SessionWed10

July 1, Saturday The crew having lingering suspicions about Andrew Peters has the ship’s sensors stay focused on him while aboard. Externally only the passive sensors are being used as a precaution in case those who have kidnapped Ridge’s family would construe active sensors as a reason to begin executing them.

In the asteroid belt on the other side of the moon, on the main screen of the Perseverance a woman smirks at Ridge, “If you follow our instructions none of your family or you will be harmed.” She sends Perseverance a video feed with no audio of Gavin (one of Ridge’s relatives) tied to a chair. He is conscious but does not seem to be aware of the surveillance.

Ridge asks for proof that they currently have them and that they are okay. The video feed could easily be faked. The woman tells us that we’ll see them soon enough and to follow her. Her ship is extremely maneuverable ship due to many extra drive modules attached. Ridge follows it weaving around asteroids to a salvage yard or a dozen wrecked ships of various sizes including one dreadnaught class. Ridge takes a quick survey and decides that very little of value remains except some metal.

In the salvage yard is a strike cruiser that has been heavily modified. It is heavily armored and armed with dreadnaught cannons which almost seem too large for the ship. The woman reappears on Perseverance’s main screen and tells the Ridge to dock with the Filthy Mongrel, gesturing to this other ship.

As Ridge docks with the Filthy Mongrel, Laiden finishes weaving some mystic threads and does the calculations to teleport the ship and everyone aboard away if needed. Moss and Nix decide that they’ll stay on Perseverance hidden, while the rest of us go to meet with those on the Filthy Mongrel.

The airlocks open, a green tinged hair dwarf who is absolutely filthy and disgusting with blackened teeth with three or more missing. He’s short and fat for a dwarf, his skin is slick, damp, and moist. Carrying some large automatic weapon, he swaggers in bringing forth a near noxious stench. Another nine armed crew are behind him.

Grinning he nods maliciously, “Brains! Get out here! Head count!” A scrawny human with short hair and dead green eyes brushes past the dwarf showing some disgust. He looks around, mumbling to himself, and then says that the Pixie is missing. “Alright, get the Pixie out here”, the dwarf seems smug.

Fey miniaturized and invisible in Noun’s pocket, flies out back to the ship, returns to her normal size, becomes visible and comes out of the ship to join the rest. “Now that everybody is here, you can call me Captain Dorian. If you all behave you can all live and even get back everyone we took.”

The group senses that what he’s said is partially true and perhaps he is exaggerating his position to get the group to cooperate.

“As a sign of good faith drop all your weapons and drop them in that corner” Captain Dorian points to the corner of Perseverance’s airlock.

Scrawny little guy pats each person down for weapons and takes those and any bags, throwing it in a pile. He shouts down the hall, and other pirates bring Ridge’s five adult relatives onto Perseverance’s air lock (a mix of pirates and hostages).

Andrew telepathically asks the hostages if they are okay. Andrew senses that they are lightly traumatized, but not significantly injured. It is confirmed they were been injected with something. None of them have seen the missing two children.

“This is how it is. Every thirty seconds they need to be sent a signal or they die. You need to do everything we want you to do or they die. All it takes is a push of a button and they die”, Dorian says pointing to a large red button in the hanger bay, “As a sign of good faith I give you these five. The children are being kept just to make sure you aren’t lying or tricking us.”

Ridge tells the rest of the Perseverance crew that she wants to know where the children are in case things go south.

Laiden lies and says it can’t be done while being here and that we need time to work on it. Doran accepts. We want reassurance that the kids will be delivered. Doran says that the kids are not on this ship (we believe him).

Dr Peters is allowed to examine one of them. Noun uses some ability.

Ridge is asking about how to find the kids. Malcolm can. A bunch are evil. Nothing invisible. Dwarf is especially evil.

Laiden has Serra create a fake algorithm.

Dr Peters thinks about reading the dwarf’s mind. Ridge wonders whether this can be detected, Andrew isn’t sure. Dr Peters holds off right now.

We all sit down and Dorian digs through our stuff.

Everlily Nyx, invisible and stealthy, sneaks onto the Filthy Mongrel to learn the layout of the ship, and see if she can find the other hostages. She "goes dark" to maximize chances that she will not be detected.

The pirate pokes around the computer that Laiden is working on. Laiden tries to trick them into telling him what he knows, but Brains says he can’t talk about that. Brain wants to know what Laiden is doing, Laiden bullshits, and Brains questions what he’s saying.

Laiden says there are hidden computer functions, that folks can’t get to. Brains is a little miffed at why they would disable their ship to make it hard to do things, but buys Laiden bullshit.

Pronoun asks if Dorian would like to talk to himself. Dorian says that sounds like a trick and isn’t interested.

Noun really wants a mirror, but he realizes there are none on Perseverance as they have all broken and shattered from his presence.

Malcolm is interested in dominating Dorian then we can decided what to do next.

Laiden gets from Brains how he tied in multiple clusters of computers from various other ships. Brains says his ships computers are way better, but sends Laiden that his computer is much more powerful than Laiden’s. Laiden also gets the sense that Brains is competent with quantum mechanics.

Laiden and Ridge and Serra have a forged document with some truth in it to fake Dorian out.

Some more possibilities are discussed:

Brains is sent to do the computer work, but asks for help from Laiden. Dorian insults Brains, but lets Laiden go help out.

