Jason: Created page with "{{Gamelog |Session Date=2026/05/31 |Campaign=Onyx Reach |Author=Jason |Session Title=Solar power considered harmful }} We're in the Outlands cluster of Onyx Reach, so named because this is an unusally dark and empty section of the Forge. This darkness creates a sort of window facing toward our origin galaxy. We're near Candlemass, a Jovian, with a very unusual ring system. One ring system is aligned with the ecliptic, but another is about 60 degrees offset, and the two s..."

2026-06-14T22:50:50Z

Created page with "{{Gamelog |Session Date=2026/05/31 |Campaign=Onyx Reach |Author=Jason |Session Title=Solar power considered harmful }} We're in the Outlands cluster of Onyx Reach, so named because this is an unusally dark and empty section of the Forge. This darkness creates a sort of window facing toward our origin galaxy. We're near Candlemass, a Jovian, with a very unusual ring system. One ring system is aligned with the ecliptic, but another is about 60 degrees offset, and the two s..."

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{{Gamelog
|Session Date=2026/05/31
|Campaign=Onyx Reach
|Author=Jason
|Session Title=Solar power considered harmful
}}
We're in the Outlands cluster of Onyx Reach, so named because this is an unusally dark and empty section of the Forge. This darkness creates a sort of window facing toward our origin galaxy. We're near Candlemass, a Jovian, with a very unusual ring system. One ring system is aligned with the ecliptic, but another is about 60 degrees offset, and the two systems interweave. One layer of the planet's atmosphere contains thin islands of crystallized titanium, floating on top of the lower gas layers. Tashi Station orbits the planet. It was meant as a temporary station, but it's stuck around for sixty years now, accumulating new space in the form of tacked-on shipping containers and such. Its orbit is decaying, and in four or five years, they might get an up-close look at some of those titanium islands. It's home to a raider collective, which causes the station to be shunned by most.

We're hear because Dex has an ancient book which purports to be a treasure map, and there's someone here who can translate it. Dr G, meanwhile, is searching for information on Dr Winston Smythe. She found shipping records for a shipping corp tied to Dr Smythe, which has sent cargos to and from this area. Our ship is docked way out on the furthest docking area of the station, and no other ships are docked up at the moment. Once our info systems have sycned up with local, Rook finds a bounty offer from a Mr Cade Bonsoir, amount not listed. Rook tells Johannes thanks but no thanks when he offers to come along, and calls on Cade solo. Mr Bonsoir's office is also his abode, and there are clear signs of a firefight here at some point. CB has four nostrils. Otherwise he's a middle-aged guy with straggly hair. His office is full of various instruments and equipments. When he sniffs, his nostrils flare outer set first, then inner. It's weird. Bonsoir has a buddy at Tinian's Run who hasn't communicated in too long, and he needs that guy, Morton Cartwright, found. To be clear, it's not just Cartwright, nobody has heard anything from Tinian's Run in a couple months. For standard plus ten percent, Rook will go look into the scene at Tinian's. Rook asks about the local troublemakers, the Red Corsairs, and whether he needs to worry about them. Bonsoir assures him that they have biger targets, but if they happen to bother him, dropping the name of Cade Bonsoir should at least get him safely to Tashi. He asks Rook to swear an iron vow before he leaves. This will be a "dangerous" vow.

Dockside, Dex and Geneva are hanging around, looking for information, especially about the Careworn Associates shipping concern. Geneva visits the module where the Careworn PO box is registered, and shockingly, it's a crap area. It smells like motor oil there. Someone named Amelia answers the intercom, and buzzes her in. The door leads to a security interlock, which does not allow two people in at a time. The vestibule closes behind Geneva before Dex can squeeze in. Geneva finds herself in a room full of outdated computer terminals and Amelia, a completely tatooed woman wearing overalls and nothing else. Amelia is happy to assure her that Careworn can move her target regardless of any petty bureaucratic or legal concerns. She assures Geneva that the company was founded to ensure deliveries to places that might not be well served by existing shippers, but she has no idea who founded her. Her boss is in Cygnus Deep, a sector over, and this office in Tashi is run out of the Gundersun office in the Deep.

Out in the corridor, some dirty children are giving Dex the stinkeye... just the way he gave unfamiliar adults the stinkeye when he was a station rat. Eventually one of them asks Dex who he is. Dex says, "I'm a man looking for information, and you look like people who can help me out." Dex happens to have some Juicy Fruit still in the package, and these foul urchins want that gum. One of them leads him toward the customary docks. He points to a woman in a flight suit, and tells him that she knows everything. He hands over the gum and asks the kid his name. It's apparently "Plug." Dex asks Plug to hang around, because there might be more business coming.

