LogYuriRT1-2010/09/17-Jason-1

Game log for the 2010/09/17 session of Rogue Trader: After the Gold Rush, as taken by Jason

Into The Storm is out, and of course our startup time is somewhat delayed. Other delays may have been caused by watching Community. We can neither confirm nor deny.

Anyway, we start our session at Machariel Base, located in the not notably scenic Telluride system. Machariel Base stretches for dozens of miles, capable of fitting ships and housing a full range of commercial activities. The nearest planet masses less than Mercury, and basically provides a lot of space to put stuff. As we pull in, The Boss summons Lord Captain Machariel and bridge crew to the flagship, Arkhamina's Lament.

Aboard the Lament, the Lord Captain gets summoned to his father's stateroom, while Jahazer Simoom, Livienne, Bors, Victrus, and Jotham get directed to a briefing room, and Opiter gets sent to the Machariel's Tech-Priest Majorus.

Talfore Machariel shows little emotion, but his son can discern his father's pleasure at his return. Marneus explains about the trap at Footfall that set our recent adventure in motion. He then asks about the lost space station that we found. The Old Man accepts that Marneus did the best he could in a lousy situation, and decides to make Marneus' command of the Solo Drakban permanent. Talfore asks for an accounting of Marneus' officers, and suggests that someone ought to be appointed XO. He also reminds his son that as the Lord Captain of a Machariel fleet vessel, he represents the family wherever he goes, and while he remains junior to his sister in the family, Talfore suggests that he may have room to exercise his own judgement if her decisions seem less than sensible.

Marneus expresses a desire to recover the lost space station he found. With a couple of heavy lift ships, it could be moved to a more useful location, and refitted as a deep space fueling depot for the Machariel Fleet. Talfore gives his permission to begin the work, but not a blank check.

The Machariel's Flag Seneschal debriefs the majority of the Drakban's officers, and sees nothing to take issue with. We report back to our ship none the worse for wear. Opiter and the Tech-Priest Majorus exchange courtesies in binary, and the Majorus entrusts Opiter with a message for a Tech Priest at Port Wander. Opiter, in turn, asks for and receives a blessing for upgrading his mind impulse unit to a fancier one that will sync better with the ship.

Meetings complete, Jahazer plots a course for Port Wander. He has a moment of doubt or two, but he gets us there just fine. The journey will take us first to Footfall, and on the way there, we encounter another Warp Storm. Through the judicious expenditure of a Fate Point, our Navigator drives us through a small gap in the storm, and we arrive at Footfall in only nine days, against a planned travel time of 30 days. The storm does create a slight complication with our arrival, as we reenter real space in the corona of a star.

Commander Xanatov, more or less expecting this sort of error, takes the conn without a murmur and sets about moving the ship in a generally non-Sunward direction. She tries to skip us out of the Sun, but there's a hull breach in engineering. The engines go offline. The ship drifts. Opiter attempts to persuade the Machine Spirit that it should restart the drives. We lose 2 crew population and 5 morale. Also the Enginaerium lacks gravity in some parts and pressure in the others. Opiter cannot get the engines on line, but then Bors shows up and, um, encourages the men to try a little harder, and then better things begin to happen.

On the bridge, we receive a hail. A dead-sounding voice repeatedly asks, "Blessings of the Omnissiah be upon you. Do you require assistance?" As it happens, we could truly use assistance, and not in any small amounts. A very large ship with the gear symbol of the Tech-Priests passes between us and the sun, giving us a measure of protection from the horrible, horrible fire. Victrus takes a moment to verify that our macrocannon batteries behave. They do. The Tech Cruiser takes us under tow. We are saved, at least until further notice.

