LogYuriRT1-2010/09/03-Jason-1

Game log for the 2010/09/03 session of Rogue Trader: After the Gold Rush, as taken by Jason

Realizing that we are, for all intents and purposes, nowhere, we make repairs while sending out scouts. The system has 6 solid planets, of which the first four are too close to the star, and the other two are tolerable but devoid of life. The system features six more gas giants, which seem to be unravelling. Augury array scans suggest a possible space station around a moon of the sixth planet, but the local gravitational tides daunted the red shirted crew too much for them to refine the result.

The techs inform Opiter that they can make the Gellar field work for maybe a day by cannabilizing other ship's systems. Anastasia fails to determine the ship's exact location. Perhaps we can scrounge circuit boards from the system beacon.

Captain Macharial summons Jotham and Bors to escort him to the engine room. He warns us to expect trouble, so we appear in armor, regalia, and full weapons loads.

Opiter and Anastasia assign the navigation work to their minions, who do better. A couple systems over, barely in range, there's a system with a freelance scrapyard. Opiter orders the one who found the world promoted and stomps off. Anastasia then complains that it took them too long to find the solution.

Arriving in the engine room, the Lord Captain blames Opiter for breaking the engine. "Just kidding!" Solo Drakban just needs a few parts, is all. Or else it might become a sublight ship. The yards at SR-651 are our best bet. It's a system with tricky conditions, so it was full of wrecks already. The breakers just harvest the local natural resources.

The Lord Captain orders us to set a course for the edge of the system that will take us past the sixth planet, allowing us to get a good augury of the possible space station. Navigator Xanatov has a little trouble with the gravity gradients, but we get there, and we decide to board the station. The planet is larger than Earth and mostly water.

Flying toward the station, we pick up debris - not large debris, just space garbage. The station looks like a Mk III Wayfarer station, able to support eight to ten thousand people, and the debris suggests it was in heavy use at one point. Our augury arrays pick some sort of noise coming from the station. It sounds like someone beating on the inside of a pressure door. Disturbing, but we cannot afford to let that deter us. We prepare two boarding teams, with an Engine Seer on each team, and a third team collecting debris from the area.

Meanwhile, at Macharial Base, one Lucius Holt takes his Astropath confirmation exams, needed to allow him to seek employment as such. Unfortunately, no ship requires his services at present. Jahazer Simoom, by contrast, was sent here by the family. With a couple cruises with Macharial ships behind him, he looks forward to his next voyage. Livienne Corvus' player has secret conversations with the GM.

Back in Cinefus Maleficum, we board the station. Without station power, the doors won't open. We use the ship's boarding ring to attempt to force our way in, and through the use of a Fate point, the boarding collar makes an excellent connection. The cut portion of the ship's hatch blows in, showing that the station lacks power and pressure. We also hear a faint noise, like water rumbling through old pipes, and possibly a vague whipering noise. Jotham touches his head to the bulkhead and the whispering becomes an odd, Low Gothic version of the Voidfarer's prayer. We move forward to investigate, attempting to meet Team B somewhere in the middle.

We do, in fact, meet them in the old command center. We have some random items of perceived value to the Machine Spirit, but Team B has discovered something that looks like a large, speakerless Voxcaster, which turns out to be the source of the prayer. They also have a large armored box, full of dataslates. Half the team, along with Bors, return to the Drakban with loot. Opiter and Jotham stay on the station, Opiter searching while Jotham observes the voxcaster. Opiter realizes that the station must be pushing 6,000 years old.

The debris team have found random stuff, old containers with unreadable writing, garbage, nothing of obvious value.

With all the good stuff we found, we can get 4-5 days of Gellar Field operation, but still not enough to get us to a known safe destination. The big win from these station parts is that we can avoid scavenging parts from Drakban, so we won't have to face down anarchy with broken subsystems. Victrus tests the ship's weapons on the debris field, with adequate results. To the warp!

Twenty-eight hours later, we emerge from warp at the edge of SR-651, and hailed automatically. The automatic hail gives use the course we need for the inner system, which Anastasia faithfully follows. The debris in the system creates a short debris storm that nobody enjoys, but we get through it. The yard consists of a collection of asteroids, chained together, with habs sprinkled around. Ah, the life of the Void-born. Captain Macharial deals with the locals and explains our needs, and they invite us to a docking point. We end up inside an asteroid, full of other Rogue Trader ships, some of whom have a reputation for piracy. This could be an issue, since Bors and Victrus really, really hate pirates. Ol' Drakban chooses this moment to go rogue, one of the dorsal turrets tracking a nearby ship without command, and that makes us very popular with the neighbors. Jotham goes to bless the rogue turret's command console.

The station's Voidmaster knows the elder Macharial of old, and treats our Captain with courtesy. The station will help us with parts, and we are welcome to give our crew liberty, so long as they respect the neutrality of the station and don't cause trouble. And look! They have an Astropathic Choir! Marneus phone home.

Phoning home means a trip to a different hab on a different rock, which gives us a chance to sightsee. Anastasia sees a Tyrant-class battleship hull out there, stripped to the girders, crawling with workers. Flying through all the traffic requires concentration, but Anastasia manages, and then the Lord Captain gets his message off.

