Overview

Brief summary of the session

Mission

Assigning Faction: The Provinces

• negotiate the safe return of Signals Scrawled on behalf of Fortuna Bellicose

Rules of Engagement:

• the Squad may not loot, requisition, steal, and/or destroying civilian, commercial, and/or governmental property.

• The squad may not threaten or use force on civilians.

• The squad may not use pre-emptive force against hostile or potentially hostile targets. The squad should only attack if they have already been attacked, and not initiate violence themselves.

• The Squad will provide support to any civilians, deserters, and wounded enemy soldiers.

• The Squad is prohibited from deployment of chemical, biological, explosive, and/or poisonous weapons.

• The Squad is prohibited from the use of “enhanced interrogation.” Commonly known as torture, many Factions have restrictions on if and how it is employed.

• The Squad is prohibited from firing upon or presenting as a clearly marked medical transport or facility.

Synopsis

...and i need it resolved peacefully"

Bellicose introduces his mech: it's capable of operating superbly in any paradigm, and has a designated engineer from The Forge Unrepentant who comes along and makes this possible. this engineer, Signals Scrawled (she/her), has been kidnapped and is being held beneath us, he needs people to negotiate for her safe return. Bellicose says bandits are Artisans. Offers to pay us handsomely (pay for squad upgrade essentially, plus fuel for next stop)
We’ll take instructions from Rembrant Tracer, travel with his squad, unless they explicitly counteract the rules of engagement. in the meantime we get free reign of camp (mess hall, kitchen, quarters), among about 100 soldiers. we are invited to a soiree by a page boy who has a crush a raleigh
Annie goes to the firing range with Raleigh. We meet Tracer (5’8”, blonde, beard), his friend Clandestine Crash (v. large and broad, Chinese), Boford Riley (handsome middle eastern woman), Claxone Caliper (medium height, man, no hair). Raleigh gets a little hurt at the range (using pineapple salad to build beliefs with Annie) but is basically okay. Annie shoots well, it's not terribly satisfying though.
in the afternoon Corvus watches Arbit Rangers on the ship, Annie unexpectedly joins. They talk about arbit rangers, and discover Woods saved them both as kids. Annie shares that she was kidnapped by Artisans (doesn’t know why) and Woods rescued her before they got to Syncytium. Corvus falls asleep about four episodes in so annie heads out. Corvus wakes up to an ansible call from Macro (overindulges, rolls entanglement). Macro requests that Corvus gets the specs on the Cortana (Bellicose’s mech), interrogate the engineer before we return them (inject a truth serum, interrogate, inject a serum to wipe her memories). Corvus is only allowed to tell Annie about this new facet of their mission.
Marion releases a story about the last planet: sends her briefing to Macro, its discovered that the Humanitarian faction of the federation already knew about the trust’s presence on incorruptum corpus, but hadn’t told others, so there's decently large politcal fallout (a general is named here, CHECK NAME)
We go to the party. Raleigh and simmons sit with rank and file, corvus, annie and marion are at head of table. Woman approaches, church of sovereign light accent, name And And And (tall in a not base human way, looks in her 30s, aesthetically pleasing scale highlights). She flirts some, asks about our families. Corvus mentions his spouses, has a “few around the galaxy”, has only met three in person, has 38 spouses, doesn't always know when it updates. we learn And And And is legally bound to her “master” the engineer, unto death. Corvus and And And And discuss Corvus’s puzzle box, she’s shocked he’s opened it. She’s seen it before, the Forge Unrepentant was unable to open it. She offers Corvus a residency.
And And And and Annie dance, flirt, Marion and Bellicose dance and chat politics. Annie has a nice night with And, and Corvus and And talk the next day about puzzle box. And shows security footage of a Rainbow-haired squid person wearing a black suit and holding a cane (the person on our postcard) breaking into the Forge Unrepentant. They introduce themself as Orchid-Pan-Orchid, looking for someone to open this box (corvus' puzzle box). Orchid cuts through a wall to enter, instead of space behind them its a red room with beds, bucket of red paint. Corvus discerns that Orchid thinks the situation is hilarious, and is having a great time

(the above action is a continuation of our downtime from Lost Worlds 3, but has been moved to this section for clarity and flow. The below action is the mission proper)

We head below, discover by taking samples that the structures we travel through was grown, random buildings (baseball field to apartment to brothel to theatre, brutalist style architecture). the concrete material is the moss, as it dies it becomes like concrete
It takes a couple days to get to the negotiating location, so we Get to know the other crew. Claxone is quiet, but goes off about the Artisans one night, Boford is also quiet, Clandestine gets along with Raleigh, and Tracer and Annie talk plans: corvus and Annie will be checking on Signals while Marion does the negotiating