Marneus transfers the call from the Tech-Priests to Opiter, who begins to converse with them in binary. The Captain of the cruiser expresses disbelief that something as old as Drakban can still fly. After Opiter explains the nature of our difficulties, their Captain tells us he'll be sending a repair party. Before Opiter can ask about flight arrangements, they teleport a half dozen Tech-Priests and about twice as may Skitari aboard. They ask to be taken to the ship's Cogitators, and begin messing with them, forcing Opiter to try to keep up in hopes of preventing any sabotage. The Tech-Priests restore about 60% of our realspace drive power, and express an interest in our antiquated but beautiful Jovian-Pattern drive systems.

The Lord Captain puts a warning in his Navigator's permanent record, notifying Navigator Simoom that immediate improvement will be required to save his career.

The Captain of the cruiser informs Marneus that repairs have been completed and casts off tow, teleporting their repair team home. Marneus, in turn, calls down to the engine room and informs them they will have half a day to effect additional repairs before we resume our journey. Jahazer comes to the bridge and protests at his reprimand, attempting to shift blame to the poor structure of the ship's hull. Jotham offers to pray with him, but the navigator prefers to meditate in silence. Jahazer stands revealed as a closet heretic.

On the second leg of our journey, on to Port Wander, Jahazer does a fine job, right up until it comes time to bring the ship out of warp. We leave the warp to find ourselves a mere three km away from another ship - which is in the middle of a firefight with pirates. All hands to battlestations! Four Hazeroth-class raiders swarm around a frigate. Seneschal Corvus recognizes the frigate as the Litvyak of House Yefremova.

Before Victrus can even get clearance from the bridge, the dorsal cannons have already engaged the pirates. Solo likes to editorialize. Under Victrus' control, the dorsal macrocannon batteries absolutely maul one of the raiders, blasting its dorsal decks apart in one titanic salvo. Despite Jotham's personal encouragement, the ventral batteries miss. Litvyak 's lances shatter the drives on another raider. One of the raiders lands a brutal hit on Drakban, cutting our hull integrity by over 60%. Xanatov attempts to bring the Drakban onto a course to improve our firing solution, but instead, we actually bump into our raider quarry, knocking both ships off course. Encouraged by Jotham, and with their firing solution improved by Jahazer's Navigator powers, our ventral batteries deliver some significant damage to yet another raider. Drakban 's shields and armor absorb their return fire. Litvyak takes laser damage just forward of her engines. Xanatov rolls Drakban to let the dorsal battery engage a different target and nearly annhilates her, setting her adrift and afire, damaging and depressurizing her engines, destroying her life support, her internal gravity, and depowering her communications. Victrus promises beer to all the gun crews when next they get liberty. Litvyak offers us the chance to take the last raider, and when we decline, she takes out the last one herself. That leaves three hulks to salvage (one of the raiders being utterly atomized), and there's a Machariel trade flotilla at Port Wander that might be available to help strip the wrecks. Seneschal Corvus negotiates for the rights to salvage two of the hulks. Jotham, Livienne, Bors, and Marneus all go aboard Litvyak to negotiate.

The Yefremovas welcome us with full honors. A few of us glimpsed Lidiah Yefremova on SR-651, but seeing her in the flesh, we're struck by her commanding demeanor. Her XO, Yuriy, is the size of some small vehicles, which quality becomes even more startling in the cramped quarters of a frigate. They take us to their staterooms, which have nice fittings, but a very minimalist style. Marneus would go a different way, one involving gubbins. She has not brought such a large party to the negotiations as Marneus has, choosing either not to involve her Seneschal and Purser, or not having such officers aboard. Jotham does that irritating religion thing, and then the dickering begins. Marneus suggests that Drakban did most of the work, but Lord Captain Yefremova uses her holotank to demonstrate that the raiding party started with six ships. They did a little lifting of their own. Livienne suggests that each ship be allowed to salvage her own kills, which still works out to two salvages per ship. Livienne notices that their small talk aims at figuring out who this Marneus cat is, and he comes off a little eccentric. She feeds us, and entertains us, and reads Marneus a bit despite Livienne's attempts to block her conversation. Livienne tries to fish a little bit in her conversation, but gets nothing of use.