Previously, on Butteller...
Sep. 14th, 2008 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philmophlegmButteller 3: The Spinward Squadron
In 1248, after the Second Battle of Gateway and his crowning as Emperor, Avery I, ruler of the new Fourth Imperium, made public the news that survivors of a previously unsuspected sibling race of humans were in desperate trouble away to Coreward. Small pockets of them might be trapped on many worlds, perhaps in low technology cultures with no means to flee a coming apocalypse. Even reaching them meant crossing thousands of parsecs of uncharted space. But if nobody answered the call then they would die alone in the night. The Empress Wave was both a call for help from a dying civilisation and a warning to flee - to flee the effects of the collapse of a supergiant star near the galactic core.
There were no ships to answer the call, no resources to build them and no crews willing to try. It was a fool’s venture at best, but Avery laid down the challenge anyway in the slim hope that someone would step forward.
Amazingly, a handful of volunteers did indeed present themselves. A number of Zhodani ship crews came forward - the latest manifestation of the Zhodanis' intense curiosity of everything coreward. They were joined by a handful of ships from the various spinward states, including the old Darrian cruisier Mire. A message came from the far-off Freedom League. The Star Vikings, who in the years following the Collapse had pillaged neighbouring worlds to protect their own civilisation, and who to many represented all that was wrong about the dark years, were boarding their ships in huge numbers to join the great rescue. And Maori Spirit, the former New Earth Union cruiser that held the line at the Second Battle of Gateway, was leaving Charted Space to once again serve humaniti's greater needs.
Theirs was indeed a fool’s errand, just as it was a fool’s hope that anyone would respond to the distress call.
Butteller 3 dealt with the activities of the Spinward Squadron - the most spinward part of the fleet sent coreward to find the lost race of humaniti. There were 16 ships in the squadron, most notably the Terran cruiser 'Maori Spirit', the Darrian cruiser 'Mire', the Zhodani cruiser 'Evlodr Shefr' and the Zhodani fleet tanker 'Zdivrie Nerapr'. Commanding the squadron as commodore was the Maori Spirit's famous captain Tom Rahman.
However, as the squadron was about to leave jump and enter the first of four sectors it been tasked with exploring, Commodore Rahman was found dead in his stateroom. The PCs led the investigation and determined that it was murder. There were plenty of suspects including some of the PCs, Zhodani officers on board the Maori Spirit at the time, Oojan M'Banke the sel-proclaimed leader of the enlisted men on board and a vocal critic of Rahman, Rahman's former mistress, his former mistress's husband, his current mistress, an Aslan marine whose life he saved in a battle, and someone who witnessed Rahman's part in a massacre of civilians earlier in his career.
After a whole day's worth of investigations, the PCs were able to work out that Rahman's former mistress, a secret transhuman psionic, had been the one to shoot him, and in fact thought that she'd killed him. However, reflec armour worn under his uniform had saved his life only for the engineer who knew the truth about his role in the massacre on Ys to confront him. Seeing that his heroic reputation would be ruined, Commodore Rahman took his own life.
In 1248, after the Second Battle of Gateway and his crowning as Emperor, Avery I, ruler of the new Fourth Imperium, made public the news that survivors of a previously unsuspected sibling race of humans were in desperate trouble away to Coreward. Small pockets of them might be trapped on many worlds, perhaps in low technology cultures with no means to flee a coming apocalypse. Even reaching them meant crossing thousands of parsecs of uncharted space. But if nobody answered the call then they would die alone in the night. The Empress Wave was both a call for help from a dying civilisation and a warning to flee - to flee the effects of the collapse of a supergiant star near the galactic core.
There were no ships to answer the call, no resources to build them and no crews willing to try. It was a fool’s venture at best, but Avery laid down the challenge anyway in the slim hope that someone would step forward.
Amazingly, a handful of volunteers did indeed present themselves. A number of Zhodani ship crews came forward - the latest manifestation of the Zhodanis' intense curiosity of everything coreward. They were joined by a handful of ships from the various spinward states, including the old Darrian cruisier Mire. A message came from the far-off Freedom League. The Star Vikings, who in the years following the Collapse had pillaged neighbouring worlds to protect their own civilisation, and who to many represented all that was wrong about the dark years, were boarding their ships in huge numbers to join the great rescue. And Maori Spirit, the former New Earth Union cruiser that held the line at the Second Battle of Gateway, was leaving Charted Space to once again serve humaniti's greater needs.
