Empire of Bones – Cyber Control

Captain Ghurd Nashal had been monitoring the command section station since he realized that intruders had gained access to his ship. He could not figure out how they were hiding themselves, but Nashal could clearly see the violence inflicted on his pet ellicoths. His attention was pulled away for several hours to attend to the destruction of the Nejeor system’s defenses and repairing the damage to the Empire of Bones. When that was finally complete, Nashal attempted to communicate with the intruders.

The Corpse Fleet captain was genuinely interested in talking to the warriors bold enough to attack his miles-long starship from within, and he hoped to get them to reveal their ultimate goal. We wasn’t sure if he would be successful, so he also had his science officer, Lieutenant Renzar, prepare to track the intruders if they answer his communication. He sent a request to parley across all the displays in the command section grav-train station that explained how to adjust comm units to be able to speak with the captain. He was pleased when he finally received a response.

The captain began by asking their names, honestly noting that he would rather know more about such interesting opponents before having them destroyed. One of the intruders introduced himself as Kima, but the others remained silent. No matter, thought the captain. At least they were talking. He nodded to the ghoul Renzar to start the trace.

Nashal mentioned that he would have been willing to allow them to escape with their lives if they simply fled, but they had angered him by killing his favored pets, as grotesque as they were. This was not true, of course, but Nashal wanted to see how they would react to the claim. Kima was nonchalant about destroying the beasts, which confirmed for Nashal that these would make excellent undead subordinates.

The captain asked why they had come, and to his surprise and delight, Kima answered the question. The intruders planned to take the ship and crash it into the Stellar Degenerator to deprive the Corpse Fleet of their prize. An audacious plan, and one that might even work – assuming they could take the bridge and figure out how to actually fly the Empire of Bones.

Renzar nodded to Nashal, and the captain congratulated the intruders on their moxie. He encouraged them to survive what came next before terminating the transmission with a grin. Oh, this was going to be a glorious day, indeed.

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Empire of Bones – Command Section Grav-Train Station

The Crew finished off the last of the four baykoks that Nashal had sent after tracing the call. The undead had managed to wear down the freshly rested Starfinders enough that they needed a few minutes to regroup. They activated the TombRobber virus and entered the corridors that led to the bridge, finding a convenient storage room to wait out the next inevitable patrol. Half an hour later, they reached the double door to the antechamber of the Empire of Bones bridge. Glitch overrode the lock, then stepped back to allow Galakrond to lead the way.

The large room had an additional set of double doors centered in the fore wall opposite the crew’s entrance. Two large computer consoles flanked the fore door. Ten-foot-wide raised platforms with metal railings ran along the port and starboard walls, each with an exit out of the room. Four large display cases made of a clear material stood evenly spaced in the center of the room. Each case contained a different item under a harsh white spotlight: a red-and-gold spear, a humanoid skull and spine, a desiccated severed hand with a gem embedded in the palm, and a spacesuit helmet with swirling red mist within it and blood spattered on the inside of the visor.

Of more immediate concern were the three formerly human undead guarding the apparent trophy room. They carried no weapons, and did not appear to be wearing any armor, but they moved unnaturally quickly, their bodies contorting as they sized up the Starfinders. “Kurobozus,” muttered Glitch. “Undead monks, kind of like solarians,” he added. “Kind of.”

The kurobozus were swift, but their reliance on physical attacks made them all but helpless against the doughty front line of the crew. Kusanagi and Kima had their bells rung, and the blows to the head rendered them unable to communicate for minutes after they undead lay motionless on the floor.

While the afflicted Starfinders recovered from the effects of the monk’s head shots, Glitch examined the items on display, identifying each in turn. He took for himself the Warlord Stone set in the palm of its original owner. This stone held the collected memories, philosophies, and tactics of an ancient alien warlord. He didn’t have the hour it would take to commune with the item, but in the long term, it would prove quite valuable.

Kusanagi took possession of the Eyes of Rhean, a pair of pale sapphire gems from the head of an inevitable. Once Glitch explained their function, the android placed the gems over his own eyes. The Eyes burrowed into Kusanagi’s skull and replaced his own eyes. This gave him improved darkvision and would allow him to use one of the eyes as a spy drone. Galakrond picked up the Spear of Fates, a golden spear with a ruby blade that functioned as both a doshko-like melee weapon and a powerful plasma caster.

Finally, the two-foot-long metallic centipede covered in runes interlaced with the skull and spine of one of Admiral Serovox’s defeated foes. This Runeworm was claimed by Kima, who placed it near his ear. The item animated and entered his body, intertwining with his internal anatomy and releasing an arcane virus that rewrote and improved the lashunta’s DNA. He shuddered as it finished its work, but smiled as he felt the effects of the symbiote.

The fore door led to the bridge, but it was dead-locked. The crew thought they might be able to hack it, but it seemed prudent to clear the port and starboard rooms of enemies, lest they find themselves flanked and outnumbered by superior foes. They approached the portside door and Galakrond opened it up.

Three rows of computer displays took up the center of the room, with additional control panels lining the fore wall. Monitors lined the port, starboard, and aft walls, showing various decks and grav-train corridors of the ship’s interior and the Gate of Twelve Suns, as well as the position, direction, and possible firing arcs of dozens of armada ships in the system. Heavy doors were set into the fore wall – another entrance to the bridge.

Another pair of korobozus flanked the door the crew had opened. A ghoul had taken cover behind the central row of computer displays. Finally, the skeletal remains of a vesk casually turned from his position near the aft wall – Captain Ghurd Nashal. The captain’s torso was occupied by what appeared to be a large purple worm with three grasping pincers on the end swaying out of the skull’s mouth. It retracted long enough for Nashal to say, “Ah, you made it. Welcome!” Then he turned toward the ghoul and said, “Lieutenant Renzar, greet our guests, won’t you?”

The ghoul opened fire with a line of plasma that burned Galakrond. The vesk soldier also took fire from the captain while he fought one of the kurobozus. The other undead monk entered the trophy room to keep the other Starfinders out. It was a tense thirty seconds or so while Glitch chased the ghoul around with corrosive haze and Kusanagi struggled to even hit the kurobozu. Then the tide turned as Kima weakened it enough that a pair of shots from Glitch’s recently acquired pistol to put it down.

About that time, Galakrond finished off his monk foe and advanced on the captain. Kusanagi entered the cyber control room to engage the ghoul, who tried to override his technological side, but failed. Kima moved to assist Galakrond, and the worm inhabiting Nashal managed to strike the solarian. He resisted the paralytic substance oozing from the wound, and the Starfinders managed to make an end of the Corpse Fleet officers in short order. Nashal’s final words were, “You would have made a fine addition to this crew.”

The doors to the bridge were deadlocked from this room, as well, but Kusanagi found a bridge keycard on the captain’s body. The crew readied themselves, then opened the doors to confront the Corpse Fleet admiral.

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Empire of Bones – Bridge

A dais in the center of this large room supported an imposing throne-like chair with a computer console just in reach. Five-foot-deep recesses were located to the port and starboard of the dais, and walls of holoprojectors that stretched down from the ceiling surrounded each. The projectors filled the pits with three-dimensional holograms of the local space, including the Gate of Twelve Suns, the ships of the Corpse Fleet armada, and the Stellar Degenerator – a massive cone-shaped megastructure sitting in a section of nonstandard space beyond the Gate.

Three floor-to-ceiling windows showed the stretch of space in front the Empire of Bones. Rows of chains sat in front of bank of controls adjacent to the windows and most of the port and starboard walls. Curved walls cut off the port and starboard corners of the fore walls; each had a door set in it – emergency evacuation shafts. A pair of kurobozus guarded the emergency exits, a hulking vesk-like giant with a large hammer stood near the dais.

Atop the throne sat the elebrian necrovite in charge of the armada – Admiral Serovox. They grinned as they glanced over their shoulder at the Starfinders. “I swear, this has been the most interesting endeavor in a long time. How in all the worlds did you manage to make it this far?”

“Had a little help from a disgruntled security officer,” said Kima.

“What, Malakar? I know … knew all about her plot. Honestly, I was looking forward to the struggle between her and Captain Nashal. A senior officer does need to encourage ambition in subordinates, after all. She was making real progress, too. Ironically, I was going to offer her command of her own ship at the completion of this mission. But I suppose you put an end to all that. What help could she give post-mortem?”

“Couple of handy viruses,” said Twitch. “Made us invisible to your automated security and let us create fake security alerts.”

Serovox chuckled, genuinely impressed. “That is resourceful. Well done. I didn’t believe Nashal when he said you’d make for good recruits, but it appears he may have been correct after all.”

“Do you always talk so much?” said Galakrond.

The necrovite nodded, unabashed. “In the end, the brief abnormality of your lives will end, and I’ll see to it that such fine specimens as yourselves are converted into potent agents of the Corpse Fleet. Under my command, of course. I find it useful to have a quick word with the fleeting flicker of life a body hasn’t released yet in order to determine what form of undeath will best suit it in the eons that follow its last breath.”

“We can’t let you have the Stellar Degenerator,” said Kima.

“Why ever not?” asked the Corpse Fleet admiral. “Life is the source of all foibles, all weaknesses, and ultimately all conflict. Only the whispered perfection of undeath can be allowed to exist … obviously.”

“We disagree, and we will defeat you,” said the solarian.

Serovox shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose here. Even if you manage to defeat us, the Corpse Fleet has more ships. More armadas. And all the time in the universe. As long as the Stellar Degenerator exists, the Corpse Fleet will seek to control it. Sooner or later, we will succeed. And then, everything dies once and for all.” They leaned back comfortably in their seat. “I suppose you’ve come to stop me, then. Somehow.”

“That’s the idea,” said Galakrond, Spear of Fates gripped tightly and eyes straying to the giant bodyguard.

Serovox glanced at the weapon and tutted. “I see you’ve taken some of my collection for yourselves. Cheeky, but it hardly matters.”

“Enough!” roared the vesk Starfinder, lurching forward to engage the brute. For its part, the gatecrasher was happy to oblige, knocking Galakrond to the floor with his massive hammer. Kima moved to assist, while Kusanagi engaged the nearer of the two kurobozus, and Glitch started casting spells.

With a knowing smile, Serovox cast a spell of their own, disappearing from view. The technomancer nodded with respect, having recently added a similar spell to his repertoire. He produced the spell ampoule of see invisibility taken from one of the kurobozus in the trophy room and activated the magic within. The admiral had not moved from the throne.

Kusanagi played cat and mouse with his foe until Serovox cast a wall of force to trap the two together. Movement hampered, the android was forced to adapt. Kima and Galakrond finished off the larger undead about the time that the other kurobozu crossed the bridge to attack the solarian. It did not long survive the pair.

Once Serovox realized that Glitch could still see them, they flew to the far after corner of the bridge, putting the throne dais between them. The technomancer grinned, getting the admiral back in line of sight and casting a wall of fire in a snaking pattern that went through the necrovite. Serovox burned brightly and was no longer grinning as they were forced to fly through several layers of the flaming wall to escape the heat. It was then that Glitch noticed the admiral was regenerating!

“Can we smash through that magic wall?” Galakrond asked Glitch. At the ysoki’s nod, the vesk set to work with the Spear of Fates, making incremental progress. Kima joined him in the effort while Serovox chased Glitch around, scorching him with explosive blasts that seemed to be never-ending. After several seconds of progress, the Corpse Fleet admiral took a break from blowing up Glitch to cast another wall of force, double-layering it around the outside of Kusanagi’s cage. The operative yelled out Serovox’s position, since the necrovite had moved within his blindsense.

Glitch remembered a spell gem of see invisibility that the crew had recovered from the storage bay of the Sunrise Maiden. He used it to allow Kima to find and target Serovox as well. The solarian flew off the floor to strike and found the well-armored admiral a much tougher target than he’d originally supposed. After he did successfully strike Serovox, the necrovite decided that he was a significant threat and dispelled his enhanced sight.

After that, Galakrond started tracking Serovox’s movement to the best of his ability and called out locations for Kima to strike. Glitch got in on the game, since he could see the necrovite precisely, and the fight turned from a rout to a victory shortly thereafter. The Starfinders hit the deck exhausted after almost two full minutes of exertion. But they knew they couldn’t rest much longer.

Glitch found a command key on the throne and in short order had granted the Starfinders authorization to crew the Empire of Bones. Once they had prepared, they pointed the ultranaught at the interdimensional portal and prepared to smash it into the Stellar Degenerator. A pair of Omenbringers designated Dusk Blade and Orphanmaker were in the space between them and their target, and these two ships moved to intercept when they realized that their leadership was no longer helming the Empire of Bones.

Even in the hands of mortal amateurs unused to its controls and specific workings, the Corpse Fleet vessels were no match for their own capital ship, and soon enough it was time for the Starfinders to rush toward the Sunrise Maiden and try to make good their own escape. It was a near thing.

When the Empire of Bones collides with the much larger Stellar Degenerator, for a split second, it appeared that nothing would happen. Then the ultranaught deformed in shape, with rays of black and red energy shooting out of it. The Stellar Degenerator cracked at the point of impact, and then exploded in a prismatic fireball of incandescent plasma. The shock wave of the explosion warped the space around the portal, and then the demiplane tore itself apart, destroying its contents. Those Corpse Fleet ships close to the portal were ripped to pieces as ripples in reality emanated from the catastrophe. Those ships from the armada that survived fled into the Drift over the next few minutes. The stars that had formed the Gate of Twelve Suns started to fall out of sync with one another as the Sunrise Maiden entered the Drift.

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Absalom Station

Days later, the crew returned to the Prime Material plane in Pact Space and returned to the Lorespire Complex to debrief with Starfinder leadership. Chiskisk, their original contact, was particularly interested in hearing the tales of their exploits, and recommended that they write up accounts of their adventures or take their story to the vid-lecture circuit. For their efforts, they were each awarded the rank of Venture-Captain, and each began to take a more active role in guiding the Starfinder Society into the future.

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Empire of Bones

Empire of Bones – Hangar Country

Across the hall, the crew bypassed the security lock to access another “secure site.” The room was dark, and only a few lit buttons and displays pierced the blackness, illuminating no more than the rough shape of the area. Panels of computer screens, bundled data cables, and digital readout displays lined the walls, with more than a dozen chairs arrayed in front of them. The constant chatter of beeps and clicks accompanied the data streaming across every readout.

In each of the chairs sat a cybernetic zombie, wired into the control panels in a similar way as those in the flight control room. Unlike those undead, these zombies were active – constantly tapping on their displays. They did not react to the intrusion, and so the Starfinders examined the displays and tried to figure out a way to hack the data stream. The connection was obviously some manner of techno-magical link, but after several minutes, even Glitch gave up trying to figure out how it worked. A search of the room turned up nothing more of note, and so they left the room.

The next “secure site” turned out to be a brig. It was more brightly than most of the ship, with crisp white light flooding down from the entire ceiling. A series of four barred cells ran the length of the aft wall, each with a barred door and a keypad lock. A metal cabinet hung on the fore wall, behind a small metal desk with a computer terminal and a metal chair built into it.

As the crew spread out to search the room, they came under attack as four marooned ones – formerly dwarves by the look of them – emerged from hidden floor panels. The undead were swiftly dispatched with minimal injuries, and the Starfinders resumed their search. They found another emergency key in the pocket of one of the marooned ones, as well as some gear and valuables in the cabinet. Kima claimed a standard photon crystal that had been placed in a bag with a bunch of plasma sapphires. He grinned at the upgrade.

The crew briefly debated searching the remaining chambers near the hangar bay before Galakrond took it upon himself to decide for the group by opening the nearest door. The floor of the room beyond was covered in gravel, which stretched from wall to wall and was heaped in small hills and shallow hollows. The walls were scored and covered in small dents, and large sections are slightly discolored in what appeared to be spray patterns, but they seem structurally sound. The area was thick with dust, and to the left of the entrance was a metal cabinet with a large handle. The vesk stepped inside to inspect the cabinet, and a pair of large scaled, worm-like creatures immediately exploded from the gravel!

“Surnochs!” warned Glitch. “Killer jaws, and they also spit acid!” No sooner had he uttered his warning than one of the creatures did just that, spattering the ysoki with caustic spittle. Kusanagi entered the room and crawled up into the corner of the ceiling on the port side, hoping to stay out of the surnochs’ reach. Working together, the crew brought the creatures down with only superficial injuries to show for it.

Galakrond found a paragon semiauto pistol with merciful and venomous fusions in the cabinet. Glitch inspected the collars on the surnochs, which seemed to have been modified to serve as environmental protection. It must be how the Eoxians kept their pets alive in a ship with no atmosphere. He was pretty sure that he could modify the collars into force fields given enough time to tinker. Kima bagged the collars and the crew made their way to the last of the nearby rooms.

The ceiling, walls, and floor of the chamber were covered in heavy armored plates that showed scratches and signs of scoring. Many of the plates seemed newer and appeared to have been bolted directly over damaged plates without removing the old coverings. Twisted, wrecked pieces of junk were piled up in the corners and where the walls met the floor. Several pipes ran through the room near the ceiling, with numerous valves along their lengths. The doors had barely opened before some of the junk shifted and a pair of scavenger slimes riddled with weapons reared up to attack!

The LFD screamers that had fused into the oozes’ forms did the most harm, blasting most of the crew with painful sonic blasts. Despite that, the Starfinders persevered and destroyed the slimes. Unfortunately, the weapons they’d absorbed were the only items of value in the room, and the crew was already better-armed.

The Starfinders returned to the security post, attached the three emergency keys and placed the former Commander Malakar’s hand on the biometric scanner. Even so, it took Glitch a few tries to hack into the system. Once he did, he pulled up all of the information he could find about the Eoxian battle cruiser. The Empire of Bones was a unique ultranought, a massive warship larger than battleships, carriers, and even dreadnoughts. It was one of the flagships of the Corpse Fleet and led its own armada of vessels. The ysoki pulled up the specifications for the ships arms and armaments, and Kusanagi whistled appreciatively.

Though crews throughout the ship were required for the vessel to function, all orders came from the command and control decks, which they were able to find on a map the technomancer pulled up. It was clear that though it might be possible to remotely hack some stations to control a single thruster or one sensor array, operating the entire ship required taking control of the bridge and cybercontrol in the command section.

Additional information from the security terminal indicated that the command link from cybercontrol governed both the sensors and the engineering crews. A different, related system on the bridge governed the gunnery and navigational crews. Controlling both the command link and the bridge systems allowed an individual to captain the ship.

Once they knew where they had to go, they searched for a way to get there. On a ship the size of the Empire of Bones, there were hundreds of ways to get from one section of the ship to another. However, the fastest and safest route from the primary launch and recovery decks – where they were – to the command and control decks was travel via grav-train. There were grav-train stations near both hangar country and the command section.

Before they set out, they decided to try to get more information on the beings in command of the ship. Admiral Serovox – a nonbinary necrovite – commanded the entire armada for which the Empire of Bones was the flagship, and while they had the power to issue commands to any crew on board, they apparently rarely got involved in the ship’s day-to-day operations. According to the reports they found, this duty fell to Captain Ghurd Nashal – captain of the ship and Commander Malakar’s direct superior. In addition, Nashal’s record included a footnote mentioning something called Project Tombstone that appeared to have been added by Malakar and only existed on her security terminal.

Nothing about Project Tombstone could be found in the main security logs, but when they checked Malakar’s personal folders, they found more information. A quick glance through the files revealed that the commander was working toward some kind of mutiny, and there were extensive notes on how a minor threat to the Empire of Bones could potentially be used to eliminate, or at least embarrass, “inappropriate members of the command staff.”

Also in the Project Tombstone files were notes on a pair of computer viruses Command Malakar had introduced to the security computers across the entire Empire of Bones. One virus, named Wraith 2.0, prevented the security cameras and security robots on the ship from seeing or recording any creature that was entered into the virus’s memory. Malakar planned to use this to aid in her escape from the vessel in case her plans went south. Glitch casually added the crew’s images into Wraith 2.0’s memory. If Malakar’s virus worked, it would cause the ship’s security to ignore them.

The other virus was named TombRobber, and it was capable of creating false security alerts anywhere on the ship. Additionally, it could include in these alerts false security footage of anything in Wraith 2.0’s memory. Glitch also took control of TombRobber, which would allow him to activate it from anywhere on the Empire of Bones using his datapad. Each use of TombRobber would require a different emergency security key, giving the crew only three chances to use it to their advantage.

Satisfied that they’d done all they could to prepare, the crew headed deeper into the Empire of Bones to steal a ride.

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Empire of Bones – Grav-Train Station

The main transport system to move from one deck to another in the Empire of Bones involved grav-trains, small multiple-car trams that ran throughout the ship on tracks that produced their own gravity. Massive shafts with grav-trains on every wall traversed the central spine of the ship, while smaller routes branched off from the major corridors, sometimes even running along the ceilings of large foot-traffic thoroughfares. Grav-trains could change routes at switching points every few hundred feet on most tracks, and grav-train stations were scattered periodically through the ship. The grav-trains usually operated on autopilot along regular preset routes, but an override would allow security personnel to take command of a grav-train and determine its route and speed when necessary. This was exactly what the Starfinders intended to do.

At the fore end of this massive chamber, two shallow channels ran from port to starboard, disappearing at both ends into open tunnels. Glowing tracks ran along the channels, and a four-car tram sat on the aft set of tracks. A hefty cargo crane could be seen on the fore side of the tracks near the port tunnels, with a pile of crates not far from it.

Low walls demarcated a twenty-five-foot-square area in the middle of the room, and five computerized workstations lined the interior of the aft wall. A large column descended from the ceiling above the square, reaching to within ten feet of the floor; it’s covered in displays showing arrival and departure times along various routes within the ship.

Three rows of hard benches lined an area to the starboard of the walled-off area. Two large cargo doors, each thirty feet wide and just as tall, occupied the port and starboard walls. A large metal trapdoor sat in the floor between the walled area and the portside cargo door. An observation post fifty feet from the floor and accessed by a metal ladder was in the port aft corner of the room. The crew entered the room from the middle of three sets of twenty-foot-wide bulkhead doors that were evenly spaced along the aft wall.

Unfortunately, the station was occupied by undead forces. A pair of skeletal baykoks – one in the observation post and another lounging on the benches – were supported by four bone trooper commandos in the station control area. The undead all watched the doors as the crew entered, and upon seeing that they were living beings made ready to attack.

p=.

The bone troopers opened fire on the crew, but failed to hit the well-armored front line. In response, Galakrond advanced and emptied his x-gen gun at the commandos. Glitch cursed, unwilling to risk damaging the station controls with an explosive spell that would catch all of the gathered bone troopers. He settled for magic missiles at the baykok protected by heavy cover atop the watchtower. Kima activated his solarian powers and made ready to support the vesk.

The baykok on the bench flew forward and uttered a dread howl, an otherworldly keening that left the crew shaken. Galakrond engaged his haste circuit and jetpack to engage the flier with his blade, and Kusanagi supported him with sniper fire. Kima surged forward to attack the bone troopers, and Glitch continued plinking the baykok in the tower.

The flying baykok was the first to fall, and the bone troopers scattered shortly thereafter, forcing Kima and Galakrond to give chase. Kusanagi advanced up the wall to eliminate the tower guard’s cover advantage, but that left him open to counterattack. One of the bullets was infused with negative energy and rendered the android paralyzed and hanging from the wall. Glitch rushed forward to the station controls and released the clamps holding the grav-train in place. He glanced up at the rest of the crew, thinking they could hop aboard and flee the scene, but the others were too deep into the heat of battle.

With Kusanagi indisposed, Kima came under fire from the tower, and turned to Galakrond. “You take care of the rest,” he asked, indicating the remaining two bone troopers. The vesk grunted agreement, and the solarian took flight, rushing the tower and bringing his weapon to bear on the sniper. After cleanup and a quick job looting the fallen, the crew boarded the train and set it in motion.

They’d been traveling long enough to regain their composure from the last encounter when a corpsefolk marine and two baykoks in a security tram spotted them. A chase ensued, in which Kusanagi took the helm and piloted the train through a number of different sections of the ship to shake the pursuers. There were miles of transit corridors dedicated to the grav-trains use, with numerous corridors, intersections, junctions, and switchbacks. The undead quickly fell behind and the Starfinders returned to the main corridor that led them to the command section.

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Empire of Bones – Command Section Station

As the grav-train came to a halt, the crew was alarmed by a familiar rumbling roar sound. Glancing aft, they saw three massive forms hulking between them and the doors of the command sections of the ship. They recognized the beasts as a threat they had struggled against back on Eox – and then it had only been one! Apparently, ellicoths were a popular guard beast for the undead.

The beasts appeared to be starving, and they rushed forward with saliva splashing to the deck as they advanced. The crew noticed large collars around the ellicoths’ necks, likely an environmental protection gadget similar to what they’d seen on the surnochs below. Glitch was first struck, but escaped major harm in the beast’s desire to absorb his life force. The technomancer resisted the worst of the essence drain and retreated to the far side of the train and lobbed an explosive burst that caught two of the three ellicoths.

Kusanagi sniped at the beasts from inside the train while Kima and Galakrond advanced to engage the massive creatures in melee, suffering brutal gore attacks for their trouble. Glitch rushed to the port side and lined up an arcing surge that killed the most heavily wounded ellicoth and injured the other two. Kima finished off the second a moment later, leaving the third for Kusanagi and Galakrond.

As the final heavy body fell, the crew decided they needed to risk a longer rest to recover from the exertions of the day before they came face-to-face with the Corpse Fleet leaders. Glitch activated the TombRobber to distract the security forces and send them on a goose chase while the Starfinders hid and caught some sleep. They could only hope that the Nejeor system’s defenses would continue to repel the undead armada long enough.

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Empire of Bones

Nejeor – Gate 1

Dozens of Corpse Fleet warships had invaded Nejeor space, and they were accompanied by a flagship that had to be at least six miles long, larger than any starship the crew had ever seen! They were heavily outgunned, however, the nearby computers also indicated the activation of a number of automated defenses placed all around the Nejeor system. These seemed to be keeping the Corpse Fleet at bay for the time being, and the undead might even be distracted enough by the barrage that the Starfinders were not completely doomed.

While it would have been possible to stealthily evade the fray long enough to enter the Drift and escape, that would leave the Stellar Degenerator in the hands of the Corpse Fleet. The Starfinders knew that the undead would have no compunctions against using the superweapon on the Pact Worlds’ sun and other systems beyond. The crew had not forgotten their promise to the artificial intelligence Osteth to destroy the Stellar Degenerator.

While studying the displays, they recognized an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. By infiltrating and seizing control of the Corpse Fleet flagship, they could steer it into the portal to collide with the Stellar Degenerator and destroy both.

An alarm interrupted deliberations and the security monitors showed a group of eight corpsefolk marines taking position in the entryway of the control center building. The crew exchanged weary glances, then made their way to the hall to engage the Corpse Fleet invaders. The undead opened fire as soon as Galakrond opened the door, but the vesk’s pilfered new armor protected him from the worst of it and he soldiered forward. A flash grenade stole blinded Galakrond, rendering him mostly harmless for crucial moments.

Kima advanced to support the vesk and engaged with the nearest marines, while Kusanagi struck from the safety of the hall and Glitch peppered the undead with destructive magic. The solarian found himself surrounded, and leaned into being the focal point, summoning a black hole to pull all of the Corpse Fleet soldiers next to him. This allowed Glitch to evoke a devastating wall of fire that burned every single one of the undead, and weakened them enough that the rest was mere cleanup.

While the Starfinders recovered from the encounter and took any useful items from the bodies of the fallen soldiers, it occurred to them that the undead must have arrived on the controller moon with a ship. Once they’d rested, they set out to search the jungle for the vessel, finding it about half an hour later. It was a Blackwind Sepulcher model, far less impressive than their own ship, but it did give them an idea.

They boarded the Corpse Fleet vessel and found a single cybernetic zombie wired into the controls. The animate did not so much as react to the Starfinders’ intrusion. Letting it be, Glitch hacked the console to unlock pilot controls and Kusanagi flew the ship over to where the Sunrise Maiden was docked. Then the crew set to work, swiftly removing pieces of the undead starship and hastily bolting them to the outside of their own. They also slopped on black and red paint on the exterior, and turned off life support, relying on their armor’s environmental protections. Their camouflage completed, they lifted off from the controller moon.

<<< >>>

The surrounding space was constantly illuminated by flaring beams of energy that lashed out from the system’s controller moons, and gouts of incandescent flame pulled from the suns by gravitational pulses. The ancient weapons were wildly inaccurate and fired haphazardly, often fading out before reaching their targets or detonating in apparently empty space, but even so, the Corpse Fleet armada was beginning to show signs of extensive damage. The largest of the Corpse Fleet vessels was enormous—bigger than many space stations. It was surrounded by explosions and debris, both from its own hull and from the escort ships that had been destroyed protecting it, forming a cloud that blocked most efforts to get a clear image of its exact shape. However, blasts from the massive ship’s powerful weapons clearly marked it as the most effective member of the armada.

The crew risked a quick scan to see what they could learn before attempting to approach the massive Corpse Fleet ship. This massive vessel was called the Empire of Bones, and it was bigger than even a colossal starship. It was practically bristling with capital weapons, and like most Corpse Fleet starships, it didn’t contain any atmosphere.

The many explosions of the ongoing battle were partially clouding the Empire of Bones’ sensors, and many of its weapons were trained on the ancient kishalee defenses. It might be possible to slip in closer to the vessel and board it without those on board noticing. The Starfinders figured that they could land the Sunrise Maiden on the Empire of Bones’ hull and it would remain undetected for an extended period of time. Hopefully, long enough for them to seize control and aim it at the Stellar Degenerator.

The only other ships currently in the Starfinders’ path were four Crypt Wardens spaced roughly evenly between the them and the Empire of Bones. The crew exchanged glances, then began the approach.

As they drew near the first Crypt Warden, they received a challenge communication from it. They had anticipated this complication, and enacted their plan to get through. Galakrond was at the helm, piloting the ship, and he tried to emulate the flight pattern of the armada’s ships. Kima was on weapons, and he fired at the kishaleen defenses, making it appear as though they were trying to protect the nearby Corpse Fleet vessels. Glitch was in engineering as usual, and he created a fake malfunction in the communication system. After all these precautions, Kusanagi transmitted a garbled response that the crew hoped would pass as a legitimate Corpse Fleet identification.

The first Crypt Warden continued on its way, and so the crew continued forward. Twice more they met with success, and flew on past the Corpse Fleet ships. The final undead vessel was particularly suspicious, and initiated a scan of the Starfinders’ starship. Glitch quickly set to work dampening the crew’s vital signs, to prevent the scan from picking up any signs of life one what they were pretending was a vessel piloted by the undead. The ruse succeeded, and they sighed with relief as the final Crypt Warden flew away.

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Empire of Bones – Hangar Country

They mag-locked the sunrise maiden near an open hangar bay and spacewalked to a nearby airlock and entered the Empire of Bones. Kusanagi offered to scout and activated his cloaking field before advancing into the hangar bay.

During his swift recon, he noted that dull red lights illuminated the massive chamber. A heavy crane arm dangled from tracks on the ceiling, and empty racks for small fighter ships lined the fore and aft walls. A nearly invisible force field covered the gaping hole in the starboard end of the room, while two large doors exited to the port. In addition, there was a large window to the port looking into an enclosed room. He paused briefly to get a look inside the room past the window.

The long, narrow chamber was crowded with controls, monitors, and readouts that covered the walls and even the ceiling. Colored lights blinked and flashed adjacent to numerous switches and keypads. Doors exited to the fore and aft, and two cybernetic zombies were physically wired into the control panels. He assumed the controls inside operated the crane and other hangar mechanisms, then continued his circuit.

The floor held a dozen iris hatches, each fifteen feet in diameter. Most of the hatches were closed, but one toward the fore end of the bay was open. This hatch contained a threnody-class assault aircraft, and a corpsefolk marine appeared to be performing some sort of maintenance inside the closed cockpit. The android returned to the airlock to report his findings.

The crew thought to circle around the backside of the aircraft, hoping the undead would have a harder time seeing them, but they failed to cross to that point before they were spotted. The engines whirred and the assault fighter engaged the Starfinders. Galakrond and Kima advanced on the ship to try disabling it to get to the undead pilot.

Meanwhile, Kusanagi and Glitch sprinted across to the aft door of the control room, finding it locked. Once they bypassed this, they entered the room and began hacking the controls. The pair were blasted by a death ray that filled the entire room, and they swiftly exited, rejoining the fight against the pilot after the Threnody was brought down.

They determined that the trap had not reset, but they worked quickly all the same collecting as much information as they could from the system’s computers. The consoles were designed to track the fighters stored in the hangar bay, and they didn’t have access to local security or provide maps of the interior of the Empire of Bones. They noted that a message had been logged regarding their intrusion into the hangar bay, but as of yet, there was no ship-wide alert to your presence. They also found and downloaded a local map of hangar country to their own datapads, but much of the map showed no information beyond describing particular areas as “secure sites.”

The section security post was most likely to be one of the secure sites listed on the map. The other secure sites were likely areas with valuable or fragile equipment or personnel but weren’t directly necessary for the zombies to perform their fighter-monitoring duties. Not having a full map of the Empire of Bones on minor computer systems was a security precaution. This arrangement was fairly common in strict military groups and paranoid mercenary organizations. Since the rank-and-file crew members don’t need the full details of every section of the ship, such information was available only on a need-to-know basis. Any senior officer or security officer at a security post was likely to have access to more complete ship records.

In summary, if the crew was going to take control of the Empire of Bones, they knew that they had to find information about the layout of the ship and how to get to its bridge. Secure sites seemed like a great starting point to gain more intel about the vessel’s security and plotting a path forward.

They made their way down the portside hall until they came to the nearest door of one of the “secure sites.” Kusanagi bypassed the control panel to unlock the door and Galakrond stepped inside. A metal podium with numerous controls on it stood in the center of the room. Padded, vertical beds with numerous straps and restraints filled the space, most with numerous stains and small tears in their padding. Each bed sat beneath a bright spotlight from the ceiling, which illuminated the room brightly. Four large vents were visible in the ceiling, and an undead drow stood in the middle, gazing calmly at the intruders.

“Well, come on, then,” he said without intonation. The vesk was only too happy to oblige, and a moment later the door closed and locked once more, leaving Galakrond separated from his companions.

But only for a moment, as Kusanagi once more overrode the lock on the door and it reopened.

“Shit,” muttered the nihili. Moments later, the undead was no more.

When they searched the room, they found something within a compartment within the central podium. It was the same size and appearance as a humanoid finger bone. This small key had a micro plug that can be inserted into any of the computers onboard the Empire of Bones, datajack augmentations, or handheld computers such as datapads. When plugged in, a key attempted a handshake protocol with the device, looking for the receiving program that trial and error determined existed only in the Empire of Bones’ security terminals. When it connected, the key transmitted encoded information to that receiving program, helping the user gain access to sensitive information on the terminal.

Glitch theorized that with more of these security keys, their chances of overcoming the system’s defenses would only increase. He urged the others into seeking them out, starting in the other “secure sites” of hangar country. Moments later, the crew heard something advancing from the hall, shortly before a foursome of security robots appeared outside the chamber door. The robots were no match for the Starfinders, but they did suggest that they couldn’t simply sit around in one place for too long.

They continued to the next “secure site,” a short distance down the hall. The room had only a single door in the aft wall. A small dais in the center of the room was raised up a few feet, and pillars lined the walls. Each pillar supported a display, all of which showed collections of video streams of hallways, hangar bays, rooms, and other locations within this section of the Empire of Bones. They had found the security post, and leaning casually against the fore wall opposite the door, they saw the security officer.

“So. You imagine you can take the ship, is that it?” she rasped.

“Something like that,” said Galakrond. “Who are you?”

“Malakar. Remember it. You will all make excellent subordinates. After you’re dead, of course.”

She raised a gun, but Kusanagi was faster, dashing into the room as a pair of grenades hidden by the door went off. The crew was staggered by the unexpected explosions, but they recovered swiftly and pressed the fight. Galakrond struck next, and Malakar backpedaled, shooting him with a lightning blast.

“I noticed you’re not particularly well-protected against electricity,” she said, tapping a nearby screen that showed the vesk getting fried by a robot.

Kima moved toward a flank and brought his solarian blade to bear. Malakar nodded in respect and said, “You might make a good lieutenant once I’m in charge.”

“Really? A lieutenant?” said the lashunta.

“Sure,” she said. “If you talk a little less.”

“You really don’t know me, then,” said the solarian with a grin.

Glitch thought to end the fight with another wall of fire, drawn into a circle so tight that it seemed to be a column of flame centered on Malakar. Unfortunately, her spell resistance caused the heat to wash over her harmlessly. The ysoki cursed, but he needn’t have worried. The undead security officer, for all her grand proclamations, did not last the span of two more heartbeats.

They found another emergency security key on Malakar’s corpse, but even with the two keys and the former security officer’s biometric hand scan, Glitch insisted they were going to need all the help they could get bypassing ship’s security. He advised the crew to seek out any remaining security keys in the immediate area before he attempted hacking the security console. The others agreed.