Two Artisans meet us on the baseball field, a third in a mech. Marion negotiates with Placid, while Corvus and Annie go with Quasi (teenager, nervous) to the Artisan's area, Italian restaurant. She takes us to a door, refuses to let us see Signals. Corvus riles her up and tries to open the door, Quasi goes to subdue him and Annie subdues her instead (actually subdues, not kills)
Raleigh makes friends with Tracer, talkign about families and pets. Tracer sends a “video of his dog”, shuts down Raleigh’s mech
Corvus and Annie open the door, enter a small room with a box. Annie realizes Raleigh’s gone dark, opens the box (we get meloned), and meet Signals Scrawling (old tattooed lady) after she crawls out of a tent. Corvus hesitates so Annie injects her with the psychedelics. while corvus begins their enhanced interrogation, Annie gets her gun.
Marion also realizes the comms are cut, Raleigh sees Tracer and clandestine cresh taking out Boford Riley and Caliper
Raleigh attempts to steal Tracer's mech, gets seen and shot at by Tracer, who has armed himself with a sniper rifle. Marion also gets shot at, runs for cover with Placid.
meanwhile, Corvus asks Signals about orchid pan orchid, “he’s the angel of humor” “what do you mean an angel?” “a holy harmonium of mass and recursion”
Annie goes to check on things on the football field.
Marion and placid keep running, Raleigh pulls himself up and finally gets into tracer’s mech, distracting Cresh (also in a mech) from engaging with the Artisan's mech, but destroys the stolen mech in the process of saving the prisoners (Riley and Caliper). Raleigh cuts them free, and they reunite with Placid and Marion. Placid and Caliper are about to shoot each other, Marion steps between, gets shot by Tracer, who has been trying to shoot Placid
Corvus continues to ask questions of Signals. She doesn’t know why orchid wanted the box open, doesn’t know who the black star is. they're interrupted by Quasi returning, attacking corvus. corvus dodges, Signals says something spicy that Corvus hears but the players don’t
Annie, having reached the football field and surveying the scene, uses her hunter robot to shoot Tracer in the head. Cresh uses his mech to destroys the Artisan mech, the pilot lives. Annie uses the other Artisan mech to destroy the remaining Provinces mech, returns to corvus and Signals, eventually everyone reconvenes.
Placid insists on taking Signals back, Annie volunteers to go with to keep an eye on things (is functionally a second hostage). They get left in a location, to be returned once the Artisans have gotten a ship and left unharmed. Signals mutters in her sleep, words for clouds and alloys, Rubrum, etc. Annie hesitantly asks Placid if he knows anything about the Weavers, specifically a Chenille Weaver. Placid laughs, he knows nothing.
Marion, Raleigh and Corvus discover (bc the comms are back) that the surface was dealing with a coup: House Cantrelle to blame for traitors above and below. House Cantrelle is the house in charge of space travel/jump gates within Provinces, very old very powerful and don’t like Bellicose

Downtime

Note: Simmons mini session occurred on car ride down to kent. Nero has a chat with marion at the party. Nero gets assigned to watch the ship, protects it during the mutiny (i mean the ship and his mech get busted to hell but that’s okay

We reconvene, catch each other up. Simmons shares that the head of house cantrelle wants her brother back, her brother is the pretty boy knight that was close to Fortuna. Corvus looks into the moss one last time, realizes it holds tons of anthropological data on how Citewegans lived, and the Federation could use this to build all sorts of things.

Raleigh talks to pageboy Timothy, timothy continues to have a massive crush. Gets a lot of info, bellicose is on the outs with her father and on a “great and noble quest to--oh, i cannot say more”. They exchange favors, handkerchief for a mechanical horse. Marion is proud of raleigh for making connections

Corvus and Annie check up on Signals, she’s fine. Corvus gets a sovereign suns ansible (pretty light) to communicate

Hazard: we head out into the slip, after an hour alarms start blaring. Parri announces we’re encountering a reality bubble. Choose to either go through bubble and suffer gear malfunctions, or go around and take our journey from 2 to 4 weeks (mine and the monastery)

Marion recovers well from her broken rib by being a good patient

Raleigh and Annie play hide and seek, Annie gets trapped and has a big moment about it. They chat after, Annie shares her story of why she doesn’t like “being cooped up”
She had cornered a mark in an alley when the wall exploded: an illegal mech in the city. She fended off the mech and went after it, but had her ground shot out from under her, ended up trapped under rubble for many hours with pretty severe injuries

