What Remains However Improbable

Whatever brought you to the casino, you certainly weren’t expecting opportunity to fall into your lap. Perhaps you were at the slot machines, perhaps at the High Fold tables, but you couldn’t help but overhear a Vyixian in a red coat and a hat whispering urgently to a heavily built human.

“Look,” she says, “I don’t know how it happened but when I went down there it was gone. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, I just know it’s gone.”

“That’s not possible,” says the Human who you recognise as Ace’s head of security, Seven Broad, “that Vault is impossible to get into unless you’re you, Ace, or the Doctor-”

“I know that, but it’s gone, and I’ve checked your cameras-”

“You’ve checked our cameras?”

“-and nobody leaves with it after the Doctor leaves. It’s gone – you have to look into this!”

“I don’t have to do nothin’, Nine,” says Broad, “Ace did that as a favour to you and we’ve got enough going on. You can hire a private investigator or something all you like, but this is your problem – yours and the Doctor’s.”

Broad walks away, and you see the Vyixian’s ears fold in defeat, but you’ve sensed the opportunity and for whatever reason you offer to investigate…

• Deepest Fathom - James
• Heightened Serendipity - Tamsin

• Dr Fathom hires on Serendipity to assist with investigating the loss of the Ship Heart Fractured Dawn from Fathom's secret vault on Ace's World.
• When they look into the Vault it becomes clear that Fractured Dawn had some sort of surge of power and rolled off down a vent.
• In the vent they find a number of creatures – Sprats – that seem to have been elevated in some way by Dawn's presence. This is fascinating and concerning in equal measure.
• They follow Dawn's trail into an underground facility run by robots that appears to produce and launch vending machines containing loot and challenges to locations in the system. It appears that Dawn got into one of these and was launched to Kylal.
• The pair follow suit and land on Kylal where they are released from the machine and follow Dawn's trail to release it from its own machine.
• With Dawn in tow they learn that some other presence spoke to Dawn and decide to pay a visit to the boss of the vending machine facility, Honoured Guest.
• Guest, it transpires, is one of Serendipity's targets – a powerful Startouched who has lost touch with reality after enacting cataclymic destruction on the moon Vyix 9a. Guest has decided that with the great power they displayed in doing so they are more powerful than Ship Hearts themselves, and bedeck themselves in shards of Ship Heart Relics.
• The party manage to overpower Guest, and the shards of Hearts magnetise to Dawn who becomes crusted in powerful relics that are communing with each other.
• The facility is left to continue its bizarre work, and Dawn returns to the Vault.

• Serendipity debriefs to Spectre Vyix 9a - Honoured Guest was in fact Overstayed Guest, and has been successfully pruned. They were the one that actually caused the destruction of Vyix 9a, and have been growing ever more mentally unstable since. I'll pass over a full copy of the journals, and also mention that Fractured Dawn ending up in the vending machine was the suggestion of Immersabilis II, and was intended to summon help, not actually a plot to destroy Kylal.
• Serendipity reports the existence of the Vending Machine facility to her contacts in Aspexx. They are thrilled to discover an opportunity beneath the nose of Ace, and negotiations begin in earnest to give Aspexx control of the facility.
• Serendipity constructs a second prototype of the connection she made with her drone in the field.
• Fathom fills in Red Nine on any last bits she missed, then cements the tinkering he did with Bot '32 in the facility so that he can request a Vending Machine request from across the system.
• Fathom works to analyse the collection of gems with an attempt to answer the question: what is the relationship between these gems and the ship hearts they appear to represent?
  • He finds that the fragments in the gems seem to be made from the same inexplicable material Ship Hearts, but the ages of the gems far predates the Ships they purport to be from. Immersabilis II for instance can't possibly be from the esteemed successor to the ill-fated Immersabilis from a couple of decades ago – not only is this not the same colour as that well publicised Ship Heart, but the mounting of its jewelry is thousands of years old… Further investigation shows that every single fragment here is incredibly old and that the lot easily date back from before the end of the Last Interstellar War. How they were cut, and how that could be achieved on whole Ship Hearts, eludes his understanding for now. Dawn is particularly defensive of them and begins to display what can only be described as parental behaviour about its collected fragments.
• Fathom also takes Fractured Dawn and Guest's journals back to the Vault, adds Heightened Serendipity to the access list for the Vault so that they can have access to the journals (and since they could probably just break in anyway if they wanted to, which would be embarrassing to all parties), and provides Fractured Dawn with an idiot-proof way for it to tell Fathom where it's going the next time it decides to go on an adventure (mechanically, this is tuning his Communicator to it…)

• The Vending Machine facility continues to pump out Vending Machines and launch them around the system.
• Aspexx are now showing interest in the underground caverns beneath Ace's Place, giving them a reason to pay attention to the conflict with Her Glorious Command.

• May choose to have his communicator tuned to Fractured Dawn, at which point it will inform him of any ideas or hijinks it may get up to. If he tunes out from it and forgets to reconnect during Downtime then he may not be informed.
• Mk II Overridden Vending Machine Bot: Bot '32 may be prevailed upon from across the system to launch a Vending Machine from across the system. It will not arrive in the same Encounter, but rather a future one picked at random by the GM. Vending Machines will either be a Loot or a Challenge Machine (again, picked at random):
  • Loot Machines contain 3 items that may or may not be of use (e.g. weapons, ammo, supplies, keys, pastries) and only one may be purchased in exchange for 1 Clout – the others will be immediately destroyed.
  • Challenge Machines contain 3 items of increasing usefulness and delivers three challenges to the upcoming Encounter of increasing difficulty (e.g. “do the encounter while singing”, “don't get hit”, “without using guns”). If the challenges are completed, the prizes are dispensed.
  • Vending Machines can be hacked with a successful Tinkering to override their programming, but a Failure will result in the machine destroying all of its prizes.
• Ancient Relic: a small shard of glowing translucent gem set into a metal ring. This relic may be used to call PULL or PUSH once per Encounter. Further uses of the call that Encounter may be achieved by sacrificing 2 hit points to the ring (like a Commando spending hits). Keep track of how many hits are sacrificed to the ring and keep Katie updated.

• New Target: Ninth Life – final conspirator of the Vyix 9a terrorist attack. Known to be in system somewhere under a new name, associated with Dazzling Amethyst, a presumed dead Altarian.
• One pending Elegy boon for accomplishing contract.
• +2 Clout with Aspexx for alerting them to the Vending Machine facility.
• Mk II Psychic Drone Connection: twice per Mission, out of combat, you may meld your mind with your Drone in order to control it precisely. Your senses are as restricted as the drone's, and you are unable to control or sense your body while you are projecting into the Drone. You may do this more times per Mission by taking a Severe Injury for each time you want to use it as it fries your mental pathways.
• Ancient Relic: a small shard of glowing translucent gem set into a pendant. This relic allows you, once per Mission, to choose whether or not a Decoy Hologram of yourself is actually you after all at the point you reveal it. You may do this multiple times a Mission at the expense of a Severe Injury as doing this causes a rift in the space-time continuum. Please inform Katie in downtime whenever you push this ability past the once per mission.