<<< >>>

Empire of Bones

Nejeor – Gate 1

The crew crossed the hallway to the doors of the chamber where Osteth had said the last of the cultists in the facility still lurked. They entered to find an ancient workshop containing a cluster of workstations, crates filled with castoffs of kishalee technology, and piles of tools, most alien but a few similar to designs used by Pact Worlds engineers. A pair of unusual robots lay lifelessly on the main worktable near the center of the room, but two appeared to be functional. Additionally, the room was occupied by a ysoki in a yellow jumpsuit and what appeared to be her drone.

“Who the hell are you?!” she shrieked, whacking the drone on the head before tapping a few keys on her arm rig. The robots spun around, their reticules going from blue to red.

“We can talk this out,” said Kima, raising his hands, palms forward. In response the ysoki shot him.

The crew advanced on the woman and her robot backup, Galakrond leaping atop the table to engage her and the drone. The solarian backed him up, while Kusanagi and Glitch attacked the modified maintenance robots. While she scurried away, defending herself from the vesk’s sword, her constant prattle turned grim and defeatist. “Ya really done it now, Xix. Didn’t think the ol’ void would come callin’ so soon,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

“Should have surrendered,” said Galakrond, not letting up.

Moments later, the robots and drone lay in pieces and the ysoki’s lifeblood stained the workshop floor. The crew looted the body and the room, then returned to central operations where Osteth awaited them.

“My new friends, with much time over the past few days in my confinement to think, I have come to a difficult conclusion. The Stellar Degenerator must be destroyed. Even if this Cult of the Devourer were defeated this day, there is no guarantee the location of the Gate of Twelve Suns will stay hidden. The sivv superweapon cannot be trusted with any people, no matter how peaceful and well intentioned they might be.”

She grew somber for a moment. “Though the events happened before I was born, I heard tales of when the kishalee used the Degenerator to ‘pacify’ a terrible enemy that threatened us with obliteration, and the results convinced my people to hide the weapon away.”

Osteth’s image disappeared, and the entire room was filled with a holographic display of an unknown solar system. Her voice continued. “Some were killed instantly, caught in the energy transference beam when the Stellar Degenerator turned their sun into a black dwarf.”

The hologram showed a ray of light streaking in from outside of the system and hitting the sun. This tether pulsed with energy, tearing apart starships and even moons in its general vicinity. “Those were the lucky ones. Within a week, temperatures across the system dropped to below freezing, and with no sun to sustain it, plant life began to die shortly thereafter.”

The sun at the center of system shrank and grew dark. Digital displays appeared near each of the system’s ten planets, showing the decrease in temperature and light levels. “Hundreds of millions eventually starved to death or were killed in skirmishes over food.” Another numerical display showed a rising death count. “The mass of the black dwarf wasn’t enough to keep its planets in orbit, and eventually, they started to drift outward, spinning erratically into the inky depths.” In the hologram, the orbits of the system’s frozen planets wobble, and the farthest world disappears off the map. “A terrible way for a people to go extinct.”

The lights in the chamber returned to normal as Osteth reappeared on her dais. “So you can see why the Stellar Degenerator must be destroyed. But to do so, we must first open the gate.”

Osteth reiterated that the remainder of the Devourer cultists must be stopped, but she also said that the crew should retrieve the control board those cultists were seeking. With the missing piece of equipment, Osteth could activate the Gate of Twelve Suns and release the Stellar Degenerator so that it could be destroyed once and for all.

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Nejeor – Gate 2

Several hours later, the Sunrise Maiden entered orbit around the second gate planetoid. Scans showed that it had no atmosphere and showed no signs of life. There were no obvious kishalee-made buildings like those on Gate 1’s controller moon, but there was a metal hatch – large enough for their starship to fly through – in the planet’s surface near the equator, similar to where the control center on Gate 1’s controller moon was located. Further scans revealed an underground complex (with a breathable atmosphere and full gravity) located deep within the planet.

The hatch began to open as soon as Kusanagi flew their vessel toward it, revealing a tunnel illuminated by strips of lights. It takes a couple of hours to traverse the tunnel to a spot where it branched off into three sets of hangar bay doors. A red light glowed above the center door, while green lights shined above the other two. As the android brought the Sunrise Maiden near leftmost bay doors, they opened to reveal an empty hangar.

A few particles of dust swirled within the cavernous hangar bay. Its walls were made of a smooth, unknown metal without a trace of rivets or seams. Opposite the ship doors they could see a smaller pair of convex doors. The large hangar bay doors remained open until the Sunrise Maiden settled onto the floor. At that point, the bay repressurized and filled with a breathable atmosphere, which took approximately fifteen minutes.

The crew made ready and exited their ship. Approaching the convex doors at the far end of a hangar bay cause them to open automatically, revealing a thirty-foot-diameter elevator car. Each of these hover lifts had simple controls on the inside: two blue lighted buttons aligned vertically. Pressing the lower button caused the lift to glide downward about 200 feet. After about 90 seconds, the lift arrived at the bottom of the shaft, and the doors opened.

Smooth, gray walls and bright lighting accentuated the lack of corners in the entryway with a thirty-foot-high ceiling. The chamber opened onto a larger area just opposite a set of convex elevator doors. The chamber was carved into the solid rock of the planet and reinforced with sheets of a nearly indestructible kishalee alloy. It gave the impression that the facility had been built only a few decades ago instead of thousands of years. The only tipoff to the facility’s age was the stale taste of the air.

Of more immediate concern, however, were the Desperate Hunger cultists that lobbed grenades into the lift as soon as the doors opened. An oblivion shade spawn retreated away and to the north, and a running battle ensued. The cultist soldiers were felled swiftly, but they were reinforced by elites with disruption grenades and pistols.

Where the elites stood guard, the ceiling arched up to about fifty feet, and at its apex hung a glowing crystalline pyramid that shed bright light on the room below. An array of upended tables and sturdy crates formed a makeshift barricade, blocking off much of the northern portion of the area, including a pair of shiny convex doors. Wide passages led east and west, and a wide set of stairs led down to the south. A declining ramp was separated from the stairs by a low metal partition.

When the first elite cultist fell, it rasped, “Warn … Deldreg….” The other fled south down the ramp and out of sight. Kima held up a hand before evoking solarian magic to infuse the crew with celerity before giving chase. At the bottom of the ramp, he came to a wide junction. Hallways led off to the east and west, while a large gray double door led to the south. Sections of the floor had long gouges in them.

Encased within a suit of battered powered armor, a scarred and gnarled dwarf stood in the center of the junction. He ground his teeth on a frayed cigar, and bits of tobacco rolled down his unkempt beard. An advanced X-gen gun was mounted on his shoulder, ready to unload a spray of death.

“You ready to dance?” The dwarf’s voice grumbled, a hint of dark humor dripping from the question. “Ain’t seen nothing but hunks of metal, weird plants, and people made of light since we came to this system, and Ol’ Deldreg’s been just aching for a dance.”

The dwarf never had a chance to take even a single step as Glitch’s spell-infused grenade injected nanobots into him that scrambled his mind. He could only babble incoherently as Kusanagi and Galakrond joined the fray to take him down.

After a brief rest to catch their breath, the crew turned toward the eastern hall. The first door to the north had the same triangular touch pad as other doors, but it didn’t open when the pad was touched. It blinked red instead. Glitch removed the touch pad’s cover and rewired it to get the door to open. The circular chamber within had stark white walls that were occasionally broken up by rectangular outlines near the floor and a few feet off the ground. The overhead lighting buzzed incessantly, and no sooner had the door opened than a gaunt undead lunged for Galakrond’s throat.

The marooned one’s grip was overpowering and all the vesk could do was struggle to escape from the cruel undead hands for the first few crucial moments of the fight. Fortunately, the rest of the crew was able to batter and blast the undead enough to distract it, and moments after Galakrond managed to free himself, the wretched creature lay dead on the floor. The crew took a moment to let the soldier recover, and he downed a potent healing potion to soothe the pain in his throat.

The next door in the hall was not locked. Looking in on the room from the hallway, the crew could see that it was dark except for a small red light blinking on a standby control panel on the far wall. As soon as they crossed the threshold of the doorway, a motion sensor in the ceiling activated the lights. Two clear surfaces covered in alien writing hung on the walls near the door, and a computer terminal stood on the opposite end of the room. The main features of the room were two opaque cylindrical fields of energy near the walls, each about ten feet in diameter.

The writing referenced both gravitational equations and biological processes. The notes were unfinished, though, so Glitch crossed the room to the terminal. Examining the computer, he determined that the cylinders of energy were acting as stasis fields for two living creatures. Probing a little deeper, it seemed that they were large monstrous humanoids with bladelike arms. No sooner did he report this to his companions than the terminal went dark and the stasis fields failed. “It wasn’t me!” insisted the technomancer. “Sabotage!”

When Glitch caught sight of the creatures for the first time, his eyes widened and he rattled off what he knew about them. Known as psitheers, these insectile humanoids had a hive-mind intelligence that aided them as they stalked their prey. Their arms ended in vicious bladelike appendages that could cause terrible bleeding. Moments later, the crew got some firsthand experience.

The creatures’ bladed arms were wickedly sharp, and in moments both Galakrond and Kima were in serious trouble. The lashunta lost consciousness from his wounds and blood loss within the first thirty seconds, and the rest of the crew scrambled to compensate and try to rescue him from dying. It was a near thing, but Glitch managed to get a potion down the solarian’s throat after Kusanagi managed to take the first psitheer down. Kima lay still and drank a more potent healing draught before regaining his feet and helping Galakrond finish off the second. After this harrowing encounter, the crew returned to their ship to rest and receive Winslow’s healing ministrations.

<<< >>>

The chamber at the end of the hall appeared to be an ancient armory, thoroughly ransacked. The eastern and western walls of the long room were lined with empty weapon racks, while the outlines of suits of armor could been seen inside of broken display cases along the northern and southern walls. The drawers of the two workbenches in the center of the chamber had been pulled out and their contents – empty cans of oil, tiny screws, and other bits of rusty metal – were scattered across the floor.

A small compartment in the eastern wall hung open, which inspired the crew to search for other such hidden compartments. They found three, each of which contained some piece of kishalee weaponry. They collected these, then returned to the junction and continued to the west.

The spacious chamber contained three tall racks holding various powered-down robots. Located in a central position, a freestanding control panel blinks serenely, at which stood another ysoki flanked by a pair of human cultists.

“Oh, hey. Huh,” drawled the ysoki.

“Should we kill them, Zaz?” asked one of the cultist.

“Yeah, uh. Get ‘em, boys.”

Glitch rushed forward and took a shot at the other ysoki, who activated his jetpack and fired back. While the technomancer and Kusanagi engaged the enemy ratman, Galakrond and Kima squared off with the foot soldiers. The solder and solarian finished their work first, and before Zaz could flee, the crew took him down. This left only one chamber remaining, and so the Starfinders made their way to the southern double doors.

This room buzzed with activity. Three control panels stood at the far end of the room opposite the double doors. The panels flashed with multicolored lights and occasionally beep. The southern wall contained a large window, with some kind of shimmering containment field in place of glass. The vast bore that pierced the heart of the planetoid could be seen through the window. The walls of that massive cylinder were veined with strange conduits and studded with peculiar technology; countless maintenance robots, many so far away as to seem like mere insects, crawled over the various sections of the machinery, occasionally lit by a random spark of electricity. Monitors lined the walls inside the room, showing close-ups of the robots working within the bore. One video stream tracked the progress of four such constructs, one of which was carrying a grayish rectangular object; these robots seemed to be flying at all possible speed toward some point.

The android Null-9 paced between the control panels and the containment field. Though her eyes were cold and her movements regimented, she was almost trembling with anticipation. A moment after the crew entered the room, she addressed them with a flat voice that had a hint of metallic rattling.

“You are too late, meddlers. The end is nigh. I will prevail. I am the chosen of the Devourer, and you are just insects—insignificantly scrambling about ignorant of utter certainty.” With that, she raised her weapon to open fire.

She was no match for the Starfinders.

A few seconds after she’d fallen, a foursome of maintenance robots – one carrying a dull gray metal object – arrived. They were just as handily dispatched, and the crew took a closer look at the robots’ package. It seemed nothing more than a sheet of dull gray metal and ceramic about three feet long and one foot wide. A closer examination of the board revealed that it was traced with unusual circuitry that formed various triangular patterns. This must be the control board that Osteth had told them about. Securing their prize, they returned to their ship and flew back to Gate 1.

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Gate 1 – Control Center

Osteth was pleased to see the crew again and thrilled when they reported that they were able to stop the Devourer cultists and bring back an unbroken control board. By inserting the control board into a slot she indicated under one of the central operation’s terminals the crew had repaired the computers that could open the way to the Stellar Degenerator. Osteth repeated her insistence that destroying the superweapon was necessary, and said she would wait upon their order to initiate the process that would access the demiplane. She explained that it would need to be done when the controller moons reached the innermost points of their orbits, which happened once a day.

It occurred to the Starfinders to talk to Osteth about how they might be able to destroy the Stellar Degenerator. The AI admitted that it would take an act of devastating power, likely more firepower than the Sunrise Maiden could bring to bear. Osteth had an idea that the Stellar Degenerator might be piloted into one of the gate’s twelve suns, but someone would need to board the superweapon, which likely had ancient security measures still in place. She is unsure how such an event would affect the rest of the system, and she was fairly certain though that it would probably end in the death of whoever was at the Stellar Degenerator’s helm.

They decided that they would cross that bridge when they came to it. In the meantime, they thought it best to open the gate to get a look at the Stellar Degenerator to see what they might learn about it. When the crew gave the order to open the demiplane a look of concern crossed Osteth’s face.

“My friends, something is terribly wrong. Thanks to the gate’s advanced age, several microprocessors across the controller moons’ core facilities are failing. Unfortunately, I have already initiated the subroutine to open the demiplane. My calculations predict that unless something is done in the next few minutes, a catastrophic chain reaction will destabilize the system’s twelve cosmic strings and cause each and every one of the suns to be pulled into the center of the system. Such a collision would result in a massive supernova … and the Stellar Degenerator would remain within its demiplane!”

The consoles around the room began running a series of simulations at rapid speed, all of which ended with flashing red screens – except for one. “Yes. I think I have it. If I split my consciousness across the twelve controller moons, my own programming could provide the necessary corrections for our plan to proceed. But I will not be able to pull myself back together. It will be the end of me. Permanently.”

Osteth nodded. “This is the only choice. The rest will be up to you. You must promise to destroy the Stellar Degenerator, no matter what happens!”

There wasn’t much time for goodbyes as the holographic form dissolved into lines of code and the consoles surrounding the crew began to glow blue. Several monitors began showing views of the interior bores of the other controller moons. Traces of the same blue light limned the circuitry along the walls and the army of maintenance bots. A moment later, the building shook and all the monitors switched to perspectives from the planetoid’s surfaces pointing toward the skies. In each, different angles of a colossal tear in space forming could be seen in the distance. The fiery red of the planar gate contrasted with the inky blackness of space in a display that was both beautiful and awe-inspiring. This all happened within the span of twenty minutes.

Looking at the consoles, the crew could see readings about the phenomena. The circular opening to the Stellar Degenerator’s demiplane had a diameter of half a million miles and was stable. The massive vessel within has a conical shape and was mostly built from a material the Starfinders had never encountered or heard of (though parts of it are encased in rock, as if it were built into an asteroid). The superweapon itself was over one hundred thousand feet long and had a mass of over fifty thousand tons. It gave off a faint energy signature, not much more than a docked starship, and it had a small amount of its own gravity.

As they stared in awe at this marvel of terrible might, warning lights began blinking frantically across the central operations room. The automated defense systems had detected a fleet of starships entering the area! A glance at the readouts confirmed the worst: an armada of Eoxian-style vessels ranging from speedy fighters to lumbering capital ships were only a few hours away. The Corpse Fleet had tracked the crew to Nejeor and were ready to claim the Stellar Degenerator for themselves!

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The Thirteenth Gate

Nejeor – Gate 1

It took a couple of hours to enter orbit around the planetoid, which was made difficult by the gravitational fluctuations throughout the system. The unnatural forces threatened to tear the ship apart, but Glitch’s calculations helped Kusanagi navigate the dangerous space with ease. Once they were safely in orbit, they performed another scan of the surface to see what they were in for.

The planetoid had an oxygen-rich atmosphere and dynamic weather patterns. It supported one large ocean and a few small continents, whose biomes ranged from temperate plains to steaming jungles to polar ice caps; signs of life could be found all across the world. All of this normalcy seemed to be maintained by technomagical ley lines emanating from tall antennae that encircled most of the planetoid, as the world’s strange interior and the huge bore that ran through the center would most likely render the surface unlivable.

The Sunrise Maiden’s scanners also revealed a number of ruins scattered across the planetoid’s surface and a single intact structure on the equator. The buildings were thousands of years old, and the intact structure stands in the middle of a dense jungle. The only safe place to land a starship was on a landing pad – no more than a deteriorating slab of an ancient concrete-like material – in a clearing half a mile away.

As the crew breached the cloud cover and made their landing approach, they caught glimpses of the planetoid’s surface. They spotted a stampede of wild, horned quadrupeds kicking up dust across a grassy plain. They skirted the edge of a mountain range and watched as an avalanche swallows a copse of tall trees. They passed over the canopy of a jungle, spooking a flock of brightly colored, double-billed birds. As they approached the landing pad, they saw a crude trail burned in the brush leading in the direction of the control center.

As they stepped out of the Maiden, the crew noted a very wide path through the jungle. The densest parts of the foliage had recently been cleared with fire, explosives, and sharp instruments. Walking the half mile to the control center looked simple enough. They noted that many of the nearby plants were poisonous.

As the crew moved through the jungle, they heard screams and howls in the distance from the local fauna. Occasionally, carnivorous plants made half-hearted attempts to grab at the Starfinders with a green tendril, but they were easily avoided. After about five minutes of walking, the crew stepped into a swampy clearing. Several inches of rainfall had collected in this natural depression within the jungle, making the ground damp and squishy. Bits of broken pavement jutted from the mud at odd angles, remnants of the service road that once connected the landing pad to the control center.

The nearby trees swayed as something very large barreled its way out of the jungle. Branches snapped and foliage is scattered about as a large, bulbous beast with two mouths, each one dripping with slimy green saliva, burst into the clearing. The creature walked on a handful of small legs, and two massive clawed arms jutted from its torso. Its thick tail flailed violently about, and both its mouths each let loose deafening roars as it charged forth.

It got one bite on Galakrond before the crew put it down.

Half an hour later, the Starfinders all got the sense that they were being watched. A moment later, an androgynous human with a shaved head covered in scars dropped out of the foliage overhead. It had only hollow holes where its eyes should be, and a pair of fanged mouths open on its palms. A grayish haze tinged with crackling red lightning floated above it. The atrocite shouted into their heads, ”DIE!”

The flying outsider proved a challenge, since half the crew’s strengths lay in melee combat. It also seemed to be protected by a displacement illusion. Kusanagi scored the first significant hit against the creature, and it focused its void bolts at the android. The second one sheared off the operative’s right arm above the elbow, and the Starfinders scrambled to finish the fight before it could kill one of them. After a brief discussion about what to do with the hand – Kusanagi didn’t much appreciate his companions’ jokes – and some time to rest, they continued on.

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Control Center

Eventually, the path through the harsh jungle turned into the remains of a battered road leading to a large bunker-like structure. As the crew approached, they saw that more of the jungle had been scorched here, most likely the result of a large explosion that had blasted a hole through the wall of a one-story building. They heard sounds of cruel laughter from inside. The remains of a large double door lay broken on the floor, while a couple of bizarre-looking chairs or couches sat mangled against the north wall. Two short sets of steps led up to a raised section of the room, from which a double door exited to the north. A smaller door stood in the southeast corner.

Three cultists inside the wrecked lobby had captured a furry, three-legged beast the size of a small dog with a spherical head on a skinny neck. They were teasing and torturing it on the far side of the room, laughing and shouting cruelly as they battered the creature. They were so focused on it that they didn’t notice the crew’s approach until it was too late for them.

Three ancient kishalee hoverbikes leaned against the wall in one corner of the room. Two of them were still operational, but the third was critically damaged by an explosion. Within the closet on the southeast side of the room was a stand with four space suits constructed for kishalee anatomy. Galakrond took the golemforged plating off the largest of the three cultists and replaced his armor with it. They piled the rest of the cultists gear on one of the doors, and continued into the building.

To the north, they found a corridor that served as the spine of the control center, connecting the various chambers in the building. Except for a few smears of grease and tracks in the dust, it was relatively free from the predations of the cultists. They entered the nearest door across the hall, and found a computer lab. The large chamber was lit only by the bluish glow of a single monitor across from the southern door. The other computer consoles that lined the walls were dark. A circular platform of some unknown technology was affixed to the floor in the center of the room. The view outside a window in the western wall was completely obscured by thick jungle foliage.

Glitch got to work hacking the system and almost immediately set off an alarm countermeasure. It took him a couple of tries to shut it down before he could get back to the business of accessing the terminal. Once he had it, he powered up the lights and the other computers in the room. The platform near the center of the room also flickered to life as a luminescent holographic projection manifested above it.

Within seconds the light coalesced into a tall, regal humanoid form that resembled the images of the ancient kishalee found on Istamak. The figure was dressed in garb that appeared to be a mixture of military and scientific outfits that seemed to disappear into the glow of the circular dais at the figure’s feet. The holographic figure stretched out an arm and started speaking with the strange, spidery syllables of Kishaleen with the rapidity of purpose, though her expression remained fixed and stoic. Galakrond and Glitch explained to the others that it was greeting them and with some urgency.

“He has gone mad. His programming had degenerated and he kept raving about something called the Star-Eater. I confined him due to these critical errors, but now he is out, and I am in here! He and those who helped him must be stopped.” There was a brief pause. “From your attire, I assumed you weren’t allied with those cruel marauders. Please tell me you aren’t with them.”

As if on cue, the door to the hall opened and there stood a foursome of cultists, three rank-and-file led by a half-orc with a sniper rifle. Galakrond rushed to block the doorway, and a messy melee began. When the sniper rifle failed, the half-orc pulled a knife and tried to stab the vesk to death. He defended himself from the barrage and the crew started to make some progress against the cultists. It was painful, but they managed to win, limping back into the computer chamber to recover from the effort.

The hologram, assured by the fight that the Starfinders were there to stop the cultists, introduced herself. “My name is Osteth. I was once one of the many kishalee scientists who monitored this entire system, protecting its secret. Long ago, I had a physical form, but in order to maintain these computers past our civilization’s fall, another engineer and I created digital versions of our consciousnesses to serve as custodians for eternity.”

“His name is Eltreth,” she continued. “We have operated here for millennia, keeping this place functional and its terrible secret hidden, until a couple of centuries ago. Without warning, he began to display signs of instability and critical errors. He became convinced that he was the tool of some being called the Devourer. I believed it to be just some sort of manifestation of degradation in his core programming, and I sequestered him to these servers before he could cause any damage. I had hoped he could be repaired, but recent events have changed my mind.”

“The cultists arrived,” said Kima.

The hologram nodded. “Several days ago we were invaded by that group of raiders. Some of them looked much like yourselves, but others were like figments, strange dark apparitions with no true form. The raiders call themselves the Desperate Hunger and are led by an android woman named Null-9 – I discovered this as they blasted their way into this facility spouting paeans to this Devourer and caught me off-guard. Before I knew it, they had freed Eltreth and forced me into his prison. Luckily, I was able to place some roadblocks in their path to slow them down, but they cannot be allowed to access the Stellar Degenerator.”

“How many were there?” asked Galakrond.

“More than a dozen main members, some number of shadow creatures, the android, and a couple of smaller creatures like you,” Osteth pointed at Glitch.

“Okay, so what have you done and how can we stop them?” asked Kusanagi.

“The many maintenance robots that perform the physical tasks of this system have always been semiautonomous, but ever since I locked Eltreth away, I have been striving to uplift the robots to full sentience so that they might continue should something happen to me. When it looked as though Eltreth would be freed, I uploaded as much independent programming as I could to their processors. It will take Eltreth some time to regain full control over those robots. In addition, I generated a pulse of electricity throughout the terminals in the operations room, making sure the demiplane containing the Stellar Degenerator could not be easily accessed.

“Truthfully, I fear the Desperate Hunger will be stopped by nothing short of death. Though it pains me to say so, I must trap Eltreth again and destroy his programming for good. What I thought was a mere degradation was but utter corruption borne from powers I do not understand. If you know of any other way, please tell me.”

The crew had no suggestions. “How do we free you?” asked Glitch.

“You cannot do it from here. You must access the sequestering subprogram from the main operations room.” Osteth brought up a map of the control center and points out a large chamber down the hall. “This should initiate an exchange of my core programming and Eltreth’s. Beware, though. Eltreth has probably installed countermeasures.”

The crew made their way down the hall and decided to check the door before central operations. The rectangular chamber had various illuminated panels and monitors along its walls. Some showed what looked like the schematics of the entire structure, while others seemed to show the interior of the planet. In the latter images, squads of robots skittered along the technology-studded walls of a massive tunnel. A circular platform stood in the center of the room, projecting a hologram of a tall figure clad in white robes. The figure gestured at the various screens, seemingly attempting to direct the robots in their tasks.

When it noticed them, it said, “Oh, thank the First Cause! I thought I was going to be stuck with these lunatics forever. You are here to help, yes?”

The crew exchanged uncertain glances and Galakrond said, “You Eltreth?” At the hologram’s curt nod, the vesk continued. “The other hologram said you were on their side.”

Eltreth rolled his digitally emulated eyes and said, “Well, of course she said that. They’ve corrupted her programming. I barely managed to escape and trap her so I could try to salvage this clusterf- Look, can you help or not? I could use a hand reprogramming these crazy robots.”

Glitch looked at the others who shrugged. The ysoki entered the room and moved up to a terminal. He frowned when he saw that the computers had only holographic interfaces, not physical ones. They could only be accessed by someone with a rig that would work remotely and wirelessly. He looked up at Eltreth in confusion, but the AI was glaring at the rest of the crew who continued to wait in the hall.

“None of you know how to program?” They shrugged apologetically – bust mostly, suspiciously. Eltreth threw up his hands and said, “Fine!” In a blink, the room filled with deadly arcs of electricity.

Glitch survived the blast and noted with a grunt that the computers were also fried. He limped back out into the hall and muttered, “I could use a few minutes.”

“Guess Eltreth is the crazy one,” said Galakrond. Once the ysoki had recovered, the crew continued to confront the AI.

The door opened onto a raised platform that overlooked various panels alight and abuzz with digital activity. Screens flickered with schematics of the many pieces of technology that controlled the kishalee megastructure, while others showed views of legions of small robots repairing and maintaining massive mechanisms. The shadows moved strangely, seemingly having a life of their own. A circular dais occupied a second raised platform in the eastern end of the room, where Eltreth was manifested.

Four oblivion shades and a couple of Desperate Hunger cultists also occupied the chamber, and they grinned madly as the crew entered the chamber. The crew were in for a tough fight, between the spells of one of the shades, the sharp blades of the cultists, and the nattering of Eltreth throughout the entire affair. Kima lost consciousness from his wounds or a crucial few seconds, and Kusanagi was locked down for half a minute by a hold person spell. Even so, they rallied and defeated the cultists and their incorporeal allies.

Glitch engaged in a hacking battle with Eltreth, who was rewriting code to create countermeasures on the fly. One of the terminals exploded during the course of the effort, but the ysoki persevered and swapped the corrupted AI for his counterpart Osteth. Once the control center was secured, she expressed her gratitude.

“Thank you, travelers. With Eltreth returned to his containment, the Gate of Twelve Suns is one step closer to being safe from the predations of those marauders. Now that I have access to the gate’s full sensor suite, I can detect that some of them are still within the system. They are within the core facility of Gate Two’s controller moon, an underground facility where my colleagues could adjust the gravitational pulses emanating from the planetoid’s center when necessary. Since my inception as an artificial intelligence, physical presences have been unnecessary in those facilities, with the exception of standard maintenance bots, of course.”

Osteth’s form flickers for a moment. “It seems as though the marauders have briefly commandeered some of those robots to help them in their quest. I am completely locked out of those bots’ programming, and it is only a matter of time before our enemies retrieve an intact control board required to repair the controls that open the Stellar Degenerator’s demiplane. You must stop them!” A frown creased the hologram’s face. “But first, there are still cult forces here in this building!”

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The Thirteenth Gate

The Drift

Having learned about the existence and location of the Gate of Twelve Suns, the hiding place of the Stellar Degenerator, from the floating city of Istamak, the crew decided to make preparations before heading to the Nejeor system. They returned swiftly to Absalom Station to exchange credits for better arms and armaments for themselves and their ship. This accomplished, they set a course through the Drift in pursuit of the Devourer cultists who had found

When they approached the end of the trip, the Sunrise Maiden passed through a nearly invisible cloud of dust. Glitch noticed something strange happening to the computers and with a quick check realized that they were being hacked – from inside the ship! A moment later, a strange being materialized as though stepping out of the bulkhead onto the bridge. The technomancer recognized it as an anhamut inevitable, an outsider tasked with protecting explorers of the galaxy.

“In-in-in-interlopers! You will cease your transgressions and r-r-r-return to your place of origin or be d-d-d-destroyed!”

After this strange proclamation, the inevitable attacked! It favored its sharp-edged nanite blade, but also blasted Kusanagi with an electric discharge. Galakrond and Kima pinned the outsider to the wall, and the crew managed to defeat it before it caused any serious harm. But as its body lay cooling on the floor of the bridge, they wondered why such a being would attack in the first place. Setting the mystery aside, they continued their journey through the Drift.

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The Nejeor System

When the crew emerged from the Drift, they were still nearly a day’s travel from the Gate of Twelve Suns. As they approached, it was obvious even from a cursory scan that the system was not a natural phenomenon. A perfect circle of a dozen stars appeared stationary with respect to one another, maintaining a perfect gravitational balance. Glitch performed a deeper probe of the system to gather more information.

Scans revealed that a single planet orbited each star at exactly the same distance. The planets had roughly the same diameter, mass, and rotational period. Even stranger, each planet’s orbit was synchronized with all the other planets in the system so that every so often they all faced the center of the circle of stars at the same time.

The gravitational forces exerted by the twelve stars was in a delicate balance, achievable only with exacting measurements and more than a little magic. These forces made navigating through the system very difficult and using a Drift engine within the system impossible. The safest time to attempt to reach one of the planets was when its orbit reached the point farthest from the center of the system, though it was by no means simple. In addition, eleven of the planets were lifeless hunks of rock with no atmosphere; only one appeared able sustain life – it was, in fact, teeming with it. A single intact structure was detected on that planet’s surface.

The occasional burst of gravitational energy emanated from each planet as it reached the point in its orbit where it was closest to the center of the system. The energy came from a hole in each planet’s crust at the equator that seemed to reach straight down to the planet’s core. The Starfinders deduced that the release of this energy likely kept the system stable and surmised that, if focused properly, the energy could be used to open a large portal to another plane.

Deep scans of the system’s planets revealed small cosmic strings – one-dimensional “defects” in the fabric of space that produced gravitational waves – mystically contained within each planet’s core. These cosmic strings were maintained by massive technomagic devices kept in working condition by armies of maintenance bots.

While they were considering this, a trio of ships approached from the vicinity of the life-bearing planet: one large ship and a pair of escorts speeding alongside. All sensors indicated that they were on an intercept course! The comm channels screeched to life, and a gaunt man leered toward the camera lens. His skin was dark but was made nearly iridescent by a swirl of glowing nanites. Long, silver dreadlocks and an unkempt charcoal-colored beard framed his face. The distortion of the lens put a shade of menace to the man’s movements and appearance.

“Are you ready for the end?” The question hissed out from a mouth of brown crooked teeth; a yellowish, soapy spittle flew forth with every syllable uttered. “I am the agent of oblivion! I am the fang of the Devourer! I am the herald of annihilation. I will sing when your bodies – then only shells – drift and twirl through the void, charred amid the tangled wreckage of your ship, and your journey to nothingness is nearly complete!”

The crew engaged with the Devourer ships, focusing on the large one, which scanned as the Singularity. The Sunrise Maiden took a beating from various missiles and laser fire, but the newly upgraded shields were up to the task of protecting the hull from the majority of this abuse. The Singularity was slower, and after they had scored a few telling shots through its shields, the crew shifted focus to target the smaller ships.

The cultists tried to use this to lure the Starfinders into firing arcs, but the canny adventurers weathered the storm. After the first escort ship was disabled, the crew turned back to the Singularity and ended the fight. The other escort ship bugged out, and the Starfinders might have given chase but for an unusual transmission they noted coming from the Singularity.

“Our ship’s been pushed through the Blood Door, boss. The interlopers are tougher than I thought—may the Devourer consume them! I’m sending out a long-distance transmission for more choirs to come, slit their throats, and feast on their remains!”

Glitch informed the others that “pushed through the Blood Door” was a Devourer idiom for being killed, and further pointed out that simply destroying the Singularity would not stop the message from getting out. He suggested they board the Devourer vessel and gain control of its communications. Then they could fake an “all clear” signal, which should hopefully prevent more cultists of the Devourer from arriving.

Kusanagi lined up the Sunrise Maiden with the enemy ship’s airlock and secured the umbilical. The Starfinders overrode the cargo bay airlock security and entered the Singularity. There, the Jangly Man awaited them, having taken cover behind a storage crate. Galakrond charged forward to strike the Devourer cultist, who recoiled before activating some technological attack, and shouting “Get ‘em!” Moments later, four incorporeal shapes emerged from the walls or floor to engage each of the crew members. These oblivion shade spawn, emboldened by the Jangly Man, struck hard and started to disintegrate the Starfinders.

Fortunately, the crew were able to take control of the combat after Kusanagi slew the Jangly Man. Clearing out the shades took little enough effort, and the Starfinders rushed to the bridge. Once there, they hacked the system and sent an “all clear” signal that piggybacked onto the other transmission, ensuring that no other cultists of the Devourer receive the Gate of Twelve Suns’ coordinates.

Exploring the Singularity, the crew found that the vessel’s power core is essentially damaged beyond repair, rendering the starship useless. In addition, they discovered an audio message in the ship’s logs. The woman’s voice on it was authoritarian with a hint of an electronic rattle.

“If we can get the last console online, the weapon will be within our grasp, and soon the end of all things will follow. Unfortunately, the control board is shot. Zaz has no idea how to repair it, but Eltreth has told us where to find spares. Take the Singularity and patrol the system in case that inevitable managed to send for help. Bring some of Malice’s children. I will contact you again to return to the control center when we have the control board.”

Apparently, the inevitable they’d encountered had run afoul of the cultists and perhaps been exposed to their corrupting influence. They were all certain that the voice belonged to an android, and Kusanagi rolled his eyes when his companions looked at him half-expectantly. He then plotted a course to the living planet.

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The Thirteenth Gate

Cloudside Community Center

Herald Tzayl was very interested to hear the tale of the crew and their experiences in Istamak. The Starfinders wove a tale of battling cursed kish in the House of Renewal and the assault of the hologram-spirit in the Maze of Ghosts. The outcasts were most interested in the “living building” in the Broken Lands that tried to devour the crew once they had acquired the key to the secret entrance to the Temple Found.

As the story came to a close, one of the outcasts brought forward a pair of simple-looking gray boots lined with fur. Glitch noted that the gift possessed a minor enchantment and suggested that they would be best suited for Galakrond. Afterward, the crew settled into to sleep.

<<< >>>

Glitch and Kima did not feel well the next morning, and they returned to the ship so that Winslow could take a look at them. The shirren determined they had been afflicted with a disease – likely from the white mass that occupied the SecuriTech offices in the Broken Lands. A few spells later, and the Starfinders were feeling much better. The crew then made their way to their final destination on Istamak.

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The Temple Found

The kish of Istamak had imbued the structure with heavy religious import, as over the millennia it remained the most intact building in the city. They understood the Foundry had been important to their ancestors, though they didn’t know the exact reasons why. Because of a damaged exterior sign, the building had become known as the “Temple Found.” Until recently, any kish could enter the temple, explore most of its interior, and commune with the ancestors by examining the Foundry’s many surviving data files. Some areas (such as the basement) were considered off-limits due to dangerous energies or creatures that had made their lairs there. However, after the Cult of the Devourer took advantage of the kish’s hospitality, ransacked the Temple Found for information, and attacked the kish – killing a few and wounding more than a dozen before leaving – several kish believed that it was time for a change in the rules of access.

Chief among this outspoken group was Xavra, a huntmaster in the service of Istamak’s leader. He began to demand that the Temple Found be closed off to all but those who had proven themselves worthy, especially excluding any further outsiders. He had swayed many to his position before another member of the leader’s council – the curate Tzayl – decried this proposal. Tzayl and her supporters were subsequently banished, and Xavra took his warriors into the temple, closing and barring the doors behind them to force the issue. Xavra held the upper hand; he had brought enough food and water with him to remain locked up in the temple for several weeks. Even so, he and his soldiers were fanatical enough to starve themselves to death to prove their point.

The main entrance to the Temple Found was located in the center of the building’s northern facing. The front plaza featured an elaborate fountain with a hammer-and-anvil motif. The fountain no longer sprayed water, but the kish believed the rain it gathered had healing properties – explained by a number of images painted on the side of the fountain. The large front door was also emblazoned with blacksmith imagery and was free of kish graffiti. It was quite thick, sturdy, and quite thoroughly locked. It would take days of work with industrial tools to cut through the doors.

