Star Wars (7ABY; M03, D06-D07): Creepy Creatures
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Ganen, Kadia, Roger, Garth, Morrigan, and (Sekar) / [CP: 3.0]
Robert was at a convention; Ruth had to work until closing.
Catching Up with Morrigan
After talking to Arjon back on Tatooine, Morrigan was still curious about the freighter in Docking Bay 94 and was compelled to try to find out more about it and its pilot. An autograph managed to get a customs agent talking enough to learn that it was registered as the ‘Guilty Hand’ and belonged to one Rallo Turrant.
Morrigan remained unseen during the flight from Tatooine to Tshindral; spending most of her time continuing to familiarize herself with the operation and technical specifications of the SkyBlind. Just before the other PC’s disembarked onto Starlyte Station, she’d accidentally locked herself in a maintenance crawlway.
Month 3; Day 6 (Continued)
With the ship have been broken into once already, Mon and Sekar stayed behind to keep an eye on it as the others left to venture into the core of the station. Sekar also managed to locate X7; switched off and prone in the port cargo hold with a sizeable dent in his head but otherwise undamaged.
With so many areas sealed off, without power, and/or exposed to space; the core of Starlyte Station was labyrinthine to say the least. Roger took the lead and did his best to make his way towards where he’d picked up the homing signal from. Though some parts of the station were still somewhat well-traveled and operational, they eventually went off the beaten path and into the abandoned portions of the station; over the advice of a drunk who warned them that there were ‘bad things there’. The deeper in they got, the more run-down everything was.
The drunk’s warning began to gain some merit when the PC’s came across a charred human skeleton lying face down on the floor in a small maintenance area. It had no hands; its hand bones having been fused to the conductive portions of an open power relay. Written on the wall nearby (in what appeared to be very faded blood) were the words “ONLY DARK”.
Shortly after Roger finally got a fix on the homing signal with his hand scanner, the PC’s came across another grizzly scene: three dead Rodians who appeared to have been killed by something exploding in the middle of them; sending them all flying in different directions. Most of the device had been reduced to shrapnel, though the PC’s did find the remains of what appeared to be two astromech legs on opposite sides of the room. The PC’s conjectured that it was probably another device created by the explosives engineer that they were looking for; apparently made from the shell of a droid.
While passing through an abandoned machine shop and getting very close to the source of the signal, the PC’s were set upon by a pack of, as best as they could tell, degenerated humans. Each had abnormally pasty white skin, black on black eyes, clawed fingers, and the behavioral characteristics of a wild animal. A couple of them sported additional abnormalities; one had elongated limb bones and the other had a somewhat misshapen head. Most alarming of all, however, was that they could stick to walls and ceilings like spiders!
The PC’s managed to kill a few and repel the rest with only Garth sustaining any serious injury. One of the creatures tightly grappled onto Roger; and while Ganen tried to pry him off, the injured bounty hunter tried to shoot him off and accidentally grazed Ganen’s helmet; messing up the right side of his visual display.
Roger finally managed to track the signal to a heavy maintenance hatch. The source of the signal was just on the other side, along with a single life-form reading. After one of the PC’s banged on the hatch, a series of signal code taps came back in reply; spelling out “Why are the Hutts the most mighty?” The PC’s tried tapping back “GUN” (which was what they’d been told to identify themselves as), but the return reply was “Gun compromised. Why are the Hutts the most mighty?”
After a minute or two of discussion, Ganen got impatient and began to tap “We’ve killed eight Rodians and we don’t have time for this shit”, but only got as far as ‘have’ before he heard the hatch locks unlocking. The hatch swung open; and a thin, pale, awkward-looking man poked his head out. “Why didn’t you just come down the maintenance tube?”, he asked in a prim accent; jerking a thumb behind him. “Did you not know that there are dangerous creatures in this part of the station?”
Whether or not the PC’s had his money was surprisingly only the third question which he asked after that; the first two being whether or not Nagath was ok and whether or not any of the Rodian gunmen were still running around. After an affirmative to the first and an ‘unknown’ to the second, the engineer led the PC’s up the aforementioned maintenance crawlway to the more inhabited portion of the station. The PC’s then surrounded him as they cautiously made their way back to the ship.
“We’re missing a Chiss!”, Ganen announced after a quick head count. After a short search, the PC’s were able to locate and free Morrigan; who blurted out a thank you and then bolted for the lavatory.
