Odd Jobs …
Episode 3: Fire And Ice

Part 1: The Mission

As the 214th Fleet jumps into the Mithril system and starts vectoring in, Lieutenant Minka notified the player characters that they would be performing a recon mission on icy Mithril … code name “Operation: Cold Sword”. Apparently, there was a small Sword Worlds garrison force on the planet, and the Admiral wanted to know why. Again, their ship was to be the INS Katana (a Broadsword class Mercenary Cruise).

Arrival in orbit was scheduled for 0630 ship time, followed by 2 hours of orbital scans. The final briefing would be at 0900, followed by immediate launch. So the player characters will get a lie-in in the morning, she’ll tell them. (At least that’s the plan!)

Part 2: Midnight Madness

The next part was very linear. It was played for haste and confusion (like a session of Paranoia) to rattle the players and limit their resources later.

At 0612, when the player characters were asleep, the fleet was attacked by elements of the Sword Worlds’ Sacnoth fleet (starting with stealth mines for surprise). The characters were rudely awakened by the General Quarters alarm, but they knew that their role was to muster on G-Deck to form damage control parties.

They had about 30 seconds to get dressed before the ship was shaken by an explosion and the Red Alert alarm started to blare. They now knew that it was serious, and not a drill. Getting Minka on the internal comm system, she yelled at them about mines and screamed at them to get to G-Deck.

They had, perhaps, another 60 seconds before Executive Officer Dare Chin shouted over the internal PA system “ALL HANDS ABANDON SHIP! REPEAT: ALL HANDS ABANDON-”. He is cut off by a second explosion (a bridge hit) and now, to make matters worse, the Decompression Alarm was sounding urgently. After this point there were no internal communications.

For sound FX, I recorded the ‘abandon ship’ message from the Star Trek – TNG episode “Cause And Effect”. And a suitable ‘huge explosion’ came from the film “Die Hard” (the chair bomb scene).

60 seconds later, a truly huge explosion ripped through the ship. The player characters were bounced off the walls and thrown to the floor, loose objects flew about, and the main power failed.

They MUST now make it to the lifeboats (on G-Deck) to survive and everywhere was chaos. Emergency lighting was ‘supplemented’ by fires in some sections. In one section, a lose oxygen hose whipped about, cutting everything like an oxyacetylene torch. Metal supports and debris blocked certain routes. Panicked ratings filled the corridors. Random bulkheads sealed (though there has not yet been any decompression, despite the decompression alarm).

In preparation for this session, I had a map of G-Deck (my own, made long before the MgT Ghalalk deck plans were published) and marked off blocked and partially blocked sections. In addition to pressing the players for quick answers when asking them what they were doing, I made a show of accurately calculating how long they are taking to move towards the lifeboats. This was to imply that there was a finite time to reach the lifeboats before the ship blew up completely … and that if they don’t make it, that would be the end of the adventure.

When the player characters ‘finally’ made it to the lifeboats, there was only one left. It is an LSP Reliant class lifeboat. Basically, a 20 dton launch with crew=2, passengers=25, no cargo and no low berths, designed for 1 atmospheric re-entry or unlimited use under zero-G. There was only enough places left for the player characters and some NPCs, so they had to close the door against the remaining crew. (War is hell!)

After the lifeboat was launched, the players wisely skipped orbit and went straight for a landing on Mithril. There are several other lifeboats (launched earlier or from other ships) but as the decent started, a flight of Sword Worlds Wolf class Attack Ships swooped in and started blasting. Most of the other lifeboats were incinerated in the air and the survivors scattered to make it harder to hit. After a few Piloting dodge rolls, they crashed into a snowbank on the planet’s surface.

Part 3: A Cold Day

The next part is a little more relaxed than the first. In fact, it’s just a minor variant of GDW’s Double Adventure 2: Mission on Mithril.

So much for the ‘Fire’, now comes the ‘Ice’. Mithril is a cold world, and the lifeboat has crash-landed several days walk from the local starport (such as it is). There were enough emergency food rations for everyone for 30 days, water (in the form of snow) was in abundance, but protective clothing against the cold was in short supply … however, there were enough vacc suits (with insulation and built-in heaters) for the player characters. They would have to trek to the starport and find rescue for the NPCs, while remembering the Sword Worlds military camp was nearby.

For sound effects use a blustery wind rather than an arctic wind (there’s an excellent example on the BBC’s “Essential Weather Sound Effects” CD), but remember its not windy every day.

Part 4: City Of Darkness

This part features a hidden Ancient site on Mithril. Marooned on an enemy-occupied planet, with a lifeboat of NPC’s waiting for rescue, and with limited resources, the party discovered the real reason for the Sword World presence on Mithril.

As the party got near the starport, perhaps 10 km before, they came across a small valley where a lot of activity can be heard for some distance. Looking into the valley, they saw a makeshift military camp and an excavation site.

The military camp was temporary home to the Sword Worlds 13th Lift Infantry Company (part of the Sacnoth Lift Infantry Brigade, a TL12 conscripted unit), and the excavation workers. It consists of a fenced compound 340m by 500m. There were three ground vehicle gates, each with a guard hut either side (inside the fence). WWII style guard towers were situated in each corner and roughly the middle of three sides (total of seven). There were seven barracks, a medical barracks, three separate ammo bunkers, a vehicle maintenance shed, a large HQ building, a barn, a storage silo, and five animal pens. Additionally, 25% of the compound was confined by an inner fence surrounding a vehicle park. The vehicle park had 5 tanks, 3 APCs, 6 air/rafts, and numerous tractors, bulldozers, and other earth-movers. At night the whole camp was flood-lit.

