LogYuriRT1-2010/12/09-Jason-1

Game log for the 2010/12/09 session of Rogue Trader: After the Gold Rush, as taken by Jason

Lord Captain Machariel comes down with a sudden, inexplicable, and hideously acute case of space dysentery.

Anyway, the crew of the Solo Drakban have towed their newly partially salvaged ancient space station out to the edge of the system. To improve our sense of security in the system, we attempt to more thoroughly scout the ruined world in the system. Our augur arrays suggest it's a ruined Hive World. We now get into a low orbit and begin intensively scanning. Anastasia Xanatov gets us nice and low while Opiter Castus aids the Machine Spirit to get the most of our sensors, and our systems reward their hard work with a bounty of data. Roughly half the surface of the planet shows signs of development, focused around three hive cities, now fallen in. We feel certain this was an Imperial colony before something bad happened to it, centuries ago. Opiter identifies a Mechanicus shrine of unfamiliar type (which he unsurprisingly expresses a wish to visit). Bors Tovon, examining the damage, opines that it looks like the result of a full scale planetary war. We try to identify signs of Orks on the planet and don't see any. Maybe there aren't any. We laugh at our foolish optimism.

Seneschal Livienne Corvus, acting in the Lord Captain's stead during his illness, receives preliminary scan reports from the ship's shuttle pilots (in triplicate), who have been investigating the wreckage in space. Aside from the expected debris, they found hull plates from Imperial Navy ships. Analyzing the aggregated set of all the scans of the planet and the debris from the void, she begins to pick out ships with something wrong about them - one immediately suspects Chaos. Wreckage on the planet includes normal looking Space Marine Drop Pods and wrong-looking ones. Yep. Chaos. She can't keep us from going planetside, so she puts a team on standby to recover our bodies.

Opiter retrieves his servo-skull from the bridge. Who knew he had one hidden there? Well, all of us know now. He gets in the shuttle along with Bors, Jotham, Lucius, and a company or so of Armsmen. Anastasia pilots our shuttle, of course, and gets us safely to the planet. During her approach, our ship gets sensor painted a couple times. Either the survivors have kept some technology, or some automatic defenses still work. She decides to land anyway, and puts us down in a decent spot with nic balmy weather. We open the hatches, and as soon as the shuttle engines shut down, the silence becomes palpable. The wide open sky begins to really bother poor Lucius, who comes from a hive. From the ground, the scale of the hives becomes really apparent. The mind can scarcely visualize the sort of carnage required to do so much damage to a Hive. We immediately see dead Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines. We wipe down some shoulder pads and see Iron Warriors and Thousand Sons Chaos Marines. The loyal Marine uniforms suggest they might have been Sons of Orion and Flame Wardens, Blood Angel and Salamander successor chapters respectively. Lucius' psychic powers still detect a faint whiff of Chaos.

We head inside thought the nearest bay door, or rather gaping hole where the bay doors were smashed in. Opiter sends his servo skull ahead to scout, keeping it just a hundred meters or so in front of us. The defenders had tried to fortify the inside of the hive, so the skull finds much evidence of interior fortification, and lots of remains.

Back on the Solo 's bridge, the PO in charge of an Auspex station reports company in the system. The bogey appears to be a warship, perhaps cruiser sized. inbound to the planet. Livienne orders the landing party recalled to the ship, and the landing party makes no argument. Opiter grabs a shoulder pad from one of the loyalists on his way out.

Victrus Karellius tries to lock on to the bogey, and can't. It ignores hails. It closes the planet and flank speed, then turns broadside to the ship. As it does, there's a screaming sound in all our frequencies, and Livienne realizes she can see right through the unidentified ship. Jahazer Simoom confirms that the warp has not intruded into real space, meaning the ghost ship must be an apparition, not an actual warship. He also identifies it as a Hellion-class heavy cruiser, configured be a carrier for Stormtroopers. The Navy sold the last Hellion 4500 years ago. Jahazer manages to decode the ship's transmission and determines that it contains the coordinates of the planet. The landing party desires to land again, now that we know it's a ghost threat, but Seneschal Mom wants us to be very safe. Lucius hears whispers of Traitor Legions and heretical forces, couched in language that suggests he's overhearing Imperial Navy orders. Once Anastasia turns our shuttle around and gets us back into atmo, Lucius stops hearing the whispers. About an hour later, the ghost ship fades out.