“Well, I image that Nagath enlisted you to pay me; not to rescue me”, the engineer said after receiving his case, “so perhaps some additional payment is due. I’ll be happy to give you an additional 2000, but I’ll need to get to Sullust to get the code key to open this case. Won’t take long; it’s only a single jump from here, and it’s actually on your way if you’re heading back to the Arkanis Sector next.” The PC’s agreed, departed the station, and jumped for Sullust.
As the PC’s settled down in the galley to relax for a bit; Ganen, without even thinking about it, took off his helmet to fix his visual display. He actually looked quite young and, much to Kadia’s disappointed, had no scars or boils or other deformities as she had been assuming up to that point.
After only an hour and a half in hyperspace, the ship reached Sullust and landed in a hangar bay in the city of Serres Sarrano. Everyone was pretty exhausted by this point, so they decided to spend the night aboard the ship while it got refueled and then head out in the morning.
Month 3; Day 7
The next morning, the engineer said that he’d allow the PC’s to accompany him to his local workshop; but insisted that Ganen, Roger, and Kadia would attract too much attention unless they changed out of their armor and/or left their larger weapons behind.
Ganen stayed behind to watch the ship, Roger went out on his own to shop for comlinks and medpacs, Garth & Morrigan accompanied the engineer, and Kadia & Sekar shadowed them from a distance.
The engineer took the PC’s to a tourist attraction called LavaRide; where participants were sealed into heat-resistant hamster balls and then dropped into active magma floes. His workshop was hidden among the many ‘tracks’, and he had a mechanism set up which could lock onto a particular ball’s transponder and then push it out of the lava and through a side hatch as it passed.
As he hooked the money case up to a computer to run his code key and get the lock open, the engineer took a moment to catch up on local goings on. He then informed the PC’s that Piringiisi (a popular mud bath / hot spring spa which Morrigan had visited in the past) had been closed down for the last two days because two people had disappeared and one had been injured. It was believed that the mud baths had been invaded by some kind of hostile fauna and they were offering a reward of 3000 credits to anyone willing and able to locate and eradicate it.
After paying them the agreed-upon two grand, the engineer sealed Garth and Morrigan back up in the ball and sent it the rest of the way down the river of lava. When they got back to the main lobby, they found Kadia and Sekar waiting for them and watching the safety video.
The PC’s agreed to at least find out more about the Piringiisi situation and headed there after everyone rendezvoused back at the SkyBlind. The spa was closed, but a knock at the main entrance was answered by a very nervous young man who’d apparently been stuck with the job of staying in the dangerous place in case someone came by.
The first guest (a human female) had apparently vanished in the evening five days earlier, though at the time it was chalked up to her having left without notifying anyone. The second, a Sullustan male, had gone missing the next morning; and the staff had begun to worry. The spa had finally been closed the evening after that when a Squib with a nasty laceration on his leg had come out of one of the mud baths screaming bloody murder that something had grabbed him.
The spa had now been closed for over two days, and neither the management nor the local authorities were certain of how to proceed. An attempt had been made to drain all of the springs and baths, but this had only resulted in the disappearance of two droids. A reward of 3000 credits plus lifetime passes to the spa were being offered to anyone who could help (the latter part of the offer seemed more appealing than the money to Kadia, Morrigan, and also Garth). The PC’s were also advised that most of the springs and baths were connected by underground vents, so whatever they were after wasn’t confined to a single area.
Despite having little to go on, Garth speculated early on that they might be dealing with a dianoga. If that was the case, however, it would almost certainly mean that someone had deliberately put the thing into the spa. After some discussion, they came up with a plan.
Garth spoke to the spa employee about requisitioning a strong winch and cable while Morrigan and Ganen scrounged up some scrap metal and other materials. Returning to the ship, the fashioned a harness and a number of sharp hooks which they then spot welded to Ganen’s armor.
Meanwhile; Roger, Kadia, and Sekar made a preliminary sweep of the complex. In a remote corner, they came an area which had been closed off years earlier because the spring had dried up. It still had its underground connections to the other pool, however; but more importantly, someone had drilled a tunnel to it from some out-of-the-way area outside of the spa complex. Said tunnel was neat and straight; indicating that whoever had made it was experienced in doing so (though on a planet where everything is underground, that doesn’t narrow it down to a functionally small number).
Furthermore, the question regarding what sort of thing they were dealing with was answered as the PC’s made their way back towards the main entrance. Peering at them from across one of the larger mud baths was a large eye on a slimy stalk extended above the surface.
