shared:mission:finite_existence [Planetfall]

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====== Finite Existence ======

===== Initial Brief =====

>>> Incoming Transmission
>>> Source Identifier: Vaunted Platinum, ZRD, Kylal; Stalwart Band, Captain,TE-3 Firebrand; Eloquent Affinity, Secretary to the Ambassador, Mytene
>>> Destination Identifier: TE3-Firebrand#Her Glorious Command#Starlight Ebbing#Muse IX#Endeavour#Unquiet Journey#*
>>> Subject: A Ship Heart has been found, competent operatives needed to retrieve it
>>> Message Begins Calling all competent and enthusiastic explorers, survivalists, and adventurers!  Recently a ZRD technician and her allies were able to uncover strong evidence of the existence of a previously-unknown ship heart in the system!

Obviously it is imperative for the good of the system as a whole that this ship heart be retrieved and put to the most effective use possible.  Accordingly, Firebrand, the ZRD, and the Mytenean authorities are prepared to fund an exploratory venture to assess the possibility of retrieving it in the first instance.  Further resources will be available should retrieval by the initial team prove untenable.  Report to Eloquent Affinity in Mytene Secondary for further briefing.

===== Characters =====

  * [[shared:player_character:Blind Devotion]] - Alex
  * [[shared:player_character:Deepest Fathom]] - James
  * [[shared:player_character:Red Nine]] - Katie