On our second approach, we get pinged again, and this time we try to triangulate the source, but we can't isolate it down to any fine point. We go back to where we started and begin looking around the Mechanicus facility. Eventually we find a terminal, which Opiter begins to interface with, hoping to mine vast tracts of data from it. First he'll need to get it working, which he does, and gets to watch a millania-old system boot screen. Once he gets in, he finds that, shockingly, many systems remain offline. To really mine this place, we'll have to go around restoring many other systems. He can, however, score a map of the public spaces, such as the chapel and museum. Lucius reminds us that the facility is haunted. Opiter reminds him that we live on a haunted ship, so same-same, right? As we mock the psyker for his fear, the servo-skull finds something, chitters, and begins to investigate a junk pile. It gievs bump to some trash and uncovers a genuine robot, complete with apparently-fatal battle damage. It mounts a massive assault cannon, which has Bors panting, though the lack of ammunition somewhat damps his spirits. We head for the museum. As we go deeper into the facility, we stop seeing Iron Warriors armor - apparently they didn't make it this far.

We find the museum with a pile of Space Marine corpses in front of it. A group of Imperial Fists apparently defended it to the death, and succeeded - the museum appears unbreached. We order our armsmen to start moving the bodies, both to open up a way in, and to search for any records. Sure enough, they find an Adeptus Astartes dataslate. The planet was called Haldr. The Imperial Fists were contacted by another chapter because the loyalists knew the Iron Warriors would be there. A Chaos cult had grown on the planet, and they eventually invited the Traitor Legions in.

Eventually Opiter opens the museum door. As soon as he opens it, the lights come on - whoah. Life-size dioramas of Mechanicus history and their work on Haldr fill the room. We also find a medical bay. Opiter and Bors then search for access to the lower, more secure levels of the museum, and eventually find one. It contains workshops, and Lucius finds a computer terminal there. Sadly it has no power, so we're going to need to get a generator powered up somehow- but Opiter knows how to get that done. Throughout all this, Lucius has been hearing psychic screams, but they grow muffled when we go downstairs.

The generator appears to provide power for the whole building - our armsmen throughout the facility report that the lights just came on. The system reports that a state of emergency remains in effect for the entire facility. Then the system begins bring up the automated defense and targeting systems, which briefly scare the willies out of everyone before Opiter shuts them down.

Back in the ship, Anastasia gets a request for landing coordinates for her position. She asks them to authenticate. She also detects encrypted transmissions sent her way, which she relays back to the ship. Her radio tech calculates that the transmission is coming from roughly the same place where the pinging of the ship originated. She flies off to investigate without bothering to inform the party inside the Mechanicus facility. (It's funnier that way!) Flying a search pattern, Anastasia figures out that the pings only happen when she's over a specific area, which they quickly triangulate down to about a square half-kilometer. She also relays the signal up to the Drakban. Eventually one of the shuttle crew spies movement on the ground inside their search perimeter. Anastasia tries to fly even lower to investigate. A close look at a topo map of the ruins convinces the shuttle crew that there are life forms and power sources, based on moving heat signatures, EM radiation, etc. Anastasia reluctantly reports her findings to Seneschal Wet Blanket. The Seneschal responds by telling her that according to the ship's Cogitators, the signals sent to the shuttle carry Adeptus Astartes encryption. She orders the Drakban to reply with her formal Imperial credentials, including her registry, Warrant, etc.

The exploration party in the museum decide to run a cable from the surface to the terminal and rig a transmitter to let us upload the contents of the museum data core to the Drakban. Bors, Lucius, and Jotham decide to lead the search party to the presumed Space Marine site. We discover the source of the transmission is underground, requiring us to dig. After much digging, we find a bunker, complete with airlock-style door and entry keypad. We knock and get no response, and we don't know the keycode, so we summon a salvage team with a torch to cut it open. Interior overpressure pops the door out like a cork, and we send a couple armsmen down the ladder. They immediately call for us to join them. At the bottom of the hatch, four Space Marines lie on top of sarcophagi with their bolters, with a dreadnought watching over them. The Dreadnought shows Iron First regalia and carries an assault cannon, dreadnought-scale power fist, and some sort of large bore cannon. One of the Marines has a chapter banner. Lucius discovers that one of the Marines is a Librarian. We call for help from Drakban, which sends us a bunch of medical staff and more armsmen.

Meanwhile, Lucius tries to thought-send to the Dreadnought. Nothing happens... until a few minutes later, when a blinking red light on its readout panel suddenly stops blinking and turns green. Lucius announces that it might be waking up and then mutters that it might have heard his thought sending. Sure enough, it transitions from its slouched posture to being fully upright, makes a brief burst of white noise from its speakers, then scans the room. He introduces himself as Brother Lysander and accuses us of being late. We tell him what year it is. He can't believe that, since they were deployed in M47. He explains that the five of them are all that remains of the loyal Marine presence. He asks about the situation, inquires as to whether we all speak Low Gothic, and identifies Opiter as a member of the Mechanicus. Lysander says that "they didn't find it while they were here, so it must still be here... if it was ever here at all." He's concerned that we haven't found it... although it may be just as well, since we don't know what it is.