Space Herpes or For the Love of Tiffany

A couple of days after bringing 'The Tusk' to Millwall Station and going immediately into 7500 credit debt as the ship is repaired, Max and I took another job. Oh yeah, and this scientist joined us, a Dr. Cole. He reminded me of my parents. He had the walk and speech pattern of someone from academia, but lacked their sense of superior judgement based on second hand knowledge and no real world experience to back it up. So I liked him. 

Dr. Scrot asked us to investigate a space station orbiting the planet Invictus. It sent out a distress signal, but the station's computers had no luck gathering information because of interference. What little they did discover was the name of the space station, the Precuneus. A scientific, experimentation station studying the effect of zero gravity on bio masses.  A Dr. Boshavic is in charge. 

Now that wouldn't be strange, except the Precuneus is supposed to be 75 light years away. 

Millwall Station loaned us a scout ship, Rosa, and off we went to investigate the displaced space station. On the way to our destination, Dr. Cole took the time to explain what his process was for selecting a teacher's assistant. The man had a plethora of attractive, female students to chose from. I admire his dedication. 

Upon reaching orbit along side the Precuneus, it was obvious it was in trouble. A strange shaped asteroid attached itself to the hull. None of us had any clue what it was. Dr. Cole surmised that is was an alien spaceship and because the aliens had the intelligence for space travel, that they were friendly, and should be regarded as such. So upon on meeting them we were to assume as much. See comment about about judgement based on second hand knowledge and no real world experience.

We entered the station and Dr. Cole managed to get one of the computers to give a run down of this operation. He found more details about the experiments. It included a variety of creatures, one that bothered him the most was the gorilla. He regaled us with stories of how when gorillas and monkeys attack they go for the face, fingers and to his ultimate horror, the genitals. I can't say I was too pleased to hear that little factoid. 

I messed around with the computer and managed to bring up the personal files. Seventy-five on staff. Dr. Cole took a liking to one of the scientists, Tiffany Fields, a comely scientist who likes working out, pina coladas and walks in the rain. 

From the lower decks we heard knocking.

Down we went. As we exited the lift we saw feet sticking out from beneath a desk. Max and I took the lead, Dr. Cole stayed behind in his day glow space suit. We found a Johnathan, his neck, leg and arm was broken. Dead. And nearby was this fleshy mass with several soft, leathery eggs on top (space herpes!) that had hatched. I always get nervous when I see a broken egg. Nothing good ever comes out of those things.  

Within the wall that bisected the room, was a door with a hand scanner. I picked up Johnathan and drug him over to the door to use his hand. Just as the door swished open, I heard cries from Max and Dr. Cole not to open the door. Whoops.

A thick scent of  azane or ammonia rolled out. It was accompanied by what I can only describe as a thick fog. A form appeared in the fog, another scientist, this one was walking, but his eyes were glazed with a pus white color. On his head were a stacked, pulsating group of eggs the size of grapes. He reached out for me and I shot him with my trusty laser pistol. Dropped him with one shot. It was then I considered maybe if we removed the eggs the scientist would return.

Max rushed over and said there were more in the room. I pushed the button to close the door and the dead man's feet were stuck in the open door. Open. Close. Open. Close. Then defaulted to open as another man stepped out of the rolling fog. Meet Bob. 

Max shot some of the eggs on his head. I tried to imitate this, but my aim was a bit off. Bob lunged at Max, eyes pus colored as the other, and fell forward on his face. I took the opportunity to clear more of the eggs off his head. My aim was off again. 

I killed Bob.

Small alien like creatures popped into the air, made a screeching sound and then hit the floor. I'm assuming they were dead. 

I was in mid-sentence apologizing to headless Bob when Tiffany Fields walked through the door. Somewhere Dr. Cole had gotten a fire ax, but his arms were visibly shaking from the effort of holding it. Tiffany went after Dr. Cole, eggs again, stacked on her head. 

Dr. Cole managed to get her back toward Max and I. I lassoed her with my rope. Yes, I carry a rope in space. This is my rope. There are many like it, but this one is mine. Max shaved a batch of eggs of her head with an expert shot. I wound the rope around her tighter and we managed to get all the eggs off and her eyes returned to normal. There was hope. I looked over at headless Bob and felt a little guilty.

Max turned on the ventilation system and the ammonia fog cleared and we entered the back half of the laboratory. We found where the asteroid connected with the station. It looked like a natural cavern. No sound. No light. We decided to enter.

End session. 

Credits

GM..................... +matt jackson 

Max............................ +Greg C 

Dr. Cole....... +Christian Walker 

Nikola.................................. Me

Bob......................................Bob

Tiffany................ Zienia Merton

Mythoard, You Wonderful Bastard

Take a moment to check out the picture above.  That's what I got in the last Mythoard.  Go ahead.  Touch the picture.  Make it bigger.  It won't hurt.  

So Mythoard, you wonderful bastard.   This month was fantastic, a round of applause for +Jarrod Shaw and his clan that work so hard getting these boxes out to all of us.  Bravo.

You know its going to be a fantastic hoard when there is shit on the outside of the box!  Yes there was. 

The first product I spied with my little eye was The Dungeon of the Demon Strata by +Chris Tregenza of +6d6.  What a cool book.  I will admit it will take me some time to get the gist of this way of playing.  I read through it a couple times, but would love to see it run in an actual game.  Despite that, the dungeon itself is an interesting concept and I love the layout of it.  There are a few elements, especially the easy, medium and hard tasks setup.