Theirs was indeed a fool’s errand, just as it was a fool’s hope that anyone would respond to the distress call.
Butteller 3 dealt with the activities of the Spinward Squadron - the most spinward part of the fleet sent coreward to find the lost race of humaniti. There were 16 ships in the squadron, most notably the Terran cruiser 'Maori Spirit', the Darrian cruiser 'Mire', the Zhodani cruiser 'Evlodr Shefr' and the Zhodani fleet tanker 'Zdivrie Nerapr'. Commanding the squadron as commodore was the Maori Spirit's famous captain Tom Rahman.
However, as the squadron was about to leave jump and enter the first of four sectors it been tasked with exploring, Commodore Rahman was found dead in his stateroom. The PCs led the investigation and determined that it was murder. There were plenty of suspects including some of the PCs, Zhodani officers on board the Maori Spirit at the time, Oojan M'Banke the sel-proclaimed leader of the enlisted men on board and a vocal critic of Rahman, Rahman's former mistress, his former mistress's husband, his current mistress, an Aslan marine whose life he saved in a battle, and someone who witnessed Rahman's part in a massacre of civilians earlier in his career.
After a whole day's worth of investigations, the PCs were able to work out that Rahman's former mistress, a secret transhuman psionic, had been the one to shoot him, and in fact thought that she'd killed him. However, reflec armour worn under his uniform had saved his life only for the engineer who knew the truth about his role in the massacre on Ys to confront him. Seeing that his heroic reputation would be ruined, Commodore Rahman took his own life.
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Date: 2008-09-14 11:12 pm (UTC)Slowly the PCs discovered that the area of space they were in was known as 'The Forest' by its inhabitants. They encountered several different and new alien races, including the Thotloth (small, aggressive, orange clones), the Tchopth (short, brown, bipedal invertebrates with a taste for a good deal), the Ba (gangly, bipedal bureaucrats) and the Syrrgl (militaristic, purple worms).
Fun encounters included a Tchopth filling station attendant (the first of his race or in fact any of the races of The Forest to be encountered), a bar-room brawl between Thotloth and Syrrgl which resulted in some of the PCs joining in (on one or more sides) and ultimately with Baroness Bubbles Chatterly starting a chain of 'Bar Bubbles' starport bars across the subsector.
A group of PCs* on board the frigate Miltiades set off to investigate the legends of the 'Sky Raiders' on the planet Loenchdda. A journey into Loenchdda's sweaty, swampy outback was followed by the discovery of a ziggurat and human skeletons apparently buried with some ceremony. These seemed to be the Sky Raiders, but were the Sky Raiders also the Yaskoydri - the lost human race that the Spinward Squadron was searching for?
Another group of ships, the scout tender R.J. Astudia, the close escort Zylle and the fleet courier FC-281 'Rainbow', headed in a different direction. The PCs** in this group explored a seemingly abandoned space station after something pulled the Astudia out of jump-space. The space station turned out to be the prison holding a psionically powerful alien called a Ssitransh - a being able to manipulate jump-space.
Certain of the PCs (I think Chronotis and Duke, but I couldn't swear to this) freed (unwittingly or otherwise) the prisoner who then used his jump-space manipulation power to transport the PCs back in time a thousand years to his original trial. This Ssitransh was in fact Dominator Dook'krss, the tyrant that the Foresters had fought 'The Ssitransh War' against. The Foresters won the war, destroyed the Ssitransh's home planet and perpetually imprisoned the Dominator in low-berth.
Having now gone back in time, the PCs were split into two groups - prosecutors and defenders and the trial was carried out again. Only this time the verdict was that it was the Foresters who were guilty. Although too late to save the Ssitransh race, Dook'krss was freed.
* Ithklur Marine Lieutenant Assato*kla, Vargr Able Spacehand Anozarrekh, Ensign Vincent Drake, Commander (and Chief Engineer) Sorlie McSporran, Prrt' Able Spacehand Rrl and Science Officer Archimedes Flux.
** Captain Faradon Larg, Ship's Librarian Autumn Rabbits, Professor Jonathan Chronotis, Sophont Liaison Specialist Matthew Duke, Hiver 'Executive Assistant' Medusa and Aslan scout ship gunner Iyaritetiyrl (aka 'Duncan').
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