On Macharial Base, Lucius gets a call. No, it's The Call - he has a ship! Seneschal Livienne Corvus and navigator Jahazer Simoom also receive summonses to wait upon the pleasure of Lord Property "Npcref" (as page type) with input value "YuriRT1/Talfore</br>Macharial" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.Talfore Macharial. They have two hours to collect their personal effects before their transport leaves for the Expanse, to meet up with Drakban at SR-651. As they depart, The Macharial stops Livienne, and hands her a dataslate containing "the information that [she] need[s]." Jahazer reviews his memory and assures himself that he knows the area.

On SR-651, Marneus finds a lounge where he can sit quietly and await an Astropathic response. Marneus and Anastasia don't notice, but Jotham overhears a conversation between a Rogue Trader typed and a plain looking older man, dressed in plain clothes. The man in the plain clothes flashes the badge of the Inquisition. Yow. A young woman and a muscle-grafted man at a nearby table are watching Marneus. Anastasia recognizes that one of the people in the lounge wears the uniform of Aspyce Chorda.

With permission from her Captain, Anastasia goes to make social with an acquaintance (Kort, a rakish fellow with an undeservedly high opinion of himself), and finds that he feels a vague contempt for the Machariel, tinged with awareness that the clan does have a history deserving respect, if not a future. Word of Marneus' history has gotten around. Eventually Marneus gets messages from both the Choir and the Harbormaster. The Harbormaster wants to discuss ship's repairs, while the Choir informs him that Old Man Macharial requires us to hold fast, keep his mouth shut, and await help. We leave the lounge and the habitat to return to the dock rock, from whence we visit the Harbormaster.

SR-651 can meet our needs, but not from available spare parts. They'll need to do some demand-based salvage of other hulls in system, which will require time. The expense will be ... considerable, even astronomical. Marneus displays mad haggling instincts and pays so little that the poor Harbormaster will eat nothing but protein paste for a week. The parts begin coming in, but repairs will take seven to eight days, minimum. Opiter keeps all dock personnel from getting a close look at the ship, since some of Drakban's components might be of interest to scavengers.

After several days, Marneus gets another message from the Choir. A Machariel ship has just popped out of warp, and they're bringing us something important. He gathers Jotham and Opiter to write a detailed report of our experience on the old space station. Opiter, BTW, cannot figure out what is powering the voxcaster, but he assures Jotham that it's a Mezoa-pattern Orthoproxy, although it's not.

To nobody's surprise, the newly arrived Macharial ship turns out to carry three PCs. They have taken advantage of the time to get to know one another a bit. Jahazer cannot be counted on to keep a conversation going, while Lucius tends to be guarded. They come aboard the Drakban and Jotham tells everyone that Jahazer is his cousin and totally cool, and not in that fake Dane Cook way. Livienne also has orders from The Old Man, who wants Marneus to get the ship fixed up ASAP and then bring it back to Machariel Base.

Marneus has a formal dinner for the new arrivals, and during the conversation, Jahazer relates the long, sad story of the Voidspear. We have a brief standown on ship to let the crew blow off steam, which helps the crew a bit, but those who do leave the ship (like Livienne) find that Marneus' bad reputation has rubbed off on the rest of us. Opiter suggests that perhaps we could invest in some higher quality rations as well, which idea Marneus asks his new Seneschal to implement. She succeeds and the quality of onboard food improves. While buying the rations, the purser lets Livienne know that people seem to be paying attention to them, specifically, and they may also have people following them. They decide to lead whoever's following them on a merry tour of the station, especially the areas with mirrors and reflective surfaces. Yep, it's a woman (small, wiry, short black hair, carries herself like noble born) and a graftee (military haircut, carrying a bolter, military bearing). Surprise, surprise, surprise. They aren't blatantly tailing them, but they come and go... and of course your humble observer recognizes those descriptions. Livienne arranges to be met at the ship's docking port, ducks inside, and then comes out again in hopes of following them. Sadly Jennie failed to provide her character with a Shadowing skill, and she loses them. Asking around on station, Livienne gets the Harbormaster to divulge that the girl is a Rogue Trader, and the hulking following her XO, from House Yefremova. To be precise, she carries the House Yefremova Warrant. She commands a frigate, slightly larger than Drakban.

Jahazer settles in and finds that his two mates have some competency, but no great supply of it, and one clearly shines brighter than the other. Lucius finds that the old Chief Astropath kept lousy logs, and in fact he may have been getting a little too Warp-touched. The logs barely mention the Choir, but since they all died, it hardly matters now.

When he finally feels like he's ready, Jahazer plots a course for Macharial Base, and fails to sense the Astronomicon clearly. Ruh-roh! He nonetheless manages to plot a workable course... which leads us into the tail of a warp storm. When we transit out of warp at Macharial Base, an outer gas giant looms awfully large in the viewports. Anastasia contrives to skip the ship off of the gravity well, avoiding any major mishap, though the crew do get shaken up a bit. Our trip lasted only five days and we had no Gellar Field failures, so it's all good. Macharial traffic control brings us in to dock.