Let him walk down your hallway
It’s not this quiet
Slide down your receiver
Stand across the wire
Follow my number
Slide into my hand

In their last adventure our heroes have killed Mr Ting and discovered the location of the Collector, the mysterious figure who was willing to pay a huge amount of birr to take possession of a Skavarra Mystic. The PCs suspect that there are deep secrets at work in this story, and have decided to pursue the Collector and learn what he knows. The roster for this session:

  • Adam, gunner and acting captain
  • Reiko Ando, deckhand
  • Siladan Hatshepsut, archaeologist and data djinn
  • Saqr, pilot and mystic
  • Dr Banu Delecta, medic

Using Saqr’s mystic powers the PCs have learnt that the Collector is hiding in a station in the Algebar system’s enormous asteroid belt, Assager’s Ghost. Assager’s Ghost is a veil of ice and gravel 10 AU thick and 10 AU high, which encircles the system and blocks light from passing beyond to the outer planets. It is a stable, relatively low density asteroid belt but its enormous depth prevents light passing through, and also makes it an ideal location to hide criminal activities. Although crews from the inner planets mine the asteroid belt, its vast size makes it impossible to discover a hidden location by chance in even a million lifetimes. Without using Saqr’s special powers, the PCs could never have hoped to find the Collector.

The Collector’s Stellar Guardians

The PCs set off in the Beast of Burden to raid the Collector’s space station. After 10 days’ travel, as they neared the station, they were attacked by a small vacuum beast, similar to the creatures they had encountered in Marfik. However, after they killed this beast two more appeared, accompanied by a much larger, more nebulous thing, like a jellyfish the size of a class 2 spaceship. At the same time, asteroids started hurling towards them out of the inky, clouded darkness. While they fought off the vacuum beasts they found they had to fire torpedoes at the asteroids to destroy them, out of fear of suffering massive damage to their ship.

After they destroyed the first asteroid and the larger vacuum beast another asteroid came spinning out of the Dark, obviously propelled by some monstrous force. They destroyed this one too, shook off one of the monsters that had gripped onto their ship, and destroyed both remaining beasts. Finally the Dark around them settled back into calm, dusty silence. They all realized what this meant: the Collector could somehow control vacuum beasts and hurl asteroids at them. Saqr had been feeling strange ripplings of mystic powers during the battle, and realized what they all suspected. The Collector had been using mystic powers to watch their approach, to hurl asteroids at them, and to control vacuum beasts. Dark secrets lay hidden in his base.

The Collector’s base: First incursion

They soon found the base, a huge, asteroid-battered space station floating near the edge of the asteroid belt. It resembled a spindle, hanging in space in near complete darkness, with occasional lights flickering along a hull that was so old and weathered that they guessed it must be a Firstcome station. As they approached they saw a huge section in the middle of the station had been converted into a large garden, perhaps 100m in diameter and 100m high, overgrown now with trees and vines and rich with shadow and streaks of weak sunlight from the distant, filtered sun. The station looked abandoned, or at least untended.

They flew to the top of the spindle and docked with an external docking station, just above two hangars for class 2 ships. After running the necessary checks they disembarked into a huge cargo loading area, and set up a defensive position at the entrance to the dock. They waited.

They were soon rewarded, as a strike team came through doors on the far side of the cargo area, firing as they entered. The battle was short and vicious, with several of the PCs taking heavy injuries before they could subdue the attackers: four mercenaries in battered light armour carrying vulcan rifles and fighting with fanatical dedication. When the smoke cleared none of them were left alive, and a mystic who accompanied the team lay dead on the floor.

It was as they suspected: the Collector’s base was a nest of vicious fanatics, supported by deranged mystics.

They checked their weapons, and pushed inward, to victory or a hideous, nightmarish end…