Fortunately, the crew wasn’t going in through the front.

Weeds poked through cracks in the ground in the long, narrow courtyard shadowed by large, blocky buildings. A broken bench sat next to a simple but imposing metal door with no visible handle or hinges. A sign was affixed to the door above a digital keypad. The sign read “Security Only” in Kishaleen, and the keypad features other Kishaleen symbols that roughly corresponded to numbers. They input the “maintenance mode” security code and entered the building.

A faint layer of slime covered every surface of the connected chambers past the entry hall. The largest open area contained a set of empty lockers, one of which seemed likely to have once held a collection of guns and ammunition. Bits of metal and plastic were scattered everywhere. One side room contained a small, round table, another a metal desk, and a third, a few rows of chairs and a podium. A door led east.

As they moved in to search the area, they noted an ooze that appeared to have incorporated a number of technological items into its form to create a hermit crab-like shell. This scavenger slime appeared to be armed with a number of weapons, including a functioning artillery laser! The slime blasted Galakrond a few times before the crew managed to put it down. The vesk requested a few minutes to recover, while the rest of the crew pulled the functioning weapons and other tech out of the mess of the corpse.

The eastern door opened on a stairwell that made a wide circuit downward, terminating in another unmarked door. Past this, they found a large storage chamber. The southern half of the spacious chamber was divided into two metal containers that stretched up to brush the ceiling. Large corrugated doors on the containers’ fronts had been painted with crude symbols that appeared to be kish warnings about punishment for seeking forbidden knowledge. The area opened into a hallway to the west, but the crew first moved to inspect the containers.

Galakrond heard unsettling noises from inside, some combination of an inferno, a flood, a tornado, and an earthquake. Curiosity got the better of him and he pulled the corrugated door up to reveal a pair of large elemental creatures – one of earth and stone and another of water! The crew engaged with these creatures and had just defeated them when a fire elemental blasted through the door of the other container to attack. An air elemental flew out after it and both continued the assault. The Starfinders had a harder time with these creatures but managed to defeat them without anyone taking any serious harm.

They found an x-ray visor in one of the containers, but the device had been built for the multiple eyes of a kish. It would require modification to function for two-eyed beings without the user suffering sickening headaches. They stowed the visor and continued into the western hall.

Six nearly identical offices had nameplates attached to the wall outside each. They appeared to have been converted into meditation cells by the kish, each containing a simple woven mat and several crude bowls coated with dried-up paint. The walls were a confusing riot of colors and shapes, and the southernmost office contained the body of a kish warrior. The corpse was burned in places, and two of its limbs were clearly broken, but upon closer examination, the cause of death seemed to have been drowning. It looked like the poor wretch had fallen afoul of the elementals.

Continuing west, they found over a dozen standing desks filling another large chamber, many of which had been heaped with dried flowers, decorative bundles of grass, and other homemade trinkets. Though worn in many places, the faintly checkered carpet still looked high quality. A large locked door led to the west, and a red door stood in the northern wall. More immediately pertinent, however, were the kish warrior and her animal companions, a pair of eohi!

The crew engaged with the hostile alien, but very quickly Kusanagi found himself outmatched. The kish warrior hit him in the head – hard – and a second blow rendered the android bleeding out on the floor of the office space. Kima maneuvered to engage and eliminate her while Galakrond tangled with the eohi and Glitch rushed over to force-feed a potion to the dying android. A few tense moments later the threats were down and the Starfinders took a long moment to recover, Kusanagi downing a couple more potions.

The door to the north opened on what appeared to have once been a reading room. A ten-foot-long table ringed by chairs occupied this chamber. The table was scored by hundreds of shallow gouges, seemingly at random. On the northern wall, a metal shutter closed off a five-foot-wide window. There was a small sign on the shutter which read “Will Return Shortly” in Kishaleen. They searched the small chamber and found a secret door near the shutter, got ready and went through.

Shelves holding a staggering array of datapads lined the walls and stood freely around the chamber. A small desk sat in front of the backside of the shuttered window adjacent to the secret door, which served as the room’s only entrance. A balcony holding even more shelves stretched across the eastern, western, and northern walls, and there they found Xavra flanked by three kish warriors.

The zealot immediately launched into a tirade in vulgar Kishaleen, which most of the party could basically understand. “I knew the ancestors would send further demons to test us. We were too weak and trusting at first, and many believed that you weren’t demons but messengers. But why would the ancestors send such strange and foul creatures as peaceful emissaries? And what news did you bring? Nothing besides death of good kish, defilement of our sacred spaces, and corruption of some of our finest minds. You clouded their eyes and made them think our way of life wasn’t under attack. I could see, though. I knew. When I send you back to the ancestors, you can tell them Xavra knows and he stands strong. I will always stand strong!”

Kusanagi, who had not bothered trying to learn the local tongue understood not a word of it and was the first to fire, flying to the top of one of the nearby stacks. His shot flew wide, and Xavra returned fire. The crew immediately made their way onto the balcony by various means, which irritated Glitch a little, who had hoped to blast the kish with his latest attack spells. Things looked dicey once Xavra unleashed a solarian zenith power to slow half the party, but by that time it was too late. Galakrond’s final doshko blow brought the huntmaster down and finishing off his lackeys was a simple exercise.

With Xavra and his warriors defeated, the crew was free to explore the secured records room. The datapads contained a multitude of technical documents. Unfortunately, the once-tidy system of organization for the library was now in shambles. Glitch found and hacked the librarian’s terminal, accessed the main filing system and discovered the location of the Stellar Degenerator datapad. However, when the crew went to that particular shelf, they find a datapad about quantum fluid dynamics instead. On a hunch, he looked up where the quantum fluid dynamics datapad was supposed to be located and examined that shelf. There, they found the actual location of the report on the Stellar Degenerator.

The report contained the information about the Stellar Degenerator’s history and eventual storage.

Thousands of millennia ago, an ancient race known as the kishalee had crafted technological wonders and flew among the stars, seeding colonies all across the galaxy. One such territory was on the planet Nejeor VI, a gas giant with virtually inexhaustible natural resources. The kishalee built floating cities among the clouds, the grandest of which was Istamak. Colonists came from far and wide for a chance to live in this shining metropolis, ready to work on the gas-mining platforms or study the planet’s unique weather patterns.

Then the kishalee’s war with the sivvs began. It raged for centuries, and the resources of Nejeor VI were vital in keeping the kishalee fighting. A weapons-research facility and factory called the Foundry was built in Istamak in an effort to find an edge against the sivvs that could end the hostilities. The sivvs created their own superweapon first – the Stellar Degenerator – but kishalee agents ended the war by capturing the weapon before it could be fired. Bankrupted by the creation of a weapon of system-wide mass destruction, the sivv civilization collapsed soon thereafter. The kishalee then turned many of their civilization’s resources to studying and understanding the Stellar Degenerator. The Foundry was sent vast information about the weapon so it might participate in the study and analysis of the doomsday device.

In time, the kishalee decided that they currently had no need for the Stellar Degenerator’s massive destructive power, so it should be hidden away, in part to store it for future use and in part to keep it out of the reach of any other enemies. The best and brightest kishalee technomancers created a demiplane in which they would store the weapon—a place accessible only through a titanic structure called the Gate of the Twelve Suns, which was constructed far from the Nejeor system. The study of the Stellar Degenerator in Istamak came to a close, and all information on it was archived within the Foundry.

Years passed, and the kishalee came into conflict with other species. Though the Stellar Degenerator could destroy the home system of any opposing force, the kishalee used it only once. So horrifying was the terrible, dark fate the Stellar Degenerator imposed by cursing worlds to sit in dark orbits around a dead sun, the kishalee never again called upon the superweapon after its sole wartime use.

Though dominant for thousands of years after the war with the sivv, the kishalee civilization eventually deteriorated. For unknown reasons, its government slowly collapsed, and the citizens of Istamak were cut off from others of their kind. Regular supply runs that were vital to the city’s survival stopped arriving, and the kishalee of Istamak were forced to fend for themselves, tearing down buildings, turning the empty city blocks into farms, and learning to hunt both native fauna and species imported to the planet. Over the centuries, these kishalee had apparently gradually degenerated into a less civilized, less fragile version of their species – the kish – and in the process forgot much of their people’s history and achievements and understanding of the scientific wonders they lived among. Knowledge of the Stellar Degenerator and the Gate of the Twelve Suns was just a tiny fraction of what was lost.

But nothing stayed lost forever.

The datapad contained a warning that all research into the subject of the Stellar Degenerator had been terminated. It also held the coordinates of the Gate of the Twelve Suns – the artificial megastructure deep in the Vast that acted as the entrance point to the demiplane holding the Stellar Degenerator – which was enough to allow the crew to plot a course there. The Gate of the Twelve Suns consisted of a dozen stars arranged in a circle, each orbited by a single planetoid; the devices that controlled the gate, further examples of advanced kishalee technology, were located on these planetoids. From the datapad, the crew gathered that only a small crew was required to operate the gate.

The Starfinders knew they were approaching the end of their journey.

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The Ruined Clouds

Istamak – The Spires

From the House of Renewal, the crew made its way toward the Maze of Ghosts. Their route took them through several skyscrapers south of the city’s park. These towering edifices stood up to eighty stories tall and appeared to have been left relatively untouched by kish. They discovered why when they reached the center of the former business complex and a winged beast with a deep pink coloration and multiple eyes descended from above!

The sharpwing dive-bombed Kusanagi a few times, but the android proved a difficult target to hit. When it had taken a few shots, the beast landed right in front of Kima and tried to tear the lashunta apart with beak and claw. It was not up to the task, and the Starfinders slew it moments later. They decided to hurry on lest anymore winged threats decided to try for a snack.

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Maze of Ghosts

According to Tzayl, the kish “communed” with their ancestors by briefly turning on the power to the displays and walking through to listen to the holograms’ “wisdom.” As the answers a pilgrim received were often cryptic or indecipherable, the Maze of Ghosts was only for the deepest questions posed by the most devout kish.

The front entrance of the building had been sheared away by some ancient calamity, revealing metal structural supports, pipes, and bits of wiring. The ground was littered with rubble, some of which had been removed to clear a small path into the structure.

Galakrond led the way, and came under attack almost immediately. Hanging from exposed metal bars, a large constrictor-like serpent banded in orange and black scales bit the vesk and wrapped around him, crushing him tight. The crew found it difficult to attack the beast in the cover of the walls. This was further complicated when the serpent pulled Galakrond into the wall with it, but the Starfinders managed to prevail. The soldier requested a few minutes to catch his breath and tend to his bruised ribs.

Past the entryway, a small booth with a large open window stood against the western wall. A doorway to the north was blocked by a thick, translucent shutter made from some kind of synthetic crystal. The sturdy shutter blocked access to the rest of the building, and there was no obvious way to open it or access a mechanism to open it.

A large sign under the window of the ticket booth that featured the words “Istamak Historical Museum” – legible courtesy of Glitch’s comprehend language spell – and listed the prices of admission, hours of operation, and similar details that no longer mattered.

As with many other portions of the city, the kish had decorated the interior of this building with charcoal and their own paints, creating murals that tell their version of the story of this place. The murals depicted humanoid figures looming over the buildings of a city; these titans seemed to be looking benevolently down at the city’s inhabitants.

The crew examined the mural and deduced that the towering figures were meant to represent the kish’s ancestors as they watched over the city and its current inhabitants. They also noticed a number of nearly hidden indicators in the drawings that point toward a disguised panel in the wall near the ticket booth. The panel swung open easily, revealing a large breaker switch.

Flipping the switch powered up the building, opening the shutter and activating the holographic displays. In addition, a welcome hologram activated, showing a sweeping panoramic of the city; the image depicted how the city must have looked in its prime, but seemed to be full of glitches. A voiceover (translated by Glitch) accompanying the image was audible, though only a few fragments were understandable between crackling bursts of static.

“Welcome to…” The audio became garbled. “…Istamak, shining city of progress! Come…” Static obscured several patches of the next few sentences. “…to witness… living history…” The music playing under the words increased in volume for a few moments, drowning out some of the voice. “Don’t hesitate to ask questions … and come again soon!”

Past the open shutter, the murals continued in the next room, this time showing smaller figures in the streets of a stylized city. The figures looked in reverence toward a large archway to the west leading into a wide, dark hallway. There was a small counter in the northwestern corner, and a number of dusty shelves and empty hooks occupied the eastern side of the room. The crew found a fully charged holoskin lies in the dust on one of the shelves, collected it, and continued into the building.

Animated holographic displays along the walls of the next section of the twisting hallway depicted the planning and construction of a huge city among the clouds: alien architects manipulating three-dimensional electronic blueprints, an important-looking figure standing on an open-air cloud barge and pulling a lever that starts large construction machinery in the background, and a handful of industrial painters putting the finishing touches on a building.

A large touch screen was mounted in front of each display, and Galakrond experimented with the user interface. The touch screen in front of each display, when pressed, caused the displays to freeze up and emit a string of garbled speech that was beyond translation. The images often blurred and jump without warning, as well. Of greater concern, however, was when one of the holograms left the display and moved to attack the vesk!

The living hologram looked and spoke like an important government official, referring to the crew as “vagrants” and “interlopers intent on befouling our fair city!” The hologram was as difficult to harm as a ghost, but eventually, they sent the malfunctioning manifestation of AI back into hiding. After several tense moments when nothing more happened, the crew continued along the hallway.

The next portion of the hallway featured animated holographic displays of manufacturing and other industrial work: a miniature version of a gas-mining vessel scooped up clouds, an alien in a jumpsuit stood at the console of an automated production line, and another sat at a large workbench performing delicate repairs on a small technological item, his face comically distorted by a large magnifying mirror.

The touch screen in front of each display activated the holograms’ artificial personalities, though a glitch caused each touch screen to activate the same speech in Kishaleen. It sounded like propaganda that touted the strength of the kishalee people, especially when they worked together to overcome certain obstacles – a thinly veiled reference to other cultures and civilizations.

The holographic displays in the next section of the hallway depicted performers and creators of various forms of art. A trio of aliens in formal costumes leaped and spun gracefully on a stage, another alien sat in front of some kind of instrument and tinkered away at the keys as if trying to perfect a melody, and a group of patrons stood in an art gallery admiring a sculpture of metal and glass. The touch screen in front of each display activated the holograms’ artificial personalities, but after centuries, they were all surly and offered only scathing criticism of the Starfinders’ hair and wardrobe choices.

The crew next came to a T-intersection. The display at the left end of the hallway featured an official-looking room with a podium in the center. A handful of aliens in crisp suits could be seen in the background; some appeared to be discussing the contents of a document, while others were examining charts and figures. A couple of banners embossed with stylized symbols fluttered in a nonexistent breeze above it all.

They approached the display they spotted a sparking projector and surmised that the flickering images and rogue AI were likely due to this faulty device. They hadn’t time to ponder it long before the living hologram reappeared out of the wall and resumed its attack. It was swiftly defeated, and the crew pondered attempting to repair the projector and ending the “curse” that Tzayl had mentioned. They decided against it in favor of more expediently completing their objective of finding whatever the Cult of the Devourer had learned on Istamak.

The holographic displays at the right end of the hallway were dark but had been replaced with murals depicting aliens in solemn poses, their heads looking up toward the sky and their bodies lit from within. A small shrine in the center of the murals was covered with tiny effigies crafted from wire and metal.

The kish had turned this darkened corner of the museum into a shrine to the kishalee depicted in the holograms in the other displays, turning them into saint-like figures. After walking through the main gallery, kish pilgrims arrived here to place little dolls meant to represent themselves here to be blessed by their ancestors. Another flat, triangular crystal lay among the offerings on the shrine. Within a minute or so, Glitch had accessed the data, containing an audio file.

The message began with a loud burst of static, followed by a feminine voice. “…chief technology officer here at SecuriTech. Our customer service representatives received your message regarding your…” Another burst of static ensued. “…and I want to assure you that we take your security issues with the utmost seriousness. After all, you are our biggest client.” An awkward chuckle was distorted by audio artifacts. “A copy of the admin keycode for your lock—for all the locks we install—resides on a server within the Foundry. This server cannot be accessed except from its physical terminal, and only SecuriTech’s chief executive officer, a few key members of our team, and I have access to that terminal. In addition, I checked the logs this morning, and no one has accessed your file in almost a year. And that was for normal…” The message ended with a final burst of static.

The metadata of the message contained another partial router address, and combining this with the one they’d found at the House of Renewal, the crew was able to pinpoint the physical location of the server that originally processed the messages. This computer was located in the SecuriTech building found in the northwest part of Istamak, in a section of the city known to the local kish as the Broken Lands, a small chain of islands floating separate from the metropolis proper.

The crew made their way through the city park, managing to avoid any encounters with the local fauna, but determined that their two jump jets wouldn’t reasonably get everyone across and leave sufficient exit options in case things went sideways. After some discussion, they decided to head back to Cloudside and see what Tzayl could tell them about the Broken Lands.

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Cloudside Community Center

The leader of the kish outcasts told the crew that the area was very dangerous and that only foolhardy kish youth wishing to impress a potential mate made the perilous journey across the shattered hunks of land. Her people believed the buildings in the Broken Lands were “angry,” and Tzayl shared a tale about kish entering them and never being seen again. She didn’t know much else, but she noted that she would love to hear of their adventures, should they return. Additionally, she offered the Starfinders a 50-foot length of titanium alloy cable line and a grappler.

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SecuriTech Offices

They crossed the floating bits of rock to a larger one upon which sat the SecuriTech office. A smooth path ran past an overgrown lawn to the entrance of the drab building. The knee-high blue-and-green grass smelled sweet, like honey warming in the sun. The structure’s walls were shot through with barely perceptible white filaments webbing across the entire surface. None of the crew could tell what the filaments might be, but it appeared that they were acting as a kind of structural support, keeping the walls of the building from collapsing in on themselves.

Though the front doors were unlocked, the many filaments running through them and the adjacent walls made them effectively stuck. While Galakrond started trying to wrench the front door open, the crew was approached by a pair of large, floating, living sacs of gas that vaguely resembled jellyfish.

The creatures lobbed hardened pellets of minerals at the Starfinders, who returned fire. When one of the blobs was hurt too much, it merged into the other, creating a larger version of the aberrant creature. When the combined alien had had enough, it floated away and down below the side of the floating island. The crew let it go and returned their attention to the door, which Galakrond tore open moments later.

Except for the carpet of pale white mold covering everything, the entry room appeared to have been untouched for millennia. Five heavily padded chairs sat against the western and southern walls. A bed of mushrooms grew on a large, four-foot-high, L-shaped desk across from the main entrance, next to a small cabinet. Several datapads had been swallowed by the mold, as were the snacks and liquid refreshments that would have been available on the small cabinet. Another door led north.

Finding nothing of interest, the crew forced open the northern door to find a long hallway running east-to-west. They approached the nearest door to the north and forced this open as well. Beyond, they found a spacious room that looked like a wide swath of small, gray hillocks covering what might have once been a collection of desks and chairs. Another door exited the room to the south (the same door they’d seen farther east in the corridor). There was an open doorway to a smaller room to the northwest, and a short hallway led east past two other doors.

The open northwest room was as covered in mold as the rest of the building, but the smell there was somehow even worse. A foul, rotting odor wafted from what appeared to be an open unpowered refrigeration unit. Rotting cabinets hung on the walls, and parts of a small, round table peeked out from under a mound of mold. The room was a riot of mildew and mushrooms.

They swiftly left and headed to the east, where they found a pair of executive offices. Each of these offices had a desk and some chairs and both were covered with mold. In the southern office, they discovered a smooth purple glove of storing tailored for kishalee hands.

The two other doors on the south wall of the hallway opened into what appeared to be meeting rooms. Most of each room was occupied by an oval table surrounded by six chairs. The dilapidated remains of audiovisual equipment lay on the table, coated in a thin film of mildew. Light filtered in through a large, south-facing window covered in the fibrous white tendrils.

Finding nothing of interest in either, they took the northern turn at the eastern end of the hall and found another door. Galakrond opened the door to a room containing three tables; one of the tables had a large white patch about two feet in diameter. A roughly square hunk of metal, plastic, and crystal sat in the center of the open space, its sides covered with alien symbols and bits of circuitry. The mold covering the walls seemed to be moving ever so slightly, as if a faint draft were blowing, though the air was still. Another door led to the south.

The last door opened into the server room. The walls, ceiling, and floor of the chamber were coated with a thick layer of mold, with thousands of pale white filaments poking out like tiny fingers. However, the two rectangular objects in the center of the room were free of mold. The crystalline devices were marked with sharp-edged designs, and each had a dark computer console built into one side.

The router address the crew had discovered matched the one assigned to the northern server, which was also written on the outside of the device. They also noted that the southern server had no router address, meaning it could be accessed only via the console; this one likely had the most sensitive information stored on it. Neither server appeared to have any power, and their consoles were dark and unresponsive.

Glitch cast a spell to recharge the southern server and got to work hacking to gain access. In under a minute, the technomancer found and retrieved the admin keycode for XLT-88 digital lock to the Foundry’s security entrance. Basically, a certain combination of keys pressed simultaneously would put the digital lock into a maintenance mode, making it possible to disable the lock without knowing the current keycode.

No sooner had he reported his success than the filaments on the walls began to ripple as if caught in a strong breeze. They quickly coalesced into a swarm that blocked the exit from the server room and enveloped Galakrond and Kima, who were standing guard.

The crew had no reasonable way to deal with the thousands of organisms that made up the writhing swarm, and so they lured it into the server room and fled past it and out into the hallway. They could run much faster than the swarm could move. Glitch was the first to make it back outside, but he quickly cursed his luck when a sharpwing came swooping down to try to eat the lone ysoki. The others made their way out and helped finish off the beast before the crew made good their escape.

They had the key to the back entrance of the Temple Found, but they thought it best to return to Cloudside to rest, plan, and prepare.

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The Ruined Clouds

The Drift

The Cult of the Devourer was headed for a distant area in the Vast called the Nejeor system to uncover the location of the Stellar Degenerator. As the crew traveled for days on end through the Drift, they could not help but occasionally stare out a view port at the strange bleakness of the transitory plane. Instead of inky blackness dotted with stars, the Drift was a mass of pink-and-purple energy that seemed to both envelop the ship and be incredibly far away at the same time, making it difficult to gauge speed and time. They caught the occasional glimpses of chunks of other planes the Drift had absorbed—a titanic but empty basalt throne carved with images of cavorting devils, a single metal gear the size of a city, a vast bridge that seems to have an ancient abandoned city built along its span, and other similarly strange sights.

Several days into the trip, the Sunrise Maiden passed close to several humongous, dark clouds that occasionally flashed with internal light. These hid the approach of another starship, which revealed itself by opening communication with the Starfinders.

“Attention, Pact Worlds vessel. This is the Azlanti Star Empire vessel Fearful Symmetry. Surrender immediately, and you will not be harmed. In fact, you will have the immense pleasure of becoming another small part of the empire’s vast populace. Refuse and we will be forced to turn you into space dust. This message will not repeat.”

The Fearful Symmetry was a sleek starship, built for as much speed and handling as a long-distance vessel of its size could manage. It was emerald green in color and etched with Azlanti symbols that evoked alertness and watchfulness. Its thrusters burned white hot as the vessel approached. The Starfinders swiftly found their battle stations to engage.

The Azlanti vessel took a heavy blow from the newly installed antimatter missile launcher, firing back with light plasma cannons and a light torpedo launcher. Then the enemy ship went on the defensive, taking refuge in the concealment of the strange clouds. When the Sunrise Maiden was out of missiles, the Azlanti pilot got more aggressive, and his gunner managed to tear a hole in the aft shields. The smoking ship kept just behind the Starfinders until its final transmission: “Long live the Azlanti Empire.” Then it exploded, causing significant damage to the Sunrise Maiden, and sending several systems haywire. The Crew exchanged concerned glances, then warily continued their trip through the Drift.

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The Vast – Nejeor System

The crew exited the Drift in the Nejeor system, a nine-planet system with a yellow dwarf sun. They had no clues as to where the Cult of the Devourer might have gone in their search. However, even a cursory scan of the system’s planets revealed that only one of them showed any signs of life: Nejeor VI, the planet they were currently closest to. It took a few hours for the Sunrise Maiden to reach the gas giant and enter orbit.

Glitch performed a more comprehensive scan of the planet and pinpointed the signs of life on a floating metropolis in the stratosphere, sitting just above the churning clouds of Nejeor VI. The city was crumbling in places, while other areas are overgrown with trees and other plants. The energy signatures that would normally come from a settlement of that size were weak and erratic. The city must have been millennia old and that age was the apparent cause of much of the decay, as opposed to it having been destroyed by some outside source.

Nejeor VI

Kusanagi could easily see that there was only one safe place where he could bring down your vessel: an emerald-green landing pad on the outskirts of the city. All other possible landing areas in the metropolis were either unstable or covered in impenetrable thickets. The Sunrise Maiden touched down on the green circle, one of a few landing pads that jutted out into the clouds in the southeastern corner of the city, but the only one still usable.

Like much of the rest of the city, the pad appeared to be made of a thick, barely translucent crystal. The majority of the pad was open to the sky; the thick clouds of Nejeor VI swirled lazily below. An archway stretched above a ten-foot-wide walkway that joined up with walkways from other landing pads, leading into what could once have been a dockmaster’s building. A holographic sign in a language unfamiliar to any of them stretched across the archway.

They took a few moments to inspect the landing pad and noticed a few scorch marks that could be from the heat of another vessel taking off or landing. It was clear that they were less than a few days old and that they were representative of the unsafe quality of Cult of the Devourer engines. They exchanged satisfied glances; at least they were on the right trail. Then the Starfinders noticed a pack of four humanoid aliens crawling over the side of the platform, primitive weapons drawn.

The natives proved to be no threat, and the Crew captured the last rather than killing her outright. Having learned his lesson on Salvation’s End, Glitch cast a tongues spell on Kima so the lashunta could question the captive. The stubborn female refused to tell them anything, insisting that they weren’t any different from the other invaders – presumably the Devourer cultists. She spat at them and loudly insisted, “Istamak will stand strong against you foul demons!” They left her tied on the dock.

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Istamak

From the landing pad, the crew entered the dockmaster’s building. The interior of the structure had been gutted long ago, and the walls were covered with murals worked in crude paint and charcoal. The images seemed to depict the sun in various positions in relation to the emerald landing pad; each of the pictures was accompanied by a number of what appeared to be tally marks. After spending a few minutes examining the murals, the Starfinders realized that they depict a kind of calendar that communicated the best periods of the year in which to harvest the green lichen that grew on the underside of the pad.

They noticed the sounds of combat outside, and looked out an empty window frame overlooking the street in front of the building. Two small groups of aliens like those that had ambushed them were fighting each other. Both groups had taken casualties and only three remained standing on each side. The more observant of the crew noticed that the aliens of one of the two sides were all wearing a prominent, though crude, symbol on their armor: an outline of a shield-like shape with an upside-down tear drop breaking through the top and a circle in the middle. The other group were dressed similarly to the ones who had “ambushed” them.

The symbol looked familiar, but none of the Starfinders could quite place it. They decided to approach the fight to see how each group reacted. Since the invaders were not attacking, each group of natives stayed focused on the clear and present threat. A short while later, those with the symbol prevailed, and the losers fled deeper into the city. One of the remaining three was severely wounded, and his comrades didn’t seem to have the skills to heal him. They seemed unwilling to possibly exacerbate his condition by moving him. Keeping a wary eye on the Starfinders, they appeared to offer a short prayer to the sky.

Kima, still under the effect of tongues picked the name “Talavet” out of the prayer, and he remembered where he’d seen the symbol before. They wore the symbol of the lawful neutral deity Talavet, the goddess of community, self-reliance, and tradition. He mentioned this to the others via telepathy, and they all wondered how a group of natives in the Vast had encountered the goddess.

They started a dialog with the aliens, who referred to themselves as “kish,” and indicated they were outcasts from those they had been fighting. The crew offered to help their friend recover from his wounds, and the kish were willing to let them try. They called Winslow over the comms, and the shirren made his way from the ship to the scene of the battle. He cast a simple healing spell to revive the fallen kish, offered an embarrassed thumbs up, and headed back to the Sunrise Maiden. The natives were impressed and suggested that the Starfinders meet with their leader.

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Cloudside Community Center

From the spaceport, it took about half an hour of walking to reach the outcast kish’s territory, a small neighborhood of dilapidated residences around a sturdy community center. The exact name of the building had long since faded away, but the space above its front doors was marked with a large and fairly freshly painted symbol of Talavet. A handful of younger kish were in the space in front of the building, playing a casual game involving a ball and pairs of vertical hoops on poles on opposite sides of the court. Dozens of other kish could be seen about the neighborhood, tending to small gardens, repairing the buildings, or maintaining weapons and armor. Many of them stopped what they were doing to gawk at the aliens as the Starfinders were escorted into the building.

The interior had clearly been recently converted into a small church, and hastily created symbols of Talavet were the majority of the decor. The kish skirmishers introduced the Starfinders to their leader Herald Tzayl, who wore an austere brown robe accented with a colorful scarf around her head.

Tzayl wanted to know more about the crew, and they explained that they were tracking down the aliens who had come to Istamak before in order to stop them. Satisfied, she agreed to answer their questions to the best of her ability. The Starfinders started simple, asking to know about her people.

“We are kish, the keepers of our ancestral land of Istamak,” she said. “You come to us in turbulent times. Those you see around you have been recently cast out from their homes for daring to speak out about Huntmaster Xavra’s desecration of tradition. And now we clash in the streets to protect ourselves. It is very sad.”

When asked about the Devourer Cultists, she explained, “They arrived in a metal cloud like yours, but different in shape and color. Theirs looked angry, as did their clothes. We welcomed them into our great temple, but they profaned the Vault of Tales and attacked us, causing many deaths and much destruction. They then returned to their cloud and ascended into the sky.”

“Can you tell us about the great temple?”

“The Temple Found is sacred to our ancestors, so we maintain it as tradition dictates. It was open to all, until recently. After the strangers left, Huntmaster Xavra sealed himself and some of his warriors within, claiming that the temple must be kept safe from other strangers. I objected to his decision, and the chieftain saw fit to exile me for speaking out. Luckily, I was not the only one to feel this way, so my neighbors joined me in my banishment.”

“What is the Vault of Tales?”

“One of the many blessed areas within the Temple Found. It is a vast collection of our ancestors’ wisdom, held within sacred crystals. I sometimes used to visit the Vault when I had deep, unanswered questions. Though there is much about the words I don’t understand, I always come away from the Vault of Tales with some guidance. That is why the Temple Found should be free for all to visit.”

“How do we get into that temple?”

“The doors are shut from within and can be opened only if Xavra allows it.” Tzayl looked thoughtful for a moment. “But I have heard the voices of our ancestors speak of another way in. Perhaps if you were to listen to them, you might benefit from their insights. But first you must prove yourself worthy enough to hear those voices yourself.”

She explained that there were two places of significance where kish went when they wanted to hear the voices of their ancestors or seek their blessings. While these were sacred ceremonies for her people, she admitted that not many kish had performed them in close to a year. Perhaps, she mused, if Xavra and his warriors had shown more devotion, they wouldn’t have been so quick to break away from tradition. She also said that she didn’t see any harm in the crew enacting these rites; after all, if they do so, they might better understand the kish community.

Tzayl described the House of Renewal as a “place of either healing or silence,” depending on the kish who made the pilgrimage. Kish went there when they were ill, physically or spiritually, and stepped into the chamber at the center of the building. If the ancestors judged the kish’s heart to be true, she emerged healed, sometimes even healthier than before. Otherwise, the pilgrim was never seen again. Tzayl also mentioned rumors that the House of Renewal had become corrupted in some way.

She explained that despite the site’s name, the Maze of Ghosts was not a frightening place. Instead, it was where “our visions of the ancestors are the strongest.” Kish who wanted to feel a deeper connection with the city’s history meditated within. Tzayl explained that if the kish’s intentions weren’t pure, the ghosts simply didn’t show themselves.

The outcast kish welcomed the Starfinders to spend their evenings at Cloudside if they wished. With about an hour of searching, the crew found a relatively clean unclaimed set of living spaces on the third floor of the northeasternmost building. The condos were spacious, and though the furniture and fixtures had been looted and scavenged centuries ago, they could tell which areas were meant to be kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, and so on. The kish provided them with crude bedrolls and pillows stuffed with some kind of animal hair.

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House of Renewal

A set of wide semicircular steps led up to a pair of doors in the front of the one-story building, which once was painted light blue but was now dingy from age. A half-destroyed holographic sign hung above the entrance, and a symbol of a semicircle above a straight line had been crudely painted across the doors. From there, it was clear that the rear of the building had collapsed in some places. Galakrond led the way inside.

The walls of the entry room were lined with broken, dusty, and moldy furniture. Opposite the pair of double doors that led outside, a window in the wall was closed off by a slab of opaque material. A smaller door opened in the eastern wall near the window. Murals depicting kish with broken limbs and dark halos above their heads covered the walls. Two kish warriors not affiliated with the outcasts rose from behind cover to attack, but they were swiftly defeated.

Galakrond couldn’t get the window open, so the Starfinders went to the eastern door. The hallway beyond once led farther into the building, but ten feet in the ceiling and walls had collapsed, making progress impossible without working for days to clear the rubble. A door to the north opened up to reveal a walk-in supply closet. Dusty shelves holding the occasional empty box line the walls, and it appeared as if very few people had been there in quite some time. They gave it a cursory search it but didn’t find anything.

To the south, they found the reception station. The western side of the area was occupied by a tall desk built into the wall, half of which was under the large window blocked by a panel of opaque crystalline material. There was another door to the south, and stylized eyes painted on the walls.

Past the southern door, they found a mural gallery. Two rows of lockers made from a ceramic-like material occupied the western end of the room, while the lockers that lined the walls of the eastern half were covered with murals depicting sick and injured kish being bathed in a greenish light and stepping away completely healed. Other more beatific-looking kish looked down from the top parts of the walls and the ceiling. Fresh charcoal drawings covered the door to the northeast, while the southeast corner of the room is filled with a large mass of rubble.

Glitch moved to the northeast door to get a closer look at that part of the room and ran afoul of a trap that pierced his furry hide with countless needles. Despite the pain, he saw that something had been scratched on the door. It crudely depicted a humanoid figure that vaguely resembled a kish with its face covered in a mass of black lines. While he was recovering, the others cleared a side door that led outside, providing the crew an alternate exit.

There was no remaining sign of whatever had originally occupied the room past the trapped door; it had been cleared of all furniture and decorations, save for a simple square cloth mat measuring four feet to a side. The walls, floor, ceiling, and even doors had been painted an inky black, and a pair of two-headed formerly-kish abominations lurked within. The creatures hit hard, but were still quickly bested.

An east-west hallway awaited the crew through the exit from the black-painted room. Three doors to the north opened into rooms with walls that, though dirty, were a soothing aquamarine color. Remnants of comfortable-looking furniture poked out from the rubble of the northern walls. The dusty floors and lack of murals hinted that no one had stepped foot in here for some time.

They found a large chamber through a door to the south. There was an air of solemnity in the austere room. A capsule five feet in diameter and eight feet tall sat on a ten-foot-square platform in the center of the chamber. A six-foot-tall door opened into the capsule. It was made of some kind of shiny metal, and dozens of wires, cables, and tubes sprouted from its surface. Many of the wires ran to a freestanding wheeled console nearby. A small shrine covered in dried flowers and small wooden icons stood against the western wall. Another door exited to the south.

Glitch cast comprehend languages, but he wasn’t able to determine the specific purpose of the machine. The crew put one of the bodies into the capsule and the machine activated, but there was no apparent effect. After a few minutes, Glitch used the console to end the “treatment.”

They found a flat, triangular crystal resting among the offerings on the shrine, and the tech-savvy Starfinders recognized it as a data storage device. Accessing the device required touching the crystal in a number of specific places, which they quickly solved. Much of the data was corrupted beyond repair, with the exception of a single voice message in Kishaleen. Glitch translated.

The voice in the message was deep and gravelly. “Greetings. This is…” There was a loud burst of static. “…head of security at the Foundry. We recently had a few pieces of classified…” There was another burst of static. “…and we are investigating the possible compromise of all methods of entry and exit in our facility. As far as I can tell, the series XLT-88 digital lock on our security entrance hasn’t been tampered with, but the manual I have here states that the lock can be placed in standby mode and accessed with an admin keycode. Of course…“ Static again. “…but the director and I would like to know how many of your employees have access to this keycode. We are not accusing you of any misdoings, but we do need to leave no stone unturned. Please respond at your earliest convenience.”

They surmised that the Temple Found that Tzayl had told them about and the Foundry mentioned in the message might be one and the same. The metadata of the message contained a partial router address, identifying the server through which the message was sent. By examining a similar message, they thought they should be able to pinpoint the server exactly.

South of the capsule chamber, they found a room choked with rubble, as most of the ceiling has collapsed, forming an impassible mound. Crushed office furniture poked out from under the debris, and the floor was thick with dust and grime. Back in the east-west hallway north of the capsule chamber, they found another small room. Apart from debris from a collapsed ceiling, it seemed empty, though the thick layer of dust on the floor appeared to be have been recently disturbed. Looking more closely, they noticed that an image of a kish face had been traced in the dust. It seemed to them that the face was meant to look sad and that this was a sort of farewell note or apology.

