March 13, 109 PA
The battle against the Soul Harvester and his minions was a traumatizing one. The heroes prevented the woman in the circle from being possessed by Nxla, but they could not save her life. While all of them were affected in some way, two of them fared worse than the others.
Chayton Willow Blackwood had always struggled internally and something snapped inside him. A voice spoke to him and began to whisper vile and aggressive thoughts. After some taunting, the voice revealed its name was Notyach. It claimed it to be Chayton’s twin brother who died at the time of their birth. The spirit warrior did not remember hearing about a brother and didn’t believe the voice only he could hear. The group noticed he was acting strangely but he insisted nothing was wrong when they inquired about his condition. Meanwhile, he began to see a twisted version of himself whenever he caught sight of himself in a reflection.
GM Note: Chayton failed a Save vs Insanity and picked up the Jekyll and Hyde psychosis. When things like this happen in my games, I tend to use the Shadow mechanic from Wraith the Oblivion to crowdsource the negative influences the voice tries to have on the afflicted character. Used correctly, it adds an interesting and creepy element to any game. The GM just needs to monitor it closely and make sure it doesn’t get overused.
Fido also struggled with the events in the necromancer’s lair and has developed some hypochondriac tendencies. So far, this has manifested as a mild phobia of germs. We’ll see where that one takes us in time.
Nick, the power armor pilot, searched the necromancer for information or goods. Most of the villain’s possessions were mundane or worthless. All except a Wilks 320 Laser Pistol that Nick claimed. The necromancer also had a journal. It detailed how he was recruited by Zil into Nxla’s service a year before, the rituals performed to force the soul of a victim from their body so Nxla could possess it, and some vague details about the activities of the Cult of Nxla in the area. The entries mentioned some other hidden enclaves, including one in the ruins of Indy, but did not provide enough detail to pinpoint their locations.
Emma began chronicling everything. Raesha approached her in private and suggested he had guessed who her sister was. Emma confessed the dragon wolf was correct, she was a younger sister of the famous Erin Tarn. She asked Raesha to keep the secret and he agreed while adding he did not mean to offend with comments he had made about the elder Tarn sister earlier in the day. Emma dismissed the apology as unnecessary.
Raesha noticed Emma having trouble drawing the ritual circle. All the best rogue scholars were known for their artistic skills, but the young woman was also shaken by the violent encounter. The dragon wolf reminded her she had a digital camera and she switched to taking photographs of the room.
Fido retreated to Nick’s Mountaineer ATV and began cleaning. He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to do so, but it made him feel better.
Kres’Kreen’s raptor companion waited until the heroes were done with the soul harvester and then feasted on the remains.
Before the group cleared out, someone suggested they claim the technowizard device that conjured the shield between the two rooms. Although none of them were skilled in technowizardry, Fido was trained in some basic mechanics. He thought he could disassemble the device enough for them to transport it to Comfort. The work took much longer than he thought it would have, most of the rest of the day.
Chayton retreated from the group. He wanted to cleanse himself so he backtracked to one of the streams they had crossed before. He removed his dragon bone armor and cleansed it before washing the filth of battle from himself. The voice began to taunt him and once again, Chayton insisted it wasn’t real and couldn’t hurt him. Much to his surprise, the entity speaking to him took control of one of his arms, drew his dagger, and stabbed himself in the leg. Chayton gathered his horse and returned to the cave. He thought his regenerative powers would heal the wound quickly, but for reasons he did not understand, the wound did not close.
When the shielding device was loaded on the ATV, they began the return trip. Part way back, perhaps a couple of hours from Comfort, they noticed copious amounts of smoke rising into the air. Something big was burning. Raesha, who had been flying alongside the ATV, decided to investigate. Nick didn’t seem interested in whatever caused the smoke. He’s had enough for one day and opted to continue to the town. So Fido pulled his cyber-horse from the back of the Mountaineer and followed behind Raesha. His code of honor demanded no less. Chayton also followed but Kres stayed in the truck. By then Emma had already lost herself in her journals. In hindsight, no one was sure if she had even been aware of the smoke.
Raesha flew to the source of the smoke and found a small village had been attacked by the undead. Lying in the center of the ruined community was a great horned dragon that had suffered numerous fatal wounds. A human male dressed in black robes with a gold dragon pendant on his chest took by the fallen dragon mourning while other survivors were busy packing up their possessions to leave the village.