The excavation site looked like a small, yet industrious, strip mine.

And while sneaking around, trying to find out what the Sword Worlders are doing, they stumble into a half-buried tunnel. It is approximately 5m in diameter, perfectly straight, and inclined down at about 30°. The sides of the tunnel have a smooth yet rippled (almost melted) feel, and it looks like the tunnel was drilled by a 5m diameter laser beam. The entrance is on the far side of a hill to the valley with the excavation and angles back to point to somewhere under where they are digging.

The party decided to explore, how could they resist, and control-slid down the tunnel.  It led to an Ancient site, a large cavern originally shaped like a slightly irregular octagon measuring 5100m by 4200m, with a vaulted ceiling. Where the tunnel entered the chamber (halfway up one wall) that whole side had partially collapsed into a large rock-fall pile of flint-like rock. The pile ran along 4200m of the long side, intruding 750m into the cavern, and was 135m high at its peak (where the tunnel exit was). The floor of the cavern was covered by an arrangement of blocks (some alone, some in piles of two, three, or more) ranging from 50m to 450m in length, between a third and a half of the length in width, and up to half the length in height. Gaps between the blocks or piles are typically 150m wide. In the middle was a ‘plaza’ 500m across with a ziggurat in the centre 150m across by 75m high (flat-topped). The cavern floor and walls, the blocks, and the ziggurat were all made of the same dark grey rock … yet had a feel and finish like quick-form cement. The whole thing had an air of an Aztec city, except the blocks (which should be buildings) were solid with no doors or windows … like a crude recreation of an Aztec city’s form and shape without any details. The whole site was lit by a weak ambient twilight-like light of no discernible source.

Exploring the bulk of the site was a spooky task. There were no artefacts or other items. The only movable stuff was the pile of debris from the rock-fall. Also, there was a very fine layer of rock-coloured oily dust over everything (like dark grey talcum powder). Apart from the ziggurat the only other item of note was that, when one of the characters climbed on a block they noticed a pattern of lanthanum and boron strips inlaid in the top (initially camouflaged by the dust). An Engineering skill check determined that the pattern was functional (like a starship jump drive grid) rather than ornate … but they were unable to say what that function was.

But it was the ziggurat that was the key to the structure, the centre of the web (so to speak). Ascending the ziggurat, the party discovered what appeared to be a control panel of some kind. It had the overall shape of the Transporter console from the original series of Star Trek. Yet again it seems to be a crude recreation of a thing, rather than the thing itself. It is made of the same dark grey quick-form cement-like quality, and there are no makings or controls evident, save for a vague outline of an alien hand with three fingers and a thumb (no one recognised it was a Droyne hand).

After trying various approaches, one of the characters placed their bare hand over the alien handprint. There was a sudden build-up of power and everyone found themselves back on the surface.  Further, the were unable to find the tunnel again.

For sound effects in the cavern play “The Alien Planet” from the Alien soundtrack, in the background on continuous loop. Start this upon reaching the end of the tunnel and seeing the cavern for the first time.

Part 5: The Harvest

The fourth and final episode is the punch-line, so to speak, of the whole adventure. The party has stumbled into a nasty little trap, from which escaping is by no means assured.

Remembering that there is a downed lifeboat filled with survivors from the cruiser Warwamo, the party wants to continue to the starport. But everything from the moment the control panel on the ziggurat was touched was an illusion.  Each character’s Life rating (STR + DEX + END) was reduced by 2 points per ‘day’ … once below 3, that character fell unconscious.  At that point, a single Determination roll could allow them to wake up or not.

Those that awoke, saw they were all still in the cavern of the Ancient site. Energy was coursing through the grid pattern on top of the blocks, and some kind of portal had opened in thin air on the ziggurat besides them. The portal showed the silver-grey haze of jumpspace, but the greyness deepened to a black spiral, stretching away into infinity … some kind of immense jumpspace tunnel. There was a moderately strong wind blowing into the tunnel and crackling electricity sparks around the edge.

More disturbing still, a procession of people were emerging from the tunnel and walking down into the cavern. At first glance, they appeared to be walking wounded, but on closer inspection, they turned out to be dead. These were the souls (psychic remnants) of many of those who are dying violently in proximity to Mithril, casualties from the Fifth Frontier War. As each figure moved into the cavern, they were absorbed by one of the blocks, and that block grew marginally. This place is a giant psionic battery charging itself up by harvesting the energy released by a sentient being at the moment of death.

The character who touched the control panel was still standing there with his hand in place. To rescue the others, the awake character had to knock the hand away and break the contact. Once that happened, each character got to make a difficult Determination roll to awaken. Meanwhile, the portal closed, the last of the figures was absorbed, and the whole place returned to its age-long dormancy.

For sound effects back in the cavern play “The Cenobites” from the Hellraiser soundtrack, in the background on continuous loop. Start this upon returning to the cavern and seeing the harvest. Also, for added effect, try adjusting the temperature where you are playing to just fractionally below comfort level.

Background

Okay, so why are the Sword Worlders digging on Mithril, and why now? With the Fifth Frontier War, the Sword Worlds’ Gram Fleet invaded the Lanth subsector. As a result, they encountered the Ancient site on Victoria (detailed in JTAS 2). Comparing this with information they had previously gained from other Ancient sites led them to believe there was a site of potentially enormous power on their own doorstep. What use it will be to them once they find it is anybody’s guess.