Unsure what to make of this, the crew decided to press on to the Maze of Ghosts and see if they could find any more clues that could gain them access to the Temple Found, where the Devourer cultists had gone.

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The Ruined Clouds

Salvation’s End – Orbit

The crew was on the Exemplarion, the personal starship and luxury space-yacht of an Eoxian celebrity, having just arrived aboard a far more modest Starfinder starship. They had had a brief window to tour the larger craft’s six decks, casino, spa, trio of restaurants, and other extravagant amenities that accommodate the hundreds of guests on board. After a while, one of Zo!’s skeletal assistants intercepted them and escorted them to the production studio on Decks 4 and 5.

The studio was a large, multi-tiered auditorium with an immense window that looked out over the moon known as Salvation’s End. Dozens of professionals rushed about the studio, adjusting lights, testing holographic displays, pulling clothes from wheeled wardrobes, cleaning the hundreds of tiered seats, and more. The elebrian media mogul Zo! sat on the stage with the Starfinder Society’s First Seeker, Content Not Found: uwazi, animatedly telling a story while Luwazi marveled at the ongoing activity. When the First Seeker spotted the crew, she waved them down the aisles to join her and Zo!. Assistants immediately rushed out with additional chairs to accommodate the Starfinders.

“Yes. Yes! You’re everything I was hoping for,” exclaimed the undead showman while looking over the new arrivals. “Oh, Luwazi, you’ve truly outdone yourself. They’re so exciting, so energized, so–”

“–alive?” finished a ghast woman wearing well-tailored clothing as she stepped onto the stage. Zo! frowned at the blunt observation, muttering an introduction to Wazasha Kevir, his associate producer. He looked like he was about to say more, but Luwazi intervened.

“Starfinders, no doubt this is all happening a little fast, so let me explain. After the Scoured Stars incident, the Society struggled to support new expeditions. I reached out to numerous people and organizations for grant money, and our host was eager to help. He financed more than a dozen missions, including the one to Salvation’s End. There was one big catch.” Zo! visibly bounced in his seat with excitement as Luwazi continued. “If we found anything especially exciting, we’d need to cease exploration long enough for him to get a film crew out there to document whatever we found next. Well, Salvation’s End may look like a moon, but our initial survey of it found there’s something built inside – the whole thing might be artificial. That qualifies as especially exciting, but that was also several months ago.”

The skeletal mogul waved his hands. “Oh, but Luwazi, I couldn’t just send a single crew. No, the Starfinder Society’s greatest triumph deserves far more production value.” He hopped up from his chair and gazed out at the moon as he paced and gesticulated. “Imagine: heroes from the Pact World, a mysterious planetoid, untold secrets, limitless adventure – all broadcast before a live audience in our greatest production yet!” He spun to look back at the group, his lipless mouth smiling gleefully. “Live Exploration Extreme!”

The ghast Wazasha clapped politely before interjecting. “To translate, you’re scheduled to explore part of Salvation’s End accompanied by a professional camera crew and production team, led by me. You will find exciting things and be thoroughly entertaining.”

Luwazi explained the Starfinders’ stake in Salvation’s end and what they had encountered so far. “I hired a team to perform a surface survey, and it was they who discovered a hatch that led much deeper into its interior. We also know that a tribe of goblins calling themselves the Exhaust Drinkers lives on the surface, and we’ve clashed with them in the past. Most recently, we undertook a concerted effort to clear the tribe out from our landing facility on the moon’s surface. The moon’s gravity will feel about normal, but we’ve detected that the gravity is artificially maintained and even seems to reorient itself in some areas.”

Wazasha glanced down at her wrist-mounted holoscreen and announced that the show was an hour away from starting. She ushered the crew out of the auditorium toward a dressing room for further instructions. There she reviewed the assignment and confirmed that the Starfinders had the supplies they thought they might need. In this venture, they wouldn’t just be holovid stars; they were performing for a live audience of passionate fans able to contribute to whatever incentives Zo! concocted during the event. Although the Starfinders’ only obligations involved exploring the designated portion of Salvation’s End and not killing the production crew – or getting them killed, Wazasha clarified patiently when they asked – they stood to reap considerable social rewards if they put on a good show and pandered to the crowd. Before continuing the briefing, Wazasha called in a squad of makeup artists to ensure that the crew would be looking their best.

Two teams would be accompanying the Starfinders as they explored Salvation’s End. The first was the production team – consisting of two ghouls, two androids, and a hexapodal robot – that carried refreshments, portable seats, makeup, the bubble projector for The Booth, a pair of heavy-duty broadcast relays, and other equipment necessary to keep the operation running. The camera team consisted of ten ghouls bristling with holocord cameras, boom microphones, reflective screens to amplify natural lighting, and other equipment for properly recording the Starfinders’ exploits in several multimedia broadcast formats.

Like many reality shows, one of the crew would be periodically sequestered to speak candidly about recent events and (especially) other people on the show. Wazasha explained and demonstrated the Booth – the hexapodal robot could plant itself on the ground and unfold its top like a box, deploying a seat in front of a two-panel screen to create a visually neutral backdrop. At the same time, the robot deployed a pair of tiny hover drones equipped with cameras as well as a slightly opaque, noise-cancelling bubble to provide some privacy. The ghoul ushered each of them inside with her, at which point she asked a few basic introductory questions – some open-ended and others provocatively pointed to elicit a raw, emotional response.

After the briefing, it was clear that the ghast associate producer had a dry wit and largely professional demeanor. Occasionally, her two-foot-long tongue hungrily slipped out of her mouth or interfered with her speech, and she irritably recoiled it back into her mouth before continuing. She preferred to speak directly and it was clear that she wouldn’t coddle actors who couldn’t handle show business.

Once they were ready, Wazasha ushered them into a clean shuttle for the 15-minute voyage to the false moon’s surface. The camera crew and production team were waiting, while Zo!’s special effects team played an opening montage to build the audience’s excitement. The crew followed along on the local infosphere (connected to the Exemplarion), even seeing the overly dramatic renditions of their personal bios to introduce viewers to the show’s stars.

Kusanagi – This mysterious masked operative previously earned some small notoriety exploring the Drift Rock back on Absalom Station!

Galakrond – Another Drift Rock veteran, this strong, silent vesk mercenary wielded the signature weapon of his people to protect his teammates!

Glitch – This plucky ysoki master of magitech is a newcomer to the crew who has already proven his worth as the Tiny Technomancer!

Kima – A rising star with his own online series, this lashunta solarian has joined the crew, hoping to elevate their collective brand to new heights!

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Salvation’s End – Surface

Several other Starfinders were retrofitting the dock into a more permanent structure, and some of the Society repair crew casually explained that the location might become a new lodge depending on their findings. The repair crew guided them to a heavy hatch deeper in the facility, beyond which lay dark tunnels that led deep below the surface.

A network of service tunnels crisscrossed this outermost subsurface layer, providing avenues for repair drones to service the simulation chambers deeper inside. However, as the crew explored – and voiced their thoughts aloud, as Wazasha prompted – they found broken and incomplete robots and drones of unknown design at irregular intervals along the worn steel hallways. Almost every light fixture was broken or malfunctioning, making the fifteen-foot-tall tunnels dark but for the occasional, haunting flicker of light from the distance. In the few places where it seemed signage once hung, someone had purposefully defaced or removed the analog signs and torn out any digital displays.

The technological elements in these tunnels seem to be roughly comparable to Pact Worlds’ technology but are of a design never before documented. They examined the geology of the moon in the places where the tunnels were damaged and the surrounding rocky matrix is visible. The rock appeared to be natural, but there were signs of warping and buckling as though the moon had periodically experienced heavy forces such as strong gravitational forces or the large-scale movement of something large toward the moon’s core.

Farther down the tunnel, they also find a midden containing both refuse and excrement. The trash consisted largely of low-value technological scraps that might have been attached to something more valuable. The ample excrement appeared to have come from goblins. Some omnivorous creature about the size of a vesk was the source of another pile. The crew estimated that several creatures had visited the midden within the past hour, and could confidently follow the goblin tracks further down the tunnels.

The crew hadn’t traveled far when an explosion shook the walls and echoed from ahead. The camera crew fanned out to record their reactions. Wazasha prompted them, asking whether random explosions were the sort of event that made Starfinders curious. Although the circumstances seemed staged, Wazasha seemed as unsure of what might lay ahead as they were.

Ahead, the walls had shattered outward from an older explosion, leaving an open space that was partly collapsed along the edges. Due to the poor lighting conditions, the camera crew turned on an array of bright set lights that several ghouls turned toward the action. Something big reflected the light. As the crew drew nearer, they saw something that resembled a large, six-legged armadillo with compound eyes, iridescent banded armor plates, heavy digging claws, and a pair of rasping tongues.

The spicodranth’s scales reflected Galakrond’s laser fire and nearly blinded the vesk. The rest of the crew advanced on the creature while the undead camera crew maneuvered to find the best angle to capture the action. A trio of goblins emerged from the tunnels and began firing at the Starfinders. After the spicodranth fell, two of the three were handily defeated, leaving only a single goblin flanked by Starfinders. Kusanagi’s shot took out the last.

Wazasha pulled the android into the booth, looking slightly perturbed. She reminded him that they had agreed to try to capture and question any of the Exhaust Drinkers they encountered, and she pointed out that the audience had not liked Kusanagi “executing” the clearly outclassed creature. He shrugged and offered no further explanation for his actions.

The crew made their way up through the section of tunnels that the goblins had opened with their recent explosion. The camera crew filmed the proceedings, and once the Starfinders were above, several ghouls fired grapplers and adeptly hoisted themselves and their equipment up. The region beyond was a large cavern that sparkled with phosphorescent fungi whose caps spanned as much as ten feet in diameter. The goblins’ explosion from below had buckled the cavern floor here, leaving a concentric impression in the ground where there appeared to have just been unaffected stone before. These buckled rings were about a foot high.

Of greater note, a group of dwarves watched the Starfinders and accompanying undead horde curiously. A woman among them stepped forward to address them as the ghouls eagerly filmed the exchange. Glitch cast a tongues spell on himself to overcome the language barrier, and the dwarf introduced herself as Ylga Tulgarst, daughter of Ulfrodi. She claimed to speak for her clan. The ysoki struggled with the exchange, making the dwarves more nervous, before Galakrond discovered that Ylga understood Draconic. He then began translating for Kima.

Ylga told them that the Marbleheart clan was large, but had split into smaller groups to seek the surface more than a century ago, from a time before her memories. She now led a band of forty-three dwarves, though they were down to twenty-nine after the orcs and earthquakes returned. The Starfinders asked about the orcs, and Ylga explained.

“The orcs fought us for centuries, but they fled upward long ago. I heard stories of their towering forms, green skin, and rage as a child, but we only saw them for the first time a few hundred forge-days ago. They are shorter than I imagined, but just as cruel. Also, they jabber in a language unknown to us, even though I learned the orc language as part of my warrior training.”

The crew assumed that the dwarves had mistaken the goblins for orcs. Additionally, they estimated that Ylga’s forge-days, were roughly a 24-hour period – how much time passed between the time a smith heated a forge for work and the time she returned after rest to restart the process. As such, they calculated that the strange orcs first appeared about a year ago.

When asked what her clan was doing in the tunnels, Ylga said, “We have always lived below ground, but a generation ago my ancestors answered Torag’s summons – a tremor that called on our people to seek what lies above in the Quest for Sky. There we shall do our god’s will on Golarion’s surface.”

The crew exchanged glances. It was common knowledge that Golarion had disappeared during the Gap – leaving only Absalom Station orbiting in its place. Glitch mentioned in an undertone that Torag was a major dwarven deity who had also disappeared during the Gap. The Starfinders decided not to mention either of these things just yet and accepted Ylga’s invitation to return to the dwarves’ camp and speak with their head priest.

As they traveled to the Marbleheart camp, Ylga told the Starfinders more about her people. With its large baggage train, host of children and elders, and trek upward through unfamiliar tunnels, the dwarves’ Quest for Sky had never been an unbroken voyage from one point to another. The dwarves had periodically settled down for a year or more to gather resources, rest, and allow scouts time to blaze the next trail. Ylga’s band of the Marbleheart clan had built its current settlement more than a year ago, but the dwarves had holed up rather than travel further due to the “orc” raids that had slain many of their clan. As a result, the dozen stone buildings had reinforced doors, arrow slits, and other modest fortifications in the event of another attack.

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Marbleheart Camp

When they arrived, the settlement was in distress, and Ylga was quick to ask a nearby dwarf what was wrong. The goblins’ latest explosion resulted in burst pipes and additional tremors. Less than an hour ago, a fissure split down the middle of the settlement’s cavern, dropping a massive chunk of stone to crash into the Temple of Torag’s facade. The few dozen dwarven survivors were struggling to break through the boulder or one of the reinforced walls to get inside, where their chief priest Holsin Nolskrit was trapped!

Ylga quickly introduced the Starfinders and coordinated the dwarves in their rescue effort. After some examination, she determined that there were two likely ways to get in and help Holsin: remove the boulder or send in a small group through the fissure. Several dwarves determined that the fissure’s trajectory should lead to its intersecting with the temple’s rear rooms, but the trench had partly filled with an unknown, viscous fluid.

The ghast Wazasha let the crew know that the audience was voting on what they should do next, then pulled up a holographic display from her wrist computer to show the votes as they were cast. Every time the dwarves identified one option’s difficulty, painfulness, or uncomfortable circumstances, the voting for that option surged. Ultimately, the audience voted for the Starfinders to clamber through the strange fluid-choked fissure to sneak into the temple from behind.

The oily fluid seemed to be a synthetic lubricant, much as would be found in a mechanical engine or hydraulic system. The substance wasn’t directly harmful to the touch; however, anyone marching through the fissure will become slathered in it and probably have trouble moving without falling over. The Starfinders used a combination of magic, technology, and brute strength to climb through the fissure above the fluid, making their way to the back rooms of the temple. As they traveled down the fissure, several tiny camera drones followed along to record your actions.

They found Holsin in the front room of the temple, surrounded by what appeared to be globules of autonomous fluid. The crew handily dispatched these strange technological oozes and Galakrond gave the dwarf a healing serum to mend his wounds. The dwarves outside the temple managed to remove the boulder and free everyone shortly thereafter.

Holsin was thankful for their aid and very disturbed by the cave-in that had nearly killed him. Despite his tireless piety, it seems that Torag was angry with the dwarves. He was open to discussing his concerns and theories with the crew, including his suspicion that the dwarves are near the surface. Wazasha encouraged the crew to keep the old dwarf talking.

For generations Holsin’s people had climbed higher and higher in the Darklands, following Torag’s prophesied tremor that began the Quest for Sky. Ever since, Torag had rumbled periodically, coaxing his people to ascend. Now Torag’s miracles had become less powerful, which Holsin believed was because the god’s power was diluted by the influence of surface faiths with which he must contend. The “short orcs” had also returned with magic wands from the surface to fight their age-old enemy. Furthermore, the orcs had used vile surface magic to channel the sky-realm’s toxic air into the caverns and kill the dwarves. If the dwarves were to survive and reach the surface – Holsin believed that they were so close – someone able to survive the poisons needed to travel into the deadly fog and clear the tunnels.

Wazasha didn’t have to tell the Starfinders that the audience demanded they be the dwarves’ saviors.

The tunnels extended only another mile up, but after traveling half that distance, the air became visibly cloudy until, the haze obscured all distant objects and terrain, giving the caverns a spooky and menacing ambiance. Skulking in the haze, the crew saw a handful of goblins, including one wearing what appeared to be a piecemeal set of powered armor. Big Genius Polbak – loudly referring to himself in the third person – ordered his subordinates to attack!

The goblins were no real match for the Starfinders, and because they knew the audience would love the loud-mouthed leader, they left him alive. With the goblins defeated, the crew explored the cavern and found a large adamantine door. The goblins’ tools, explosives, and other gear was scattered haphazardly about, available for them to use in opening the door. With applied engineering and strength, it didn’t take long to accomplish.

Once the door was open, Wazasha urged the Starfinders to let a few of the camera crew enter first just to get a good reaction shot. The door exited onto an elevated walkway that ran along the length of a horizontal cylindrical space several hundred feet in diameter and extending as far as the eye can see to the right and left. At several points along its visible length lay heavy doors like the one they had opened. Most notably, though, they spotted a digital terminal near their door, its display glowing with strange alien text that quickly cycled through various forms before stopping on Common. It read:

Simulation #20,553
Dwarven Quest for Sky
Planet Golarion
Circa -4,900 Absalom Reckoning (simulation local calendar approximation)
Status: Simulation ongoing.
ALERT: ERROR! Immediate repair required.
ERROR! External influence detected.
ERROR! Control measures enacted.

The crew exchanged wide-eyed glances while the cameras zoomed in on the screen. The Quest for Sky was a simulation that had been running for who knew how long. At a second glance, they saw that each of the doors along this massive gallery have a similar terminal next to them, suggesting there were untold numbers of other simulation chambers sustaining other artificial worlds within the moon. This was a huge discovery.

As the chamber’s sensors detected the toxic gas and began venting it out of the Quest for Sky simulation, Wazasha signaled the crew to let them know that this was a perfect cliffhanger to stop filming. She asked that the Starfinders quickly assemble for one final action shot, instructing them to pose together like victorious explorers as the poisonous fog billowed past them. The camera crew snapped dozens of pictures for promotional purposes.

Wazasha ushered each of the crew in turn into the Booth to get their impressions and theories about the nature of Salvation’s End as a massive simulation machine. They offered their thoughts until the ghoul was satisfied that she had what she needed.

Just after the camera crew took the last set of pictures, Wazasha asked aloud, “How about we hear how they’re wrapping up the event in the studio?” She pulled up a program on her wrist computer, which played the live audio feed with Zo! shouting excitedly.

“What a discovery! What a destination! What a band of unlikely heroes! What could lie deeper in Salvation’s End? Find out on the next episode of Live Exploration Extreme! when the Starfinder Society returns to–”

“What?” shouted Luwazi with alarm from near Zo!’s microphone. “That was not part of our deal, Zo! You can’t just add a sequel when we haven’t–”

Zo!’s voice insistently cut back in. “Ha ha! And now a word from our sponsors!” A booming add for Nova Solutions blared out of Wazasha’s computer before she closed the program, rolled her eyes, and ordered the teams to retrace their way to the surface.

Wazasha told the Starfinders that Luwazi Elsebo wanted to give them a proper debriefing before deciding whether to send them deeper into the unknown. Furthermore, there was still the question of what to do with the Marbleheart dwarves. The gaping hole through which they had arrived and the open door into the simulation control chamber shattered the artificial existence in which the dwarves had lived for at least a century, and the existence of a larger galaxy beyond their tiny world might inspire some to travel the stars. For others, the stress might be too much without patient mentors to guide their path. It was clear, though, that given the malfunctioning machinery, remaining in the simulation wasn’t a viable option.

<<< >>>

Back on the Exemplarion, Luwazi seemed somewhat frazzled as she met with the crew to hear their un-glamorized accounts of the expedition. She reported that Zo! was desperately trying to negotiate for additional filmed excursions, but so far she had left him with a curt “We’ll see.” Prior to dismissing them, Luwazi asked for the crew’s thoughts on whether Live Exploration Extreme! should return for another episode or not. Considering the amazing discovery and all the good publicity it would likely earn the Starfinder Society, the crew were agreed in their recommendation that she should at least consider it.

The crew also recommended the Society take point on relocating the Marbleheart dwarves and integrating them into modernity. This humanitarian effort would likely also earn the organization some good publicity while also rescuing what was left of an entire civilization trapped for centuries out of time and tricked into pursuing something impossible by unknown parties for an unknown purpose. Luwazi agreed with the recommendation and started the process of creating the Marbleheart Initiative.

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Absalom Station

You arrive back at the Lorespire Complex shortly after the live broadcast of the show reached the Pact Worlds. They found themselves invited as guests to a host of programs, game shows, nightclubs, and other events – again for Galakrond and Kusanagi. The fame was short-lived, which was just as well. They were contacted by Winslow, who reported that the Sunrise Maiden had been retrofitted under Twitch’s supervision.

They were ready to continue pursuing the Stellar Degenerator in the Nejeor System.

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The Ruined Clouds

Eox – Orphys

The crew decided to see what weapons and armor they could find in the Splice before attempting to hunt down the marrowblight. Windows covered with mealy boards and one lopsided automatic door adorned the outside of the dingy one-story building beside the Ministry of Eternal Vigilance. Above the entrance was a hologram of a bizarre, ostentatious hat made entirely of tiny bones and the words “Bonesmith’s Boutique: Merchandise You Can Trust!” According to the infosphere, this rather disreputable business sold a motley assortment of weapons, armor, and sundry supplies.

The boutique was named for its proprietor and sole employee, Bonesmith Jaklyn. She was behind the front desk wearing an elaborate pirate-styled outfit and the same strange hat depicted on the sign outside. When the bone trooper saw the crew, she opened her mouth wide – the skeletal equivalent of a smile – revealing several golden teeth. “Ah, breathers!” Jaklyn exclaimed, using a common Eoxian term for living individuals. “Welcome to Bonesmith Jaklyn’s boutique! We’ve got everything your little beating hearts might desire – and probably more!”

She actually had every item the crew requested in stock, although she initially asked for twenty percent more than they would have expected to pay. Kima engaged the Eoxian shopkeeper in conversation, discussing bringing in steady business, and even offering to do a feature of the shop on his vid show. Jaklyn warmed to the lashunta’s sales pitch, and not only did she do away with the upcharge, she offered him and the crew a storewide discount! Once they had completed purchases and outfitted themselves, they headed back into the streets of Orphys.

Kusanagi sensed right away that something was wrong, and a moment later a pair of nihili dropped from the walls flanking the doors to Bonesmith’s Boutique. The android threw himself forward into a roll and crossed the street, pulling a pistol as he went. Seeing this, the others likewise reached for weapons. Glitch joined the operative across the street and lashed out with magic. Galakrond could feel the undead creatures’ gravity aura crushing his lungs, but he and Kima stood their ground and shortly the undead fell to the street. The crew found a pair of credsticks containing thousands of credits and quickly surmised that the nihilis had been hired to attack them. Clearly, they had drawn someone’s attention.

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The Marrowblight’s Hut

A couple of hours after they left the safety of Orphys’ atmosphere dome, the blasted landscape of the wholly devastated and undead planet gave way slightly to a carefully cultivated area surrounding a dilapidated hut. The displays were almost garden-like in their precise arrangement – thin, pliable bones weaved intricate patterns in clumps that might otherwise be living bushes, and flutes of skin and cartilage might have been mistaken for flowers were it not for the disturbing shapes and absence of brilliant colors. Beyond the “garden” sat a bizarre, circular hovel apparently made from stretched, cured skin wrapped around a frame of massive bones. A front door hewn from sickly wood stood ever so slightly open.

The crew circumvented the worst of the “bushes” in their approach to the door, but as soon as they stepped into the open yard, a fleshy mass they had mistaken for the ground jerked into motion! Massive horns atop the ellicoth’s head gored Galakrond before the crew could react. Worse, when the vesk soldier advanced, his armor’s Geiger counter spiked and he practically choked on the radiation emanating from the gargantuan alien.

The Starfinders began their assault, Glitch and Kusanagi keeping their distance while Kima joined Galakrond in melee against the great beast. The vesk was struck by the ellicoth’s trunks and the alien seemed to siphon his life to heal its own injuries. Between the radiation and the ability to recover from wounds, the crew got a little nervous, especially after it rampaged to gore both of the melee combatants at once. In the end, however, the Starfinders attack overwhelmed the ellicoth, which fell heavily to the ruined ground. The crew retreated to catch their breath and drink serums of healing to recover from the effort of felling the enormous guardian.

Rather than close with the radioactive corpse, the Starfinders went around the side of the flesh-draped hut and made their own entrance! Within, the shack was threadbare and devoid of any items of obvious value. Dusty and brittle furniture littered the floor, and the marrowblight attacked from behind this meager cover!

Galakrond closed and came under attack from the marrowblight’s claws and spurs. He weathered the onslaught, and shortly, the crew’s overwhelming counterattack set the undead creature back on her heels. They demanded her surrender, and she tossed her weapon to the floor, raising her hands above her head.

The marrowblight, Xerantha Mortrant by name, confessed that she had been colluding with the Corpse Fleet for a long time. She admitted to meeting with Captain Zeera Vesh, who was on the planet recruiting for some massive push out to some undisclosed location in the Vast. Xerantha denied sending the nihili assassins after the Starfinders, suggesting that might have been Vesh’s move. She added that they could find her in a canyon nearby known as Skullcap Gorge. When she described the place, they realized that they had passed it on the way out to the marrowblight’s hut. They left Xerantha in her hut and headed out to confront the Corpse Fleet captain.

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Skullcap Gorge

The desolate Eoxian terrain turned macabre as the sloping land descended into a gaping canyon that stretched for dozens of yards. But instead of sheer cliffs of rock, towering piles of bones and skulls of all sizes and shapes formed the walls of the gorge. At the ravine’s eastern end, a wide pool of bubbling green acid abutted a sheer cliff. Several flat, stepped rocks next to the pool approximated a stairway climbing to the top of the cliff.

They entered the canyon from the west; the enormous walls of bone to the north and south were fifty to sixty feet high. When the crew was about halfway between the acid pool and the western edge of the gorge, a figure at the top of the “steps” stood and called out to them. “Petty, foolish, irritating Starfinders! All of the effort I spent to weave this deadly trap, and for what? To have you bumble through, unharmed and yet still so ignorant? Allow me to enlighten you. I am Captain Zeera Vesh, esteemed officer of the mighty Corpse Fleet – valiant navy of the true Eox – and you will go no farther. You’ve meddled enough in our plans. Now, I shall succeed where my lackeys have failed. I shall destroy you and bring glory to the Corpse Fleet once and for all!”

While her diatribe had distracted them, half a dozen bone troopers had closed the trap from the west, pinning the crew between them and their captain. Kusanagi engaged Vesh while the others set to work against the Corpse Fleet soldiers. Explosions from infused grenades, supercharged weapons, magic missiles, doshko and solarian blades, and plenty of blaster fire filled Skullcap Gorge with enough noise for two full battalions hard at work trying to kill each other.

The android quickly decided that he outmatched against the Corpse Fleet captain, who seemed to have had the same operative training as himself. He engaged his cloaking field and was dismayed that Vesh seemed to be able to see right through it! He retreated down the stairs toward his companions, and as the number of bone troopers dwindled, they moved to assist. In the end, Zeera Vesh faced off against Kima and was found lacking. Her body crumbled to dust and the crew wasted no time kicking the ashes into the nearby acid pool. They collected her belongings and the items of value carried by the bone troopers, then returned to Orphys and the Sunrise Maiden.

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Eox, Orbit

Captain Vesh was carrying a secure computer data module, and once Glitch ported it into the ship’s computer he was able to hack the system and access the information within. The module contained the data that was deleted from the datacore in the Star-Eater’s Spine, which revealed that the Cult of the Devourer left its Diaspora base to search for the Gate of Twelve Suns in a distant star system called Nejeor, based on the cultists’ interpretations of Nyara’s prophecies.

Nejeor’s coordinates put the system somewhere in the Vast, aligning with what Xerantha Mortrant had told them. The electronic signature on the data matched that of the hacker who had scrubbed the files from the cult’s computer system, confirming that the Corpse Fleet had visited the Star-Eater’s Spine, accessed the datacore, and learned that the cult was searching the Nejeor system for the “key” to the alien superweapon.

They sent transmissions to report their findings to the Ministry of Eternal Vigilance, the Eox veteran Gretal Rapinder, and also Chiskisk, back on Absalom Station. A few hours later, the shirren responded, thanking them for their efforts, letting them know that additional credits had been added to their accounts, and directing them to plot a course to Apostae. There they would find fellow Starfinders in need of rescue from a dark elf who had double-crossed the Society.

<<< >>>

Apostae, Orbit

The drow hadn’t seen the Sunrise Maiden coming. Given Villyth Zeizerer’s recent defeat of a trio of Starfinders sent to retrieve some weapons she’d stolen, she had been overconfident when she demanded ransom from the Society. Unfortunately for her, she had captured some good friends of the crew. The Starfinder ship swiftly rendered the dark elf vessel inoperable, and they moved to board.

They found several half-orcs and dark elves waiting with weapons drawn when they breached the airlock, but a well-placed spell grenade by Glitch thinned the enemy numbers by half. Galakrond and Kima moved to engage the survivors while Kusanagi chased the leader and gave her a bleeding wound. Villyth quaffed a serum that rendered her invisible, and slipped past the crew and into the airlock between the ships. They gave chase, but she had locked them out of their own ship!

Then Winslow, warned of the invisible drow from the chatter over comms, rendered her unconscious with a simple mind thrust. The shirren gave his companions a thumbs up as he reopened the airlock, and they took Villyth prisoner. They found their fellow Starfinders locked in an upper chamber of the dark elf ship. Boske, Porunga, and Twitch were gratified to see their friends’ faces, and happily came back aboard the Sunrise Maiden.

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Splintered Worlds

The Diaspora – Star-Eater’s Spine

The dark and oppressive tunnel below the asteroid’s surface gave way to a severe airlock chamber crafted of metal and concrete past an open outer door. A wide sliding door stood closed in the far wall of the room, rust dappling its edges like rotten lace. A single light above the doorway flickered weakly.

As the crew approached, spores burst forth from vents on either side of the door, bypassing their armors’ environmental protections. Kima and Galakrond resisted the effects of the magical spores, but Glitch and Kusanagi found their thoughts sluggish. As such, it took the crew some time to cycle the airlock and get through the inner door.

Riveted walls of steel around the airlock hatch extended into a cavernous gloom. At the chamber’s center stood a wide computer console that practically stretched to the ceiling. Rows of grimy buttons framed its blank display screen, from which emanated the faintest of glows. They spent some time failing to hack this computer before it occurred to them that any information about where the cultists went and what exactly they might have learned on Castrovel would be located in a larger computer system.

Past the operations terminal, half a dozen tiered pillars were interspersed throughout a wide hallway, which ended in a concave wall made of plated steel. A strange pile of body parts and viscera lay next to the easternmost pillar, and the faint scent of ozone hung in the air. The mass of gore appeared to be the remains of some manner of undead humanoid. It was difficult to discern the exact features, however, because the corpse had been cut into little chunks. Galakrond sifted through the pile of gore and found a patch stitched with the insignia of the Corpse Fleet, the exiled remnant of the Eoxian Navy. It seemed that the undead rebels had preceded the crew in infiltrating the Star-Eater’s Spine.

Glitch hung back while the other three advanced down the hallway. About the time they reached the center, a latticed wall of laser beams stretching from floor to ceiling and wall to wall separated those in the hall from their ysoki companion. Then the wall moved rapidly to the west and the trio of Starfinders scrambled to evade.

Galakrond and Kusanagi rushed back out before laser wall came back east, but Kima was too slow. He was burned by the beams and found himself cut off again. Instead of facing the murderous lasers again, he made for the doors to the north of the hall and burst through them into another darkened hall. The lasers persisted until Glitch and Kusanagi managed to finally hack the terminal and shut it down. All agreed that they should take a few minutes to rest before continuing.

When they did, they found a cloying gloom filled the long, claustrophobic hallway where Kima had sought refuge. A red light on the western wall blinked slowly, giving the scene a sinister atmosphere. Several closed doors on the north wall opened into a series of connected living quarters. In each, minimalist sleeping pallets lay on the severe metal floor, and simple shelves and dressers served as furniture.

In a locked dresser, they found a pair of injection gloves and 2 doses of a substance labeled “insanity mist.” They also found a security key card, that Glitch mentioned would have been helpful when dealing with the operations terminal. The easternmost of the rooms opened up into an armory. Three largely empty rows of shelves lined the northeastern side of the wide room. Here and there, a drooping suit of armor hung from its rack. A pair of patrol-class security robots activated as the Starfinders entered the chamber, but they were swiftly overcome. They left several suits of broken armor where they lie, planning to pick them up on their way out of the base.

Back to the west, they came to an area divided into two wings. The eastern side was filled with round metal tables and chairs, while the western chamber contained several pantry shelves as well as four flat, utilitarian stove units with attached faucets. The pantry shelves mostly held dry and preserved foods. The nature of the supplies here was odd, with extremely spicy options mixed with bizarre strains of fruit and vegetable preserves. They continued through an exit to the south.

Looming over the west side of the sterile room beyond were floor-to-ceiling computer consoles that swallowed the entire wall with dizzying displays of darkened screens, inset buttons, levers, and switches. A squat, bony, reptilian creature was slumped over in a congealed puddle of blood in front of the consoles. Another, more lively specimen lifted its head and barked in challenge as smoke billowed from its eye sockets.

The alien lizard barely got a single tooth into anyone before it was put down. The crew considered the large computer momentarily, but then decided to see if they could find any other items in the base to help them bypass its security measures. They headed out the southern exit into another mess hall.

The kitchen and dining area they found seemed as if they had been abandoned in the middle of a meal’s preparation. Pots of meat slurry and festering dairy sat on the stoves to the west, and metal cups full of some sludgy, long-turned beverage sat on the tables to the east. Tiny flies buzzed about the entire scene, flitting from place to place among the rotten smorgasbord. Glitch was sickened by the stench, and the crew swiftly moved on.

They found additional living quarters and searched them, finding a datapad and a credstick containing over a thousand credits. East of the southern set of barracks they found an arsenal similar in design to the armory on the north side.

Three rows of mostly bare shelves stood along the southeastern end of the wide room. Here and there, a dilapidated pistol or longarm sat on a dusty shelf. Three humanoid robots stood near the north wall; each was hunched over and covered in scorch marks, occasionally emitting puffs of sickly gray smoke. It appeared that the constructs had been taken down with laser fire, sometime within the past week. They bagged a number for broken guns and returned to the datacore.

The massive computer had a voiceprint password, so Glitch turned his attention to the datapad they’d found in the living quarters, hoping to find an audio file they could use. Among the mundane data files, electronic messages, gaming applications, and other files on the datapad was a single video file labeled “Do Not Delete.” In the video, a verthani and a gnome were sitting cross-legged on the floor inside one of the base’s living quarters. Both were dressed in robes and wearing unholy symbols of the Devourer, and the verthani is teaching the gnome to sing a paean to the Devourer. Throughout the song, both cultists repeat the phrase “Nyara knows!” over and over.

This phrase triggered something in the mainframe, and the Starfinders were able to access the datacore. There were three data modules of interest, labeled “Activities,” “Intelligence,” and “Sacred Lore.” They accessed the Activities module first, since Intelligence and Sacred Lore were protected by security countermeasures.

The Activities module stated the mission of this sect of the Cult of the Devourer in no uncertain terms. The denizens of the Star-Eater’s Spine were devoted to poring through the prophecies in a sacred but cryptic tome called The Entropy of Existence and Glorious Rise of the Void. The data contained the cult’s analysis of some of these divinations, including one prophecy flagged as high-priority. A link pointed to the location of this high-priority prophecy in the secure Sacred Lore module.

The cultists had focused on this one prophecy in particular because they thought it the most likely candidate for them to bring to fruition. From the data, it appeared the cultists interpreted the prophecy as referring to some sort of weapon – one powerful enough to serve as a “key” to untold destruction – but they had deciphered little else. In addition to the cultists’ obsessive work to understand more of this prophecy’s latent instructions, the module details the terrible, ritualistic tortures the cult enacted to try to pull further clues from those lines.

Following the breadcrumbs, the crew accessed the Sacred Lore module. It contained reams of information about the cult’s profane belief in the Devourer, the assured entropy of the universe, and the cultists’ unholy roles in bringing about the end of existence for the glory of their dark religion. In addition to general religious dogma and near-mad ramblings, the data module also detailed the Star-Eater’s Spine cult’s fascination with an ancient elven soothsayer named Nyara, outlining her history.

Centuries ago, an evil and malicious elven mystic named Nyara had lived a depraved existence on Castrovel. At the time, the Cult of the Devourer was merely a shadow of a threat to the civilized species of the galaxy, but Nyara discovered in the dogma of the Star-Eater the nihilistic ambition for which she later became known. Nyara fed off the pain and suffering of those weaker than her, and she slaughtered hundreds and quickly rose through the ranks of Castrovel’s Star-Eater cult. As the number of atrocities she committed in the Devourer’s name mounted, Nyara came to believe that her uncaring patron would visit a terrible fate on her soul should she not work to further the total destruction of existence that the Devourer so coveted.

Committing herself fully to the Devourer’s entropic cause, Nyara began a career in dark soothsaying. Her killings became ritualistic rather than indiscriminate, and she drew prophecies from the very blood of her victims. Nyara spent her long elven life span extracting the terrible secrets underlying creation and extrapolating innumerable doomsday futures. Before her death, Nyara recorded her most profane divinations in her magnum opus, a tome called The Entropy of Existence and Glorious Rise of the Void. This work, though obscure to the galaxy at large, is considered a key unholy text to many Devourer cults. Its dark prophecies span countless realities, including dozens of ways that the multiverse and all its planes of existence might someday come to an end.

