The party make it back to Hel system and drop off the crew who wish to leave.
The appearance of Excaliber causes a stir in the Helcan system. Representatives from other systems arrive to hold discussions to try to get hold of Excaliber’s technology.
The party pootle round the various systems. We build up favours. Twilight is very interested in the story of the ‘otherkin ‘.
Another asynchronous slipknot is found above Twilight. Going through it, the party find a system with no planets and just a black square orbiting the sun.
The black square is made of iron – enough iron that would normally be found within a system.
As the party travel between slipknots, the party find that they naturally drift into particular roles within Excaliber. The implants help the party to fulfil particular roles.
Vespasian – pilot
Milly – commander
Francis – comms
Eli –gunnery
Phoebe - engineering
Excaliber goes back through the original slipknot to its original system. Gave the Prince a ceramic sword. Set up a satellite so that Vaughan could talk to the system. Set up legal stuff so that all systems are interacting ethically.
Excaliber then goes through the slipknot that it originally came through. The new system comes out into a nebula with another synchronous slipknot. This opens to SSanother system with planets. Party goes through a synchronous slipknot. This system reveals a beacon on a nearby asteroid orbiting the 4th planet. Biological life signs on the planet. Further investigation reveals that tech has regressed. Visual scans reveal one ancient, abandoned city. Primitive lander found on the moon.
Party takes shuttle to the moon. There is a flag and footprints. The party examine the technology. It looks like humanoid individuals designed and used the tech. Milly gets Excaliber to design a programme to decipher the language using an instruction manual.
The planet looks like it has been empty of people for a couple of 100 years. A probe is sent down to the city. Animals are present; flyers that look like giant butterflies and caterpillars with human-like faces. The flyers hunt and grab a caterpillar; mate with it. Then the caterpillars explode into hundreds of little caterpillars. The caterpillars flee from the flyers. Some caterpillars manage to pupate into flyers.
Phoebe programmes some probes to collect DNA samples. Comparisons are made between the protein bases. There is a relationship between humans as well as the other animals.
Eventually the party find an inscription. ‘The ‘otherkin’ exist. They are terrifying. They have annihilated our civilisation.
The party look at the GPS satellite network. There are missing satellites in the net. Do find a couple that are broken. Some of the others have been damaged and others that have fallen out of orbit. Some of the other satellites (non-GPS) orbiting the planet were missing. They were taken out over a period of a week.
The party decide to look for possible areas underground where the humanoid population could have retreated to.
After a long investigation, the party find no humanoids.
Milly insists on returning to Hecla to warn them about the otherkin. Several members of the crew decide to leave/retire.
-
The party head off. Fly through the Heclan asynchronous slipknot and continue through the slipknots past the butterfly world.
The next system is populated by space-faring peoples – the system of Amarand. The party are invited to a party – a wedding between Amarand and Celestra royal family.
Amarand , Garnet and Celestra are the smaller systems aligned with one of 3 main empires – Four Flowers (merchantile), Xeer Hegemony (judges, laws), Hetrotic Successors (descendants of Arthur).
Arthur unified the systems and ruled them for 70-odd years before disappearing. This was Arthur’s empire. There was a civil war after he left and the current system of rule came about.
Eli, Frank and Milly take charge of the discussions with the Amarand officials. At the wedding party, they speak with each of the ambassadors. Phoebe ensures that the party have translation devices and that all the machinery is polished and works wonderfully.
The wedding party takes place on a space station. It takes several days.
The party do have a private tea with the royal family of Amarand. Goes very well.
Four Flowers representative –Emir Sandor Everson, assistant Tarla Salon – youth
Xeer representative – arbiter Castleman Parekhe (looks like Denzel Washington) gives considered responses. Has an assistant – very athletic young lady, Mia.
Hetrotic Successors - Ansel Keys (looks like Brad Pitt).