===== Summary =====

  * The party was briefed by Eloquent Affinity.  She noted the urgency of the mission, and that the ship heart should be retained for the betterment of the system as a whole, which clearly meant it should stay on Mytene to allow more farms and mines to keep the system self sufficient.
  * The party then briefly visited Perpetual Motion, who was working in his lab, late one night (well, had been, POL-1T3 had made him stop for breakfast) and confirmed the story from the Infinite Energy mission debrief - he had been working as an inventor and scientist, and had been influenced by a ship heart into making ‘inventions’ which were mostly powered by startouched powers rather than actual science.
  * Moving on, the party came across a group of Altairians, who had come out from their humble abodes to go on a slightly self-imposed quest to fetch this ship heart, which was clearly meant to be the property of the Dynasty, who know best what to do with it for everyone’s best interests.  They were reasonably quickly dispatched, though left alive, alone, in the wilderness.  They’re probably fine.
  * The final encounter before entering ship heart range of the heart they were seeking was with The Whole.  After smashing a graveyard’s worth of dead raktors, reanimated by sapient mushrooms, the party had a brief chat with them, and claimed a talking mushroom-infested raktor arm, before moving on.  The mushroom arm could be heard commentating in a muffled voice from inside Deepest Fathom’s bag for the rest of the mission.
  * Moving into ship heart range, they came to a cave.  And suddenly, to their surprise, (as well as the usual local wildlife which were quickly dispatched) found a floating, wispy creature which was nigh-impossible to hit, and which inflicted them with visions of horrible deaths by poison gas, or traumatic injury.
  * Moving deeper into the cave they ran across a party of goons, led by someone who Deepest Fathom suspected was probably an Aspexx agent, though Fathom didn’t recognise her specifically.  There was a tense conversation, and an even more tense fight, during which Blind Devotion was knocked down.  Whilst Fathom and Red Nine found somewhere to hide, the Aspexx agent interrogated, then executed, Blind Devotion, and was on her way further into the caves with her lackeys when two of them were teleported away and replaced with the two standing PCs.  A very short fight later, the PCs had chased off the agent and left the decapitated head of one of the lackies as a warning for the others if they survived, then moved further into the cave.  Fathom attempted, unsuccessfully, to repurpose one of their weapons, breaking it beyond use in the process.
  * Getting closer to the ship heart, they discovered a Various, who had clearly been part of a party coming here for much the same reason the PCs were, but who had been less successful.  They fought off the mites which had finished off the party of Various, as well as a partially broken, but animated, skeleton.  Giving the Various a jolt from their electrodes to wake them back up again, they were able to confirm that they had indeed come here seeking the ship heart.  They also reported having been set upon by similar wispy creatures, which gave them lasting flashbacks of a traumatic death or near death, before disappearing.  Once healed by Devotion, they fled.
  * Finally their eyes beheld an eerie site, a crashed and broken ship, buried in the rock and earth, which left a small area sheltered around a nacelle visible, with 3 doors and an emergency power cable.  Navigating the cable over various environmental hazards in the area, they attempted to power each airlock in turn.  The first was jammed on the outside, the second contained an angry skeleton which had ruined the internal controls, and the third contained a face full of poison gas, but was otherwise a route into the ship.
  * From the airlock door, in the spaceship east, they proceeded though the very wrecked, very old ship, encountering more skeletons, a range of hazards, and more of the ghostly fragments.  Fathom was able to tinker up a ghost hoover, and proceeded to capture and examine one of them, figuring out that it was somehow ship heart powered, and that it was probably a chunk of a person’s psyche or spirit or something similar.  Nine then stuck a hand into the ghost hoover’s bag, and absorbed the fragment into herself, and also hugged several others, doing the same.
  * They passed engineering (engines: extremely wrecked, reactor: broadly OK), several enormous rents and splits in the hull, and the crew quarters which suggested a crew of around 30, as well as several other blocked off routes.  Nine spent time noting down as many personal details as she could, and gradually began to feel like she knew some of the crew a little.  All the while afflicted by traumatic flashbacks of the fragments’ last moments.
  * Arriving at the life pods, they found a door to the holodeck, which would lead them through to the bridge, where Devotion’s senses said the ship heart likely was, and had to fend off several skeletons.  Also, there was a body in one of the pods (who had clearly tried to use it, expecting imminent rescue, where none had arrived, who opened the lid, shook their fist, and moaned, charging at the PCs.  Fathom was able to break into the holodeck door.
  * They found themselves in a nebulous and vague simulation of a range of different times in one person’s life - Coruscating Beam, the Chief Mystic of the ship - one was Beam as a child (Bean), at a party, one as a graduate being taken out for a celebratory dinner, one as a young adult, meeting Infinite Energy for the first time, and one in the final moments of the doomed ship, imploring Energy to ‘save thy crew, body and spirit, from the doom which is befalling us’
  * Putting the versions of Beam in the correct order, they mashed together into a coherent enough whole to talk to.  Beam confirmed that the ship had landed here on the  third planet in the system, to check on an experimental terraforming seed which Aspexx had used in the terraforming on that planet, designed to enhance resource extraction by making them available in plants and animals, to ease mining.  Upon landing and powering down the engines to get ready to go and check on progress, the ground on which the ship landed had collapsed into an extensive cave system, tearing open the hull and allowing in the still-poisonous atmosphere, and breaking the engines, as well as seriously injuring many of the crew.  Beam then used an intervention to save them, and remembered nothing since.
  * They entered the bridge, and met with the skeletons of the captain, (named Probably Captain, a boss with a sense of humour, the most horrifying thing in the mission), and of Beam, who were going about something resembling their former duties.
  * Following a long conversation with Infinite Energy they persuaded it that it had helped, but remaining here was risky.  It refused to leave without its crew, so Fathom used the intercom to summon them, and all the remaining fragments and skeletons converged on the bridge.  Nine then took all the fragments into herself (amounting to around 29 double CURSEs in the course of the mission), and whilst discussing what to do next, it turned out that the Aspexx operative had arrived and disconnected the reactors before setting them critical.  With alarms blaring, a frantic few minutes ensued in which Fathom was able to remove the data core of the ship (not just the holodeck, as it turns out, Beam’s data was stored more or less through the entire ship’s data centres, which explained why some of the ship’s functions weren’t very functional, in a portable enough form to take away with them).  Devotion requested an Intervention from Her Glorious Command, which was provided, allowing Infinite Energy enough additional ship heart power to function normally whilst also holding the lives of the crew and animating their bodies.  Infinite Energy then teleported everyone to a nearby cave as the ship blew up around them in a flash.
  * Unfortunately the cave was full of angry, radioactive snails.  Which were swiftly dealt with.
  * The party then persuaded the people who had sent them that the ship heart would not be safe on Mytene, or anywhere where Aspexx might expect it to be based on the people who briefed the mission, and it should instead be stored incognito on Ace’s world, at least until everything had calmed down, which was accepted, somewhat grudgingly, with a note that there would be a substantial cost to the PCs should any of those three factions lose access to the ship heart.  They also persuaded the authorities to lie about the whereabouts of the ship heart, and say it was lost in the explosion.
===== Aftermath =====