The data includes a computer-generated hologram of Nyara recounting some of her most enigmatic prognostications, as recorded in her most infamous book. One of these predictions is flagged as high-priority; they accessed the prediction, and a hologram of Nyara recited, “In the maw of the Twelve lies the Key. Forsooth, shall all be undone. When the knee meets the gorge, so far. The widening gyre implodes – magnificently.”

Finally, the crew accessed the Intelligence data module, which contained records of all of the communications between the Star-Eater’s Spine and the Devourer cult on Castrovel. Although it appeared that the cultists had tried to erase this data before they deserted the base, the Starfinders were able to recover most of the communication logs for the base’s comm unit. These captioned recordings document the Castrovelian cult leader Tahomen’s boastful crowing about his cult’s activities at the Temple of the Twelve, including a premature claim of the cult’s humiliating defeat of the crew.

The last communication log took on a triumphantly gleeful tone. In it, Tahomen reported that information in the temple’s inner sanctum had revealed the location of the “key” emphasized in Nyara’s prophecy. In the final line of the recording, Tahomen jubilantly stated, “Our future awaits, far beyond the confines of the Star-Eater’s Spine! You must fly, my sisters and brothers! Fly to (garbled static), where the Key awaits…” The recording then ended. The Starfinders sighed heavily.

It was obvious that the name of the location the cultists fled to had deliberately been deleted and then meticulously scrubbed from the system. The electronic signature of the hacker who performed these tasks was unlike any of the digital footprints left in either the datacore or the computer terminal near the entrance. However, there were clear signs that the data was deleted just a few days before – sometime after the cultists had abandoned the Star-Eater’s Spine, given physical clues left behind at the base, such as the state of the mess hall.

The evidence suggested that the Corpse Fleet was aware of the Stellar Degenerator and were investigating what the Cult of the Devourer had discovered, as well. Having exhausted all of the leads in the base, they collected the loot they’d found and returned to the Sunrise Maiden.

They had barely left the surface of Asteroid K9204 when a pair of Death’s Head Necrogliders showed up on their scanners, with weapons hot. The tiny interceptors were nothing like a match for the upgraded Starfinder ship, and they were disabled in short order. The crew managed to wrangle the bone trooper pilots on board their ship and question them. The prisoners denied their membership in the Corpse Fleet, though their uniforms and the markings on their ships belied the claim.

When coerced, the pilots confirmed that the Corpse Fleet did visit the Star-Eater’s Spine and that they had been ordered to attack anyone leaving the base. Neither pilot had any knowledge of the Corpse Fleet’s goals in investigating the cult base, and they didn’t know the ultimate destination of either the Corpse Fleet or the Cult of the Devourer. The crew left the Corpse Fleet pilots in their disabled ships, then placed a call to Captain Alera Okwana with a tip about easy salvage, then returned to the Drift beacon to report back to Absalom Station.

<<< >>>

About eight hours later, they received a pre-recorded reply.

“Greetings, my friends. It is a grave matter, indeed, that the Corpse Fleet seems so intent on keeping you from following the Cult of the Devourer’s trail, even to the point of attempting to eliminate you,” Chiskisk began, their antennae folded pensively. “I presume that means they are now searching for the Stellar Degenerator as well. The Corpse Fleet is not to be trifled with, and its schemes perpetually frustrate the Eoxians here on Absalom Station. The Eoxian delegation diligently reports the efforts their planet undertakes to curb the Corpse Fleet’s activities, but they never seem to make a dent in the threat.

“Given your run-ins with the Corpse Fleet of late, I have kept my antennae in the air. My contacts in the Eoxian embassy here on the station have worked with a bureaucrat and historian in Eox’s Ministry of Eternal Vigilance named Waneda Trux. She is posted in the city of Orphys and handles reports about Corpse Fleet activity on Eox. According to my contacts, Ms. Trux recently received some indications that the fleet’s agents are up to something – perhaps recruiting for a big mission or gathering resources. It’s unclear. But following any leads that Ms. Trux has gathered could very well reveal the Corpse Fleet’s plots for the Stellar Degenerator and, if we are lucky, the coordinates where the cultists from the Star-Eater’s Spine fled to.

“Waneda Trux’s office is located in a district of Orphys called the Splice. I have informed her that you will be arriving soon. I will not misrepresent Eox – it is a dead world, and it will not be comfortable, even for representatives of the Starfinder Society on official business. But Eox is a member of the Pact Worlds, so one can expect a certain amount of civilization.”

Chiskisk cleared their throat with a metallic rasp and continued. “I am sure I do not need to remind you, but this mission is of the utmost priority. You must meet Waneda Trux and find the location of this Stellar Degenerator. You must keep it out of the hands of the Corpse Fleet and the Cult of the Devourer. Everything could be at stake. End transmission.”

In addition to the message, the crew found 2,500 credits had been deposited in each of their accounts for their ongoing efforts in the investigation. With direction from their leadership, the Starfinders set a course through the Drift to Eox.

<<< >>>

Eox

Eox was a dead world, with no seas or oceans, and what was left of its thin atmosphere was toxic, radioactive, both, or worse. As the Sunrise Maiden approached the planet, the crew was contacted by Eoxian Space Defense officials on the ancient orbital defense platform called the Sentinel, who requested identification and their destination. Fortunately, Orphys had its own small spaceport, so the crew was directed there. Once they passed through customs and immigration under the watchful eye sockets of undead officials, they were free to enter the city. They made their way straight to the Ministry of Eternal Vigilance in the Splice.

Orphys was one of Eox’s great necropolises, but the Splice was one of the city’s most unappealing districts. Largely industrial and utilitarian, the Splice was home to several necrograft factories, which lay the unpleasant reality of this technology’s fabrication bare. These factories were large, dirty, and unsightly. Most of the fusion of undead flesh and technology required to create necrografts took place inside the factories, but other rather morbid processes also happened on these facilities’ open-air grounds. This included the cultivation of massive amounts of vat-grown, genetically synthesized living flesh as well as the transportation of this unpleasant crop via flesh elevators up into the factories.

Beyond the necrograft factories, the Splice was also home to rows of slum-like abodes where some of Orphys’s poorest and politically disfavored citizens lived, including those few living species who have agreed to work for the Eoxians – often in the nearby necrograft factories – in exchange for the gift of undeath once their mortal forms have weakened. Of course, where there was a population, there were also businesses to serve the residents, and the Splice was no different. However, local law enforcement rarely turned its attention toward the hardscrabble district, so many of the Splice’s business proprietors were known to be shady, even by Eoxian standards. Visitors were uncommon in the Splice, and amenities for the living were scarce enough to be nearly nonexistent.

The Ministry of Eternal Vigilance sat on Carpalspur Street, nestled between necrograft factories and shops. Compared with other government buildings elsewhere in Orphys, the ministry was remote, run down, and politically ignored for the most part. The crew came to a wide, two-story building of black and rust-dappled gray that stood out from the other dilapidated structures on the densely packed block. A holographic banner above the sliding double entryway displayed the words “Ministry of Eternal Vigilance” in Common and Eoxian. A smaller sign on the front doors declared that the office was open for at least 12 hours every Pact Standard day, even if the stench from the nearby necrograft factory and the building’s lack of windows and architectural accouterments were less than inviting.

The ministry’s ground floor contained a large waiting room with rows of rusty and, in some cases, lopsided hover chairs. A tall, boxy machine in a corner dispensed numbered tokens. Beside the machine, projected in a hologram on the wall, were instructions for reporting Corpse Fleet activity to the ministry. A wide front desk with a teller-like window faced the lobby at one end, with a holographic numerical display. Behind the front desk, stairs led to the second floor, though they were roped off with industrial-grade silver tape labeled “No Public Access.”

There were only two people present on the Ministry’s first story: a shabby human man sitting in the lobby, and a female ghoul sitting behind the front desk, absently entering information from an enormous stack of papers into a computer terminal sitting on the desk. According to the holographic instructions in the lobby, visitors should take a numbered token from the machine in the corner and have a seat. When their number was called, they should check in at the front desk, where a ministry official would assist them. The crew took a few numbers then had a seat next to the man waiting to file his report.

While they waited, they engaged the human man in conversation. His name was Shan Goulding, and he was a worker in the Fleshworn Fabrications necrograft factory as a line inspector, examining cured pieces of vat-grown flesh to ensure that they fit the specific sizes and shapes needed for creating ocular necrografts. He was hired by a bone sage who was partial owner of the factory; once Shan completed 3 more Eoxian years (15 Pact Standard years) of service, the bone sage had promised him the gift of immortality as an undead ghoul. Shan was locked in a bitter feud with a half-elf line inspector named Frenzel, and he admitted that he was planning to report his rival for secretly being a Corpse Fleet agent.

It was pretty clear that the half-elf was not, in fact, Corpse Fleet, but Kusanagi thought he might be able to commiserate with Shan to get a bit more information out of him. The man revealed that a flesh brewer at the factory, a corpsefolk – an undead zombie that retained its intelligence and personality – named Voxel also hated Frenzel. Shan further explains that, if they ever needed anything from the factory, they should talk to Voxel and tell him Shan sent them.

Several more minutes passed in silence as the ghoul at the front desk continued doing whatever it was that didn’t involve tending to those in the waiting room. Eventually, Kima lost patience and approached the desk to speak with the undead woman. She only pointed at the instructions without looking up at him until he mentioned that Chiskisk had sent them.

“Ah. The Starfinders. The bug sent you, huh? You know the stuff people report to me is mostly garbage, right? Petty, stupid complaints about the neighbors or outright lies about rivals and enemies, and none of ’em have nothing to do with the Corpse Fleet.

“Still, once in a thousand moons, we actually get a legitimate lead or two. When that happens, I forward the reports to the government, who passes them on to the authorities and the Pact Council and
all the Pact Worlds, or so I’m told. This time, I’m giving ’em to you too. You want to use ’em to go after the Corpse Fleet, be my guest. Literally, since I was instructed to set aside a room upstairs for you. It’s yours for as long as you’re here, as an office and as a bedroom, since you lot still need sleep, I guess. But don’t rush your business on my behalf; I just love strangers – especially living ones I can’t eat – staying in my office, particularly when my boss is pretty much forcing me to play host.” Waneda smiled disagreeably, revealing sharp, scraggly teeth and a long, curling tongue.

“I’ve got two reports that came in during the last week,” Waneda explained. “They’re the only ones with any merit at all recently, to be honest with you. The authorities might get to investigating ’em soon, but I’m willing to bet your business is more urgent.”

Report Filed By Voxel Darksend; Necrotype/Species Corpsefolk (elebrian)
Address 43 Sethrot Commons, Upper Vamsbank, Orphys
Occupation Flesh brewer; Employer Fleshworn Fabrications
Available for Follow-Up Interview? Yes (at work only)
Filing Date 4 Kuthona 317 ag
Recorded By Waneda Trux, Director

Incident of Suspected Corpse Fleet Activity “Sometime between the hours of 11:30 and 13:00 yesterday (3 Kuthona), an entire vat of flesh disappeared from FWF’s flesh yards. Upon discovering the flesh was missing, I found a badge with the Corpse Fleet’s insignia next to the empty vat. I also recorded a digital photo of the badge’s location. It seems pretty obvious to me that the Corpse Fleet stole the vat flesh for some unknown purpose.”

Report Filed By Gretal Rapinder; Necrotype/Species Bone trooper (elebrian)
Address 5236 Bareknuckle Way, Splice, Orphys
Occupation Navy trooper (retired); Employer 5th Squadron, Eoxian Navy
Available for Follow-Up Interview? Yes
Filing Date 6 Kuthona 317 ag
Recorded By Waneda Trux, Director

Incident of Suspected Corpse Fleet Activity “On or around 00:00 on 4 Kuthona, my flatmate, Harvinne Nessex (also a 5th Squadron veteran), left our residence, saying she needed to purchase new outerwear – a curious task, especially considering the late hour. In any case, she never returned to the flat. This morning (6 Kuthona), I entered her quarters and discovered that most of her belongings were gone, but I found a scrap of paper on the floor that looks like it fell out of her journal (Harvinne keeps a real paper diary that she actually writes in with a stylus). On this scrap, Harvinne wrote about her disillusionment with current Eoxian policy and her intention to join a contingent of the Corpse Fleet that is currently operating in Orphys. I believe that Harvinne has left the Splice to enlist in the Corpse Fleet.”

After the crew had reviewed the reports, Waneda said, “You should probably look into both of these as soon as you can. The flesh brewer works at Fleshworn Fabrications. He said to ask for him at the factory’s back gates, which are right across the street from the ministry. That delightful stench you smell is from the flesh vats in the factory yard. I suppose you don’t like it much but it just makes me hungry. The retired trooper lives down the way. She’s retired, so she should be available whenever – what else is she going to do? Oh, and there’s one more thing before you go.”

Waneda informed the crew that Ambassador Nor had compiled a dossier of known Corpse Fleet agents currently active on Eox. “I don’t how this background material will help you, but Ambassador Nor insisted you have it,” said the ghoul as she passed it along. The information in the dossier was difficult to parse without much context, but it did include the names of the following Corpse Fleet agents: Rialphus Evanko, Zeera Vesh, and Woan Watten.

The crew thanked the surly ghoul then left the ministry building. They decided to visit the necrograft factory first, and made their way to Fleshworn Fabrications. Tall metal walls behind a chain-link fence and wide, looming security gates marked the industrial facility. Inside the gates was a massive metal-and-concrete platform resting at the bottom of an enormous elevator shaft. The edges of circular pools or vats containing some strange undulating substance were barely visible behind the fence, sunk deeply in the ground. A sign that read, “Attention visitors: Call for agent,” hung above an intercom on one side of the back gates. They used the comm unit to summon Voxel Darksend.

A booming voice answered, and once the crew identified themselves as having come from the Ministry, Voxel hurried over to open the gates, saying, “Finally! It’s about time the Ministry sent somebody! You have no idea how much I’ve needed you to tell my bosses that I didn’t steal or lose the missing flesh. Well? What are you waiting for? Get in here!”

Voxel was fairly coarse and abrupt, and he simply wanted the crew to prove that the missing flesh had been stolen. Voxel didn’t care much about bureaucracy or the political arrangements between Eox and the Pact Worlds regarding tracking the Corpse Fleet. He assumed that the authorities had sent the Starfinders, and insisted on calling them “cops” or “agents.” The crew did not correct him.

As soon as they walked into the flesh yard, Voxel insisted on showing them the relevant vat, which was still empty from the recent theft. He also showed the crew a photo on his datapad of the badge he found next to the vat immediately following the theft’s discovery and even produced the badge itself. Galakrond confirmed that it was definitely a Corpse Fleet insignia. Kusanagi suggested searching the damaged vat itself, but Voxel balked, citing safety regulations and despotic supervisors. Glitch offered to repair the apparently busted control module and fix the broken mechanism, and Voxel agreed that if that were accomplished, he saw no reason to stop them from investigating the vat.

It didn’t take the ysoki long to work his magic and get the vat fixed up. Kusanagi descended to execute his search, and in the bottom of the vat, he found some curious bone spur-like shards among the scraps of synthetic flesh that remained in the vat. He bought the shards back up and showed them to his companions. The crew determined that the bony spurs were likely osteoderms shed by an undead creature known as a marrowblight.

Voxel didn’t know anything about such creatures nor why one would be interested in the factory’s flesh. Before the crew left, he requested they sign an affidavit that he could should his superiors stating that the Ministry had confirmed the Corpse Fleet was responsible for the missing flesh. Once they had done this, he smiled gratefully and handed them a few frag grenades from his personal stash for their trouble.

The crew made their way over to the pensioner’s flat, which was only a block or so away. The narrow sliding door to this residential building bore the tarnished metal numbers “5236,” with the final digit drooping to the side. The door was slightly dented and hung partially ajar, clearly having been forced open. The sound of rasping voices shouting angry taunts could clearly be heard coming from inside the residence, and so the Starfinders wasted no time kicking in the door.

Within, three ghoul soldiers were kicking a bone trooper who had fallen to the floor. The ghouls whirled on the crew, but they were wildly outmatched. After the first fell, the other two fled into the streets, and the Starfinders let them go. The woman Gretal, who had filed the report, expressed her thanks for their help. The bone trooper was concerned about brewing Corpse Fleet activity in the area. She was also a little shaken in the knowledge that her trip to the Ministry of Eternal Vigilance has become public knowledge and that soldiers in her former squadron had taken such offense to her report. A loyal citizen, Gretal simply wanted to do right by her planet’s legitimate government and military, which required her to report her suspicions about her flatmate Harvinne.

In gratitude for their help, and also to help the crew in their future endeavors, Gretal gave them a haste circuit armor upgrade from her time in the 5th Squadron. “I was hanging on to this as a souvenir of my time in the service,” Gretal said. “Honestly, though, I have no use for it anymore, and it will likely help you more than it would ever help me. But let it be a reminder – not all of us who’re dead are bad!”

Although the bone trooper’s appearance was rather unsettling, she was relatively friendly toward the crew. Without much prompting, Gretal unlocked her flatmate’s bedroom and gave the Starfinders the journal page she had mentioned in her Ministry incident report. The bedroom contained no additional clues, but upon examining the journal scrap, they learned that Harvinne had planned to meet with something called “the marrowblight” before taking up her illicit commission in the Corpse Fleet.

The crew exchanged glances. Tracking the marrowblight was clearly their next priority.

<<< >>>

Splintered Worlds

Absalom Station

A few days after most of the crew had left for Apostae, Kusanagi was summoned to the Lorespire Complex by Chiskisk. He was a little surprised to find Content Not Found: galkarond already there, as well as two new faces, a ysoki and a lashunta. The android was introduced to Glitch and Kima, and then Chiskisk got down to business. The Starfinders had determined the approximate location of the Devourer cult’s base in the Diaspora: somewhere in a treacherous stretch of several hundred asteroids known as the Field of the Lost.

Fortunately, a reliable Drift beacon floated just outside this region of the asteroid belt, but without an exact location, the crew needed to search the Field of the Lost for clues to find the Devourer cult base there. Kusanagi asked about the others, but Chiskisk said they would be out of contact for at least another week and a half, and they felt it would be best to send a team to the Diaspora immediately.

The Sunrise Maiden was freshly retrofitted, and Winslow greeted his companions and the newcomers as they came aboard. Once everyone was settled in, they set a course for the Drift beacon Chiskisk had identified.

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The Diaspora – Field of the Lost

As they came out of the Drift, a bleak sight greeted them through the starship’s viewscreen: irregular chunks of rock and ice and occasional ominous fields of green and blue floated through an empty void, with a vast field of stars for a backdrop. Glitch initiated a scan of the area and noticed a few peculiar blips on the starship’s instrument panels that indicated irregular movement in the vicinity – another ship lurked nearby. The ysoki recognized it as a Nebulor Outfitters Starhopper, a model commonly affiliated with the Free Captains of the Diaspora – pirates. He hailed the ship and nodded to Kima as a human woman appeared onscreen.

“Ho ho! They hailed us!” said the woman, sounding delighted. “Well, I’m Captain Alera Okwana. What would ye like ta say, then?”

“Greetings,” said Kima. “We are a scientific vessel passing through this sector. We have nothing of value, and we have no quarrel with you. We will, however, defend ourselves.”

The pirate captain seemed to consider this for a moment before smiling. “Science equipment’ll prolly fetch a tidy sum, I wager. So be it. Defend yerselves!” She terminated the transmission.

The enemy pilot was no match for Kusanagi, and despite a couple of flyby strafing runs, the pirate starship was soon smoking, while the Starship Maiden’ shields hadn’t even been breached. Kima accepted another hail from Captain Okwana.

“Guess that weren’t no bluff!” she said with a laugh. “We’d like ta go ahead and request parley now, if’n ye’d be so kind. Come aboard me ship and we’ll discuss terms.”

“Very well,” said Kima. “Prepare for docking.”

As the crew came aboard the Rusty Rivet the four pirates assumed nonthreatening poses. In addition to the captain, here was an android engineer, a korasha lashunta, and a vesk. Okwana introduced them as Q4, Korrina Noh, and Zekanoya Spikesmasher respectively. “How may we be of service?” she asked.

“We’re looking for a Cult of the Devourer base that is supposed to be somewhere nearby,” said Kima.

“Yeah, there are cultists out here. Crazy buggers – I suggest giving ’em a wide berth if you come across any. They got a hole on a nearby rock where they get together and do whatever it is cultists do. They call it the Star-Eater’s Spine, or something equally stupid. Come to think of it, those bone ships were headed in that direction.”

“Bone ships?” prompted Galakrond.

“Yeah, a couple of nasty-looking bone ships. Big bruisers, and frankly above my pay grade, ya know? But they didn’t care about us little old pirates, so we just shadowed ’em for a bit. They did whatever business they had here and went on their way.”

“Which way’d they go?” asked Glitch.

“We think the rock they hole up on is one we call K9204. I’ve never been there, so I don’t know if there’s a base there or not, but I can point you in the right direction.” Captain Okwana punched some commands into the Rusty Rivet’s computer and brought up a navigational chart of the region, which she copied onto a datastick and handed to the ysoki. The chart showed the route to the asteroid.

Kusanagi exchanged glances with the rest of the crew. “Okay, now what do we do about the pirates?”

“I have a suggestion as to that,” said Okwana. “Way I see it, you beat us and got us dead to rights. I admit that. But there’s no reason we can’t be friendly-like. I’ll give ya a thousand credits apiece to let us and the Rivet go. You go your way, we go ours. Everybody’s happy and nobody dies, yeah?”

The rest of the crew was agreeable, and Kusanagi just shrugged. They took the credits and left the Rusty Rivet behind. Glitch lay in the course for the Star-Eater’s Spine.

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The Diaspora – Asteroid K9204

An hour later, the Sunrise Maiden arrived at the small asteroid, officially designated K9204. It was less than a mile in diameter and was made up of treacherous rock- and ore-infused terrain. Jagged cliffs covered the asteroid’s surface; in fact, there was only one relatively open area of any size on the entire asteroid. The planetoid was dense enough to provide low gravity and their scans indicated that it was enveloped with a thin atmosphere.

Kusanagi flew to the only open area on the asteroid large enough to accommodate a starship. Deep grooves and scorch marks in the rocky ground showed that other starships had landed and taken off from the area repeatedly, though no such ships were present. The Devourer cult base was nowhere in sight; the crew would have to explore the asteroid’s sole navigable area.

There were two wide paths heading deeper into a cavernous area on the asteroid’s surface, and the crew chose the one on the left-hand side. Nestled between a sheer cliff and a small, narrow rock formation, the ground there sloped at odd angles. To the north was a small field pocked with shards of metal, their sharp edges gleaming. To the west, a steep incline led upward to a cave-like structure.

The crew inspected the shards, determining them to be composed of cold iron. Galakrond and Glitch each collected one, cutting their hands on the sharp edges before wrapping one end up to be held safely. In a pinch, the vesk figured it could be used as an improvised weapon. They also noted a silvery glint on the ground among the metallic shards, which turned out to be a dented silver amulet with an oval pendant and a red stone embedded in its center. Glitch identified it as an unholy symbol of the Devourer.

Proceeding forward and upward, they came to a split in the path. To their left was an expansive alcove devoid of the silvery ash that was prevalent elsewhere on the asteroid. Upon closer scrutiny, it had the appearance of a gruesome graveyard. Several discarded corpses lay there – some that looked just a few days old, and some that were rotting with the telltale signs of weeks, if not months, of decay. Kusanagi examined the corpses, discovering that they had been killed in a methodical, ritualistic manner before being flayed and implanted with something after death. Sifting through the corpses was gruesome work, but the crew discovered a few items of value among the dead. These included an onyx-and-ruby ankle bracelet, a glove of storing, and credsticks containing hundreds of credits.

On the path to the right, thin rock formations curved almost elegantly to form the rough shapes of caves and tunnels, with piles of silvery ash nestled against them like snow drifts. The ash piled against the rock faces was much more uneven than elsewhere on the asteroid, ranging from a foot deep to four or five feet deep. The crew began to sift through the ash, and found a couple of large humanoid bodies. They appeared to be Sarcesians, and nearby, they found a pair of rifles, dueling swords, and credsticks that must have belonged to the aliens.

No one had any theories as to what had brought the Sarcesians to the asteroid, but they also didn’t have much time to consider it as they came under attack from three winged creatures that burst from the silvery ash! The skreelings surrounded Galakrond and managed to get through his armor with their slashing claws. This opened wounds in the vesk that bled freely. The crew managed to pick a couple of the creatures off, and without the benefit of surrounding their quarry, the aliens proved much less dangerous.

After the last one fell, the crew discovered a partially intact skeleton in a sitting position near the back of the rock formation. Across its lap was a thin, jagged, and rusted piece of metal. Emblazoned on it, in Castrovelian, were the barely legible words “Imura Excavations.” Behind the skeleton, they found four bars of pure silver ore, worth thousands of credits.

The crew barely had time to appreciate this valuable find as a shot rang out, and Kima was struck by a sniper’s laser! The shooter was using active camouflage to remain hidden, but they thought it was positioned on the cliffs above. A mad chase ensued as the crew took cover and Galakrond climbed the uneven natural steps to the top of the cliff only to have the sniper flee down the other side. Once he pinpointed the shooter, Glitch unloaded on it with magic missiles, while Kusanagi and Kima herded it back to the cliff side.

After a harrying thirty seconds or so, the sniper fell, and when its camouflage wore off, they found it to be another Sarcesian. Why it had attacked them, they couldn’t say, though if skreelings were around, there might also be a skreesire, the poor creature might have been under the influence of that monster’s magic. Near the pile of silvery ash at the foot of the cliff, they found a months-old human corpse in tattered black and red rags. The iconography on the corpse’s clothing included symbols of the Devourer. On one of its bony fingers was a filthy ¬_ring of sustenance_.

Continuing west past the rocky formations, they came to an isolated grotto dotted with more piles of silvery ash. To the northwest, a low shelf of rock dammed a pool of thick greenish liquid. A humanoid body in torn robes with one arm chewed off was ominously propped against the ledge. As they drew near, Galakrond heard a mighty telepathic screech in his head, but suffered no ill effects. He mentioned this to his companions, who paused for a moment before continuing on.

Then Kima heard a screech and felt compelled to approach the green pool. When he drew within ten feet, a fanged maw breached the surface of the pool and a tentacle lashed out to grab hold of the lashunta! The skreesire focused its attention on the solarian while the others did their best to bring the monster down. The aberration was so fixated on crushing Kima to death, that it didn’t take long for the rest of the crew to mortally wound it. It sank back into the green pool and out of sight.

The body propped against the ledge was wearing a Devourer unholy symbol around its neck, depicting a black hole with a red center. The corpse was very fresh, likely only a few days old. Beside it rested a satchel containing a hefty collection of various rare coins.

The crew searched the rest of the grotto and found a trapdoor in the ground hidden beneath the pile of silvery ash in the middle of the chamber. It opened into and underground tunnel. They had found the Star-Eater’s Spine, but Glitch mentioned that he had burned through most of his spells already. It was his first time in the field, he sheepishly admitted, and he’d been a little overzealous. The rest of the crew were understanding and they decided to bring all the loot back to the Sunrise Maiden and get some sleep before descending into the base of the Devourer Cult.

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Splintered Worlds

(Piano Instrumental)

Sadly, no trace of them was ever found…

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Splintered Worlds

Brilliance

And then the starfighter turned away, heading back for the solar space station. The crew did not question this turn of events but instead began the calculations for the trip back home through the Drift.

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Absalom Station

Back at the Lorespire Complex, Historia-7 eagerly awaited them, exhibiting the slightest slip of happiness. She had already prepared a team of Dataphile operatives to decode and record the contents of the stolen files. They set to work immediately while she debriefed the crew and forwarded a message from Envar Tamm to each of their comms. It was a digital invitation to the young socialite’s 24th birthday party, described as an all-inclusive trip to a pleasure yacht in high orbit over Verces, with a note that read: “Join me for an encore performance of our glorious victory!”

As Historia-7 finished her debriefing, she began to receive the first hints of decoded data from Ilia Tamm’s files. “The mission is a success, and you are to be commended. All of you deserve some time to rest before your likely return to a more typical Society assignment.”

Historia-7 momentarily paused after making her declaration. The android’s eyes stared off past her data visor, as though she were contemplating some additional information. “Interesting … This data you’ve uncovered is … very … interesting. For now, I’ll ask you to depart. I need to summon Zigvigix of the Exo-Guardians. It appears one of his recent offers now aligns with what this data may require us to do. How … unfortunate.”

<<< >>>

A couple of days later, the crew received a summons from a Starfinder leader they hadn’t yet worked for. Kusanagi was handling some personal business, but when the others arrived at the Lorespire Complex, Venture-Captain Naiaj watched a map holographically projected onto the spherical wall of the dimly lit chamber. This meeting room was aptly named the “Starscape Chamber” and hosted various important strategic meetings for the Society. The pale bleachling gnome slightly nodded a greeting, hardly looking away from the stellar map.

“Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice,” she said, as she finally turns away from the map. “As you know, the Starfinder Society lost not only many agents but also a great deal of equipment in the Scoured Stars incident. Since then, we’ve been dealing with a shortage of guns, ammunition, armor, tools, and provisions. Over the past four months, the Society has recovered to the point that we are able to start replacing some of the equipment we lost. While we are explorers, right now, battle-ready firearms are sorely needed.”

Naiaj momentarily turned to face the map and made a request: “Starscape, show me Nightarch.” The map on the wall zoomed in on one of the outermost planets of the Pact Worlds, showing a gloomy, air-sealed settlement on the small gray planetoid identified as Apostae. “After calling in a lot of favors and holding lengthy negotiations, we managed to secure a deal with the drow of Apostae to obtain a shipment of weapons. House Zeizerer arranged a deal between the Starfinder Society and House Xicton, a lesser drow house with a solid track record on sales. I personally oversaw the negotiations, and only recently returned to Absalom Station to deposit the down payment owed to House Xicton.

“My intention was to send you to Nightarch, the drow’s surface settlement on Apostae, to guard this delivery. However,” Naiaj paused briefly, staring blankly at the map on the wall before continuing, “I just received word that the weapon shipment has been stolen. According to my contacts in Nightarch, the thief is a minor noble of House Zeizerer named Villyth, who went rogue and stole the weapons. We do not know her motives or the current whereabouts of the shipment, but I’m sending you to Nightarch to find the weapons and bring them to Absalom Station. As you may have heard, the interhouse politics of the drow are lethal and treacherous, and you will find only trouble if you start searching blindly. For this reason, I’ve arranged for you to meet with Ceobarn Zeizerer, who represents House Zeizerer in this specific matter. You are to discuss how the Society can get its shipment back without causing a diplomatic incident.

“Your shuttle is ready, so I expect you to get your things and get going as soon as possible. If you have any questions, now is the time to ask.”

“Why are we buying guns from drow?” asked Boske.

“Like it or not, Apostae is not only a member of the Pact Worlds, but also the weapon capital of the solar system. Their firearms are high-quality and come at reasonable prices. Despite their fearsome reputation, drow are generally as good as their word when it comes to selling and trading weapons.”

“Who is Villyth Zeizerer?” Twitch wanted to know.

“She is a minor noble in the hierarchy of House Zeizerer. I understand that she is something of a rebel, and as far as I know, her actions were not sanctioned by her house.”

Porunga nodded. “What can you tell us about House Zeizerer?”

“They are the most powerful drow household on Apostae, controlling the major surface settlement of Nightarch. They are demon-worshipers and arms dealers like the rest of them, but as far as drow houses go, they are quite reliable because they have a reputation to uphold. Complications like this are bad for the business. Our representative with them, Ceobarn Zeizerer, has always been blunt and up-front with me – how I prefer to handle most of my social interactions.”

“What about Nightarch?” asked Twitch.

“It is the largest settlement on the planetoid’s surface, and a major spaceport with bustling markets dealing in all kinds of weapons. Because House Zeizerer controls the city, you’ll be meeting with their representative Ceobarn first.”

The crew did some asking around and research on their own to get a better sense of the drow city they’d be entering. They learned that Nightarch was a metropolis of over 1.2 million inhabitants, most of whom were drow elves. Their society was traditionally matriarchal, but contrary to popular belief, the gender divide was not backed by law; rather, it was a holdover from pre-Gap times. A drow man with enough contacts, cunning, and wealth could rise to positions of leadership, rivaling drow women in power.

The city had a sizable orc and half-orc population, but they were treated as second-class citizens at best, and slaves at worst. Most orcs and half-orcs were destined to live and die as mercenaries, or, as some drow houses preferred to put it, cannon fodder.

Weapons were Nightarch’s main export, and many drow houses were involved in arms trade. What most people didn’t know was that there were thousands of miles of tunnels and numerous vaults of alien technology beneath the surface of Apostae. Many weapons designed in Nightarch were reverse-engineered from this technology.

Of the many bizarre technologies that drow were known for, fleshwarping was perhaps the least understood. It involved mutations and magic to transform a humanoid creature into a hate-filled abomination. While originally a punishment, a more refined form of fleshwarping could be used to create augmentations which – while gruesome to behold – greatly enhanced the individual’s physical qualities. In the most drastic cases of fleshwarping, the target often suffered from incredibly reduced intelligence, limiting the creature’s tactical acumen.

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Apostae

An otherwise empty shuttle took the crew on their weeklong journey. As the shuttle approached the dull gray planetoid, several fighters emerged from a hulking capital ship identified as part of the local fleet defense: the Blood Armada. These fighters whizzed past like a swarm of angry wasps. The navigation computer let out a blaring alert as the capital ship scanned the shuttle, but soon after, the alert ended and the fighters flew back to the massive carrier. The shuttle descended into low-orbit, and several small settlements with sealed atmospheres came into view.

Further out, beneath clouds of dust, several mile-wide blast doors, many large craters, and miles-deep crevices could be seen across the planetoid’s surface. The shuttle soared closer to Apostae’s surface, fast approaching the dark city of Nightarch. The eponymous arch and various tower houses could be seen within the city limits. Nightarch’s vast spaceport was alive with hundreds of blinking red and purple lights, which guided the shuttle into the gloomy capital of the drow.

When the crew stepped off the shuttle, two drow guards working for House Zeizerer escorted them through a labyrinth of air-filled, enclosed tunnels to Mileshadow, a tall corporate building owned by House Zeizerer. On the top floor of the building, the guards led the crew to the office of Ceobarn Zeizerer. According to a biographical article Twitch found on the local infosphere, Ceobarn was an intelligent inventor and scientist who had risen through the ranks despite his gender. The author made it seem that this was not only because of his talent but also because he was a masterful manipulator who had managed to make himself irreplaceable.

The guards opened the door to a spacious office on the top floor of the tall building, and without even a hint of emotion, one drow barely muttered, “Wait here.” The green-tinged windows in the room offered a majestic view over the gloomy Nightarch. Several statues and holographic devices depicting grinning fiends sat on shelves on the walls and on a darkwood desk at the far end of the room. A curious fixture reminiscent of a demonic spider looked down from the ceiling with many glistening eyes.

There was no one in the office, and the house guards left the crew to wait in the room. Studying the statues and holograms, Porunga recognized different aspects of the demon lord Abraxas. The crew decided to wait patiently and not touch anything.

After five minutes, a wall panel at the back of the office slid open, and a middle-aged drow walked in and settled into a red armchair behind the desk. He gave a nonchalant wave of his hand, and the demonic statue in the ceiling started shedding a purple glow, illuminating the room. “I am Ceobarn Zeizerer,” he said without preamble. “You are Naiaj’s Starfinders, correct? I heard about the shipment. A most unfortunate setback. Villyth has always been a troublemaker.” After a brief silence, he spat, “But it is not our fault. House Zeizerer officially disowned her months ago. Why should I help you?”

The crew made a variety of arguments, from hits to House Zeizerer’s reputation, to reprisal by House Xicton, but Ceobarn was deaf to these pleas. Porunga’s comment about looking weak in the eyes of their patron demon lord Abraxas got the drow’s attention. The vesk also pointed out the benefits of establishing a long-term working relationship with the Starfinder Society, if only he would help out. While Porunga was handing over a several-hundred-credits bribe, Twitch noticed the search term “Villyth Zeizerer” on Ceobarn’s computer screen, suggesting he was not as indifferent about the rogue noble as he claimed.

“Very well. It is true that Villyth’s actions are bad for business and she must be stopped,” the drow conceded. “On behalf of House Zeizerer, I grant you twenty-four hours of diplomatic immunity. Use this time to retrieve the weapons using whatever means you deem necessary. Here’s a document that proves you’re acting on my authority. If the situation requires it, kill Villyth. But rest assured, if you abuse the power I bestow you, there will be consequences. The drow never forget.”

After pausing for a dramatic moment to let the threat sink in, he continued. “I know Villyth well enough to know that she has guards and other defenses. The more you know, the less likely you are to walk into a trap. So use your twenty-four hours wisely. Remember that before the time is up, you must locate the weapons, plan your heist, travel to the location, get the weapons, and most importantly, get off my planet!”

