re-entering the atmosphere when we got back to HQ. Although I am pretty sure Kronk would suggest to leave them floating in space while we did our report then send someone else to take them back.
Anyway, the other ideas were to install a virus on their implants to prevent them from using their biotic powers, sedating them, building a dampening field or leaving them back in the mining planet with some food, water and a communicator.
In the end we agreed to use a dampening field with Sidona volunteering to test it on her. It takes about one hour and a half for Labor to build it but it turns out to be pretty effective.
Meanwhile, while everybody was getting to their posts for this operation, Destin mentioned to Lorik about hearing some strange noises since we boarded the Varren. Upon questioning other crew members also reported hearing some noises.
The party, minus Labor and Sidona since they were busy, decided to do a full sweep of the ship to see what they could find. The only thing they discovered out were some clanky noises coming from the outside of the ship. It was just in the driving area, the loading bay and the helm area.
They even put some space suits to look outside the ship while Kronk and Linus looked through the windows in the Varren. Again, they didn’t find anything with the noises just stopping completely.
Given the results they concluded that the noises were probably from some damage from last battle.
Now before anyone thinks us players a bunch of dunces for not seeing the obvious signs of something terrible in our future, let me state that we got some really bad rolls during that scene. That is justs the way we roleplayed the results we got. :p
About 3 hours later, everybody were off doing something.
Lorik decided to pay a visit to Novis to ask about Sidona’s fatigue every time she used biotics in combat. Novis asked some questions, took some notes then assured the soldier that there was nothing to worry about.
At the end of the conversation, Lorik asked Novis to discreetly ask Sidona if there was anything going on, which she agreed to. He also requested some kind of book on biotics and was given a layman’s intro book on the subject.
Meanwhile over at the Varren, Linus was trying to interrogate the first-mate in the cargo hold. That is where we decided to improvise as a brig.
Sidona and Gunner were also there, keeping an eye on the other prisoners.
Unfortunately the interrogation once again didn’t provide much in the way of useful information. However Linus did notice that the first-mate lied when asked about how many crew members they had. Then she mocked Linus by calling him “special”, telling how he could do better than being part of our organization and so on.
At this moment the lights went out in the Varren. Linus immediately grabed the first-mate turning her into a human shield. The woman however laughed and said “Yeah, yeah. I think you already caught on. We had more people. All hiding. Trying to take control of the situation. They finally got what they wanted.”
Since this is happening frequently enough I will just start a counter here.
Times one of our ships got hijacked by hostile forces: 2
Anyway, back to the story. When the lights went down Labor used our personal communicators to tell Lorik that the Varren systems went down. Lorik immediately started a red alert and moved the Plankton back to board the other ship.
When the two ships got close to each other, alert messages popped-up saying that there were missiles coming at the Plankton. Without time to dodge they took some direct hits.
Kronk who was at the drive bay heard the sound of something hitting the hull of the ship then saw a spike getting through it, opening up and husks coming out.
Something similar happened in three other points of the Plankton, forcing the crew to fight them off.
Back at the cargo hold of the Varren, a fight started as the first-mate managed to free herself from Linus and the prisoners attack both Sidona and Gunner.
Labor, who was at the helm together with Destin, managed to get the ship back in control. But once he did that some vorcha came out of the vents to attack them. At the same time another group of vorcha came out of the vents to attack Linus, Sidona and Gunner.
To summarize what happened next, our party killed most of the attackers. Since the combat was a dragging on a bit, due to the number of combatants and complexity of having to switch between two locations, our DM decided to end the combat by making the first-mate and remaining prisoners to surrender.
After this ordeal, Sidona decided to sedate the first-mate just to be on the safe side.
The rest of the trip back to HQ was thankfully uneventful. Just as the party left the ship, Jack Knight approached Labor to thank him for giving the smuggler an opportunity to do some good. Jack didn’t like the short leash much but otherwise seemed genuinely content.
Labor offered to help him in case he needed to get situated then they parted ways.
Once the party made their report to Yulaya, the commander congratulated the team on another successful mission then pointed a few things:
The first was that the news about the brain mutations on the collector we found were disturbing. Specially because the prothean collectors that Shepard encountered didn’t have those.
Secondly, he announced that he would put on his report how Tiberus endangered the mission by withholding critical information. Yulaya was hoping that due to this Tiberus would be court-martialed.
Surprisingly enought both Linus and Labor defended Tiberus, saying that maybe court-martialing him would be too much. They did admit the guy had some personality problems and was a terrible leader but maybe with some retraining he would not be too bad. But they definitely didn’t want to work with Tiberus ever again. That last part was a feeling the rest of the squad could agree with.
Yulaya replied that didn’t clean Tiberus of his past problems but he would take their report into consideration.
The commander also supported our decision of making Gary the pupper part of our crew. He even wanted to meet the little guy at some point.
With the results of the report concluded, it was time for us to pick our next mission. Apparently there was still a short window of opportunity to check on the Hades Initiative before they moved to a new location.
If we chose that, we would get a shuttle to keep the existence of the Plankton a secret from them. Jack Knight would also be assigned to our crew for the duration of the mission.
The other option would be to investigate Alpha Protocol. In that case we would have some downtime while the intelligence team gathers some information about them. We could use this time to train and get our ship upgraded.
We left the decision of which mission to pick to next session as it was getting pretty late.
Before it ended though, Labor got a notification from the virus he put on Tiberus communicator. Apparently someone called Alistair Duncan called commander Jerkface. Then the virus self-destroyed as it was programmed to.
I don’t know if it is just me but I am getting a feeling that Alistair Duncan will be trouble sooner or later.
Guess investigating that person is another thing to add to our to-do list in the next session.