Ganen, Kadia, Roger, Garth, Morrigan, and (Sekar) / [CP: 3.0]
Robert was at a convention; Ruth had to work until closing.
Catching Up with Morrigan
After talking to Arjon back on Tatooine, Morrigan was still curious about the freighter in Docking Bay 94 and was compelled to try to find out more about it and its pilot. An autograph managed to get a customs agent talking enough to learn that it was registered as the ‘Guilty Hand’ and belonged to one Rallo Turrant.
Morrigan remained unseen during the flight from Tatooine to Tshindral; spending most of her time continuing to familiarize herself with the operation and technical specifications of the SkyBlind. Just before the other PC’s disembarked onto Starlyte Station, she’d accidentally locked herself in a maintenance crawlway.
Month 3; Day 6 (Continued)
With the ship have been broken into once already, Mon and Sekar stayed behind to keep an eye on it as the others left to venture into the core of the station. Sekar also managed to locate X7; switched off and prone in the port cargo hold with a sizeable dent in his head but otherwise undamaged.
With so many areas sealed off, without power, and/or exposed to space; the core of Starlyte Station was labyrinthine to say the least. Roger took the lead and did his best to make his way towards where he’d picked up the homing signal from. Though some parts of the station were still somewhat well-traveled and operational, they eventually went off the beaten path and into the abandoned portions of the station; over the advice of a drunk who warned them that there were ‘bad things there’. The deeper in they got, the more run-down everything was.
The drunk’s warning began to gain some merit when the PC’s came across a charred human skeleton lying face down on the floor in a small maintenance area. It had no hands; its hand bones having been fused to the conductive portions of an open power relay. Written on the wall nearby (in what appeared to be very faded blood) were the words “ONLY DARK”.
Shortly after Roger finally got a fix on the homing signal with his hand scanner, the PC’s came across another grizzly scene: three dead Rodians who appeared to have been killed by something exploding in the middle of them; sending them all flying in different directions. Most of the device had been reduced to shrapnel, though the PC’s did find the remains of what appeared to be two astromech legs on opposite sides of the room. The PC’s conjectured that it was probably another device created by the explosives engineer that they were looking for; apparently made from the shell of a droid.
While passing through an abandoned machine shop and getting very close to the source of the signal, the PC’s were set upon by a pack of, as best as they could tell, degenerated humans. Each had abnormally pasty white skin, black on black eyes, clawed fingers, and the behavioral characteristics of a wild animal. A couple of them sported additional abnormalities; one had elongated limb bones and the other had a somewhat misshapen head. Most alarming of all, however, was that they could stick to walls and ceilings like spiders!
The PC’s managed to kill a few and repel the rest with only Garth sustaining any serious injury. One of the creatures tightly grappled onto Roger; and while Ganen tried to pry him off, the injured bounty hunter tried to shoot him off and accidentally grazed Ganen’s helmet; messing up the right side of his visual display.
Roger finally managed to track the signal to a heavy maintenance hatch. The source of the signal was just on the other side, along with a single life-form reading. After one of the PC’s banged on the hatch, a series of signal code taps came back in reply; spelling out “Why are the Hutts the most mighty?” The PC’s tried tapping back “GUN” (which was what they’d been told to identify themselves as), but the return reply was “Gun compromised. Why are the Hutts the most mighty?”
After a minute or two of discussion, Ganen got impatient and began to tap “We’ve killed eight Rodians and we don’t have time for this shit”, but only got as far as ‘have’ before he heard the hatch locks unlocking. The hatch swung open; and a thin, pale, awkward-looking man poked his head out. “Why didn’t you just come down the maintenance tube?”, he asked in a prim accent; jerking a thumb behind him. “Did you not know that there are dangerous creatures in this part of the station?”
Whether or not the PC’s had his money was surprisingly only the third question which he asked after that; the first two being whether or not Nagath was ok and whether or not any of the Rodian gunmen were still running around. After an affirmative to the first and an ‘unknown’ to the second, the engineer led the PC’s up the aforementioned maintenance crawlway to the more inhabited portion of the station. The PC’s then surrounded him as they cautiously made their way back to the ship.
“We’re missing a Chiss!”, Ganen announced after a quick head count. After a short search, the PC’s were able to locate and free Morrigan; who blurted out a thank you and then bolted for the lavatory.