Dorian orders Laiden to snag a bunch of quantum manipulators from the Perseverance, to use in building a working prototype.

Noun pull out a hologram projector from his bag. Dorian notices Noun’s bag roots around in it. All sorts of stuff is in the bag.

Dorian punches Noun in the face and turns the bag inside out.

All the stuff is taken, things are going bad. Trenton’s awesome rail gun is picked up by a guard. Hostages are escorted out.

There is thought of plucking the kids out of the timeline to here. It would cost Noun serious damage.

Dorian wants a quantum manipulator from perseverance (removed), but Ridge wants assurance that the others are alive. Dorian says he has to ask Strife about the other two. The other ship is two miles away if they are there.

Strife sends a video feed of the children in one room (10 foot cell of some sort). How do we know it is real? The woman is Strife. Ridge relays a question to them about how they got a scar. The child answers correctly.

Laiden, Ridge and Malcolm go with 5 guards to remove quantum manipulators. Laiden goes to his room and gathers tools. Laiden drops a towel on the duffel bag.

Malcolm summons 5 invisible stalkers, Aunt Ridge says grab the towel we’re outta here. All teleport to the other ship.

The teleport fails. Folks wonder what happens.

One of the guards is confused by Malcolm’s momentary blink-out. "You’re full of shit, I’m telling Ponce (Dorian)." Ponce says someone just tried something, that’s it, he pulls out a detonator device, hits a button and… all of the pirates die! Dorian does not die, but drops to the floor convulsing in agony.

Serra indicates the other ship is running away. Noun runs back to this room, and does a ritual to get one of the kids back, kicks the kid out, and gets the other kid.

In order to chase the fleeing ship, the Perseverance must undock from the Filthy Mongrel. But Nyx is still aboard, and is not responding to communications. People briefly debate who should stay behind to help her when William Moss volunteers to go himself. "I’ll handle this."

We chase the ship that is running away (smaller more elite ship). We phase around to chase the ship. After following for a minute or so, Ridge notices the ship is on a straight-line path, and then it eventually collides with an asteroid and it isn’t damaged, passing right through it.

Ridge reactivates Perseverance’s active sensors. A deep scan shows the ship being followed has no life or structural signs. Ridge has Serra calculate where the other ship might have gone. She suggests a reverse course at a 70% angle as a random guess. Serra figures they didn’t go exactly in the opposite direction as that is too obvious, and is hopeful that that angle will give the widest area of space to scan.

Fey with the kids tries to make them feel better and tells them if they feel bad at all let them know.

Ridge gets the EMP to Fey. No active nanites in the their system, only two have dead nanites, but they seem standard ones (energy booster, general purpose reprogrammable ones for minor maladies).

All of the kids and adults have fatigue. A little healing doesn’t seem to work, then a major healing seems to work.

Dr Peters works with the former hostages to figure out what happened to them. Something about the injection mark isn’t quite right.

Ridge is looking into finding the ion trail, which is not easy. So we go back to start and find no trail, they must have some other technology.

Dr Peters uses divination to see if they have magic and they have a faint magic aura of some kind.

Ridge examine the trigger and requests Dr Peter to check the pirates for Nanites. Dr Peters cures 3/7 of them. He goes examines the bodies of the others.

Studying the dead pirates, Andrew determines that the nanites caused subcutaneous explosions. Malcolm talks with Andrew for a while learning that some of Ridge’s family are sick. Malcolm tries to heal the other four, but nothing seems to work. He determines that they have a negative energy effect on them.

We get to the Filthy Mongrel, and Moss hails the Perseverance. Nyx and Moss say everyone on the ship is dead. Moss says that the Mongrel is quite impressive, and that it will suit his purposes well. He asks if we need the dead pirates. Moss is seeming to lead himself to the undead.

We try to convince Moss not to use the ship and the undead. Moss is unsure about what he wants to do. Dr Peters points out that he is beginning to show signs of addiction.

Trenton argues that having additional subjects for his studies is not a bad idea. Moss says that experimenting on these is safer than risking his loved ones. There is a lot of argument about how Moss can help out.

Fey tells Moss he should see the caretaker again to help himself out. She points out he is contradicting himself and that he is no longer working rationally. Moss will contact the Order of Gaia. Moss has made his decision and is ignoring our advice and starts to leave.

No one is able to convince Moss to abandon the ship, or the three undead pirates still aboard. But he does allow Ridge to download data from the Filthy Mongrel before he leaves. Ridge does a quick pass over his planned route back to Earth, making some optimizations.

Fey believes we should stop him. Meanwhile, Dr Peters shoots Dorian with emp gun, and Dorian heals up. We gather his stuff. Dr Peters weakens Dorian’s will and then does an eternal charm, both of which succeed. His wounds all heal up.

Ridge will only agree to chase Moss if we come to a consensus.

Dr Peters tries to use his friendship with Dorian to get the code to disable the ship, who eventually agrees to send the code himself. He says the kids may be "back at the base" and gestures in a vague direction.

Dorian also says that if Blacksoul got wind of what already happened, then he would have already killed them.

Fey sends Rufus a message that Moss is progressing with undead and they should all be very wary and be suspect of his actions. His initial plan was to make a ship of undead and leave with them.

Serra tells them that something important is happening in the main computer room. Laiden teleports there immediately, just in time to see the 5 adults all grabbing for important parts of the wires of the ship to tear them out (very intelligent, but not genius). Some wires get torn out and some critical systems fail…