Raesha introduced himself and asked what had happened. At first, the robed man was overcome with joy to see the dragon wolf. He kept referring to Raesha as the divine prophet of his gods. He introduced himself as Brother Willhelm and informed Raesha that the village had been attacked by the undead. Their protector, the dragon Razmiroth, had fallen in battle. Brother Willhelm was a Follower of Dragonwright. His esoteric order believed that all dragons were divine and worthy of worship. Raesha had heard of the cult but had never encountered it before. He did enjoy the accolades the priest was showering on him though.
Raesha asked if there were any injured. Brother Willhelm showed him to a small home that was still intact where the injured had been gathered.
Fido arrived shortly after. Raesha filled him in on what had happened and the cyberknight went to tend to the injured. He used his mundane medical skills to help those with less serious injuries, but two of them looked like they had been infected by the Soulless Xombies. He requested an apron to cover himself while he tended to those victims. One of the survivors tending the ill retrieved a butcher’s apron for him, but it was covered in detritus from the butcher’s work. Fido explained the apron needed to be cleaned and was provided with a blacksmith’s apron a short time later. Protected against whatever germs he might come into contact with, Fido employed his psionics abilities and cleansed the zombie affliction.
Meanwhile, Raesha helped remove the great horned dragon’s heart. He and Brother Willhelm packed it securely in a box for transportation so the priest could perform the appropriate rites once they reached safety.
Chayton arrived. His allies briefed him on the situation and the spirit warrior said some words over the corpse of the fallen dragon. Brother Willhelm seemed pleased by this and the rest of the heroes admitted their admiration for Chayton’s actions. He then went to the wounded to provide additional healing (the magical kind). Seeing the survivors would need more help to reach Comfort quickly, he rode off on Shadow to chase down Nick to recruit his assistance.
It took an hour for Chayton to catch the Mountaineer. Unfortunately, Nick didn’t seem interested in helping the victims of the attack. Chayton accused him of being rather mercenary in his actions. Nick confessed that was exactly what he was, a mercenary, and tried to roll up the windows of his ATV to end the conversation.
The spirit warrior was agitated by Nick’s attitude and physically stopped the window from rising. Nick took offense to this and swerved the truck so it bumped Shadow and threw Chayton to the group. The spirit warrior snapped. He checked Shadow and found the horse had not been harmed. He then mounted and rode away.
Emma was oblivious to the confrontation and Kres decided he wanted to help the survivors. Using the information provided by Chayton (and the smoke trail in the sky to follow), he rushed back with his raptor companion to assist.
Once Chayton had left the village, Raesha tried to skin the fallen dragon. Brother Willhelm was distracted helping the survivors prepare to move. Unfortunately, the great horned one had already begun to magically decay at a rapid rate. Kres arrived and was successful in harvesting the meat of the dragon.
Nick arrived in Comfort. Alden Greenleaf came out to greet them. At first, he thought only Nick and Emma had survived, but Nick quickly informed him about the attack on a nearby village and how the rest had gone to help them. The elder gathered several of his scouts and sent them to assist as well.
March 14, 109 PA
The caravan of refugees arrived in Comfort around two in the morning. Alden began organizing the people and finding places for them to rest and get additional medical aid as needed. Raesha approached the elder and asked him about Nxla. Alden did not recognize the name but committed himself to doing some research the next day to see if he could learn anything about the entity or its cult. The dragon wolf then inquired about the sightings of his brother, Lem. Alden said he planned to send scouts into the territory where the other dragon wolf had been spotted in a few days. The elder promised Raesha a spot on that team when it left.
Chayton rode into town. The group asked him where he had gone, but the spirit warrior could not recall. He remembered arguing with Nick and then riding into the village, but not what had happened in between. He suggested he was just in a daze, and the group grew more concerned.
After a few hours, everyone was settled in and the group got some rest.
In the morning, Comfort was even busier than the group thought they would find it. While they had been gone, other defenders and/or soldiers had arrived in town. Alden went to Fido and asked for his help organizing the newcomers. Some of them said they had met with an entity that called itself Preservation. That force had told them Comfort needed help. Others had heard about the troubles and had come to offer their services. Fido agreed to help.
GM Note: Here I finally introduced how I was going to allow the players to swap characters in and out. Some of them had expressed the desire to play other characters in addition to their first ones. So I have added some West Marches elements to the campaign to empower them to do so.
Alden also added a group of merchants from Naruni Enterprises had passed through. Alden and the few shopkeepers of Comfort had negotiated some trade with them. More than goods though, the Naruni were interested in the blue crystal the town had been mining. The Naruni paid the town in a small pile of Black Market credits and promised to return to purchase more crystals as soon as they could. Now flush with cash, Alden placed several orders with them for building materials and other goods to help around the village.