The crew split into two teams to determine the location of the stolen shipment. The Boske and Porunga would hit the streets, trying to track down and interrogate an informant whose name they got from Ceobarn. Twitch would scour the infosphere for telltales that would point them in the right direction. The vesk were in the middle of their interrogation when they got the call that the ysoki had the intel they needed. They spent a few more hours securing the floor plan and guard posts of the warehouse where Villyth was keeping the guns. Then they rented a vehicle and headed to the location.

Villyth’s warehouse was located within a vast pressurized dome, which contained several other buildings. The location had a spacious office complex on the ground floor, and a 10-foot-high chain-link fence surrounded the building, with twenty feet of space between the fence and the outer walls. They decided to try to get through the locked cargo doors, hoping to slip in and take the guards by surprise. Unfortunately, none of them had Kusanagi’s skill at stealth, and the guard at the front door overheard them approaching the side of the building.

Boske’s gunfire alerted anyone who might be listening that trouble had come knocking. The first guard fell, and the crew entered the building after Twitch got the side doors open. A second drow guard came around the stairs and took another bullet from Boske’s big gun. She lobbed a grenade, but would have been better served running away. The scaly soldier led the charge up the steps and into an open area. Then all the lights went out and even their infrared sensors couldn’t pierce the magical darkness.

A madcap and often blind chase ensued, with the remaining two guards engaging in urban guerilla tactics. Boske and Twitch were deafened by headshots from the drow sonic rifles, but in the end the only surviving guard fled over the fence behind the building. The crew grudgingly stopped to rest and recover their hearing, assuming that reinforcements were probably on the way.

Afterward, they performed a quick sweep of the offices and labs, picking up anything of value that wasn’t nailed down. Twitch synced the security computer to his mechanic rig, deactivating the security measures in the warehouse and turning on the lights. Boske had hacked the elevator, and the crew descended to get the Society’s guns.

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Splintered Worlds

Castrovel

The Cult of the Devourer was actively searching for the Gate of Twelve Suns and the Stellar Degenerator – an ancient alien superweapon that would devastate the Pact Worlds and countless other star systems if it fell into the cult’s hands. Although the crew defeated Tahomen and his Castrovelian cult cell at the Temple of the Twelve, they also learned that the cult leader had already shared his discovery with another Devourer cult in the Diaspora.

Upon their return to Qabarat, they found a message from Chiskisk wanting to know the results of their expedition to Castrovel. The host shirren’s signature refined enthusiasm transformed into anxiety and near panic at the prospect of the Cult of the Devourer finding a weapon like the Stellar Degenerator. Chiskisk encouraged the crew to return to Absalom Station to get the Sunrise Maiden refitted while other Starfinder Society resources tried to find the cult’s base in the Diaspora. It was important for the Society to determine just how much information the cult had and how its members might be planning to act on it.

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Absalom Station

A number of things changed for the crew when they returned to the Lorespire Complex. Radaszam, leader of the Acquisitives offered Galakrond a position on another Starfinder crew in need of an agent of his talents. The vesk mercenary agreed, and left the crew to pursue more martial tasks. Radaszam explained that as the Starfinders monitored their teams, sometimes agents were reassigned as befitted their experiences. He then introduced the crew to Porunga, a vesk priest with crusader chaplain experience.

The crew hit it off with the new agent, Winslow reacting with some relief. He had been offered a position running a trauma wing in the Lorespire Complex, but he had decided he preferred to stay with the crew instead. However, he explained that he would take a less active role in the field, instead remaining with the ship while the others were out on a mission. He was concerned that his morality might actually imperil the crew’s safety, so he would be there to patch them up when they returned to the ship. Porunga’s talents as a mystic healer would fill the gap that would otherwise have existed with Winlsow’s semi-retirement.

Twitch made the arrangements to improve the Sunrise Maiden, and while the crew waited for the upgrades to be completed, they were summoned by another Starfinder leader. The efficient hum of machinery filled the Archive’s Cortex. Projected images and text flitted across multiple screens positioned around a raised swivel chair occupied by Historia-7, leader of the Dataphiles. The android swiped a finger to clear the feed and spoke without preamble.

“My sources indicate that you are the most efficient and capable team the Starfinder Society currently has for my mission. I sincerely hope you do not prove this claim erroneous. I recently detected a discrepancy in the Society’s data logs. As you may be aware, my primary objective has been decoding information regarding the Scoured Stars incident. Before the incident, my predecessor, Historia-6, and other Society members extensively investigated several corporations as well as the Scoured Stars system. Much of their knowledge was lost to us. A recent ally that you helped recruit, the skilled hacker Ceren, uncovered multiple data links from what remains of my predecessor’s research leading back to a corporation known as the Arch Energy Consortium. When I compared these findings to our records, I found no mention of this corporation, and all data related to Arch Energy Consortium was somehow deleted from our records. My worst-case scenario is being realized: our data has been tampered with.”

Historia-7 unhooked the neural cables from her neck and massaged the attachment sites. “I require additional information about this corporation. Arch Energy’s CEO, Ilia Tamm, has enough security resources and paranoia at her disposal to make a direct infiltration inadvisable. The weak link in this proverbial firewall is her son, Envar Tamm. His proclivities make him very suggestible, and I hypothesize that resourceful individuals could convince him to provide the information I seek.

“Envar routinely attends gladiatorial fights on Arch Energy’s corporate space station, Brilliance. It will take you some time to reach Brilliance from here. During your journey, I want you to create false identities. Meanwhile, I’ll make sure that you’re entered into one of these gladiatorial matches as contestants. From there, you’ll need to get Envar to grant you access to his mother’s computer records. Acquire any data related to the corporation’s board of directors. Above all, this mission demands subtlety, as Envar has quite the media presence.”

Historia-7 provided the crew additional information about the mission in response to their questions. “Arch Energy is a minor subsidiary of Resurgent Technologies, which is a larger Aballon-based corporation. Analysis of Arch Energy’s finances suggests its CEO wants to keep it that way. Ilia Tamm has made multiple business decisions over past fiscal cycles that stunt company growth. I therefore conclude that the company is a front – for what, exactly, I don’t know. I suspect that Resurgent Technologies is still unaware of this.”

“Why is Envar our way in?” asked Kusanagi.

“My research led me to discover that Envar has an addiction to transdimensional pesh, and while he’s impaired he may be highly suggestible. Additionally, Arch Energy PR constantly edits his info feed, suggesting he may already be prone to leaking sensitive information to the infosphere. This is an unenviable task, and I fully intend to ensure that Envar receives the help he needs – after we get our data.”

“Where will we find the information you’re after?” asked Boske.

“Once you gain access to Ilia Tamm’s computer, a capable computers expert should be able to locate the appropriate files. I am not entirely sure what you will find, so download anything secure and return it to me. If you are unable to extract the files on-site, removal of the computer’s storage module will suffice, but it will alert Tamm to the security breach.”

After they were dismissed, the crew performed some perfunctory infosphere research and asked around about Envar Tamm, the CEO’s only child. He was chief procurement officer of the Arch Energy Consortium, a corporation that manufactured and distributed solar batteries. Envar was a minor celebrity who relied on his money and connections rather than actual talent to remain in the spotlight. He disliked being bored and apparently sought the company of exotic or famous individuals.

Envar owed his position within the company entirely to nepotism, and while he had an elevated level of security clearance and a matching salary, his mother employed a host of assistants to limit his influence on the corporation – and her bank account. On Brilliance, however, Envar usually traveled unsupervised. Ilia Tamm and her public-relations team tried to cover up Envar’s addiction to transdimensional pesh, but leaked videos of Envar’s drug-fueled antics occasionally slipped through the cracks. One of the more popular videos depicted Envar nearly crashing a solar yacht in an attempt to impress the shirren icon Magisterial Chef Ghornak Ryzcech during his visit to Brilliance.

Finally, they uncovered the fact that Envar owed a substantial amount of credits to the ysoki gangster Razor, the leader of a crime organization funded largely by the drug trade. Razor was known for her brutal methods of extracting credits from those reluctant to pay. She often uses gladiatorial matches to recruit hired muscle, and she planned to attend the event on Brilliance, intending to collect Envar’s debt after the fight.

The crew relied on Kusanagi and Twitch to craft false identities using their prolific computer talents. Porunga, as an albino vesk – a rarity – was the most difficult to disguise. Still, they hoped they would be able to keep their heads down during the mission and avoid tipping the Society’s hand. Leaving Winslow to make sure the Maiden’s upgrades would be completed in a timely manner, the crew borrowed a Society Drake and headed out.

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Brilliance

Brilliance was a sizable space station closely orbiting the Pact Worlds’ sun. Its upper level boasted retractable shields that allowed safe observation of solar activity and the absorption of solar energy, while its lower levels contained laboratories, offices, workstations, and recreational areas including an auditorium, cafeteria, and gymnasium. Brilliance’s lowest tier provided docking for craft ranging from tankers to solar yachts.

A female korasha lashunta customs officer recorded the crew’s alias names and images on her computer, and security recognized them as attendees to the gladiatorial bout. The match was set to begin almost immediately, and the guards quickly shepherded the Starfinders to the location of the impending fight.

According to their research, the immense auditorium was usually used to broadcast entertainment and training transmissions to Arch Energy employees. One of Envar Tamm’s few tangible company actions had been to convert the area into an arena for gladiatorial bouts. Giddy to host his favorite blood sport, Envar had spared no expense in furnishing the auditorium for the matches. Arena guards directed the crew to the southern entrance of the arena, explaining that they were set to fight an alien creature imported at Envar’s request. They had a few minutes to prepare for the fight before the guards ushered them into the arena.

The ceiling of the auditorium was made of artificial transparent sapphire, providing a stunning view of space. The glare obscured the faces of the roaring crowd crammed into bleachers towering above the floor. Overhead, six suspended holoscreens looped images of the arena. Metal pillars rose like jagged teeth from the bloodstained arena floor, and an announcer’s voice boomed, “Are you ready for some carnage?” The crowd echoed the refrain as the silver metal door to the east grinds open.

A team of two male korasha lashuntas and a female vesk armed with stun guns guided a harnessed and chained beast through the metal door at the north end of the arena. Porunga communicated what he knew about the creature – a “crest-eater” – to the others over the mindlink he had established in the warm up area. Its bite was venomous, and it could also spit venom about thirty feet! The handlers latched the harness clips onto either side of the door before hastily retreating. Once far enough away, the handlers remotely unlocked the clips, giving the crew a few moments to warm up the crowd and prepare before combat began.

Remembering Historia-7’s entreaty to impress Envar, Twitch and Porunga engaged in impassioned speeches like those they had seen on professional drama-sports on Absalom Station. Unfortunately, they got a somewhat lukewarm response. Kusanagi took a more direct approach, firing up his jetpack and alighting atop the nearest pillar. Simultaneously, Boske lobbed a series of star-knives up the side of another pillar, then rapidly climbed up the impromptu handholds to gain the top. He raised his heavy gun high and roared about the time that Kusanagi turned on his active camouflage and disappeared from view. The crowd went wild!

From their perches atop the pillars, Boske and Kusanagi opened fire. The crest-eater spat venom on the android, but he resisted the debilitating effects. After that failure, the beast rushed LACIE and took a bite out of Twitch’s drone before being put down. All told, the gladiatorial fight had lasted fewer than thirty seconds. Moment’s later, the crew met their target.

An attractive, muscular korasha lashunta with reflective glasses strutted through the northern door. He casually walked over the remains of the defeated crest-eater, stepping over the carcass with a skip. He lowered his sunglasses to reveal dilated pupils and flashed a toothy grin. “Stellar,” the man slurred. He glanced at the floor and his smile changed to a look of disgust. He then took an exaggerated step over the bare ground as though trying to avoid an object there and tripped, falling face-first into one of the metal pillars on the arena floor. He immediately sprang back up and dusted himself off.

“You killed two of those things? That’s amazing!” The man held out a hand in greeting. “I’m Envar – Envar Tamm, you’ve probably heard of me. I know, I know, I’m way more handsome in person. It’s a pleasure to meet me, I’m sure. Now, tell me all about you; I want to know all about my new best friends.”

They muttered a few vague introductions, and Boske was the first to make an impression upon Envar when the vesk took a selfie of himself with the lashunta. “Thish guy getsh it!” said Envar, taking his own selfie with the arena “champions”. After the introductions, Envar announced that he wanted to take the crew on a tour of Brilliance. He casually stated, “While you’re here, do you wanna check the place out? My personal tour covers all the hot spots. If you want the VIP treatment, come with me.”

Envar led the group out of the auditorium and down a hallway to the elevator. A holo-projection of Ilia Tamm popped up in the hallway as they passed, reciting a canned message: “Security is important to Arch Energy. Remember to reset your computer passwords once a week. Use a 16-character password that does not contain any recognizable words or patterns to increase its security.”

The lashunta rolled his eyes at the projection and sighed, “I told you, Mother, I can’t remember all those letters and numbers. That’s why it’s still – Wait, where’d she go?” The crew tried to get his password out of him, but the stoned young man was way too distracted.

The tour began at one of Envar’s favorite spots, the afterhours lounge on the second level of Brilliance. The group entered a gray metal elevator with a glass window that allowed them to watch employees at work as they descend to level two. A holoprojection of Ilia Tamm announced each level as they passed, and a chime sounded as the glass doors slid open to reveal a dimly lit hallway ending in glass double doors emblazoned with a crescent sun and the word “Eclipse.”

As they approached the doors, another holo-projection of Ilia Tamm appeared and announced, “Your rest cycle and mental health are important to your productivity. Please enjoy your recreation time responsibly during your non-contracted hours.”

A small foyer led to a large open room furnished with hovering black marble tables and dark-orange leather booths. A semicircular bar occupied most of the north wall, its multiple tiers backlit in blue and purple neon where glowing, flaming, and frothing drinks were served. A small holoscreen above the host stand in the foyer broadcasted an image of a scowling shirren in a white chef’s hat accompanied by the text “Chef Ghornak personally endorses Eclipse with a five-nova review!”

A male android clad in a white suit and orange tie greeted them from behind the podium and offered to check their coats and weapons. While everyone handed their possessions over, Envar boasted that his “friend” Magisterial Chef Ghornak Ryzcech had featured the Eclipse Lounge on his reality broadcast and provided his own downloadable hospitality interface for all android employees.

The android host rolled his eyes and comments, “It’s completely degrading. Sadly, anticorp hacktivists got their hands on the program, and now I have an excuse to be rude to customers. Oh, my apologies, may I offer you a hot towel?” The android then beckoned for you to enter the lounge.

Behind the glass doors, an all-android wait staff catered to customers in the Eclipse Lounge. Tolara, a kasatha bartender with two additional cybernetic arms, mixed and served drinks to patrons with all six arms. She turned to the group and asked, “Would you care for a cocktail, or perhaps service at our premium gas bar? We carry oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen – whatever suits your pleasure.”

Everyone ordered and the crew listened as Envar regaled them with rambling tales, including, but not limited to warnings about space worms that created black holes in the hallways sometimes. The lashunta also offered them pesh before realizing that he had smoked it all during the match. It seemed that the crew was in for a long night tolerating the inebriated young man, but Boske continued to make a good impression with his scotch-bread “invention.”

A few minute later, a female ysoki entered the club with two vesk bodyguards, all armed. She walked right up to Envar before glancing at the crew. “Move if you don’t wanna be collateral, smooth skins,” she squeaked. Then she turned to Envar and demanded to know where her creds are. Envar, still in the throes of transdimensional pesh, squealed and tried to pet her, exclaiming, “Aren’t you sooo fwuffy!” The ysoki was unimpressed and immediately ordered her bodyguards to seize Envar.

The crew intervened, trying to talk the ysoki – the drug-dealer Razor – down. Porunga tried to convince her that she could have Envar after the crew was finished with her, but no one ever addressed the money Razor was apparently owed, so she quickly lost patience and ordered her goons to attack the crew, too. Even without weapons, the crew held their own against the mercenaries, and LACIE’s artillery laser did most of the work of putting them down. With her mercs down, Razor pulled a smoke grenade from her cheek pouch and made good on an escape from Eclipse.

During the confusion, Kusanagi had convinced the addled Envar to hand over his comm unit. He quickly forwarded everything he could over to Twitch, who had gone into the back to access the control computer for the club’s fire-suppression system. The fight ended before he could assert control, and a pair of security officers came out of the back office and ushered him back to the front.

Security briefly questioned the crew about the incident, although a review of security-camera footage confirmed that they had acted in defense of Envar. The officers filed a report but assured them that they would take no action against the crew. As they were about to leave, one the guards looked a bit more closely at Porunga’s credentials and started to question the vesk. Envar interrupted, “They’re famous professional gladiators. They need some downtime from the spotlight, so they had to put on these awful clothes and pretend to be someone else. Would you want a media drone following you to the bathroom?” Security seemed to accept this explanation and bid everyone a good night.

After the chaos died down, Envar decided that something “a bit more relaxing” was in order. He took the crew to the sixth floor of Brilliance, the solar observatory. While on the elevator, Envar enthusiastically gushed about the magnificent view of the sun and mentioned that he was glad they’d have the place to themselves, since the scientists who usually worked there were a real drag.

The elevator doors slid open to reveal a chamber with golden-hued metal floor and walls. Plasma screens on the south wall stretched from floor to ceiling and displayed crisp, breathtaking images of space. A fluorescent mural on the floor depicted the stages of a solar eclipse. Two silver doors to the east and west led farther into the observatory.

When the crew entered, Envar stared intently at the screens on the south wall and murmured, “I can see, like, the whole universe from here.” The lashunta stood mystified in front of the screen for a long while before Porunga stirred him from him reverie. Retinal scanners affixed to the east and west walls allowed the doors to slide open when an authorized person presented his key card. Once snapped out of his fugue, Envar proceeded to the west, opening the area with his key card and retinal scan.

Arch Energy Consortium scientists observed and recorded solar phenomena in the chamber to the west. The sun blazed above the transparent, domed ceiling of the gold metal laboratory. An enormous gray-and-silver telescope was mounted near the western wall and pointed up toward the ceiling. A half-circle desk and associated chairs rested near the northwestern wall. A dark-silver control station in front of the northern wall housed twin computer terminals. A set of silver shelves jutted out from the northeastern wall, displaying various scientific instruments and tools.

The enormous telescope mounted to the floor in the southwestern corner was positioned to view the sun through the lab’s protective shielding. To the northwest of the telescope, a holoscreen hung above a round metal table surrounded by hovering chairs. The computers in the northern control panel controlled the various layers of shields surrounding the observatory, including a dimensional shield and airlock.

As they began exploring, Envar approached the telescope. A holo-projection of Ilia Tamm appeared near the telescope and announced, “Guest safety is important to Arch Energy. Only authorized personnel may enter this restricted area.” Envar shrugged and sauntered over to the control panel and lounged in one of the hovering chairs within the console area, spinning it and giggling. “Mother,” he addressed the projection of Ilia, “you never let me play this game when I was a kid. Finally, I’ll get my high score! Check this out!” Envar mashed the buttons on the control panel. A loud droning sound filled the room, and the floor vibrated. The sun above appeared brighter as a shield lowered.

Then a pair of solar elemental materialized in the laboratory.

The outsiders looked similar to fire elementals, but no one was familiar with this particular variation. Still, everyone assumed they would be immune or at least resistant to fire, so they didn’t reach for laser weapons. Boske got a little burned, but his were the only injuries sustained as the crew swiftly dispatched the threat. Twitch approached the controls and closed the protective shield that Envar had lowered. The lashunta gave him a toothy grin and congratulated the crew on a job well done. He went on to post an infosphere-wide update, along with a selfie of himself and the crew that read “Envar and friends 1, Sun 0.”

Envar then felt that it was prudent to leave the observation deck, but he suggested that the crew check out the shelves in the laboratory and in the storage room next door and take any stored equipment as their rightful rewards. As a ranking member of Arch Energy, he informed them that he was legally allowed to offer these goods, so they wouldn’t be breaking any laws. The Starfinders shrugged and collected their SWAG.

After they finished exploring the solar observatory, Envar told them that his official tour was almost over. He’s included everything except for the “boring levels” and asked if there was any location they would like to see before the tour ended. Unanimously, they suggested Ilia Tamm’s office. Envar brightened. “I’m the only other employee who has access. Mother’s office is really plush. I go there sometimes to get away from it all… I mean, when she’s not around.” He checked the time on his comm unit. “Like now!”

Ilia Tamm’s office was located on the third floor of Brilliance. As the crew exited the elevator with Envar, a pair of vesk in security uniforms entered, but after scanning their credentials, they gave the lashunta an indifferent nod. A locked plastic door barred entrance to Ilia’s office. A keypad and a plate for swiping a key card were just to the right of the door. Envar happily provided his key card, but the dual-authentication setup struck Twitch as curious. The ysoki tinkered with the controls and discovered a silent alarm that would trigger if the right code was not typed along with the key card swipe. A few moments later, he’d disabled this security measure and the crew entered the office.

The rectangular room was starkly different from the typical gold-and-silver metal decor found throughout the rest of Brilliance. Darkwood credenzas and bookcases complemented the wood-paneled walls and tan wooden floor here. A model of the Pact Worlds system, sculpted in gold and silver metal, hung from the ceiling near the center of the room. Framed parchment maps from some ancient era adorned the walls. The lone visible piece of modern technology was a silver computer console affixed to a darkwood desk on the eastern side of the room. A private climate-controlled and air-sealed balcony overlooked open space to the north. Racks lined with dusty bottles stood along the western wall of the office, watched over by an oil painting of a graceful lashunta woman reaching up toward a radiant sun.

“I commissioned that painting for Mother,” Envar confided. “Pretty proud of it. I’m glad she likes it enough to display,” he added a little wistfully. A moment later he blinked and smiled. “Take a look around! See if she has any decent games on that computer!”

While Twitch attended to the computer, the others looked around the rest of the office. Most of the books on the shelves were works of fiction from bygone ages, and the wine bottles in the racks were priceless relics of decades- and centuries-old viticulture. Kusanagi casually unlocked the desk drawer and withdrew a high-density datajack. Porunga pocketed a psychic booster he found on a credenza.

The computer required a two-factor authentication to access: the key card that Envar had provided and a password. They didn’t have the password, but in the information taken from the lashunta’s comm unit, Twitch found the answers to the security questions to reset Ilia’s password. With these two things in hand, he was able to access the secure files without much trouble.

At a glance, Arch Energy was essentially a front that funds clandestine meetings between the members of its board of directors, each of which was hidden by a false identity. The data would require a dedicated team of data analysts to properly pry any major secrets from. Clearly, this was the data Historia-7 was looking for. He downloaded the files to his rig, the logged out. “No games, man. Just work stuff,” Twitch reported to Envar.

“Figures,” said the lashunta, dejected. “C’mon, guys. Let’s get outta here.”

Envar escorted them back to their ship, making it clear that he was really glad to have met them all. He appreciated them taking the time to take the tour and party with him. The crew got the impression that despite his wealth and connections, Envar’s lifestyle left him few enough chances to make any real friends. He assured them that he would be sending them a present crafted from the bones of the crest-eaters they had defeated in his arena. With that, he bid them farewell.

Shortly after the crew’s starship detached from the station, a pair of Brilliance security fighters approached, weapons hot! The Drake was a sturdy ship, but a bit more unwieldy than the Sunrise Maiden. Still and all, they managed to keep the shields up enough to avoid much damage to the hull while they focused their attention on disabling one of the two fighters. As it powered down, the crew turned their attention to the remaining Brilliance ship.

It faced them down undamaged and apparently without fear.

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Splintered Worlds

Ukulam – The Stargazer

Once the crew had regrouped and tended to their injuries, Kusanagi suggested they circle around to the far side of the statue to avoid the sniper who seemed to be in the head. Searching for an entrance to the structure, they noted an opening between the feet. Galakrond led them inside. Corroded pipes hung down from the ceiling above a broad basin in the center of the entry chamber. The stone walls were slick with moisture and bore carvings of tattooed elves in states of undress as they washed themselves. The domed ceiling depicted hundreds of stars connected to form scores of constellations.

Winslow noted the ritual significance of the place, which the Elven writing referred to as the Stargazer. The Oatia elves considered it a sacred space, and cleansing oneself of terrestrial influences was a necessary exercise before traveling deeper inside the monument. Galakrond decided to respect the ritual of the Oatia elves by washing his hands and head within the pool. Winslow nodded in approval and followed suit.

While the others waited, Twitch informed them that the constellations on the ceiling included both ones commonly taught on Castrovel as well as numerous esoteric designs. The crew ascertained that many of the constellations were known to modern scholars but only thanks to advanced telescopes and faster-than-light travel. That the Oatia elves had identified them suggested they had had extraordinary astronomical equipment, supernatural techniques for surveying the sky, or some other means of seeing far beyond the Pact Worlds system.

Galakrond finished up and led the way into the next chamber. The walls in the long gallery depicted elves using needles to tattoo one another with constellations, geometric designs, and strange runic patterns. Rows of tall stone benches lined either side of the hall. Carved along the ceiling were twelve stylized elven figures, heavily tattooed, adorned in different ways, and marked with starbursts on their foreheads. A pair of cultists lying in wait opened fire with scatterguns, but the crew made short work of them. The vesk looted the bodies before continuing forward.

They found the shirren sniper Salask in a domed room with numerous open skylights and windows. The design of the chamber created a steady flow of outside air. A ring of slime mold formed a misshapen circular pattern on the floor. As a true believer in the tenets of the Devourer, Salask refused to back down even against overwhelming odds. She was swiftly defeated and bound.

When questioned, she was reticent to talk about Tahomen’s specific plans. All she knew was that Tahomen saw something in the broadcasts from the Drift Rock that he thought had some connection with the Temple of the Twelve, and he believed there was more to learn from the ancient elven temple city. Because she had busily traveled back and forth to harry the crew, Salask had not seen the temple; she just knew that Tahomen believed it holds grand secrets that will speed the bloody end of the galaxy.

Twitch hacked Salask’s comm unit, which had several logged communications with another unit. These conveyed updates about her movements through the jungle and ways in which she had harassed the crew. She also had an extensive number of recorded broadcasts of Eoxian “reality” programming and blood sport, favoring productions by the elebrian celebrity Zo!, including an entire season of the viscerally grotesque Survival Deathmatch Extreme!

After a brief discussion of what to do with the prisoner, it was agreed that she would be left bound with her sword and her rations, so that if she had a chance of survival, but could not harass the crew from a distance anymore. Kusanagi climbed a much steeper staircase that branched off the main stairs and led to a 60-foot-long series of ladder-like handholds that ascended to the upraised palm of the Stargazer’s hand. The slightly cupped hand had lost its delicate guardrails long ago, but there was still space to stand there. Galakrond joined him atop the hand, and the Starfinders noted a pair of ksariks circling the perimeter of the ruins.

They let the others know, and sure enough, the creatures were waiting to attack when the crew exited the Stargazer. Galakrond took a beating, but otherwise the plant creatures were defeated efficiently. The crew continued their journey.

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Ukulam – Loskialua

The closer the crew got to the Temple of the Twelve, the more noticeably steep the trek became. By the time they were within a half day’s travel from the site, the jungle thinned out slightly and the ground arose, giving way to a stretch of verdant, rolling foothills crisscrossed by meandering creeks with sources in the striking peaks of the Singing Range to the north and west.

They reached the ruins of what Halkueem Zan had called the “Forsaken City,” but millennia before, these ruins were Loskialua, a small elven settlement. A graveyard of pyramids that rose between two and twenty-five feet in height studded the landscape. With hundreds of structures, Loskialua represented a rare archaeological treasure that would require years of dedicated fieldwork to excavate and document. Of greater interest to the crew, though, was the intact temple and observatory – the Temple of the Twelve – perched hundreds of feet up the side of Alhuenar Spire, one of the Singing Range’s highest mountains.

Standing imperiously on a promontory partway up the mountainside was a temple of elegantly sculpted stone with a single domed tower rising from its center. Expanses of the structure’s weathered exterior bore scores of tall, glass-paned windows that caused the facade to shimmer in the sunlight. Wide stairs were carved into the rock face, winding back and forth as they ascended to the temple from the ruins below. The greater temple complex had once included numerous smaller outbuildings, but these had largely collapsed over time, being of less durable construction than the temple itself.

The crew noted static over their comms that rendered them completely useless by the time they reached the base of the path to the temple. The elves had carved a staircase into the steep slope leading up to the site. Halkueem Zan had called this pathway the “Stairs to Eternity.” The crew encountered a young mountain eel devouring a cultist partway up the path. Though its paralyzing gaze stopped Boske in his tracks for a long moment, the beast was taken down quickly.

On the north side, a series of weathered pillars arced around the entrance of the temple, marking a curving border around a small plaza. A steep, narrow trail left the plaza from the northwest, winding more than a mile up the mountainside to the temple’s main observatory. A figure stepped forward and motioned for the crew to halt upon the stairs before he solemnly greeted them in Elven and ordered them to turn back. The man appeared to be an elf, though Winslow noted that he seemed to be undead. The vesk translated for the others, and Galakrond asked the guardian his name.

“I am Panelliar, Sun Spear of the Inscrutable. It is my duty to guard this place against those who would despoil or misuse my people’s discoveries.”

“That’s not why we’re here,” said the vesk. “We’re here to stop cultists from doing that. Have you seen anyone else?”

“Centuries ago, a child of Golarion came. He sought the secrets beyond for his own glory, so I turned him away with violence. A band of lashuntas and an unfamiliar alien arrived recently. I recognized them as pawns of the Star-Eater, and although I turned them away, the leader’s conviction and magic were strong; I relented.”

“Magical compulsion?” guessed Winslow.

“Any way we can convince you to let us pass?” asked Boske.

“The speaker for the Star-Eater does not wish to allow you to enter, and by his will, I must insist. You are not welcome here.”

Reluctantly, the crew engaged the ancient elven guardian. He sparred with Galakrond using a solarian enhanced spear for a few moments before moving into position and unleashing a supernova revelation. The wave of fire washed over most of the crew and the heat was so intense that it killed Ralkawi, the cultist that they had saved from the ksarik spores. Panelliar fell shortly thereafter, a hole through the chest plate of his ancient elven battle armor, courtesy of Boske. Winslow provided magical healing and everyone took a few minutes to rest before they entered the temple.

The ornately carved wooden doors leading into the temple had just barely survived the ages intact. They were unlocked, and Boske kicked them in easily, alerting anyone who might be inside to the presence of newcomers. From its floor to its curved ceiling thirty feet above, this entry hall was covered in sweeping arcs of constellations marked with delicate lines and numbers at regular intervals. A series of short climbing pitons stuck out of the ground near the center of the room, where embedded floor scythes had been placed to slash at the unwelcome.

While the others examined the constellations, Kusanagi scouted ahead to the right. Three wooden doors lined the west wall of the gallery there. The curving interior wall depicted the night sky and its stars. A three-foot-tall octagonal stone platform stood in the middle of the hall, and the android noted a trio of cultists that had taken cover along the wall. He reported back to the others, and the crew attacked without preamble. The lesser cultists fell quickly, but their leader forced a chase around the back side of a central chamber where Dr. Solstarni lay bound. They managed to defeat the lashunta cultist before she could detonate the explosives that she and her cultists had placed on the ceiling.

The southernmost point in the temple was a high-ceilinged sanctuary with tall, narrow windows filled with foggy, discolored glass. The vantage point jutted out over the cliff below, overlooking the stairs carved into the mountainside and the ruined settlement below. The kasatha archaeologist abducted from the university in Qabarat, Dr. Solstarni, was fettered here and looked up at the Starfinders in great relief. They released her and asked what she knew about the remaining cultists.

“The so-called Eyrub Paqual was a ploy, as I suspected. The man behind my abduction is a lashunta called Tahomen, who leads a significant Cult of the Devourer cell. From what I gather, he learned of ancient texts associated with the explorer Halkueem Zan’s travels here and attempted to recruit me to travel here and decipher anything we found. What I’ve learned is that the Oatia elven culture found the cosmos utterly fascinating, at first worshiping Desna before fixating on several alien entities and celestial features to worship – especially a constellation of twelve stars, which might be strictly symbolic. He knocked me out after I ceased cooperating here, and I suspect he learned something more in the temple’s inner sanctum.”

She gestured to a door on the south facing of the central chamber of the temple, and the crew moved to investigate. Once a freestanding shrine dedicated to Desna, the butterfly-shaped structure became the inner sanctum of the temple to Ibra later built around it. Even an untrained viewer could tell that the construction styles of the two phases were quite distinct. The astronomers of the Temple of the Twelve had stored the records of their greatest discoveries here, and the sanctum was filled with physical books and scrolls. A spiral staircase to the north climbed to the temple’s observatory tower high above the ground floor.

No sooner had Galakrond set foot inside than a pair of elven statues flanking the entrance animated and attacked. No one had any ideas about the nature of the magical constructs, but they didn’t last long against the crew regardless. With the guardians defeated, some of the crew looked around with Dr. Solstarni, while others defused the explosives.

Many of the pre-Gap books were legible, albeit barely intact. Tahomen had been sloppy in returning documents to their proper places, allowing the crew to uncover the same information that he had. Most of the texts were in Elven, though some were in Celestial, Draconic, and an archaic version of Castrovelian that was very difficult for a modern speaker to parse. However, with Dr. Solstarni’s assistance, the Starfinders learned that the Oatia elves were a philosophical offshoot that had spurned their Sovyrian kin and sought a new life of cosmic contemplation on Ukulam, thousands of years before the Gap. Their techniques had quickly improved, and through a combination of telescopes and divination magic, the elves had discovered a strange constellation of twelve stars that formed a perfect circle in the sky. The more they had studied the constellation, the stranger their dreams had become, and powerful scholar-priests had begun recording the odd language they saw and heard.

As the elves’ knowledge of and exposure to the galaxy had expanded, they’d parleyed with increasingly bizarre and powerful alien minds, most notably a powerful being known as Ibra – especially noteworthy because the elves’ records suggested that Ibra may not have been a deity at the time. Through Ibra’s teachings, the elves had studied the mysterious circular constellation, learning that it was not a natural feature but the construction of an impossibly ancient and highly advanced species untold light years away. The scholar-priests sensed that the ring pulsed with an unnatural energy, which led them to believe it to be a gateway of some kind. The elves called it the Gate of Twelve Suns, and they renamed their temple in honor of it.

There were a few theories, but the most popular hypothesis was that the Gate of Twelve Suns represented such power that it could only be (or serve as the portal to) some cosmically powerful superweapon. One of the scholar-priests even posited the existence of a so-called “Stellar Degenerator,” which could drain all energy from a star, turning it into a hypothetical stellar remnant called a black dwarf. Unfortunately, there’s no definitive note of where the Gate of Twelve Suns was – as if identifying its location had been taboo to the elves.

As interpretive disputes broke out among the elves, they had agreed that from the confines of Loskialua, they could never confirm their theories, much less attain enlightenment through discovery under the inspired guidance of Ibra. They had packed up what they needed, and then they had performed a ritual that the texts referred to only as “the Celestial Voyage.” The implication was that the elves had traveled to another system, though whether they succeeded or failed was uncertain from these records.

Armed with the knowledge of what Tahomen had found and the threat it could represent in the hands of the Cult of the Devourer, the crew finished up treasure hunting and exited the temple. As they stepped outside, the cult leader Tahomen and his two surviving cultists descended from the mountain. The cult leader engaged in some mocking banter as his subordinates set the heavy comm unit components down. Then he pulled out and activated a detonator.

Nothing happened.

He clicked the button another couple of times in confused irritation before throwing the detonator aside in disgust and growling at his underlings to attack! The cultists fell swiftly, but Tahomen’s magic carved painful gouges in the crew’s flesh before he was dazed and laid low.

With Tahomen defeated, the Starfinders inspected the comm unit his team had carried across Ukulam. The system was massive, only capable of being moved by several strong people once it had been broken into smaller components. Even with the comm unit disassembled, Twitch booted up the system’s computer and accessed its unsecured communications log. Tahomen had dutifully purged his correspondence history leading up to this expedition, but the ysoki could still determine that the comm unit had logged a call and significant data upload about three hours earlier.

To access more information, Twitch hacked the comm unit’s computer. Once he had access to the system, he could read Tahomen’s recent communications. The correspondence relayed many of the same conclusions the crew had learned in the inner sanctum, but with more sinister certainty: Tahomen posited that the 12-star constellation – the Gate of Twelve Suns – opened to a demiplane that hid an unspeakably powerful superweapon. The cult leader believed that the Drift Rock was a tiny fragment of this “Stellar Degenerator,” broken off when a portion of the demiplane was torn away and added to the Drift as a result of Drift travel. Tahomen had also recommended that the Cult of Devourer apply as many resources as possible to find the Gate of Twelve Suns – and the Stellar Degenerator – before anyone else could. In addition, the Starfinders learned the approximate coordinates of the location Tahomen had transmitted his messages to: a stretch of several hundred asteroids in the Diaspora.

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Qabarat

Having thwarted Tahomen and his Devourer cult, the crew was compelled to expedite their return to civilization. Having used up their environmental protection on the trip across Ukulam, they traveled by night on the return trip, sleeping in their tents which offered protection – if not comfort – from the oppressive heat.

Professor Muhali was relieved to see her colleague in one piece, and university officials offered each of the crew admittance and free tuition to the school for up to three years in thanks for their service. Alternatively, they offered a “research grant” of a thousand credits from the university in lieu of a scholarship. Most of the crew opted for the latter.