Garnet – Duke Revand (looks like Alan Rickman), daughter Alyssa. Milly and Eli reckon he is heavily involved in the information gathering services of Garnet.
Prince Azarie Venestra - the bridegroom of Celestra.
The party spend time meeting all of the guests at the wedding celebrations. Also take part in various competitions of sporty persuasion. Vespasian takes part in the preparation for various hunts.
Milly takes part in the athletics. She comes third after the local guy and Hetrotic guy draw in first place. Milly also takes part in a tactics competition. She manages to beat Duke Revand. There is a lot of mutual respect between them.
However Frank manages to beat everybody at poker – the locals cannot believe it.
Then Phoebe wins her go-cart race.
The party are all approached by Hetrotic successors to sell a sample of DNA to them because of their successes.
The party holds its soiree on the following day. It is a great success.
Milly plays another game of tactics with Duke Revand.
The hunt occurs the following day. Vespasian works with Prince Azarie to assist with a successful hunt. The Prince makes a perfect shot. Unfortunately the shot causes the herbivores to stampede. Vespasian saves the Prince by stepping in the way and shooting the animal heading for the Prince.
That night Vespasian hears automatic weapons fire. He tells Excaliber. It despatches a shuttle with the party inside. In the meantime Vespasian takes one of soldiers to head to investigate the sound of the weapons fire. It is coming from the direction of the Prince of Amarand’s hunting party. As he arrives he sees that a giant millipede is attacking the campsite. The beast is an apex predator and has destroyed half the campsite already. Vespasian manages to draw the beast away while the shuttle arrives. Milly disembarks and kills the beast with her rotary machinegun. Vespasian heads back to camp with his hunting group. He finds that the camp is destroyed and the Prince of Amarand is dead.
Milly takes control of the investigation. Phoebe has to interrogate the drones. Vespasian does any first-aid. Frank helps with examining the campsite and investigating why the beast was drawn to the Prince.
Vespasian tracked the beast’s path to the camp. It attacked once it reached the centre of the camp. Backtracking its path, Vespasian finds feeding spots. It has been lured to the camp. Vespasian also finds the spot where someone had been watching events.
Milly organises and talks to the troops. Milly notices that the bodyguard were too well prepared for the attack. They reacted perfectly.
Frank’s investigations reveals that one of the Prince’s party was stronger than would be expected for an unmodified human. It was stabbed through one of its plates with a bayonet. It looks like the beast attacked the Prince first, he stabbed it then got away as the bodyguard rushed in. The beast then caught and killed the Prince. The investigations reveal that the Prince was genetically superior to a normal human. Phoebe discovers that the footage from the drones covers the wrong areas of ground. The drones had been tampered with.
The results that of the investigations are that the skin of the Prince is genetically different to the body organs. The skin had not been modified genetically.
The party confer with the Amarand’s investigation unit. The party leave the unit to continue with their work. The computer expert Armin Steitz also notices that the drones have been tampered with. Asks Phoebe if she had noticed the same thing and confirms that the drones were tampered with by a third party.
Vespasian looks at the success rate of the other hunting parties. The Xeer representative Castleman’s assistant is a very good hunter but her party only had a mediocre kill. Vespasian suspects that she was possibly involved in other activities rather than helping her group to hunt.
Vespasian and Frank analyse the drone footage. They spot shadows and some very clever tampering. Phoebe recommends that the footage is passed onto Armin. The party agrees.
Over coffee, Armin looks at the data. He finds another glitch which Phoebe and he analyses.
Meanwhile, there are numerous invitations to other party members to visit or to gossip. Duke Revand visits Milly. He fishes for information and warns that the equipment used will cause other people to realise that it is from Arthur. People will worry that Arthur is about to return as legend states.
Milly is makes it very clear that the party are a private enterprise and that no promises can be made on behalf of the Heclans. Duke Revand believes that for just a scout the party have equipment only once available to Arthur so the empire they come from has this equipment as standard.
