The PCs have learnt interesting information on the nature of Samina’s Corsairs, upgraded their ships, and are preparing for the final showdown with the Corsairs. They set off for Uharu, the last interesting system on their journey to Hamura. Today’s roster:

  • Clementine, technologist
  • Siladan Hatshepsut, archaeologist and data djinn
  • Saqr, pilot and mystic
  • Al Hamra, captain and droid (with mystic powers)
  • Dr. Banu Delecta, medic
  • Kaarlina, mystic[1]

From Dabaran they traveled without incident to the Uharu system, where they docked at Presidium station on the system’s second planet. Besides a cluster of moons around the system’s enormous brown dwarf, Uharu had only 3 planets: a barely-occupied planet, a sparsely-populated Emirate planet, and a third planet with only a small population living in a cult-like matriarchy with very harsh rules. The second planet, Presidium, was under a partial security emergency due to a low-grade insurgency by local anti-government forces, but it held the only significant spaceport in the system, so the PCs had to dock there.

Once they had docked and gathered some information they discovered that the entire system appeared to be somehow connected to the Dancer Icon. Every planet seemed to have either been colonized by a cult of the Dancer or to have a strong religious connection to the Dancer, and even the brown dwarf was named Nartaki, a local name for the Dancer. Presidium itself was ruled by an Emirate, the Latif Ascendancy, which had traditionally venerated the Dancer over other Icons, and was now brutally suppressing any form of Dancer-worship it considered “unorthodox”.

A day trip to a shabby palace

The PCs decided to explore the surface of Presidium a little, and after calling up a poor-quality and overly-eager djinn (AI) in their room they learned that the planet had a famous palace, the Palace of the Latif Ascendancy, that was fabled across the Dabaran Circle. They paid for an expensive luxury shuttle trip to the Palace, but experienced an incredibly disappointing and shabby tour. The “luxury shuttle” they booked had nothing more than a buffet, and the dancing girls for which they paid extra were simply a video recording of not-very-enticing girls from another era on another system. The journey to the Palace from the landing area was a bland little trip in a very standard transport through boring and uninspiring fields. The Palace itself was heavily guarded by Latif guards, with many security checks, and was neither splendid nor grand. After only an hour they had finished their tour and returned to the shuttle in disgust. They had seen better on the surface of Kua!

Irfan’s Request

When they returned to their lodgings they found a video message from a skinny, scared-looking boy who told them he wanted the help of some “combat archaeologists” to help him with a mission. He told them he had no money to pay them, but could give them the location of an artifact if they helped. Attached to the video message was a grainy photo, which looked like it had been taken surreptitiously on a tabula over someone’s shoulder, of a photo that was already low quality. It depicted a wall covered in old mosaic, with two alcoves in the wall. A trailing hand in the photo suggested each alcove was perhaps 25-30 cm high, and in one of them was an ugly, squat black statuette that looked exactly like the statuette that had been stolen from them in Coriolis nearly a year ago. Intriguing! Saqr used his powers of finding (which haven’t been so crash hot recently!) to locate the statuette in the picture, and confirmed it was on the planet of Sylph, in this system. He also sought out the statuette that had been stolen from them, and confirmed it was on a spaceship docked at Coriolis station. So there really was a second! Even though Saqr had found the statuette and the group did not really need to help him now they knew its location, they agreed to meet Irfan.

Irfan met them the following evening at a mining cantina on the surface of Presidium, where he was working as a labourer in a mine. He was a small, skinny, demure boy, a little under-nourished and not really the type who looked like he could dig in a mine. He told them he was from Sylph, where the matriarchs run a brutal and extremely unpleasant regime of slavery and oppression. He had escaped a year ago, and he wanted now to help his brother, Irfan 2, to escape from Sylph. He needed to do it now, because in 6 months Irfan 2 would be old enough to be sent to the breeding pits, after which he would be unreachable. He wanted the PCs to go to Sylph and rescue his brother, and in exchange he would tell them how to get the statuette, which he assured them was in an abandoned and depleted mine near the matriarchs’ settlement. He promised them the mine had been abandoned and the statuette must still be there.

They agreed, and set off for Sylph to rescue Irfan 2.

The scam and the fight

They set up a cover as investors interested in exploring a future potential investment and headed to Slyph. It was easy enough for Dr. Delekta to convince the matriarchs that their mission was genuine and to organize for them to be taken to the mine where Irfan 2 worked, but she accidentally revealed that she was a doctor, and they began asking her some very unsavoury questions about the “resources” (i.e. the men of their colony). Apparently some had been struck down with a lung disease that might require extensive treatment, and they wanted a doctor with more experience and better qualifications than their local doctor to give them an assessment of whether these resources could continue to work, or should “cease being utilized”. Seeing their chance, Dr. Delekta requested that the 10 resources in question be brought to her medlab, along with a sample of five control resources – amongst whom she selected Irfan 2. All 15 of these malnourished, exhausted and sickly men were dragged on board the Beast of Burden and put into the medlab, as the PCs gathered to figure out what to do.

Unfortunately four of the matriarchs had also come on board, and were loitering around the medlab waiting to hear about Delekta’s judgment. Soon after she got the men in the medlab this woman, Iwoe, entered the medlab without invitation and began examining the 15 men. It was painfully apparent to Siladan and Al Hamra as soon as this woman reached Irfan 2 that Irfan 2 was her secret sex toy, and she was not going to let him go. They managed to hustle Iwoe out of the room and started talking about what to do about this problem, but unfortunately one of the healthy men overheard them talking about rescuing Irfan 2 and, seeing his chance to improve his own situation with a judicious bit of treachery, ran to the door to alert Iwoe to the impending rescue. Siladan and Al Hamra chased him but were not fast enough, and he slid out the door with Siladan wrapped around his legs, yelling to Iwoe that an abduction was going to happen.

Things went bad very quickly at that moment. Iwoe and her three assistants drew accelerator pistols from the folds of their jackets and began shooting, and battle was on. Unfortunately the PCs were not wearing their armour and did not have their weapons, so they had to dash into melee or make the most of what they had. Fortunately Clementine was able to knock a mercurium sword out of Iwoe’s hand, and of course Al Hamra is a droid who is always armed, and after a few desperate seconds in which it looked like they might be outgunned they were able to beat the four intruders down. As the fight unfolded Oliver Greenstar, Adam and Kaarlin were able to lift the ship off, with Adam using the accelerator cannon to make short work of the matriarchs’ ground-based missile launcher. They spaced Iwoe and two of her assistants, kept one alive to interrogate, and then spaced her too.

They headed back to orbit to send the news of the successful extraction to Irfan, hoping that the people of Sylph had no decent starships to chase them with. From their prisoner they had learnt the reason that the statuette was in an abandoned mine: it was guarded by at least one Sentinel, the strange portal-builder guardians that they had learnt about in Kua. They had never fought those things, but the video they watched suggested it would not be easy. But the mystery of that statuette called, and what had they encountered yet that could harm them, really? They sent a message to Irfan, and swooped down to the surface of the planet Sylph to do some combat archaeology…

 

fn1: Dropped out after an hour or two due to incredibly bad technical issues