Finally, they sent a message to Chiskisk in advance of their return to Absalom Station, as well as requests for upgrades to the Sunrise Maiden that Twitch wanted to add before taking the ship out on anymore missions.

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Temple of the Twelve

Qabarat Port Authority

Qabarat conducted trade by land, sea, and air, and like many other settlements on Castrovel, it also maintained a number of magical gateways known as aiudara or “elf gates.” These were not large enough to sustain heavy traffic, so the local port authorities managed use of the gateways to prioritize shipments from those who paid a premium for instant transportation. Most of these portals were in Qabarat’s Gateway District, a smaller area along the city’s eastern side, where use of the portals rarely interfered with the busy harbor and spaceports.

The crew flagged down a port worker fairly easily and secured some time with a manager in half an hour, since the police called ahead on their behalf. Gate Controller Raiyiri, a female damaya lashunta, was very professional and found the idea that uniformed employees of the Port Authority might have broken into the university a disturbing one. She quickly pulled up the assignment logs for the prior three days and confirmed that no employees were sent to the university. Furthermore, she knew that few people traveled to Turhalu Point, which was a largely decommissioned military base that served as a research station.

Based on their information, there was only one group that fit the description: a team of fifteen carrying laboratory equipment, cryogenically frozen organic compounds, and specialty foodstuffs with authorization from the Qabarat University of Xenoarchaeology and Xenoanthropology. According to the records, customs confirmed the contents of all of the crates, though the documentation was too sparse for Raiyiri’s liking. She also showed the Starfinders the passenger data, which indicated that the group consisted of a kasatha, a shirren, two humans, and eleven lashuntas.

Travel to Ukulam required official authorization, and there was little regular transport between Qabarat and Ukulam. In addition, starship landings on the continent were tightly restricted due to its status as a wilderness preserve, so the crew couldn’t simply hop across the planet in their own ship. However, since they had acquired visas from the university to visit Ukulam, they could use Qabarat’s aiudara to reach Turhalu Point without losing significant time in transit. The eastern coast of Ukulam was hours ahead of Qabarat, making it a completely different time of day when they arrived.

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Ukulam – Turhalu Point

The station at Turhalu Point sat at the tip of a broad peninsula covered in rolling plains and expanses of tall, pale-green grasses that shimmered with violet hues in the wind. Short-lived blooms of magenta fungus towered nearly twenty feet over the landscape, though many had begun to wilt and others were marred by bite marks of half a dozen sizes. Trumpeting calls echoed across the plains as immense, six-legged creatures with long, swooping necks trekked steadily across the grass toward the western jungles. Beyond rose the Singing Range, its peaks barely visible through the haze.

Once one of Qabarat’s minor military outposts on Ukulam, Turhalu Point had been decommissioned for more than twenty years. It still maintained a token security force to keep the wildlife at bay, but industrious researchers had converted most of its gun turrets and bunkers into greenhouses and biology labs.
Among the researchers was Dr. Khair al-Nuaf, one of the ranking human scientists and a grant beneficiary of the Qabarat University of Xenoarchaeology and Xenoanthropology. Having received the school’s recent call for assistance, he was nearby to greet the crew when they arrived.

He not only informed the Starfinders that Eyrub Paqual and his group came and departed into the wilderness a little more than day before, but also conveyed what he learned of the other group, which consisted largely of armed lashunta mercenaries. Based on what he’d overheard, they were headed toward some elven ruins to the northwest to perform archaeological survey work with the oversight of Dr. Solstarni, though the kasatha appeared to be groggy and perhaps ill.
The research outpost had numerous maps of the region and survey data from aircraft that had flown over most of the continent, so based on the crew’s anecdotal notes and the maps created by Halkueem Zan centuries ago, Dr. al-Nuaf estimated that the journey to the abandoned city would take about 10 to 12 days of steady travel on foot. He advised you that their route should lead them first through the fairly sparse lowlands around Turhalu Point, into the dense subtropical rain forests to the northwest, and finally into the foothills of the Singing Range.

The university had instructed Dr. al-Nuaf to assist the crew further by providing additional gear requisitioned from his project’s inventory. This included a scratched-up suit of armor, a couple of weapons, antitoxin, and sprayflesh. He also supplied them with field rations, standard ammunition, and access to the outpost’s recharging stations. Finally, Dr. al-Nuaf provided those who didn’t have them with a mass-produced tent. They rested the night at Tuhalu Point, setting out the next morning.

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Ukulam

Turhalu Point’s security forces were willing to drive the crew about ten miles outside the outpost, but from there, they were on their own. Strict guidelines controlled vehicle traffic in that part of the reserve, so they had to proceed on foot. Loskialua lay approximately 120 miles west-northwest of Turhalu Point through a trackless expanse of subtropical forest. Winslow established a mind link, and Boske orienteered, using his talents as a bounty hunter to track Eyrub Paqual and avoid getting lost.

It took about two days to traverse the grasslands surrounding Turhalu Point. The journey was not difficult, but the grasses were in a tall, seasonally dormant state that attracted few grazers to crop the vegetation. As a result, the grass ranged in height from three to eight feet tall, making it difficult to watch for wildlife. Nevertheless, the crew faced few dangers until they reached the edge of the jungle on the third day of travel.

Dozens of huge beasts leisurely patrol the area through which the crew needed to travel, knocking aside smaller trees and trampling the cultists’ spoor as the immense creatures sniffed out delicious fungus. Winslow told the others that the beasts were known as yaruks, and they could be extremely dangerous if threatened. The creatures were fairly calm at the moment, so they thought they could weave among them by keeping their distance and not making any threatening moves – much like a variety of other native creatures were doing.

They had safely maneuvered among the yaruks for about twenty minutes when they heard the crack of a rifle, and one of the largest animals reared up in pain and bellowed a distress call. Kusanagi and Twitch happened to be looking northwest and noticed a suppressed muzzle flare on a high vantage hundreds of feet away. Some of the beasts began to bolt away, while others rallied to the wounded one’s defense.

What followed was a mad chase through the trampling titans. Boske called directions, Galakrond opened fire to dissuade nearby beasts from getting closer, and Winslow distracted them with magic. Kusanagi, Twitch, and his rebuilt drone LACIE physically maneuvered to stay ahead of the madness, even as trees were toppled before the crew and splintered overhead.

Fortunately, before anyone was crushed to death, the crew reached an ancient stone bridge crossing one of the river tributaries that flowed through the jungle. The bridge easily supported the humanoids, but once they were across, an angry yaruk pursuing them got only a few steps across before collapsing the old elven architecture. The rest of the moot considered pulled up short, and the group gradually dispersed after another minute of aggressive posturing. Beyond the bridge stood the landmark identified by Halkueem Zan as the “Rune Obelisk.”

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Ukulam – “Rune Obelisk”

The elven Oatia culture created a few lasting architectural works during its occupation of eastern Ukulam, including the nearly three hundred foot tall structure. After millennia of erosion, when Halkueem Zan found this site, he believed it was a mighty monument. The area surrounding the Rune Obelisk was uneven, where soil deposition and plant growth have covered most of the building foundations that surrounded the site. Even so, the stubborn trees that grew sparsely there had displaced many stones with their roots, leaving carved blocks scattered haphazardly around the area.

The crew noticed clusters of blue-striped orange fruit ripening in the canopy above, and a number that had fallen from the branches above to the ground. They identified these as ralyrian figs, one of the more prolific fruiting trees in Castrovel’s northern hemisphere and a staple food for many forest creatures. Wild ralyrian figs were said to be rather tart but safe to eat.

Strange alien creatures clambered through the forest’s understory, sometimes just bobbing their heads while inquisitively watching the Starfinders. Other times they actively warbled a warning call that sounded like “kau-kar-eeee-keeee,” threw fruit at the travelers, or even crept close enough to touch someone’s leg or snatch a loose trophy before scampering away to the screeching adulation of their comrades. These creatures were known as kaukarikis, inquisitive pests named after the sound of their warning vocalizations in the presence of threat. Also known as “stingbats” – as referenced in Halkueem Zan’s notes – their tail was tipped with a venomous stinger.

Winslow hung figs from his belt, which the creatures delighted in stealing. However, when the crew was within sight of the obelisk, the kaukarikis escalated their teasing and began chasing one another through the trees. Then four of them descended to attack as their peers screamed encouragement from the branches. The flighty beasts were no match for the Starfinders, and the first wave of kaukarikis was slaughtered, the others became more skittish and screeched angrily from a safe distance. The troop remained in sight, however.

Just before the creatures had attacked, the more observant among the crew had noticed one of them stowing something shiny in the hollow of a tree about twenty feet up. Boske started to climb the tree, but Kusanagi’s jump jets got him there first, to the vesk’s annoyance. There, the android found three serums of healing, which he retrieved and distributed.

The Rune Obelisk rose above the jungle, just as Halkueem Zan’s notes promised. It was an immense pillar of stone, approximately fifteen feet wide with an X-shaped cross section that provided climbing plants excellent purchase. The flora included a network of green vines, several brilliant fuchsia bromeliads, and a host of violet flowers.

Winslow noticed something hiding among the leaves at the obelisk’s base, recognizing a vracinea – one of many plant predators that evolved in Castrovel’s jungles. The sight of its blossoms was said to lure victims closer, and its paralyzing scent could immobilize them. Before he could communicate the threat to the rest of the crew over the mind link, Twitch walked right up to the flowers, apparently proving the lure rumors true. Boske went to fetch him, but when he caught the flowers’ scent, he stood paralyzed. Galakrond approached next, but was likewise immobilized by the paralyzing scent. The others kept their distance, still not seeing the threat. And then the plants moved, revealing that they were the threat!

Boske was bit a couple of times by the vracinea’s sharp teeth, unable to escape his paralysis. Galakrond and Twitch managed to free themselves of the plant’s influence and started aiding the others in an assault. It didn’t take long to take the creature down after that, though Boske bled freely from several wounds.

After a few minutes of rest and study, the crew hypothesized that the inaccurately named Rune Obelisk was actually a massive post that had supported a now-missing observation deck. A few Elven letters were visible through the climbing vines, but deciphering anything substantive required cutting down the clinging plants. The vesk got to work, and after they’d cleared one section of the wall, they managed to decipher the writing. What survived of the Elven inscriptions warned visitors that they approach “Loskialua, monastery of starsong, embassy of the spheres, and Temple of the Twelve.” Fragmentary notes also included mentions of paying respect, messengers from beyond, an academy, and “interpreters of the beacon.”

About thirty feet south of the obelisk, the crew discovered what they presumed to be the remains of one of Paqual’s group. There was no body, but they did find a torn and useless estex suit, a gnawed frostbite-class zero rifle, and a silvery credstick. Boske suggested that they remained a couple of days behind their quarry.

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The kaukarikis’ antics aside, much of the next day’s travel passed without incident as the terrain gradually began to slope upward. Around mid-morning the crew caught sight of a colorful creature a little more than a hundred feet away. Winslow identified it as a ksarik and informed the others that the plant creature originally occupied a niche between decomposers and scavengers, before adapting to sniff out carrion and digest every piece of a rotting corpse. They were said to be able to spit acid and launch thorns that exposed those hit with carrion spores.

When the ksarik noticed the crew looking at it, it galloped away through the trees. As the day progressed, it became bolder, wriggling its feeding tentacles curiously and even gurgling audibly. Shortly thereafter, it fired a thorn dart at one of them before lumbering away. When it came back twice more that day, the crew returned fire, but each time it fled before they could do much to it.

On the following day, the ksarik appeared only once before it headed northwest. Near the middle of the day, their path took them into a clearing. They heard a hoarse moaning coming from one of the few nearby trees. The crew moved to investigate, finding a wounded and sickly korasha lashunta woman. It was clear to Winslow that she had been infected by carrion spores from the fragments of the ksarik thorn dart he found in her leg. Despite her protests, he started to treat her, only to be interrupted by the return of the ksarik!

The crew moved to engage, and the beast lobbed a couple of thorn darts at them before they managed to take it down. Boske helped Kusanagi up from the ground where the android had fallen when he lost control of his jetpack maneuvering between trees. The crew set themselves in guard positions while Winslow continued his work. The lashunta woman decided that she was willing to accept the shirren’s help rather than stubbornly die. She said her name was Ralkawi and that she had joined the Cult of the Devourer to eliminate a string of bad personal and financial choices that left her bankrupt and alone. She admitted that she was among the least pious of the cell.

The crew asked Ralkawi if any other cultists had been left behind, and she admitted that at least one or two had fallen to Ukulam’s dangers. The leader Tahomen, was a true believer, and whatever he thought he would find on Ukulam was not a good thing for the rest of creation. Ralkawi said she’d be more than happy to join the expedition since the crew seemed content to spare her life, and Winslow insisted upon it. Galakrond grumbled but then helped Twtich modify the doctor’s stretcher with a wheel fashioned from the trunk of one of the many trees. They gave the lashunta the armor acquired from Turhalu Point, since her environmental protection had run out. Then they continued on as far as they could for the day.

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On the morning of the seventh day of travel, wriggling, maggot-like ksarik seedlings burrowed their way out of Ralkawi’s abdomen. The pain on her face was apparent, but she managed to survive the exodus. The vesk stomped the seedlings into oblivion and Winslow treated the injury. Afterward, the lashunta admitted that she felt much better.

As they set out, the wind shifted direction, carrying with it a tangy scent. Looking to the foliage-obscured sky, the kaukarikis fell silent before yapping warnings to one another. They dashed upward toward bucket-sized flowers a hundred feet above and wrapped themselves in the petals, practically disappearing from sight.

Looking upward at the creatures’ odd behavior, the crew noticed fluffy pink clouds floating gently above the trees and recognized the signs of the imminent approach of one of Castrovel’s notorious moldstorms. These were said to be short-lived events in which several types of giant fungi all released their spores at once. In smaller quantities, these spores were harmless, but moldstorms could clog creatures’ respiratory systems and even take root in living tissues, breaking down flesh and inhibiting neurological systems.

Working swiftly, the crew and Ralkawi built a superior temporary shelter, which protected them all from the effects of the mold. They lost half a day’s worth of travel, but were not exposed to the diseased spores. When they emerged hours later, they saw that the moldstorm had left the landscape coated with fluffy tufts of pinkish spores like a dusting of snow, accumulating in waist-high drifts as the wind blew through the forest. The spores quickly lost their harmful potential after the moldstorm ends, and the kaukarikis took that as their cue to stop harassing the crew and return to their territory.

As you were setting up camp for the night, a large reptile crashed toward them, its scales covered in mold. The creature’s roar unsettled Galakrond temporarily, but in its maddened state, it was no match for the seasoned crew. Afterward, they provided Ralkawi with the chewed zero rifle that they’d found near the Rune Obelisk.

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Ukulam – “Plague Warden”

On the eighth day of the trip, the trees thinned ahead, forming a broad clearing centered on an immense stone statue of a reclining elf whose skin bore dozens of raised markings like painful welts. The figure rested on one partially buried elbow while extending its other hand toward the sky. The elf’s simple robe and hair were both sculpted of heavily weathered metal that had corroded entirely in places. Numerous crumbling outbuildings ringed the clearing, where only mosses and a few stubborn, stunted trees grew.
To the explorer Halkueem Zan, the immense statue had depicted a sickly elf wasting away from an unknown disease, leading him to dub it the “Plague Warden.”

Untold ages had reduced the buildings to low walls and buried foundations, with only a few fragmented walls standing more than four feet in height. The more complete structures had trapped millennia of sediment and runoff, forming a spongy floor of silt and moss, but none of the buildings had roofs any longer.

As the crew passed the outbuildings and entered the clearing, a sticky strand from above encased Winslow, drawing everyone’s attention to the previously empty sky. There floated a huge tentacled creature, its aerial camouflage fading to reveal its blue bulk!

The sky fisher reeled Winslow upward and took a bite out of him! The shirren felt weaker and recognized that the aberration must be venomous. He scrambled in his pack for antitoxin and injected it into his leg. The others started firing at the creature from the ground. And then they heard the crack of a sniper rifle a moment before a bullet impacted Twitch’s energy shield. It had come from somewhere near the elven statue, but the crew could see no sign of the hidden sniper.

“Think we’ve found more of the cult,” said Ralkawi. “Probably Salask, Tahomen’s marksman.”

Kusanagi was fished upward next, but he broke free and used his jump jets to arrest his fall. A tense thirty seconds passed before the crew’s gunplay managed to bring the sky fisher down. Unfortunately its fall also meant Winslow’s. The beast crashed down atop the doctor, crushing him. While the others took cover from the sniper, Galakrond lifted the sky fisher’s dead bulk to find Winslow unconscious. He fed the shirren a healing potion then carried him over his shoulder and into the jungle where the others waited.

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Temple of the Twelve

Struggle’s Scholar

When the crew used the beacon’s coordinates and instructions to drop out of the Drift, they found themselves a few hundred yards from the disabled Struggle’s Scholar. The heavily damaged kasathan transport ship floats in empty space, dark but for a slowly flashing orange light at its aft. Just a few miles away from the ship, a massive storm dwarfed the vessel, blue and gray etheric clouds warping the field of stars behind the ship and flashing internally with jagged streaks of light. For all its violence, the vast storm was silent, and it loomed larger with each passing second. It was clear that the storm would overtake the Struggle’s Scholar, destroying the ship long before the Starfinders could restore the vessel to working order or even tow it out of the way.

The Honorbound floated nearby, and Captain Yuluzak hailed them on comms. He explained that he sent his crew on a boarding action, leaving only himself and the doctor aboard the vesk ship. The boarding party came under attack and stopped responding to hails. He feared the worst but hoped that Galakrond’s challenge of physical combat was not a boast. The Starfinders were his only chance to salvage the mission.

Twitch used the the ship’s computer to scan the Struggle’s Scholar. He was able to get the basic internal map of the ship, with outlines of every chamber. The Struggle’s Scholar is an older model of kasathan starship known as an Idaran Centuria, its curved hull representative of kasathan design standards. Each room is 15 feet high with walls made of starship interior material and steel doors. The ship has enough power to provide both basic life support and normal gravity. According to the scan, only low-power emergency lighting illuminates the ship. He also noted the presence of notable power spikes in the captain’s quarters, engine room, and bridge.

It was a simple matter to attach to the Struggle Scholar’s airlock, which had an internal access door to the fore. Loose netting floated in the gravity-free chamber. A warning light above the interior door flashed every few seconds, periodically bathing the room in a dim orange glow. A small panel next to the door flashed orange in time with the warning light. Kusanagi used the panel to close the main airlock door, which caused the room to automatically pressurize. Artificial gravity then began to kick in gradually, and as air filled the room, a blaring alarm could be heard, timed with the light. After thirty seconds, the alarm and light stopped flashing, and a horrifying screech echoed past the sealed forward door. Signaling the others, the android used the panel again to open the interior door.

Beyond, a gruesome trail of blood ran across the floor of the ten-foot wide hallway that ran horizontally across the ship; at each end of the hall were metal access doors leading to the forward and aft. A shorter hall led to a forward door, with two doors halfway up that hall exiting to the port and starboard. The wreckage of a double-barreled weapon turret limply hung from the ceiling, just to the left of the airlock door. Two vesk corpses lay there, apparently having been gunned down by turret fire.

Galakrond stepped into the corridor and a turret dropped from the ceiling to shoot him, as had almost become protocol for this sort of exploration. It apparently spent its last round on the effort, as only clicks issued from it after the first shot. Kusanagi crept along the starboard side of the corridor, following the blood trail to an open door on the forward side. Within, the operative saw the signs of struggle throughout the room. A single bed in the forward-port side of the chamber was torn, with its comforter halfway on the floor. A nearby bed table and desk were in similar disarray, covered with shattered glass and hunks of broken ceramics. A pool of blood covered the nearby floor near the door.

A strangled vesk corpse and a lifeless kasatha in a suit of battle harness powered armor lay on the floor. The armor was unpowered – a cable on the floor led from a starship battery pack to the base of the suit. It appeared to have been disconnected. Kusanagi returned to the others to report his findings.

They decided to try to reach the bridge, the most logical place for them to find the information on Sangoro’s Bulwark. They paused to check out the engine room, through a portside door. Cracks marred the surface of the chamber’s portside wall. A constant thrum of power was audible within the area, clearly emanating from an immense engine embedded into the forward wall. A standalone control module sat opposite the entrance, but the thick cable that should connect it to the humming engine was irrevocably split. Three rectangular stacks of batteries filled the southern end of the engine room.

The engine enclosure in the forward section of the room was missing its front panel, and a maze of crisscrossing wires connected to various terminals. Aft of the control module, several dead, brick-sized starship batteries were stacked on metal shelves. The topmost row was hooked up to an exposed power terminal labeled “Bridge” with a black marker. Another power terminal was labeled “Mess,” and it seemed to have power running to it.

As near as they could tell, someone appeared to have patched what they could and diverted remaining power to the ship’s life support systems and most of the ship’s internal doors. Connecting a charged battery pack to the associated terminal would presumably unlock the associated door. The patchwork of rerouted wires would take even an expert more time than they had to reverse-engineer; they recognized the futility of attempting to reroute power using the existing wires. They had power to the mess, which seemed to be between them and the bridge, but they would need another battery to then access the bridge itself. Kusanagi mentioned the battery he’d seen near the battle harness on the kasatha corpse in the captain’s quarters.

No sooner than he said that than a four-armed kasathan driftdead floated through the wall to attack Twitch! A brutal melee ensued, as the incorporeal creature resisted even their energy weapons, but despite the harm it inflicted with its vicious claws, the crew managed to defeat it. Winslow was particularly instrumental, harming the undead while also sending healing energy to wash over his companions. They took a break before continuing their exploration.

Galakrond fetched the second live battery from the captain’s quarters and Twitch connected it to the terminal marked “Bridge.” They headed forward into the mess hall, which resembled a charnel house. The remains of two dead kasathas were piled in the forward-portside corner, surrounded by knocked-over chairs. A ceremonial table setting in the center of the chamber was spattered with blood. The stench of decay was palpable in this room, and even the sink along the southern wall was coated in a dark-red shade. Storage containers filled the eastern side of the room, each similarly spattered by gore. An impressive set of double doors barred passage to the bridge.

Winslow and Boske went to inspect the corpses, while Kusanagi approached the door to the bridge. All three were attacked by something that burst from the corpses as they drew near. They prevented the alien larvae from burrowing too deeply into their flesh, even as they came to the sobering conclusion that the driftdead was likely not the last of their problems. Galakrond produced a pair of healing serums from the storage containers, and the party continued to the bridge.

The ship’s bridge was alight in red warning screens. The nearing ethereal storm loomed beyond the forward viewing platform, while the ship’s failing power caused each station’s panels to flicker intermittently. A battered captain’s chair oversaw two tiers of descending operations panels. The seat appeared to be occupied by the corpse of a kasatha.

Kusanagi noticed that something seemed to be wearing the body of the pilot. He warned the others and the creature spun around in the chair as Galakrond approached. The four-armed alien was a xill, and it bit the vesk only once before it was cut down by the crew’s combined efforts.

With the alien defeated, they scoured the bridge for the data they needed. It was heavily encrypted, but they both downloaded it onto multiple computers in their possession and physically removed the hard drive from its damaged casing in the bridge’s command console. A silk kasatha mouth scarf rested at the feet of the ruined pilot’s body. They brought the fallen man to the main cabin where they began to collect the other bodies, vesk and kasatha. With one of the Honorbound crew still unaccounted for, the Starfinders methodically searched the rest of the ship.

Opposite the captain’s quarters, they found four beds filling most of the tidy crew quarters. Each bed was neatly made with a prominent item placed atop its center. Above the beds were tightly sealed storage compartments. A single-tier metal shelf curved around the southwestern wall, its surface pristine but entirely empty. The culturally sensitive crew knew that the items placed atop the beds were each part of a kasathan tradition for those who were making a journey from which they didn’t expect to return. The kasatha crew members had left personal items on each of their beds, as gifts to those who survive them and continue to create future history. The crew collected the items, including a datapad which they restored to power and unlocked. It contained the most recent personal logs of one of the kasatha named Teliu.

RECORD 1
I am worried about Yotto. She is furious about what happened at the Bulwark and seems to be withdrawing more and more – she didn’t even attend this morning’s spar. Instead, I battled against Blue Sky-101, who is a skilled opponent but lacks the same vitality and understanding of honor. I thought Yotto would at least work some of her anger out by taking baton to bot. Perhaps it is her youth getting the better of her. I will give her a few days to restore her balance.

RECORD 2
The loss of Yotto is unbearable, and to make matters worse, the damage to the ship was more extensive than we thought. The captain sent out a distress beacon in the Drift, but it is too dangerous to stay in this minefield, so we have returned to the Material Plane. When we return to the Idari, I hope the adata will accept Yotto’s body and grant me dispensation to query her soul. I’d like to speak with her one last time – and ask her why she was in the cargo hold when we were hit. For now, I have shrouded her body and placed it in the sparring chamber.

RECORD 3
At first, I thought it was a dream – a nightmare. I walked into the sparring room and there was Yotto, but… changed. She swung at me from across the room, but I felt her hand rip through me as though I were made of paper. I tried to subdue her with the sparring equipment, but my blows simply passed through her. It took all of us armed with force batons to eventually lure her into the captain’s quarters, where the captain sacrificed herself to trap Yotto – or whatever she has become – within her suit’s force field. Kela has rigged one of the ship’s batteries to amplify the field and keep the creature contained, but we may soon be faced with fighting this thing for our lives.

FINAL RECORD
As our forebears faced the dimming of Kasath’s sun, so do we know that our ship’s power reserves near their end. Traska has encrypted our ship’s log, and tonight we will gather in the mess to partake of our final meal. We have placed our sacred items atop our beds, as tradition requires. I hope those items, as well as something of the captain, our pilot, and even Blue Sky-101, find a safe return to the Idari should we not. Eloritu guide us.

- Teliu Davead Mord of Clan Ferrous, House Elwood, truth-keeper of the Ferrous Stone

Crossing to the port side of the ship, they entered the aft chamber to find the sparring room mentioned in Teliu’s logs. Just inside the doorway, the entry floor was caked with blood, and several batons and shuriken were scattered throughout the room. A simple sparring mat covered much of the center floor. An alcove along the eastern edge housed a weapon rack filled several kinds of batons and a dozen fine shuriken. On the opposite wall was a pad of self-healing foam with colorful abstract targets painted on it. A four-armed metal robot stood in the southwestern corner of the chamber. An open panel on its back appeared to be where a battery had been stored, but it was empty.

They noticed a holoprojector in the ceiling with a carbonedge shuriken lodged in it, and Twitch was able to repair it enough that it replayed a crew member’s brief fight with a driftdead – presumably Yotto. The holovid of the skirmish was grainy, and it cut out periodically before ending when the living crew member threw a shuriken that passed through the driftdead and hit the projector. They collected the weapons and finished their exploration across the hall.

The northern wall of the final chamber was so forcibly compacted to the south that the chamber extended only about ten feet from the door. Several person-sized crates were fused into the distorted hull, obviously melted by extreme heat. Space was visible from between several gaps in the northern wall, accented by the occasional shimmer of a force field. They figured that it was a cargo bay before the Struggle’s Scholar collided with magma-filled asteroids in the Drift. It looked like a few containers had been sucked into the larger openings, their metal melting into that of the hull and fusing them in place. The body of the final vesk crew member lay there.

Searching the cargo bay, they found that one of the fused cargo containers housed a macabre set of limbs: the right arm and leg of an android. The limbs apparently managed to avoid getting sucked into the vacuum along with their owner. They also identified a pattern of android fluids and alien blood spattered along the edges of one of the force field–protected holes into space – surmising that an android and an alien of some sort had been sucked out into space. From a panel near the door, they identified that the field had last been lowered using the authorization of a crew member named Blue Sky-101. Winslow identified the limbs as being torn off by a creature with vicious claws – probably the xill.

They managed to get the bodies and possessions of the fallen back aboard the Sunrise Maiden. Sending word to the Honorbound, they powered their Drift engine before the etheric storm finally consumed the area. The last sight they saw before heading into the Drift, was the Struggle’s Scholar breaking apart as the storm overtook it. The vesk bodies were returned to the Honorbound. Their captain, though saddened, appreciated the gesture. With this last bit of business concluded, they set a course back home.

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Absalom Station – Exo-Guardians Headquarters

Zigvigix was extremely appreciative for the shred of hope that the retrieved data represented. The tale of the Struggle’s Scholar’s fate disturbed the Exo-Guardians faction leader. Zigvigix promised to deliver the remains and personal belongings of the Struggle’s Scholar’s crew for proper last-rite ceremonies. The Starfinder Society maintained active files on each of the crew members, and Zigvigix confirmed that every member had requested burial of their bodies or their final possessions returned to the Idari – even the android, Blue Sky-101. Zigvigix then told the crew that they would send the damaged data to the Dataphiles in the hopes that Historia-7 might be able to parse the information and recover any word about the fate of Sangoro’s Bulwark.

Before dismissing them, Zigvigix offered a personal thanks for their part in the mission. “This is the first shred of truly good news that the Exo-Guardians have had in a long time! My many thanks for all you have done in securing this important data. Now, there is another important matter I wanted to bring up.

“Prior to the Scoured Stars incident, I was part of a group of loyal friends, like the team you’re all a part of. Right before that dark event, I bought some tickets for my friends and me to a major upcoming concert. It was going to be our big outing—a capstone to all our missions together. Now, all my friends are trapped or lost in the Scoured Stars, and who knows how long it will take before we find out what happened there. The concert is coming up in a few months, and I wanted to extend an invitation. No promises or anything; you might be on assignment, and field missions take priority. If you are free, though, I would be honored if you would join me at this concert. Think of it as a remembrance for my lost comrades and a celebration of a new generation’s camaraderie.

“Oh! I just realized that I should invite Historia-7 too! Okay, well, thanks again. I should get going!” With that said, Zigvigix eagerly limped away, leaving the crew to enjoy their success.

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Absalom Station – Lorespire Complex

A couple of days later, the crew received an incoming call from Chiskisk, summoning them in for a briefing. Once they had settled in, the shirren explained the development. “There is some good news regarding the research into the symbols you found on the Drift Rock. The Starfinder Society’s linguistic database recognized many of them, because this is not the first time they’ve appeared post-Gap. The bad news is that the source is… highly unreliable,” Chiskisk noted, as segments of their chitinous body scraped together in agitation.

“All that we have about these earlier texts comes from Halkueem Zan nearly three centuries ago, and it seems that no published studies of those texts have appeared since. According to these records, Zan’s original findings were donated to the Qabarat University of Xenoarchaeology and Xenoanthropology on Castrovel shortly after his—” the shirren paused while contemplating how best to phrase the sentence. “—disruptive expeditions.

“Fortunately, the Society has numerous alumni from that university, and I can readily secure you a contact there and forward my personal recommendation to a few faculty members. Perhaps they can show you Zan’s notes and even take you to the original site so that you can search for more clues about whatever this Drift Rock once was.”

No one had heard of Zan, so Kusanagi asked what was known about the man.

Chiskisk replied, “As you know, the Starfinder Society is an organization dedicated to uncovering the secrets of the universe and its past. As in any pursuit, a sensational hero can attract new recruits, and a buffoon can tarnish the whole field. Halkueem Zan was both. He traveled throughout the Pact Worlds making a name for himself as an explorer and archaeologist, but his techniques were utter rubbish. He was a looter with a good press agent, and he published lurid gibberish like ‘Pyramid People of Ukulam.’ His articles were popular with the public, but for every diligent explorer they inspired, another two were unscrupulous treasure hunters who just wanted to blow things up and call it archaeology.”

“So, he was a Starfinder?” asked Boske.

Chiskisk shuddered visibly. “No. Zan did most of his work at about the same time the Starfinder Society formed, but I don’t believe he was ever associated with us.”

Galakrond grunted. “What happened to Zan on Castrovel?”

“Different planets have different regulations for explorers. Zan wanted to explore a site on the restricted continent of Ukulam, but when the authorities denied him passage, he went anyway. I believe they confiscated most of his findings, and the whole incident spurred a decade of restrictions on offworld explorers.”

“That’s great,” said Twitch, his tone bored. “So, who’s our contact?”

The shirren nodded and tapped a few keys. “There is a postdoctoral student named Whaloss who has worked with the Society in the past. I’ll ask him to greet you when you land in Qabarat.”

Chiskisk believed that this was a strong lead, and because the crew had so far been at the forefront of this investigation, the shirren believed it was only proper that you have the right of first refusal to visit the university and learn more. In fact, they preferred that you do so, as thanks to the broadcast of the Drift Rock exploration, it was only a matter of time before someone else beat the Society to the prize. The shirren also sent the crew a digital copy of “Pyramid People of Ukulam,” which was a tawdry travelogue that lauded the author’s bravery as much as it described the culture that built the sites using ample nonacademic language such as “exotic,” “savages,” and “time immemorial.”

As a final note, Chiskisk said, “I know you’ve been running nonstop for us since you got back from the Drift Rock, so if you agree to pursue this lead, I’ve also authorized a stipend of 1,000 credits for the team.” No one argued.

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Castrovel – Qabarat

The crew traveled to Castrovel aboard the newly repaired Sunrise Maiden. Beyond dealing with a few fans of their recent celebrity on the way to the spaceport, their voyage was speedy and largely uneventful, taking only a few days using Drift travel.

Castrovel was a vibrant planet of sparkling blue oceans, continents blanketed in vividly green forests, and swirls of clouds. As the Sunrise Maiden entered the atmosphere near Qabarat, the city-state’s aviation authorities hailed the starship, asked for identification, and directed the crew to one of the landing pads at the city’s spaceport, Ship’s End. As a matter of course, a guard and a customs official briefly interviewed them about their business in Qabarat, whether they had local contacts, the expected duration of their stay, and whether they were importing any foreign life-forms. They were also informed that carrying personal weapons was not illegal in Qabarat, merely frowned upon. After the customs process, the officers issued the crew travel papers to keep with them for the duration of their stay.

Their Castrovelian contact Whaloss was waiting to meet them just outside the spaceport. Even for a damaya, he was tall and thin, almost to the point of seeming gaunt. His clothing was a stylish blend of local silks, though the overall ensemble showed considerable wear, as though he had relied on this nicer outfit for formal meetings for many years. Nonetheless, he positively beamed with antennae-twitching excitement to meet the crew and show them around Qabarat. As an advanced student of xenoarchaeology, he had collaborated with members of the Starfinder Society before and he was eager to hear about their recent findings.

Whaloss hailed a robo-taxi to carry the group into the heart of Qabarat and the university. As the taxi wended its way deeper into the city, trees gave way to elegant towers of carbon fiber, glass, and steel, each artistically sculpted to create a stunning forest of dazzling skyscrapers. The Qabarat University of Xenoarchaeology and Xenoanthropology was just north of the downtown commercial district and consisted of about ten buildings scattered over a campus of groomed lawns and gardens.

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Qabarat University of Xenoarchaeology and Xenoanthropology

While talking about their discovery, Whaloss admitted that he did not have the background to decipher the Drift Rock’s writing and technology, but he offered to introduce the crew to Professor Muhali, the head of the linguistic anthropology department. Her office was in the Alsima-Karei Hall, an eight-story building whose lobby is currently home to a small pack of journalists insistently trying to convince a receptionist to let them upstairs. Whaloss said that he was unfamiliar with any news that would warrant this level of attention.

Galakrond asked one of the journalists what was going on, and the fellow told them that Dr. Ailabiens 21:2 had given an incendiary lecture that some interpreted as a defense of violent xenophobia. The media was there primarily to secure interviews and comments from ranking academic staff.

The receptionist – Ikimsi, Whaloss supplies – was clearly out of his element dealing with the media. It was all he could do to keep them at bay on the ground floor while paging for support from the university’s publicist or deans. Lest the journalists try to piggyback on the crew’s access, Ikimsi was unwilling to let them upstairs until he had control of the situation downstairs.

The vesk tried intimidating the mob, while Twitch tried to fake a news story about an alternative source speaking out about the lecture. Kusanagi asked Whaloss if he could be disguised as someone important to scatter the journalists – a suggestion that was met with a firm denial on the lashunta’s part. It was Winslow’s calm and measured arguments, even in the face of belligerent shouting, that ultimately pacified the swarm and granted peace to the beleaguered Ikimsi.

Once the journalists are no longer clamoring to get upstairs, Ikimsi was amenable to hearing why you would like to meet with various professors upstairs, noting that Professor Muhali was currently very busy. They explained their reasons and since they had helped him with the media, Ikimsi rearranged the professor’s schedule for the day and created an official appointment for them. Whaloss led them to Muhali’s office on the fifth floor.

As the head of the linguistic anthropology department, Professor Muhali had one of the nicer offices in Alsima-Karei Hall. Her door was unlocked, and she accepts the crew in after they were introduced by Whaloss. This office was clean, roomy, and orderly. A large desk stood imposingly before a broad window that offered a charming view of a nearby park, and a small table in one corner had a quartet of chairs arranged evenly around it. Near the door was a wide examination table covered with broken fragments of stone, many of which bore incomplete words or letters written in a spiraling text. Several tiny fountains throughout the room burbled soothingly and shimmered with soft light.