Raleigh overindulges, rolls entanglement: We get a hail: “this is the once upon a december, please state your name and business and prepare to be boarded”. Once upon a december is a federation warship, affiliated with Reliance Vitality (the humanitarians faction), we ask for details, they are asking for GR. Corvus and Nero  say that we killed the asset, lying like smooth motherfuckers (We now have -2 with the Humanitarians and 0 with the Federation)

Corvus is experimenting with the apiary bees (cuts loose with marion), Marion joins. Corvus is doing it for funsies, Marion asks if there are any practical applications (she’s kidding), corvus takes it seriously, they have an awkward moment but kind recover and have a nice time.

Annie asks corvus for help with the Outlaw. Corvus deep dives into the research, discovers: Every time the outlaw appears/disappears on a planet, there is a flare of a specific particle being emitted from the planet, (is the same each time, and happened in the past as well as on planet 5). Corvus discovers that the Outlaw has been operating on the planet we’re currently heading to

Corvus talks to the group about putting the virus guns on the ship. Things get a little heated, marion talks about ethics and not wanting to do war crimes first, annie disregards her opinions entirely. We decide to go with a basic stun gun, not a special IF murdering machine. (corvus Builds a tier 2 data ray)

Nero and Annie help Sushi and GR practice what to do in the case of boarding

We arrive on the new planet: Elysium
Yellow sun, breathable atmosphere, gaseous planet.Buildings on massive solid clouds, monasteries of monks seeking conviction. Nubus Tinto, gas mining operation, operates from an orbiting moon (Tartarus). Bellicose is already here, but on other side of planet. Marion has a contact here, he gives us coordinates to land at, and we take a scan of the planet. Chatter on comms reveals there is a labor crisis on planet, trust giving shitty contracts and not being willing to negotiate. No riots yet, but unease and unrest and reassignments

Land in industrial hangar bay, Trust aesthetic. We meet Constant Hill: 6’ 8”, 500lbs, not base human (star trek eyebrows and nose) BIG guy with a big smile. Marion describes as an “old friend and good man,. Involved in the Fellowship (space travel union/IWW stuff)”. We introduce ourselves with code names for privacy: Canary=Marion, Spike=Nero, Kid Sparks=Raleigh, Dr. Grackle=Corvus, Layla Roots=Annie. Go to a bar to chat, Constant thinks we’re an interesting variety

Constant gives the situation. Without the jump gate working there’s nothing to do, Management won’t budge/cant meet demands. Local populations are looking into citizen militias to try and take the gate b/c Trust sucks. Robberies on trains making people afraid, possibly by brass owls, possibly them working for someone. Constant asks about Brian (brian rhodes is a name on the knife), Marion says we have reason to believe Brian is in acute danger. Constant shares that she’s the official fellowship liaison to the Federation now, trying to get in the good graces of a Humanitarian politician who might be the next president. Constant mentions the monks, says they can travel through the Steady (a bar that Trust richie richs can access from any Trust planet); Marion suggests that if the Steady didn’t work the monks might care more about the current problem. The monasteries are run/funded by trust execs currently,  but have been around for generations

We have the evening to mingle with the town. Raleigh and Marion bar crawl, Raleigh gets very drunk. Raleigh asks why Marion is so different here, she says “it’s like where i grew up” “you grew up on clouds?” “a mining planet yeah”... they chat a little about Marion’s home. Annie and Corvus go to a monastery, large central building, greeted by a middle aged man in grey coveralls, Corvus asks for a tour, they give one in exchange for help in the garden (annie does most of the helping, Corvus becomes the caterpillar king). Annie realizes she can breathe the air, this is distressing

Marion invites simmons on her outing with Constant. Simmons takes it a little too seriously, but relaxes and has a nice time. On the way home, Marion gives simmons access to her hard drive in case she dies and he lives, asks him to send it to Jules

Annie takes corvus on a nature walk, they go to a pretty arc, Have a little chat about chronic illness

Cast

Player Characters

• Annie Woods
• Corvus Rubrum
• Marion Maxwell
• Nero Simmons
• Rayleigh Manfred

NPCs

• Fortuna Bellicose
• Unity Perlite
• Signals Scrawled
• And And And
• Orchid pan Orchid
• Rembrant Tracer
• Clandestine Cresh
• Boford Riley
• Claxon Caliper
• Placid
• Quasi
• Pressure