Eli Lamb has a meeting with Ansel of the Hetrotic Successors. They have a conversation in which Eli says nothing but obtains a history of the empires.
Frank meets with Tarla Salon. An understanding develops where the merchants and he agree that they have a similar view of the universe.
The party receive an invitation for a private meeting with the King of Amarand. The King and the Princess are present. Eli cuts through the courtesy to get to the reason for the meeting. The party has a presentation of the investigation into the Princes’ death. Opinions are sought. The Prince that was killed is not the real Prince – his DNA is different. Is it possible that the Prince is still alive? The investigations mean that if the Prince was kidnapped, it was in the last couple of days.
The suppositions so far are that one group kidnapped the Prince but a second group killed the Prince. It is believed that the Hetrotic Successors replaced the Prince and all of the bodyguard detail. It is also believed that the Xeer Hegemony set up the assassination of the Prince during the hunt.
Frank analyses the security of all the ships and find that one of the ships from Hetrotic Successors has enhanced security. Colonel Hardcastle is the individual on the ship that is most likely to coordinate the kidnapping.
The King of Amarand is very happy for the party to facilitate the return of the Prince without causing a diplomatic incident. Milly talks with Duke Ravand. He agrees to talk to the parties concerned.
Later on.
A call comes from the planet surface that some Hetrotic Successor hunters requesting assistance because they had come across some poachers. The poachers had kidnapped the Prince. Unfortunately all of the poachers died. The Prince has been recovered safe and sound.
There was an explosion on one of the Hetrotic Successor ships with some fatalities – the most notable officer was Colonel Hardcastle.
Frank’s contact with the Xeer Hegemony, Tarla also suffered from a severe reaction after accidentally ingesting some of the planet’s foliage.
Following day the wedding commences. Before the wedding several promotions and medal ceremony takes place. The King of Amarand makes Milly Larssen the victor of the games – Viscount of Wolf-in-Sheep’s Clothing (planet’s name).
The wedding goes ahead without a hitch. Later in the evening, a member of the Four Flowers pulls a gun. The rest of the Four Flowers also pull weapons.
The Emir of the Four Flowers then announces that they are taking control as it has come to their attention that security of this system has been compromised.
The Emir warns that there are bombs next everyone’s ships and that there is a 20 minute delay in radio communication.
Eli and Frank then collapse as Excaliber pulls their minds back to the ship.
Frank analyses for threats. A couple of Amarand ships are lost as the bombs detonate. Vespasian then collapses as he is pulled back to the ship.
Milly moves into position so that when the Emir receives radio communication from the ships, she is ready to take him into protective custody. Using her ship communication, she orders Phoebe into position.
Excaliber attacks the Four Flower ships as they disgorge shuttles. Messages are sent to the Amarand naval vessels, Xeer ships and Hetrotic Successor ships.
Vespasian returns to his body as he is no longer needed on Excaliber.
Emir receives a radio comms which gives the signal for Milly and Phoebe to attack the Emir’s party.
In very quick succession half of the Emir’s group is taken out with Milly’s sword, Phoebe’s crowbar and Vespasian’s club.
Milly stops the carnage when she orders the Emir to surrender. He does so very quickly. Milly hands over the control to the King. He orders the Four Flowers delegation to be removed.
Frank and Eli are returned to their bodies after they ensure that the Four Flower ships cease fighting.
The mess at the wedding party is quickly cleared away.
Cast List
Francis (Frank)
Milly Larssen – ex-military from Hecla
Eli Lamb – dodgy lawyer
Vespasian Smith – game ranger
Phoebe – from Hel. Engineer
Chris – from Hel, yet to earn/build her sonic screwdriver. Technician
Roger – first pilot. Retires
Abigail – cleaner. Retires
Leroy – cook
Grimm Everald – Milly’s sergeant
Red Hardstardt - ‘Red shirt’
Hubert- new pilot hired by Milly. No family. Enjoys day-to-day flying