As he approaches the designated woman, she gives him a firm "wait there" gesture, which Dex respects. She seems to be arguing about the quality of some repairs. When the argument finishes, she wanders off, forcing Dex to chase after. Turns out she thought he also wanted to complain about shitty repairs, and she was just guarding her place in line. She doesn't feel like the smartest person on station, but she introduces herself as Diana Cantwell, and says he can buy her a drink and ask her some questions. Her flight suit is too big for her, and she's pretty scruffy, but she might clean up pretty nice. Turns out she does know the lay of the land around here. She identifies his "book" as a nav module and thinks any console ought to be able to read it. To tell him anything more, she'd need to load it up on something with a display.

They go to a console, she jury-rigs some cables to connect up the module, and it starts listing information in an unfamiliar character set. Cantwell says it's been a while since she saw that. He needs a "Crimson Seer" to decode that - a member of a navigator's guild. They use this symbology for their charts. Of course, they might consider this their rightful property and refuse to read it for him. There might be some Crimson Seers over in New Hades. That's the only known planet in this cluster in the goldilocks zone. It's a young world, still forming land masses through vulcanism. He pays for her dinner and they part ways. She's a "dangerous" new connection for Dex.

Everyone makes it back to the Clipper. Johannes also grabs any open data courier jobs to Tinian's Run. Johannes undocks and heads us out that way. About a day and a half later, we reach an anchorage around a blue star undergoing some amazing solar storms. Since the local area is undergoing some gravity wave fluctuations from the storms, Leehou takes the next two jumps, staying vigilant for trouble.

Side note: during a jump, the eye refuses to perceive hyperspace. Any viewport becomes a blind spot. You can perceive the edges of the viewport but nothing in between.

After the third jump, we come out near a red giant, and see something orbiting it 5-6 light minutes out. It's not a ship, it's some sort of structure. We approach and investigate, finding that it's old, it's enormous, and it might be part of a Dyson ring, maybe a sixth of one. It's about 100km wide. Leehau helps Johannes plot a course that will hopefully not agitate any defensive systems. As he crosses the edge of the structure, an eddy in the solar wind briefly sets the Clipper tumbling, forcing McInnes to scramble to get it back under control. On closer examination, the structure seems to be an enormous solar array, built while the star was in an earlier phase. Baxton is in seventh heaven and will not stop narrating whatever he's looking at. The array is curiously seamless. The panels are roughly one-acre hexagons. The edges between hexagons are microns in width. At the ends, where construction stopped, the edges are incomplete, offering a possible way in, but there will also be major solar turbulence. Johannes tries to get close alongside that edge, and the solar wind is absolutely brutal. Johannes was counting on the magnetic landing gear to anchor the ship against the turbulence, only to find that the array is not magnetic. He's going to have to hold station with thrust. Dex and Leehau volunteer for the EVA, with Geneva setting up in the lab. The frame might be tungsten - the sheer density of the thing suggests it.

They begin dragging themselves across the back side by the greebles, and determine that the structural tier is about three meters thick. The panels are just a film atop that, flapping in the solar wind. They try to approach that side to cut a sample. The flapping edge knocks Dex aside despite its incredibly thin size, and then when Baxton tries to grab it, it cuts his glove open. It takes him a terrifyingly long few seconds to get the repair tape edge opened and the edge of the hole sealed. Meanwhile, Dex has gone Dutchman, but the turbulence sends the tether back his way, and he's able to grab hold of it, then drag himself back. To get a more locked-down section of solar film, they'll need to venture out onto the front side.

We hastily come up with a plan to tape around the section we're cutting and then use the tape as a handle. Bernie the bot helps Dex start cutting, and the radiation rapidly begins taking a toll on him. Baxton tries to advise Dex on how to tackle the cutting faster, but his idea is so totally bad that Dex actually spends the next little while telling Leehau to shut his stupid mouth and let the smart people work. Leehau starts to go to pieces and Dex tells him to just shut up and hold the torch in place. That actually gets things rolling at last, as Dex starts in on it. The heat from the cutting torch does nothing, because the stuff is such a good conductor, but the power snips work on it. The seam also has to be kept open, or it begins to self-heal. Dex directs Bernie to help cut, and Leehau to hold the seam open. Unfortunately the seam gets away from him at one point, forcing them to cut more, absorbing more rads. They separate the piece... and the solar wind grabs it and sends it flying out of reach. After all that, they return to the ship empty-handed. Dr G decontaminates them.

In our next hop, we reach Tinian's Run, and begin syncing comms. Nothing responds.

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