Fido met with the newcomers. He impressed upon them the need to be on their best behavior in Comfort. That was probably for the best because they were a rough-looking crowd for the most part. Fido gave the entire group one good pass to see if he spotted anything suspicious. He hadn’t forgotten they had let Private James Davis run free and wondered if he had snuck back in or maybe sent others to infiltrate the town. Fortunately, he didn’t spot any red flags.
Fido introduced himself to a very tall man with tallow skin, a mohawk, and tattoos all over his body. He learned the man’s name was Prong and teased out he was a True Atlantean Undead Slayer. Chayton seemed put off by the Atlantean somehow and tried to show him up a bit. Perhaps it was Notyach’s influence? The undead slayer was a tad arrogant, so perhaps that was the cause. Their conversation went downhill but slowly. In the end, Chayton tried to make peace but the Atlantean ignored the olive branch.
So Chayton turned to one of the other newcomers, a man with tubing and mechanism across his body. The spirit warrior had noticed him earlier and the others explained he was a juicer, Chayton had suggested he might be able to cleanse the juicer of the toxins running through his body. The others explained to him the juicer had undergone the process of becoming like that of his own free will and probably did not want to be cleansed. Chayton didn’t seem like he understood that.
After introducing himself, Chayton asked the juicer if he wanted to be cleansed. The offer was rejected and the juicer commented on how the process made him strong and he liked it that way. Chayton asked if he could test their strengths against each other. The juicer seemed excited about that idea and began to rattle off offers of other contests they could have as well. After suggesting several without giving Chayton a chance to respond, the juicer settled on a footrace and took off running before Chayton could stop him. From a distance, the group spotted the juicer running laps around Comfort for a while.
Fido continued conversing with the newcomers. Chayton tried to stop the juicer from running but eventually, he did of his own accord. Then he fell dead. The juicer must have been at the end of his truncated life and the race finished him off. Such is the life of juicers, unfortunately. Raesha wanted to scavenge the Bio Comp from the juicer, it was a very valuable item. Chayton wanted to bury the warrior, but Fido hadn’t seen a cemetery and wasn’t sure what the town’s rules were for such things. He went to Alden to ask.
Alden said the town’s ways were to burn the remains of the fallen. The undead were a serious problem for them and no one wanted a loved one to return as a horrific monster. During the exchange, Fido noticed Alden working on research. He asked and the elder told him he had promised to research Nxla and the cult Fido joined him. Soon after, Raesha joined them as well.
Fido eventually decided what he planned to do with the newcomers for now. Most of them he would get settled in. He wanted to get to know them, but he wanted to investigate the ship below the ruined dome underneath Comfort.
Kres learned Rowan had brought in some new raptors. She went to help with their training.
Raesha stayed with Alden to continue the research.
GM Note: Both Kres and Raesha were swapped for other characters for the remainder of the session.
Note: I assume Chayton did something with the juicer’s remains by that point, but we forgot to cover that detail. The soldier was probably buried outside town.
Fico, Nick, and Chayton looked for volunteers among the newcomers. They interviewed a couple and settled on an unconventional pair.
The first was a mutated possum with cybernetic enhancements named Hope. Hope was a jittery fellow but something about them made the others think Hope would be good in a fight. And good as a medic if Hope’s boasts about their medical skills were true. Hope kept mentioning where he came from and the group surmised the possum had a connection to the Coalition States. Fido scanned him with the device he had taken from the Coalition Deadboys a few days before. Sure enough, Hope had a chip but the number scanned was not listed individually. The scanner did note the number belonged to an organization called the NGR Mindworks program. No one really knew what that was.
The second was a Septumbran Witchwolf samurai named Kaido. Man, we’re going to have fun exploring that background. Kaido had come to help Comfort but what impressed Fido the most was when the samurai mentioned his extensive code of conduct. That the cyberknight could respect and Kaido was added to the team.
The group went to the ruined dome and searched for a way to descend into the starship below. They eventually found an undiscovered buried porthole. The porthole still had power but the group had trouble getting it to open normally. Eventually, Chayton, Hope, and Kaido had to brute force their way through.
A tube dropped into a rectangular room lined with operational servers. They recognized the form factor of the devices immediately even if the architecture was different and the language written everywhere was indecipherable. The room was covered in dust and there was evidence of damage beyond the wear and tear of time.
On the far side of the room, they found a computer terminal. Fido worked on the terminal for a bit before it finally responded. A light emitter fired up and scanned the dogboy. After the scan, it focused the light into Fido’s eyes. He experienced a jolt and when it cleared, he found he could read the alien writing around him. A speaker on the terminal also fired up but the transmission was garbled. They could only pick out a few words like echo, computer nexus, and damage, but they were able to surmise that someone or something was still “alive” on the ship and knew where to find them. On the terminal, a printing unit came to life and popped out a rough diagram of the ship. It was labelled, “The Trajan.”
