Invasive Species

# Incoming Transmission

# Source Identifier: Unintended Consequences & Situation Normal, Ace’s World

# Destination Identifier: # TE3-Firebrand # Her Glorious Command # Starlight Ebbing # Muse IX # Unquiet Journey#\*

# Subject: Invasive Species

# Message Begins

Adventurer’s required to deal with damage control for an experiment with potentially disasterous ecological-

Hey get off that radio we don’t need help, it’ll all be fine

Shut UP, Normal, it went past “fine” weeks ago and it’s just getting worse

Hey universe adventurers required to deal with the fact that my partner is an unimaginative fool who wouldn’t know science if it bit him

It did bite me, Normal, quite a few times, now we need to get it under control before Ace finds out.

Look, anyone interested just come here, might be an easy job if they’re right, probably won’t be.

# Message Ends

# Incoming Transmission

# Source Identifier: Ace’s High, Ace’s World

# Destination Identifier: # Unintended Consequences & Situation Normal, Ace’s World

# Subject: Re: Practical Ecology

# Message Begins

Before Ace finds out what, exactly?

# Message Ends

Honest Jack - Susannah
Budding Leaf - Alex

Summary

The party arrive at the site of potential ecological disaster, to find Unintended Consequences, one of the scientists at the research station, there to breif them.
The research station was looking into biological methods of rendering areas of potential high decay risk safer - by introducing Mytenian cave slugs to devour any remaining technology before it could attract decay. They'll happily eat anything, and are tough enough to survive low levels of decay without too much issue.
Unfortunately, Unintended Consequences' partner, Situation Normal, had an… interesting approach to containment. Not trusting the security of their chosen site (a cave in on an island in a crater lake, rimmed with mountains), Situation Normal introduced various biological countermeasures to keep the cave slugs contained, and then further biological countermeasures to keep those biological countermeasures contained, and now there's a risk of the whole lot escaping and Ace's World having a lot of wildlife it didn't have previously.
In theory, the whole acciental ecosystem should collapse if the cave slugs at the core are culled. And if the adventurers can deal with any others of the invasive creatures on their way out, then so much the better.
The adventurers are flown into the the test site on a glider, which, due to neither of them being pirates, promptly crashes and dumps them out into the surprisingly sticky landscape - which turns out to be sticky due to the first countermeasure, an acidic slime imported from Kylal. After a hard won fight, this is put down, and they enter the cave.
Within the cave, they find (as expected) a whole bunch of cave slugs. The largest of which appear to have swallowed several decayed Stingers, and survived the process (but not the further process of being beaten up by adventurers).
The next step is to escape the test zone - out of the cave, across the lake, through the forest, and past the mountains back to the lab.
On the way they deal with various other biological countermeasures - cliff face (and cliff-faced) eels within the caves, razormonkeys who have dismantled their glider and are using the wings as makeshift shields, jellyfish and surface sharks on the water, raktors who have tamed the ice beetles that were supposed to counter them and are using them to slow their prey, and skitters who are generally stampeding and causing trouble.
While they are escaping, they get a warning over the radio from Seven Broad, Ace's head of security, that Ace has found out, is not happy with the potential situation, and has a bunch of new artillery to test and a whole crater full of live targets that shouldn't be on this planet. The shelling starts away from the adventurers, and eventually stops when the artillery is needed to counter a new Altarian offensive, but the fires (and associated flaming wildlife) catch up to them in the forest.
After getting past the final barrier - a colony of armourdillos introduced to maintain dams at the mountains, the party are assured over the radio that Situation Normal has found the perfect solution in the form of a splatterbeast with a shock collar which will allow it to be brought in once it's done dealing with the other wildlife. The comms go dead, and Seven Broad informs the party that they're the best placed to deal with it, and Ace might be persuaded to not blame them for the whole thing if they do that.
After a hard-won fight against the splatterbeast and the other creatures it has released (and devoured), the party rescue Unintended Consequences and Situatuon Normal, and ensure they are suitably chastised.

Honest Jack ensures that Ace gets a full debrief, and uses contacts in the Sirutan Independents to ensure that the source of the Sirutan animals is suitably discouraged

There is a large crater on Ace's World with some remnants of various species from around the system.
The following are generally known from papers published after the incident:
- Cave Slugs are a somewhat effective means of disposing of technology at risk of decay
- Razormonkeys have shown early signs of tool use and curiosity
- Ractors have shown early signs of synergistic behaviour with other species, particularly the use of ice beetles to disable more interesting prey.
A very friendly, curious, and lonely cliff-faced eel has been sighted wandering around Ace's World