LogOnyx Reach-Jason-4

Game log for the 2026/08/09 session of Starforged - The Onyx Reach, as taken by Jason

We're still at the station in New Hades. Rook cleans out his armor, because it's quite the biohazard as it currently lies.

Leehau comes to in the medbay. He's got a nerve block in, so his pain level is fine. He immediately asks about options for prosthetic. There's no rigger on the station, so he's going to get crutches. So be it. Dex fits him with a rod he can use just to limp around the ship.

Dex swore an oath to the Crimson Seers to bring Big Jim Slade in for interrogation, so we generally figure we should get on that. Cygnus Deep is only a handful of systems, so it's possible we can go there and start finding leads.

Amanda Parthos and Bart Parthos stop by to discuss what happened. After comparing their understandings of what happened, they ask Baxton to keep an eye out for an exosuit.

JP acquires a sprite, which he names PJ. It's a manufactured construct, designed to be a field research assistant.

The hop into Cygnus Deep takes us to Quartos. It's a desert world, with a marginal atmosphere. One could breathe the air for a couple hours, maybe, but it wouldn't be a good idea. One needs breathing gear to survive on the surface. It has rugged mountains and massive canyons, with time-worn cliffside caves. It's overrun with life, most of it subsurface. Think Tremor. There are fungal colonies that extend for miles, and a whole ecosystem supported by those fungi. There's a station there, with a population of thousands. The station is called the Sietch, and it's oddly pretty for what it is. It has a lot of glass internally, with amazing views of the planet. This the administrative center for the Cygnus Deep region, and also supports research expeditions to the planet below.

Our initial reception from the station is a little abrupt, arguably even rude. Johannes tells them we're looking for advanced medical care for an injured crew member. They allow us to dock but inform us that we'll have to submit to inspection. Once we're docked, four armed men board the ship. They want to inspect the entire ship, but they first grill Geneva about her license. Leehau and Geneva are the only two members of the crew who know she's lying. The inspectors accept her credentials but they insist on holding on to them, and will not allow her to practice on the station. They acknowledge her credentials but will not accept them. Johannes asks why the inspection is so vigorous, and the locals tell him that they require everyone to declare any guild affiliations. When they see all the weapons the crew carry, they ask if we're bounty hunters (no), mercenaries (no), or part of a house military (no longer). They have no problem with Rook and JP's weapons, but of course they will not allow them on station.

As soon as we're on the docks, the issue becomes clear - this place has labor unions like Baxton's leg had flesh-eating bacteria.

JP begins the hunt for Big Jim Slade by asking around to see if anyone has seen him. When Dex makes discreet inquiries later, he finds that word is out. Everyone knows someone is looking for BJS. Johannes starts looking for a cargo job that will take us further into the Deep, so we can look for BJS there.

Geneva and Leehau barter for a rigger to work up a new leg. The work will take a while. Scans, fittings, etc for a day, then 10-20 days to fabricate. They need their patient for the first five days and the last five days. The first five days begin now.

Rook goes looking for Crimson Seers. They have no official presence here, but there's a guy in the station observatory who's a member of that order, named Titus Fabulo. He visits the observatory, which is on a sort of spindle to separate it from the station, and which has fantastic views. It sports a huge array of antennae, which have clearly been designed by someone with an eye to esthetics. He takes a moving walkway up the spindle. They won't let him into the facility, but when he asks for Titus, they send someone to get him.

Titus is small and weedy and looks nothing like Big Jim Slade. Rook tells him about the ancient solar array and asks what the best way to map the coordinates would be. Fabulo immediately asks where it was, and Rook has the presence of mind to lie about it. Titus tells him about the general way the seers would do it, and mentions a price of ten percent of the value of the find. It would require more contact with the Seers, which Titus would handle.

JP considers ways they could locate Big Jim, and figures that with their very serious border control procedures, Station Control would probably have a record of him passing through, if he ever did. He uses PJ the sprite to infitrate their ventilation system and map the entire service access infrastructure on the level. From the dock, they could access the maintenance tunnels, and if they get in unseen, there's a route they could take to get right to the server room for Station Control. He and Dex start sneaking in, but Bernie can't go with.

The dock is of course fairly busy. THey wait for an opportune moment, and find it when someone starts campaigning for the upcoming election. They sneak through a small access panel. They encounter a large fan, and start working on disabling it and its alarm to access the server room. They suceed, and they're in. Dex quickly grabs the station customs records, but JP has trouble finding anything useful in them. So many people come through, they don't know when Big Jim would have come through, and they don't know what name their quarry used. They decide to try yanking the backup core out of the system. As soon as they flick the power switch to disconnect the backup core, they hear a terrible grinding noise. Dex pivots to stealing the active core, but there's no way to avoid having that noticed. Time to hurry. They retreat through the tunnels, stopping only to remove the alarm bypass on the fan. When they return to the access door back into the main part of the station, they find the election speaker has stopped. They need a distraction. PJ suggests setting off the fire suppression system. Sadly, PJs efforts are all for nought. They contact Rook and ask him to help make a distraction. He triggers emergency venting on the ship's systems, which creates a lot of commotion. They exit the tunnel, but they don't have radiation suits, which exposes them to the mess Rook just made. They take a few rads as they make their way into the evacuation zone.

While Johannes is out looking for work, he hears an announcement on the PA asking him to report to Docking Control. As he does, he sees Dex and JP in the evac area. Johannes gets shown into an interrogation cell, though he does get coffee. A Station Control officer comes in and straight up tells him that his vessel's Eidolon drive has vented contaminants throughout dockside, and there will be enormous penalties for this mess. He tries referencing the possibility of damage from fighting pirates on New Hades, and that reminds them that the Terminus Clipper is a ship of heroes (and Baxton). He ponies up a little cash and that generates enough goodwill that they're willing to let the thing go.