Credit: The Trajan, graphics, and maps were created by Ryan Wolfe also known as 0-hr. Ryan has been creating sci fi maps and miniatures for several years now. I absolutely love his products and I’ve backed almost every project he’s crowdsourced since I discovered his work. Check out his product catalog at https://0-hr.com/.
The group spent some time pouring over the diagram and decided they knew the general route to reach the “computer nexus.” They found another porthole in the room and descended.
The tube they passed through dropped them into what they recognized as the rec center from the diagram. Several of the doors were failing to function properly. On one side was a gym. From the equipment, they guessed the crew of the ship must have been beings about eight feet tall. They then found their way into an adjoining game room. Two billiards tables were still in good condition and although the equipment was scattered all over, Hope managed to piece together a complete set. Fido had never seen the game before so Hope taught him the rules and they played while the rest of the group watched them.
All but Nick who was more interested in the salvageable goods he was seeing. Although he didn’t know what a lot of the devices were, he knew a profit when he saw one. He began a mental inventory for a future time when they could retrieve the “artifacts” they were uncovering.
After the game, they remembered they were trying to find someone (or something) and set off for the connecting barracks. This is where they made first contact with the crew of the crashed starship. In the main hallway of the barracks, they found the remains of a single alien. It looked a lot like the classic grey aliens except for its greater height and it wore a full spacesuit. Typically greys didn’t wear clothing as far as they knew.
Hope snuck into one of the bunks and found some pictures of the crew member who had slept there and their family. He tucked those away. He searched a trunk and found some threadbare uniforms and a trip of devices. One was a tube, half-willed with a blue liquid. He found a button to activate the tube and when he did, a pair of needles popped from the bottom. He guessed it was some kind of injection device and pocketed it. The second device looked like a video game controller, but when he turned it on it performed a scan of the room and then displayed a holographic readout of Hope’s body. Unfortunately, the information labels were in the alien language and Hope could not read it. The third device was a small lockbox.
Hope returned to the group and showed the items to Fido. The dogboy guessed Hope was right about the injection unit and asked to see the scanning device. He activated it and got scans of the entire group. Unlike Hope though, he was able to read the scans and wasn’t happy with what he saw.
Nick and Kaido scanned normally but it noted Fido and Chayton as neuro-divergent. Unfortunately, it did not explain what it meant by that. Of more importance, Hope registered multiple neuro-divergencies and an explosive planted in his head!
Before they could delve into that topic further, Chayton reached out and smashed the scanner. Fido confronted him and an argument ensued. The dogboy insisted something was wrong with Chayton and he needed to get some help, but Chayton refused to listen. Things got heated and finally, Chayton shut down all conversation on the topic. He didn’t want to hear any more of it.
Due to the confrontation, the group forgot about the explosive in Hope’s head and continued.
They found a functional lift and went up to the next deck according to the ship’s diagram. They found themselves in an administrative area and more bodies littered the area. The psychic resonance on the ship had been problematic for them but Fido decided they needed some answers. He reached out with his psionics to read one of the alien corpses.
His mind was flooded with a vision of the creature’s final moments. The Trajan was a merchant and shipping vessel that had recently scored a big shipment. They were discussing their next stop when a wave of energy rolled over the vessel. Fido could tell it was a dimensional shift in progress. After the shift, the alien and his coworkers were confused. One of them ran to a data terminal and called the bridge, but no one answered. Electrical systems began to malfunction and the doors to their would not open. A short while later, there was an explosion and they were thrown across the room. Fido felt the sensation of falling, the ship moving out of orbit into the grip of a gravitational pull. The fall lasted for a long time, 15-20 minutes, and then they crashed. Fido’s vision came to an end.
He told the group what he had seen and they pressed on. They made their way into the medical bay of the ship. They began to explore when they were attacked by four mutated slime creatures. The recruits had proven themselves useful and finally, they got to demonstrate their combat prowess.
Chayton launched himself into the slimes and Kaido followed close behind him. The spirit warrior discovered the creatures were not of the supernatural type and his staff could not harm them so he switched to unarmed strikes. Kaido drew his katana and ripped through the second slime, destroying it with a single blow! Hope, Nick, and Fido went after the third and fourth slimes which were much smaller. Those were quickly finished off. Only the first slime remained, the biggest of them all, but the party surrounded it and finished it off.
END OF SESSION
The Zen Game Master 
Leave a comment