“Well, I image that Nagath enlisted you to pay me; not to rescue me”, the engineer said after receiving his case, “so perhaps some additional payment is due. I’ll be happy to give you an additional 2000, but I’ll need to get to Sullust to get the code key to open this case. Won’t take long; it’s only a single jump from here, and it’s actually on your way if you’re heading back to the Arkanis Sector next.” The PC’s agreed, departed the station, and jumped for Sullust.
As the PC’s settled down in the galley to relax for a bit; Ganen, without even thinking about it, took off his helmet to fix his visual display. He actually looked quite young and, much to Kadia’s disappointed, had no scars or boils or other deformities as she had been assuming up to that point.
After only an hour and a half in hyperspace, the ship reached Sullust and landed in a hangar bay in the city of Serres Sarrano. Everyone was pretty exhausted by this point, so they decided to spend the night aboard the ship while it got refueled and then head out in the morning.
Month 3; Day 7
The next morning, the engineer said that he’d allow the PC’s to accompany him to his local workshop; but insisted that Ganen, Roger, and Kadia would attract too much attention unless they changed out of their armor and/or left their larger weapons behind.
Ganen stayed behind to watch the ship, Roger went out on his own to shop for comlinks and medpacs, Garth & Morrigan accompanied the engineer, and Kadia & Sekar shadowed them from a distance.
The engineer took the PC’s to a tourist attraction called LavaRide; where participants were sealed into heat-resistant hamster balls and then dropped into active magma floes. His workshop was hidden among the many ‘tracks’, and he had a mechanism set up which could lock onto a particular ball’s transponder and then push it out of the lava and through a side hatch as it passed.
As he hooked the money case up to a computer to run his code key and get the lock open, the engineer took a moment to catch up on local goings on. He then informed the PC’s that Piringiisi (a popular mud bath / hot spring spa which Morrigan had visited in the past) had been closed down for the last two days because two people had disappeared and one had been injured. It was believed that the mud baths had been invaded by some kind of hostile fauna and they were offering a reward of 3000 credits to anyone willing and able to locate and eradicate it.
After paying them the agreed-upon two grand, the engineer sealed Garth and Morrigan back up in the ball and sent it the rest of the way down the river of lava. When they got back to the main lobby, they found Kadia and Sekar waiting for them and watching the safety video.
The PC’s agreed to at least find out more about the Piringiisi situation and headed there after everyone rendezvoused back at the SkyBlind. The spa was closed, but a knock at the main entrance was answered by a very nervous young man who’d apparently been stuck with the job of staying in the dangerous place in case someone came by.
The first guest (a human female) had apparently vanished in the evening five days earlier, though at the time it was chalked up to her having left without notifying anyone. The second, a Sullustan male, had gone missing the next morning; and the staff had begun to worry. The spa had finally been closed the evening after that when a Squib with a nasty laceration on his leg had come out of one of the mud baths screaming bloody murder that something had grabbed him.
The spa had now been closed for over two days, and neither the management nor the local authorities were certain of how to proceed. An attempt had been made to drain all of the springs and baths, but this had only resulted in the disappearance of two droids. A reward of 3000 credits plus lifetime passes to the spa were being offered to anyone who could help (the latter part of the offer seemed more appealing than the money to Kadia, Morrigan, and also Garth). The PC’s were also advised that most of the springs and baths were connected by underground vents, so whatever they were after wasn’t confined to a single area.
Despite having little to go on, Garth speculated early on that they might be dealing with a dianoga. If that was the case, however, it would almost certainly mean that someone had deliberately put the thing into the spa. After some discussion, they came up with a plan.
Garth spoke to the spa employee about requisitioning a strong winch and cable while Morrigan and Ganen scrounged up some scrap metal and other materials. Returning to the ship, the fashioned a harness and a number of sharp hooks which they then spot welded to Ganen’s armor.
Meanwhile; Roger, Kadia, and Sekar made a preliminary sweep of the complex. In a remote corner, they came an area which had been closed off years earlier because the spring had dried up. It still had its underground connections to the other pool, however; but more importantly, someone had drilled a tunnel to it from some out-of-the-way area outside of the spa complex. Said tunnel was neat and straight; indicating that whoever had made it was experienced in doing so (though on a planet where everything is underground, that doesn’t narrow it down to a functionally small number).
Furthermore, the question regarding what sort of thing they were dealing with was answered as the PC’s made their way back towards the main entrance. Peering at them from across one of the larger mud baths was a large eye on a slimy stalk extended above the surface.