  * Red Nine spends some time working with Infinite Energy to persuade it to lay the bodies of the crew to rest on Mytene, along with a memorial, which is currently in the cave the team reached at the end of the mission, but she promises that it will be made more prominent if and when the situation is less tense.  This takes a lot of careful and gentle persuasion.
  * After some persuasion, both verbal and financial, of Ace's Org, Infinite Energy is stored in a vault on Ace's World.  Unless noted otherwise by the relevant players, Deepest Fathom, Red Nine, Blind Devotion, and representatives from the MIC, MSC, Firebrand, and ZRD will all be able to access this vault.
  * Deepest Fathom begins to establish a lab and conduct preliminary studies on Infinite Energy.  It is very helpful to him.
  * Deepest Fathom aslo tinkers further with the data core he retreived from the ship.  It transpires to be almost all of the ship's available memory, rather than just the holodeck core, which might have been why some of the functions of the ship weren't amazingly functional.  Without a holodeck it won't do much good, but as long as it stays in range of Infinite Energy specifically (because it is holding some of Beam's spirit itself) it will be stable.
  * Red Nine spends some time being passed from ship heart church to increasingly elaborate ship heart church chasing down leads through the Divine Sect in the system, and forging links with the same, trying to find out about the special seed that Beam mentioned.  Eventually a hushed conversation in Her Glorious Command's cathedral leaders her full circle to a conversation with Eloquent Affinity in which Affinity corroborates the story that Beam provided about the seed used on Mytene.
  * Devotion follows the progress of Infinite Energy across the system, generally working with it to follow its desires and wishes.


===== Consequences =====

  * The ship heart Infinite Energy is secretly stored in a vault on Ace's World.  The MSC, MIC, Firebrand/GC, and ZRD Factions are aware of and able to access its location, along with the three PCs.  This information is not publicly available currently.
  * A significant explosion is publicly known to have occurred just outside Mytene Secondary's ship heart range.


==== All Characters ====

  * All PCs: +3 Clout, split as desired between MSC, MIC, Firebrand, GC, and ZRD, or +1 Clout with any other faction except Ace's Org and Aspexx.
  * All PCs: should any of the mission giving factions lose access to the ship heart, -2 Clout with that faction.
  * All PCs: Nemesis: Dark Water - though she currently thinks you're all dead, if she finds out otherwise she will be aggressively unhappy.
  * All PCs: -1 Clout with Ace's World, to pay for the storage vault.

==== Red Nine ====

  * Continues to suffer flashbacks and haunting dreams of the dying moments of the 29 crew members whose fragments she took into herself.  This has no mechanical consequences at the moment but unless further action is taken within two Downtimes, it will get worse.
  * Is privy to the information from A Rare Day Out, about the special terraforming seed used by Aspexx on Mytene.

==== Deepest Fathom ====

  * Mk2: data drive with Beam's data in it 
  * Initial setup of a laboratory surrounding Infinite Energy in the vault.
  * Initial readings of a sample of Infinite Energy's casing.  James can exposit appropriately to himself offscreen about this.


==== Blind Devotion ====

  * Serious Injury: being stabbed through the soft underbelly has made your soft underbelly more vulnerable. Take STRIKEDOWN for 5s extra.



{{tag>mission blind_devotion deepest_fathom red_nine}}
mission blind devotion deepest fathom red nine