Infinite Energy

Incoming Transmission
Source Identifier: Mining Laser, Overseer, Mytenean Industrial Corps
Destination Identifier: TE3-Firebrand#Her Glorious Command#Starlight Ebbing#Muse IX#Endeavour#Unquiet Journey#*
Subject: Investigation and/or rescue operation requires skilled operatives
Message Begins

For the attention of all able mercenaries, explorers, experienced individuals capable of investigation of a local area of technological interest:

The Mytenean Industrial Corps in Mytene Secondary has been notified that a local inventor named Perpetual Motion has gone missing. His inventions are of interest to the Industrial Corps. Operatives capable of locating and investigating his laboratory, and finding out what has happened to him will be compensated for their time and effort.

Apply at the Mytenean Industrial Corps headquarters in Mytene Secondary

Mossy Hollow - Joseph
Warded Path - Tamsin

Summary

The party met with Mining Laser in Mytene Secondary, who was accompanied by POL-1T3, a companion/assistant bot to Perpetual Motion, a local inventor, who the bot had reported as missing.
They chased down a lead to a local inventors’ guild of which Motion is a member, and spoke to several of the inventors, who had been expecting to see Motion at their meetup that day. They admired the inventions. Which in turn admired them. As potential targets. They also got some directions to Motion’s lab, and talked with one of the inventors, who had visited, and reported returning particularly inspired.
Warded Path drove a vehicle she borrowed from a local ZRD garage to the lab. On the way they were accosted by local bandits who used a combination of the flora and fauna in the area to waylay travellers. Their vehicle was temporarily disabled by the popping coral’s seedpods, and whilst POL-1T3 ws repairing it, they subdued the bandits. Upon questioning, one of them, a mystic, reported unusual dreams of being trapped, or feeling the need to seek something out, but nothing that they could put a more firm description to upon waking.
Arriving at the lab, Mossy Hollow solved the door puzzle, whilst Warded Path turned immaterial and walked through the door. They took a good look around, seeing several experimental areas and a somewhat chaotic and disorganised living area. They found some notes, which explained a little bit about each of the experimental areas, as well as some personal sound recorders with similar notes.
They examined the Decay Lab, which turned out to be some Decayed Trackers in a curiously un-decay-proofed area, surrounded by mundane flaming torches, and with a bell on a string on the wall, chained to a capstan which went up through the ceiling, and terminated in a room above, decay-proofed, in which a generator could be attached to the capstan, but wasn’t currently. They found a door leading deeper, but thought they would struggle to open it quietly enough to avoid angering the Trackers.
Upon entering the area, Path became aware of a new shipheart, as far from them as the Mytene Secondary shipheart.
In the tech lab they found a mixture of functional technology and attempts at perpetual motion machines, some of which were very gently ticking over.
In the bio-lab they found some well-caged local fauna, and a small garden of Popping Corals, which exhibited some slightly unusually telekinetic abilities, and were guarding another door.
Opening the door led to a convergence of corridors into one longer security corridor, with a voice print ID system at the end. Upon initially failing the challenge for the voice print, they retreated from the angry robots, and went back to try to identify some means of defeating the ID scanner. They saw a holographic Motion in the rehearsal space rehearsing a speech about a new infinite energy machine he had developed, a small prototype of which could be seen behind him (though Phil was a bit flustered and kind of skipped actually describing that element. Oops. Sorry).
They retrieved a voice recorder, but unfortunately a simple sample of Motion’s voice wasn’t all that was required, but rather his name and confirmation of his guests…
Instead they used Immateriality to bypass the now-highly-alert robots, with some difficulty due to the charging time of the ability, and due to the angry slug which Hollow found themself facing, alone, on the other side of the door.
Tracking a large mining machine they followed its trail as it intersected assorted caverns and tunnels in the area, fending off mite and slug attacks, and continuing to follow the same direction as the new ship heart which Path had identified.
Reaching the end of the trail they found a broken down mining machine, which they were eventually able to rig to explode, taking temporary care of the local wildlife, though at the cost (or benefit?) of Hollow becoming infested with Mytenean Mighty Mites.
Proceeding through a narrow crack in the rock, they found a full scale robotic mining operation, powered by a larger version of the infinite energy machine from earlier, which was processing materials for some building project deeper in the cave. Pulling an important component from the machine, however, singularly failed to stop it working, and angered the robots. They were able without too much trouble to enter themselves into the detection database for the robots, and proceeding to the next chamber, found a very emaciated and irrational Perpetual Motion working on a titanic version of the same machine.
Even the non-technical PCs however could tell that this machine really shouldn’t be working, not having enough internals, or any apparent source of fuel, and it seemed that Motion’s mechanical abilities were much less practical than they had apparently once been. It was also obvious that Motion was continuing to dig onward towards the new ship heart between working on the machine.
They attempted to persuade Motion to leave, with some difficulty, but were eventually able to persuade him to come to the surface for food and rest. On the way out, the mining robots tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent the group from leaving. Having fought them off, Path asked Endeavour to Intervene and attempt to block the psychic emanations from the other ship heart from affecting Motion, and everyone suddenly found themselves in a liminal psychic combat of sorts, between the two essentially evenly matched ship hearts, and the people present had the choice of which heart to fight for, to attempt to influence the outcome. Path chose Endeavour, and Motion and Hollow chose the unknown heart. A close fight later, Endeavour’s influence proved not to be strong enough to break the unknown heart’s influence, but nevertheless the obvious Psychic Bullshit proved persuasive to Motion, and convinced him that something more was at work than a simple hyperfocussed state.

As the party returned to the surface, Motion became steadily more rational and lucid, and started to show some level of acceptance that he had been influenced by the unknown ship heart. The party left him in the care of POL-1T3, and in bed, having made sure he was well fed and watered.
Returning to Mining Laser they reported the outcome.
Path reported Hollow to the Mytene Secondary peace officers (and whatever other system authorities she would report to) to a somewhat nonplussed reaction - whilst concerning, his views both about the Decay and about the mites were not felt to be outright dangerous, though his progress would be monitored.
Path also reported in to the Endeavour mystics, who are currently *GMs need to confirm where they are currently…* and the report of Endeavour’s suggestion for an option to blow something up being ‘Decay’ was met with some concern. The news of a newly discovered ship heart, and its location, was met with significant interest. Its influence over a lone individual within its sphere was met with some concern, but much less so than Endeavour’s attitude!
Hollow nurtured and cared for the Mites which had taken residence in his shoulder, and despite his distress at their currently-short lives, was able to make a self-sustaining colony of them, and felt that, with practice and determination, he could come to form some active symbiotic relationships with them.

Information about a new ship heart becomes available to anyone with access to the ZRD database (if it is functional at the moment?), as does its rough location to within a few miles on the surface, though it’s unclear how deeply it is buried.
Mining Laser and the Inventors’ Guild were happy to have Motion back in contact, and agreed to keep a closer eye on him until the situation was resolved. There was some disappointment, but not altogether much surprise, that his infinite energy machines were not functional technology.

+3 Clout with MIC, or +2 with MSC, or +1 with any other faction
+3 Clout with the Mytenean Inventors’ Guild (which likely won't mean a huge amount, but you have it if you want it!)

Is on a watch list in Mytene Secondary’s peace office
Has a mite colony in their shoulder
Has access to the new Infestation Experimental Ability tree as and when it is written.