The small items inside were two, plastic silhouette miniatures.  A discount code for Big Damn Dryden, a big d12 hit location die!! (I love getting dice no matter what they are or if I have one, possible two...okay I have three of them now), and the final insert is Robot Uprising by +James Spahn who also had another product in this month's box.  

Did I just say James Spahn, the man takes pleasure in taunting me, but I do not let that color my opinion of him or his products.  Included was a softback copy of White Star, probably the hottest new(ish) game system in the past year or so.  I bought the PDF a while back and now I am playing in a Friday night game over at +Erik Tenkar's, so its good to have a copy to flip through.

Let me demonstrate the value of Mythoard with this example.  To get the softcover of White Star on RPGNow is $19.99 that does not include shipping.  And White Star is very much worth it.  But I got a copy in Mythoard that the subscription is only $25 a month.  So hell yeah it's worth every penny.

The First Sentinel by Edwin Nagy for the +Lesser Gnome crew headed by +Zach Glazar.  Lesser Gnome products are always fantastic quality.  The art, layout, editing and adventure quality is hard to match.  

Last but not least has been a constant in Mythoards, an old Judges Guild product raised from the crypt of yesteryear.  This time it was the Astrogators Chartbook.  My good friend +Rob Conley says its a very cool book.  I have no idea.  It's still in the plastic and I feel like I am violating an artifact if I break the seal.  But I'll do it damn it.  I swear I will. 

As you can see/read this Mythoard has a heavy sci-fi slant.  I really enjoyed this month a lot and looking forward to the next month of course, but for now I am going to look at my hoard again.

Same picture as above, but I do just like looking at it.  Go subscribe to Mythoard.  It will make you smarter and better looking...and a lot of you out there can use all the help you can get. 

I Shot First

I am not above whoring myself out for some extra xp and that's what I'm doing with this post.  +Erik Tenkar ran his StarSlinger setting using +James Spahn's White Star system last night.  It has been many months since the B-Team got together.  +Douglas Cole and +Peter V. Dell'Orto rounded off our group for the night.

We decided earlier in the week to roll character for the first session.  Erik has a few very cool classes in his StarSlinger setting including the Scoundrel.  He suggested I give it a try because one of the class abilities is:

First Strike - Once per day the Scoundrel can make a saving throw (adjusted by Charisma bonus if any) before entering combat. If successful, the Scoundrel has the drop on his / her opponents and has a free attack (also adjusted by and Charisma bonus) before initiative is rolled. If the roll is failed, initiative and combat proceeds as normal.

I'm notorious for my bad rolls across any system, d20, 3d6, 2d6, and I even suck at flipping coins.  Erik said with the Scoundrel class I could get in one free shot.

I liked the idea of a con man.  Peter played a grizzled old Star Knight named Velo and Doug played a mercenary named Payne.  My guy was named Chicago Jones.  

Short of the long of it, we contract with a bad guy named Kyn Vitman.  Our group couldn't buy a box of Girl Scout cookies and I think Kyn knew it.  He wanted us to find a ship that crashed about a half's day ride away from his bar and recover Avionic Bovine DNA.  1000 units or credits, I can't remember which, for the job minus expenses.  We had no room to negotiate.  So we agreed.

Payne and Chicago traveled light, laser pistols, a little armor and a dagger.  Old Velo brought everything, he had a tent, flashlight, sleeping bag, a Ronco Record Cleaner and a med kit.  We took hover bikes to the site.  While we scouted around the ship I nearly did a header off my bike because something flashed in my eyes.  Someone was there, but we needed to get that DNA sample.  Were were already in the hole because the cost of the bikes was coming out of our pocket.

In we went. We explored the weirdly constructed ship.  One of the weird things was we didn't find any crew, dead or alive.  However, not too far into the ship we encountered a three men I imagine were the ones on the cliff.  Payne and Chicago cover the hallway they came through.  Velo was in the other room searching.  I was able to hit the first one who attempted to run through and Payne shot a big old hole through the second one.  The third one ran away screaming like a little girl.   

Velo soon after got munched on by a smart cockroach.  Velo fell down and twitched, but he lived.  After we disposed of the bugs we used the well prepared Velo's medic kit on him and wa-la, he rose from the almost dead. 

We were able to get a computer up and running.  Discovered where the sample was and fast tracked it over there.  When we got there, 250 some DNA samples were waiting for us.  We found the one Kyn wanted and used Velo's sleeping bag as a huge sack. 

When we left the ship there were three men waiting for us.  A little guy who did the talking and two meatheads.  I used my Scoundrel skill of attacking before anyone else.  Chicago allowed the little talking man to finish his ultimatum before shooting him in the heart.  While the little gurgling man lay on the ground, the two meatheads raised their hands and walked off.

We scored 650 credits off the little man.  And a piece of paper I recognized as a black market number.  I used my contact Leroy to trace the number, apparently someone offered 2500 credits to get the DNA sample from us.  I figure we could sell a bogus sample (since we scored all of them) and then sell the real one to Kyn.  

So the drop off was a bathroom.  I sat in one stall, another guy came into the other stall and slit a 2500 cred card under and I gave him the bogus sample.  We weren't quick enough to see who it was.

So we travel back to Kyn's place.  He looks surprised.  I knew then who my stall companion had been.  After a short discussion we sell him the sample he wanted and included all of the ones we took.  I tried to wheel and deal for more, but didn't get too far.  However we did score 3500 credits from him and did not have to pay for the bike rental.  

Payne and I leveled to second, Velo came up short.  Now I get 10% more xp.

Had a blast.  Glad to be playing with the B-Team again.