Professor Muhali was fairly stern, having wrestled with offworld authorities to secure excavation permits, cut through red tape, and debunk fraudulent ideas vigorously defended by stubborn fools. She was dark-skinned for a lashunta, with pale green facial markings and purple hair cut in an asymmetrical style. After introductions, Muhali said that she had spent the past several hours corresponding with colleagues and devising ways in which to resolve the scandal Ailabiens 21:2 had started.

“One of my colleagues, Ailabiens 21:2, gave a rather incendiary public lecture last night in which he examined a war from nearly a millennium ago and used the cultural fallout from it to rationalize the genocide of the formian species. Even before the lashunta city-states and formian Colonies signed peace accords thirty years ago, such brutal conclusions would have been dismissed. Now he is fomenting hate crimes under the guise of ‘pure logic’ and anthropology. This is not what the university stands for, but it’s what the public now believes. I’ve placed him on academic leave and restricted his access to university resources until we can clean this up.”

With the media and university deans breathing down her neck over the incident, Muhali was largely uninterested in working on anything else, even as a favor to the Starfinder Society. Twitch cut right to the heart of the matter with a simple question. “How can we help?”

Professor Muhali sighed and delicately massaged the bases of her antennae. “You’re persistent. Maybe that could come in handy. What the university needs right now is to smooth this over quickly, and Ailabiens 21:2 is not listening to anything I say. He has not quite violated enough protocols to be dismissed; firing him would otherwise be good for optics. I think the media would settle for a public apology. If you can convince him to do that, I should be able to handle the rest.”

The crew agreed to try to defuse the scandal by convincing Ailabiens 21:2 to apologize. Whaloss took them to the professor’s office and while they were walking, the lashunta briefed them on the controversial doctor.

“Ailabiens 21:2 is an accomplished xenoanthropologist. Although his academic peers cannot doubt the contemplative’s knowledge of the subject, his own publications tend to receive mixed reviews due to the utterly sanitary impartiality and lack of empathy with which he approaches his work and subjects. This extends to his interactions with his coworkers and students, whom he boorishly psychoanalyzes to their faces as though he were performing a favor. For his part, Ailabiens 21:2 boasts of his emotional detachment with hypocritical pride, claiming that his objectivity makes him a superior analyst.

“Despite his uncouth demeanor, few have read as many articles and files as he has, and he commands an unrivaled mental catalog of the university’s collections. He reviewed Halkueem Zan’s confiscated notes a decade ago, dismissing it as drivel. Even so, that makes him one of the few who has personally read the explorer’s notebooks, few of which are properly digitized.”

The office of the academic Ailabiens 21:2 was a model of disorganized chaos, containing a mishmash of texts and cultural artifacts from across the Pact Worlds and beyond. When they arrived, they found dust, debris, and discarded papers littering the floor of the disorganized office. The contemplative floated above it, apparently nonchalant about the filthy floor, which crunched noisily under the crew’s feet. A single chair stood in the corner, and the desk and shelves were crowded with books, scrolls, statuettes, and loose computer hardware.

Whaloss introduced the crew to the professor then excused himself. With little else to do with his time, Ailabiens 21:2 was willing to entertain visitors, communicating almost exclusively through telepathy while doing so. The crew started by asking him about his lecture and why he thought people were offended by it.

Offense indicates a narrow perspective in the listeners. I analyzed ancient lashunta armies’ strategies against their formian neighbors and concluded that the former’s conditioned sentimentality inhibited more effectively destructive actions against their long-time enemies. The audience found my conclusion upsetting. Ailabiens 21:2 bobbed thoughtfully before adding, Other species are endlessly fascinating.

They discussed the subject for a few minutes, unable to pierce Ailabiens 21:2’s certainty that he was correct. Galakrond started a tangential conversation by agreeing that the contemplative’s argument did make rational sense and aligned with a lot of what he’d been taught about military tactics on Vesk Prime. This pleased Ailabiens 21:2, who began to consider possible overlap between the history of the Veskarium and that of Castrovel. Kusanagi brought the conversation back on track by asking about Zan.

Halkueem Zan, I presume you mean. I reviewed the entirety of Zan’s original notes early in my time here as faculty, and to my considerable knowledge, only Doctor Solstarni has studied them more recently. Zan’s methodology was imperfect, catering to an uneducated reader’s lexicon, fetishizing the ‘exotic,’ and conveying a pathological love of his self-image as an adventurer—likely to earn money or as an elaborate mating ritual. As a result, his work is scientifically wanting and his conclusions doubtful. Nevertheless, his notes provide enough detail to hypothetically retrace his steps.

“That’s great,” said Winslow. “Can you get us Zan’s notes?”

Normally, I could, but I am currently on probation due to the weak-willed public’s inability to process the logical arguments I posited in my recent lecture. Until I am reinstated, I cannot assist you.

“All right,” said Boske. “How do we make that happen?”

Professor Muhali has suspended me, and barring the unlikely intervention by a dean, only she can undo this. Your convincing her to do so would allow me to help. If you also repair the damage she has dealt, you shall have my undivided attention.

It was clear that Ailabiens 21:2 was utterly confident that he had done no wrong, and that his academic conclusions were valid. Even so, the crew managed to convince him that upsetting others was wrong and that it was definitely a bad career move. Despite his frustrating insensitivity, the contemplative found the prospect of making an apology less degrading than enduring his academic suspension. He was willing to make this gesture in a convincing manner so long as the crew convinced Professor Muhali to make three concessions: cancel Ailabiens 21:2’s academic suspension, restore his access to the university’s restricted collections, and pardon the whole incident in his tenure review file. They agreed to try.

When presented with the contemplative’s conditions, Muhali grudgingly agreed that she would reinstate his status and library access in exchange for a public apology before the media. But she balked at the final demand. They managed to convince her that Ailabiens 21:2 had intended no harm and that this would swiftly bring an end to the whole affair. As such, Professor Muhali accepted all three concessions.

With his library access restored, Ailabiens 21:2 swiftly checked out Halkueem Zan’s original journals – a combination of image files in a long-obsolete format and physical notebooks that wouldn’t require battery power during an extended expedition – and sets to converting and digitizing them. The contemplative informed the crew that the process would take approximately 8 hours, after which he would be able to provide them with a fairly complete copy of the reckless explorer’s original account.

With the dispute resolved, Muhali agreed to examine the language records that the crew had found on the Drift Rock. She soon recognized them as belonging to a non-Elven language group found in association with the few known elven sites on the continent of Ukulam to the west. Hoping to draw upon specialized knowledge of her colleague Dr. Solstarni, Muhali attempted to contact the kasatha in her office, at home, and through her personal comm unit. Even Muhali’s attempts to contact the professor’s friends and family turned up no results, making the lashunta concerned. She pulled a spare key card to Dr. Solstarni’s office from her desk and asked the crew to accompany her to see if there was any sign of where her colleague might be.

The door to Dr. Solstarni’s fourth-floor office was made of a heavy wood composite. The office itself was in disarray, with cabinet doors ajar, several stone artifacts scattered across the floor from open archival drawers, and a traveling bag open and half-packed. The computer on the desk at the far end of the room was dark, but a diode at its base blinked regularly.

Dr. Solstarni was an archaeologist specializing in archaeoastronomic validation: the study of how ancient cultures viewed the cosmos and expressed those observations in their architecture, artifacts, and writings. Her office contained an assortment of outdated astronomy tools from sundry planets. Professor Muhali noted that the disarray was not typical for the kasatha, and even at a casual glance, it appeared that someone was packing quickly and erratically – perhaps even ransacking the room. Suspecting criminal activity, Muhali excused herself to contact local police to file a missing persons report, but she encouraged the crew to investigate to see what clues they could uncover.

No one could get anywhere with Solstarni’s computer, but searching the office produced a couple of clues. One of the cabinets was ajar and contained Dr. Solstarni’s field suit, though it had fallen from its hanger. It looked like someone had hastily attempted to grab the suit off the hangar and knocked it to the floor. Kusanagi also noticed a slight dent in the carbon fiber cabinet where someone had collided violently with the furniture in a short fight.

They also found a printed message just behind the open cabinet from someone called Eyrub Paqual. It appeared to be an invitation for Solstarni to meet with him at a cafe called the Five Arches in Qabarat’s Gateway District 2 days prior to appraise several artifacts he had recovered. Solstarni had apparently printed the message out, perhaps intending to pass it by her colleagues to see if they had been likewise contacted.

While the search continued, Twitch set about researching Paqual, finding a series of articles about elven ruins he had published over the past six years. At first blush, he appeared to be a moderately well-established academic. However, most of his articles had appeared in poorly vetted journals or cited him as one of numerous secondary authors. The mechanic also detected inconsistencies in Paqual’s online bios and records, suggesting he might be entirely fictitious.

Finally, they found some printed scans of Halkueem Zan’s notebooks marked in red pen. These appeared to be copies Dr. Solstarni annotated by hand, and the notes included some unique conclusions that appeared sufficient to help the crew chart a course from Turhalu Point to, as Zan described it, the “accursed pyramid city of Loskialua.” Dr. Solstarni helpfully wrote that this regarded what was now known as the Oatia culture, a poorly understood dynasty of elven immigrants to Ukulam.

As they were concluding their search of the office, a Qabarat detective called by Professor Muhali arrived to survey the situation. He took basic statements from the crew and did a sweep of the room, uncovering a few things that the Starfinders had not. The building had security cameras in its hallways and at the entrances, but there weren’t any inside individual offices and classrooms.

At the detective’s instruction, the receptionist Ikimsi reviewed the video logs to see that a trio of korasha lashuntas carrying heavy backpacks and wearing uniforms had entered the building two days before in the late evening – after all reception personnel had left. They then took the stairs up, but there seemed to be no footage of them on other floors or even leaving the building.

The uniforms were identified as those of the Gateway District’s Port Authority. The investigators also noted that there are inconsistencies in the footage on several floors, including the fourth floor, where Dr. Solstarni’s office was, suggesting that someone had hacked into the building’s security cameras and looped footage of empty hallways to hide whatever they were doing.

Additionally, the detective got a system administrator from the university to get into Dr. Solstarni’s computer. They reviewed recent functions and Dr. Solstarni’s correspondence. Her personal calendar noted that she was scheduled for a research sabbatical in approximately two months, as approved by her department head, Muhali, and the authorities in Turhalu Point on the east coast of Ukulam. However, one of the recent files on the computer was a letter from Professor Muhali granting Dr. Solstarni leave to depart two months early to take advantage of special conditions in the field, signed two days prior – the same day as the apparent abduction. Muhali confirmed that she had supplied no such letter.

The computer also contained a series of messages exchanged between Dr. Solstarni and Dr. Eyrub Paqual regarding Solstarni’s research into the ancient elven settlements of Ukulam. The exchanges began fairly cordially as Paqual and Solstarni discussed minor details of interest from the minimal research published about these sites. As the discussion continued, however, Paqual grew more insistent and as the printed message they’d found suggested, he had attempted to cajole the kasatha to meet with him at the Five Arches to appraise several artifacts he had recovered. Solstarni had refused, citing a busy schedule.

Based on the evidence, the detective suggested that the best course of action was to follow up on the connections to the Five Arches and the Port Authority. Based on the nature of the suspects, the officer suspected they might hide at the first sight of law enforcement. The officer was amenable to providing the crew short-term deputation to investigate the situation further, but he did so under the conditions that at least two of them wear bugs to provide surveillance and that they allow a pair of officers to shadow them at a considerable distance in case of trouble. Concerned for her colleague, Muhali encouraged the Starfinders to pursue these leads. They agreed.

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Qabarat – Five Arches

The Five Arches was located off the beaten path in the Gateway District near the east end of the city. According to its advertisements, the establishment was “a café dedicated to serving the discerning palettes of a dozen worlds.” According to online reviews, it was an eclectic dive with wildly variable food and drink quality combined with bizarre food pairings for the daily specials.

The android proprietor Uilee purportedly ran an efficient business marred only by her insistence on developing new recipes that her muted sense of taste could not properly judge. Even so, she apparently delighted in creating “authentic” offworld cuisine that was utterly inconsistent. Fortunately, she made plenty of income from the various low-key criminals and gang members who knew to skip the menu and just order drinks. They all knew and honored the unwritten policy to take all fights outside. Overall, the reputation suggested it was not a place that right-thinking individuals frequented willingly.

The Five Arches was readily apparent from the street, thanks to its glaring neon sign suggestive of the numerous portals in the district. A riot of different worlds’ souvenirs plastered the interior’s walls, and each table, booth, and bench bore the name of one of the Pact Worlds’ planets or habitable moons. About a dozen patrons nursed drinks alone or in pairs. The daily special was an unidentifiable avian cutlet smothered in a fig-like fruit compote and served alongside a mashed bitter tuber from Triaxus.

A shady-looking lashunta calling himself Twonas En sized the crew up as potential offworld customers and invited them to talk. Winslow spun a tale about needing someone to move some drugs, and offered the fellow a couple thousand credits for the deal. Greed encouraged En to accept and he led the crew to a small warehouse nearby where two of his associates waited. Out of the public eye, the crew tried to arrest the three men, who reached for guns. En was gunned down by Boske, but they managed to take the other two smugglers alive. They swiftly looted the bodies before the police backup arrived.

When awakened, the surviving lashuntas admitted that they helped a male korasha lashunta named Eyrub Paqual secure travel documents for fifteen individuals, permitting them to use local portals to reach Turhalu Point. Most of the visas were counterfeit – including three fake IDs for Port Authority employees to help move the group’s equipment – though the smugglers had had to make only some minor adjustments to the legitimate academic visas that Paqual and his ill kasatha colleague had. The smugglers also shared that they had doubts about Paqual’s identity, suspecting he was using an alias to avoid suspicion. Ultimately, his money was good enough that the smugglers hadn’t minded. Because their role focused more on securing paperwork and conveying the group’s equipment through customs without scrutiny, the smugglers were not familiar with the group’s exact composition. They did, however, know that Paqual was shipping a considerable number of firearms and heavy gear, most notably a shirren-eye rifle and a sizable comm unit that was disassembled into three bulky pieces. The smugglers had also secured special permits for transporting fungal spores. The interrogation concluded, the crew turned the smugglers over to local police.

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Qabarat University of Xenoarchaeology and Xenoanthropology

Returning to the university, the crew met back up with Ailabiens 21:2 to secure the digitized documents the contemplative had promised. The professor noted that there appeared to be some gaps in the records, either because Zan had been negligent in documenting part of his journey or because someone else had removed some documents. Ailabiens 21:2 annotated the records as best he could in the short amount of time he’d had, identifying what he believed were the most relevant parts. These records – both text and audiologs – contained several key warnings and landmarks described in Zan’s judgmental verbiage.

Wildlife: “Castrovel crawls with vermin and beasts of all kinds. Thunder-bellied behemoths clear paths through the jungle while bellowing madly. More vexing, though, are what we’ve come to call stingbats—some hellish cross of monkey, bat, and scorpion that travel in troops and harass us regularly. I fought one off as it attacked a porter and shot another as it fled, and from then on they targeted me. It’s as though they can sense strength, yet resent it.”

The Rune Obelisk: “A dramatic spire barely rising above the tree line was the first of our great landmarks. Each side of it was once engraved with untold wisdom, but only the sheltered runes near the base have survived the ages. The plants here grow thicker, as if feeding upon some gifts left by the ancient elves – sacrifices of flesh and blood, no doubt.”

The Plague Warden: “This massive stone figure is a reclining elven form covered in weathered boils. I suspect it is an effigy that served ritual purposes, such as absorbing the illness of some great king so he might live forever.”

The Forsaken City: “The city in the foothills is a forest of small pyramids overgrown with vines. As with the funerary monuments of lost Osirion, it might be this was not a place of the living but a realm of the dead. Initial excavations uncovered multiple stone tiers of fine architecture – displaying skill truly more advanced than the builders’ primitive contemporaries.”

The Stairs to Eternity: “From the Forsaken City rises a staggering, weathered staircase carved into the mountain beyond, evoking mystical contemplation in all who would climb it. Beyond stands a great temple whose haunted guardians feasted upon my comrades, forcing us to flee the savage sentinels.”

Collectively, Halkueem Zan’s records, as annotated by Ailabiens 21:2 and Dr. Solstarni, provided a fragmented course that the crew could follow from the coastal outpost of Turhalu Point inland to the “accursed pyramid city of Loskialua,” which Zan claimed to have discovered. Since following Zan’s path would most likely also lead to the crew recovering Dr. Solstarni, Professor Muhali was more than willing to provide travel visas to Ukulam. They settled into their motel for the evening, planning to leave the next morning.

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Temple of the Twelve

Akiton – Tasch

The customers started to flee through the entrance, while the bartender rushed out the back door. Philt and his bodyguards ducked out alongside the other citizens, but the shirren representative took a moment to wish the crew “the best of luck” and reminded them that he expected Talbot to be delivered soon. Not wishing to start killing locals for believing in false miracles, Kusanagi moved to the door where the bartender had gone and waved the others to follow him into the back room. They found themselves in a storage room that contained spare boxes, tables, chairs and crates of alcohol. There was another door on the east exterior wall, which was locked. While Twitch examined the locking mechanism for the outer door, Galakrond helped Winslow move the besotted Boske into the back room.

The mechanic got the door opened about the same time as a grenade disintegrated the door near the vesk bodyguard. Twitch found himself face to face with a ysoki with a laser pistol. Meanwhile, a four-armed shobhad and another of the ratmen had taken cover in the common room of Digger’s Dive. Galakrond felt his mind come under attack, but planted himself firmly in the doorway between the bar and the back room. The soldier’s eyes widened and he jerked his head back out of the way when he saw the drunken Boske aiming a zero rifle in the direction of the bar. Astonishingly, the sharpshooter managed to hit his target, the large shobhad who seemed to be the leader of the aggressors.

Kusanagi moved to support the vesk, while Winslow and ARTE assisted Twitch with the ysoki gunslinger at the back exit. The fighting effort was complicated by the fact that the crew were still trying not to kill anyone, but they managed to incapacitate Talbot’s defenders and escape to their vehicle outside.

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Akiton – Tasch Thasteron Mine

Tasch’s thasteron mine was built into a red rock hillside. It had been excavated by powered mining equipment that had since been repossessed or sold. A metal track ran throughout the mine, meant for automated mine carts. A string of overhead lights provided dim light. As they entered, a sloping ramp descended to the west, made of hard-packed red dirt that showed signs of heavy vehicle traffic. The ramp opened into a large square chamber with rough walls. A metal track ran along the ground from a passage in the west wall and then turned north, ascending a five-foot ramp and then running along the north wall until the track terminated. A pair of metal lockers stood in the southeast corner, and a heap of ore is piled to the southwest.

The ore was unrefined thasteron, the lockers contained a medkit, some tools, and an old credstick, and the vesk found recent tracks in the red dirt, matching the timeline of Talbot’s arrival on Akiton. Galakrond took point to scout the mine tunnels, and to the west he came to a T-intersection. To the north, a passageway led deeper into the mine, but was covered with thick, trackless dust and failing lights that implied no one had been down them in some time. He headed several yards to the south until he came to an intersection of several passageways with a square ceiling support. The passage to the south terminated in unfinished construction. A little past that, a passageway to the east led into a rectangular chamber with rough-hewn walls.

The vesk returned to the entry chamber and reported to his companions, who followed him to the rough chamber to the east. A metal mine-cart track ran parallel to the passage and entered the room before ending abruptly. A mine cart in an obvious state of disrepair lay adjacent to the tracks, and tools covered a table against the east wall, while a pair of metal lockers stood in the southwest corner. The lockers contained mining uniforms and binders of material-safety data sheets for explosives. The referenced explosives must have been removed when the mine shut down.

The crew turned their attention to the western passage, Galakrond still in the lead. No sooner had he stepped past the square ceiling support column than a mounted laser rifle emerged from a sliding panel and shot him. The weapon retracted back into the ceiling as he stumbled backwards – surprised, hurt, and a little angry. The crew took a minute to try to find the trap’s trigger, but no one could find anything. They tossed thasteron ore past the support, but the rifle did not fire upon it. Then Twitch sent ARTE forward. The drone was utterly destroyed when the rifle hit a critical system. The Starfinders exchanged glances and decided to wait and give Galakrond a chance to recover before pressing forward. When they advanced, the vesk managed to evade the laser and the others followed him across, though Kusanagi sprinted past the crew and into a new chamber.

The passage headed west and then turned north into a T-shaped room. The ceiling was cut to fifteen feet in height, and permanent light fixtures set in the ceiling provided brighter light. The minecart tracks that ran throughout the mine hugged the south wall, turned north, and ran along the west wall before coming to a dead end at the north end of the room. A single mine car stood on the tracks, and across from the cart was a small office fashioned from two out-of-place plastic walls set into the stonework. An open door provided access to the room within a room. Of more immediate concern were the three armed miners and the figure that crouched in the mine cart. Kusanagi recognized the man from the dossier photograph – Reynald Talbot!

The miners opened fire, and the android immediately recognized his mistake. The others rushed forward to assist Kusanagi, but Talbot himself proved the biggest threat. The former Starfinder set the cart in motion and took a carefully aimed shot at the operative, wounding him deeply. Kusanagi retreated and tried to fight back, but his shot only destroyed one of Talbot’s illusory duplicates. Galakrond engaged the miners, hoping to form a bulwark so the others could deal with the primary target. Boske jumped into the moving cart, but only managed to destroy another illusion. Winslow kept insisting that no one be killed, but the opponents proved resistant to his magic and his aim hadn’t improved since the last time he’d been in a firefight. Twitch, still a little despondent about the loss of ARTE, focused on the miners rather than Talbot.

Kusanagi fell to Talbot’s second shot, and Winslow revived him moments later. The thief and Boske zoomed past the rest of the crew, and Talbot leapt out of the mine cart at the intersection, fleeing toward the mine exit. Kusanagi gave chase, and so did Boske after he managed to get off the still-moving cart. The android took cover by the mine entrance, where he saw Talbot near the crew’s rental vehicle. It was clear that the man meant to steal the buggy to make good on his escape, so Kusanagi took aim and took his last shot.

Talbot was surprised to be shot, taking cover and firing back. His laser dropped the android again, who fell to the dirt. Boske trotted up just in time to see Talbot starting the vehicle. The vesk struggled for a moment with the choice between shooting at the target or saving his companion’s life. Then, with a curse, he fed the android a healing potion as Talbot gunned the engine and sped away. Boske helped Kusanagi limp back to the others, who had finished the fight against the determined miners. One of the men had been killed in the chaos, but the other two had been incapacitated instead.

The crew called Philt to let the shirren know that Talbot had escaped and might come back through Tasch. The AbadarCorp representative sounded annoyed but thanked them for the tip. A couple of hours later, they called back to report that they had managed to capture Talbot after all. The crew asked for the charlatan’s stone, but Philt refused, saying that they were taking it for study. The shirren was unmoved by Winslow’s plea to reconsider, and advised the crew that the Starfinders could file a petition with the corporation for the item’s return at a future date.

Dejected, the crew walked back to Tasch, then caught a ride back to Maro and the spaceport where the Sunrise Maiden waited to take them back to Absalom Station. When they reported the failure, Venture-Captain Arvin was unhappy, but he did not lose his temper. Instead he accepted the report, and with a sigh offered that everyone, himself included, needed to try harder if the Starfinder Society was going to survive.

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Absalom Station – Downlow

A day after their return to the station, the crew came to the Exo-Guardians’ new headquarters, a recently renovated warehouse, where head of the faction, Zigvigix, had summoned them for another mission briefing. The augmented host shirren watched a bustling crew move office equipment from several large pallets into a large warehouse, while other workers welded scrap metal to gaps in the warehouse’s walls. The shirren occasionally directed a crew member and made a note on a datapad. Zigvigix noticed their new guests and turned to telepathically project a greeting.

Zigvigix wore a set of shoulder speakers that blasted out sugar-pop music from the band Strawberry Machine Cake. They bounced in place along to the music, smiling at Twitch in particular. “Welcome back! Isn’t this song the best? I’ve been playing it on loop for hours!” Behind the excited shirren, several grizzled-looking station workers, each carrying a side of a heavy-looking holotable, rolled their eyes.

“Thanks for coming – I hope you’ll understand if I keep this brief; we’ve got a lot of work to do to get our new headquarters up and running, and you are on a short timetable. A ysoki salvage barge named the Clutter Collector, captained by a ysoki named Winks, picked up a distress-beacon transmission in the Drift. Winks didn’t have time to check it out, but she sold the data to the Society when she reached Absalom Station. How nice of her!

“Well, it turns out that this beacon came from the Struggle’s Scholar, a kasathan ship that…” Zigvigix paused for effect as their antennae wiggled excitedly. “…escaped from Sangoro’s Bulwark! If you don’t know, the Bulwark was the old base of operations for the Exo-Guardians. Now, First Seeker Luwazi wisely grounded us from investigating the Bulwark after all contact was lost with it shortly after the Scoured Stars incident, but we can’t pass up this opportunity to learn what happened there. We might even be able to find the coordinates to our missing headquarters. Wouldn’t it be joyous to have a large fortress to play loud music in?” Twitch was the only one to agree.

Zigvigix handed over a datapad. “Here are the coordinates of the distress signal. It is unlikely any of the crew survived, or they’d be here by now. So be on the lookout for bodies. Since the crew is mostly kasathas, it would mean a lot to their extended families if you could bring back their remains or keepsakes to the Idari! Otherwise, salvage any data you can – especially the ship’s log – as it could tell us what happened to Sangoro’s Bulwark. This datapad also holds a one-time-use decrypter that will let you decode the Exo-Guardians ciphers used on the distress signal. Good luck!”

Rather than borrow a Starfinder ship for the mission, the crew opted to take the Sunrise Maiden. While they prepared the ship, the crew did some infosphere research about Sangoro’s Bulwark. A vesk named Sangoro had founded the Exo-Guardians, which was an especially unusual fact, given the long hostilities between the Veskarium and the Pact Worlds. Many Starfinders initially did not trust him, even after he had provided the Society with a huge fortress on a remote planet to operate out of. Sangoro later dedicated himself and his followers to protecting the Society from external threats, forming the Exo-Guardians faction.

The fortress Sangoro bequeathed to the Starfinder Society was the only structure on the planet. It was a massive edifice left by some forgotten race, with extensive underground tunnels and storage vaults. The Exo-Guardians kept a large stockpile of equipment within the Bulwark, letting field agents on missions in the Vast access necessary items without traveling back to Absalom Station. Because of the importance of these resources, the exact coordinates of Sangoro’s Bulwark were kept from most Starfinders, and ships traveled to the location only by using encrypted flight plans.

Shortly after the Scoured Stars incident led to the disappearance of most Starfinder Society field agents and leadership, an unknown force overwhelmed Sangoro’s Bulwark, and – until Winks’ information was acquired – there had been no survivors or distress calls. With this attack, the Society’s data archives had lost all information on the exact location of Sangoro’s Bulwark, with even nominated First Seeker Luwazi Elsebo bereft of such knowledge. Only the Society’s amalgam digital consciousness, Guidance, might know the location, but it had ignored all requests to provide the data.

Finally, some rumors from the few Starfinders who visited the Bulwark before the fall reported that the Drift and Material Plane space surrounding the area was prone to strange events. Exactly how these dangers manifested varied by each rumor, but it appeared the space surrounding the Bulwark’s home system is prone to odd interplanar abnormalities. Starships were advised to carry powerful scanners to identify potential stellar hazards and bleeding between the planes.

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The Drift

According to their calculations, it was going to take a little over three weeks days to make the journey through the Drift to the distress-signal location provided by the Clutter Collector. The Maiden departed alongside another Starfinder Society starship, a bulk freighter called the Promise of the Future. While the freighter’s captain was too busy to communicate with them, a Starfinder team onboard the Promise willingly chatted. These passengers were kalos, aquatic monstrous humanoids native to the Brethedan moon of Kalo-Mahoi. This group, calling themselves the Manta Corps, formed a tight-knit party that the Starfinder Society often senT on missions of importance in underwater locales.

Members of the Manta Corps included Deepspeaker Alluguoth, a soft-spoken kalo who appreciated wisdom and information. Mantarider Ushuul was a headstrong soldier who fought with an automatic machine gun. He liked showing off his weapon, named “Muncher,” even via grainy video transmissions. Mantarider Suulhu-Huur was an enthusiastic melee fighter who wields an energized trident. She offered to spar with the crew, should they ever meet in person. Finally, Wavetreader Vhoosh, the quietest member of the group, was most interested in hearing about the crew’s combat exploit – specifically, what impressive kills they had accrued.

The Manta Corps eagerly trade stories with the crew but refused to speak about their classified mission. The freighter kept communications open with the Maiden for as long as it could, though it split paths with them after only two days of Drift travel, slipping out of communication range.

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As the crew closed in on the location of the Struggle’s Scholar’s distress beacon, they detected a large field of roughly two dozen asteroids surrounding the source of the signal. They recognized these as chunks of obsidian likely native to the Elemental Plane of Earth and ripped here thanks to the use of a Drift engine. A closer sensor scan indicated that the interiors of these asteroids held molten stone and were quite volatile.

While they pondered this, a vesk starship, the Honorbound, approached the opposite side of the asteroid field, heading toward it at top speed. The Honorbound was ablaze on either side with three bright-red thrusters, which were reminiscent of the energy blades of a plasma doshko. Boske and Galakrond mentioned that these features were a representation of the symbol of Damoritosh, the vesk god of conquest, duty, and war. The vesk ship began to slow shortly after the crew had detected it.

The captain of the Honorbound, a jovial vesk by the name of Yuluzak, initiated communication after a few minutes of silence. He greeted the crew in Vesk, noting the old-fashioned model of their starship. Captain Yuluzak willingly provided a brief summary of his ship: a vesk salvage transport scouring the Drift for finds important to the Veskarium. He admitted that his directive was not the most glorious or honorable of missions, but the threat of the Swarm demanded the Veskarium investigate all avenues of advancement to prepare against the next invasion. Yuluzak was eager to hear the crew’s history, as well.

When the Starfinders proved reticent, Captain Yuluzak turned the subject over the right of salvaging the distress beacon. The Honorbound was mandated to find anything of potential interest to the Veskarium, especially information on Pact World and kasathan starships. Having already determined the source of the signal, Captain Yuluzak regretfully informed the crew that he could not simply allow them to proceed with their own salvaging mission. The vesk captain casually proposed that the Honorbound and the Sunrise Maiden could engage in honorable starship combat to determine who had rights over the beacon. To expedite matters, Yuluzak offered several rules of engagement by which he swore to abide.

• The combatants would not intentionally target the life support systems of their enemy.
• The combatants would abstain from targeting the rear arc – warriors should face the enemy head on.
• Combat would be over once an enemy starship is crippled.
• Each captain could surrender at any point during the duel.

The captain disregarded Galakrond’s attempt to offer an alternative to single combat, and lost some of his good cheer when the soldier called him a coward. Winslow swiftly stepped in, agreeing to the terms. Captain Yuluzak nodded tersely then signaled his intent to begin the combat.

“Get on the turrets,” Kusanagi advised his vesk companions. “I’m going to try to keep our aft facing them.” The others agreed that this was a solid tactic, and it seemed that the Honorbound was serious about not firing into the Maiden’s rear arc. The Captain got on the comm, to begrudgingly admit to the cleverness of the strategy.

The crew used their ship’s superior speed and maneuverability to take every advantage they could, keeping the volatile asteroids between themselves and the Honorbound. Still, maneuvering in space was tricky, and the vesk starship managed to get a missile launched toward the Maiden’s starboard arc. Kusanagi got the ship maneuvered so that the missile would strike the aft arc, giving the gunners the opportunity to shoot it down with the flak thrower before impact. Unfortunately, the small projectile proved difficult to hit, and the hull rocked with an explosion that eliminated the shields in the rear of the ship.

Twitch and Winslow went into damage control mode, restoring and rebalancing the shields. The crew knew they were outgunned, but they continued to execute their strategy as best they could. The strain got to Kusanagi, who made a minor miscalculation and opened the Maiden’s port side to further missile fire. After another direct hit from a missile plus a light particle beam set two more systems glitching. The ship could not take another hit without being crippled, so they opened a comm channel and offered their surrender.

Captain Yuluzak congratulated them, impressed by the fight they put up. In appreciation of the crew honoring the rules of engagement, he offered to send them a trophy. When they accepted, the Honorbound jettisoned a cargo pod containing a set of vesk overplate armor and a tactical reaction cannon. The vesk captain then indicated that his ship would investigate the beacon and that he intended on sending a follow-up signal to you if it turned out that the Struggle’s Scholar was of no use to the Veskarium. About half an hour later, the Honorbound left Drift space for the Prime Material Plane.

While Twitch and Winslow started ship repairs, the others maneuvered the ship to extract precious minerals from the nearby magma asteroids. As they were finishing up, they were surprised to receive a distress signal from the Honorbound, requesting immediate assistance with salvaging the Struggle’s Scholar. It included coordinates in the Prime Material Plane as well as the original distress beacon recording:

ATTN: This message is confidential; if you are not the intended recipient, _ABSALOM STATION>>EXO-GUARDIANS_, please delete this message immediately.

MESSAGE: This is Remahd, captain of the Struggle’s Scholar. Most of my crew and I escaped Sangoro’s Bulwark with our lives, but upon entering the Drift, we collided with some extraplanar material. Soon after, we lost a crew member, as well as control of our primary engine. We have managed to patch our Drift functionality enough to drop out of this dangerous field and into normal space at the enclosed coordinates. Please send assistance as soon as is feasible – without our engine, our power supply is diminishing rapidly. In the event you are unable to reach us in time, I have heavily encrypted vital information meant only for the current head of the Exo-Guardians and locked it in a hard drive on the ship’s bridge.

The crew exchanged concerned glances, then set the coordinates and prepared to leave the Drift to assist the vesk.

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Temple of the Twelve

Starship – Sunrise Maiden

The ship was a Thaumtech Cairncarver, a small light freighter of Eoxian make – a model affiliated with the Corpse Fleet. Was Gevalarsk Nor trying to eliminate the crew with the officially expatriated organization, or were the rebels trying to cause trouble for Eox, the planet that had disavowed them? The answer was uncertain, but one thing was clear, it was time to find out how the Sunrise Maiden handled itself in combat.

Kusanagi assumed the pilot’s seat, with the vesk as gunners, Twitch in engineering, and Winslow as the science officer. The doctor’s initial scan of the enemy starship identified it as the Iron Rictus and he relayed its defenses and capabilities to his companions. The android proved a better pilot than the Eoxians had, and after an initial blast up the aft from a plasma torpedo, he took pains to stay out of the Rictus’ front arc. Boske couldn’t get a handle on the firing system for the first few shots, and although Galakrond had better luck, he was manning a less powerful gun. The crew of the Rictus had no trouble refreshing their shields faster than the vesk could bring them down.

Initially, Clara-247 had acted as captain, offering encouragement to the Starfinders as they engaged with the enemy ship. After a time, it became clear that her talents would better aid the crew as a second engineer, increasing the Maiden’s speed while Twitch focused on maintaining her shields. Finally, Boske managed to get a solid shot on the Eoxian ship and the crew cheered as they saw the particle beam score the Rictus’ hull. The Corpse Fleet went on the defensive, trying to use their guns’ greater range to their advantage and get the Maiden in their front firing arc, but Kusanagi continued stay on the enemy’s sides.

In the end, though the Rictus’ gunners were plenty competent, their coilguns barely managed to singe the Maiden’s hull before several of the Eoxians’ systems were glitching or malfunctioning. Kusanagi brought the ship up along the enemy’s shieldless port flank and in a classic broadside, the vesk’s final volley disabled the Corpse Fleet vessel. A few moments later, the ship exploded – the Eoxians had apparently opted to self-destruct rather than face capture and interrogation. Unsure what to make of this, the crew continued toward Absalom Station.

While they did, the space goblin Roger turned one of the vidscreens to a news channel, and his eyes widened when he saw the latest story. “Uh, guys? You might want to see this.” The others turned additional screens on and saw what the scavenger was talking about. News of their efforts on the Acreon and Drift Rock had preceded them to Absalom Station. Their images appeared on countless news outlets, featuring footage of their exploration of the derelict ship and the mysterious asteroid. A broadcast by Sooth Saiyan complained that the recording had been edited and didn’t tell the whole story, and the Starfinders noted that there were no shots of the crate Nor had requested they recover, but most other reports didn’t seem to care. The crew appeared to have become minor local celebrities – at least while the buzz lasted.

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Absalom Station – The Docks

Their newfound popularity earned them priority docking from Absalom Traffic Control and temporarily waived docking fees. Once they disembarked, a small crowd of onlookers and reporters quickly tracked them down, asking for statements, autographs, and confirmation of conspiracy theories. The crew plus two engaged with the press and their new fans briefly, but begged off providing many details until they could fulfill their role in the arbitration effort. Station security cleared a path so the Starfinders could make their way to the Eoxian embassy. They told Clara-247 and Roger to take rooms at the Moons of Sleep until they were finished speaking with the ambassador.

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Absalom Station – Eoxian Embassy

Once they were in Nor’s office, he congratulated them on the success of their mission. The ambassador apologized for airing the footage without asking, but he explained that he’d hoped the stunt would prove to be good publicity for both Eox and the Starfinders. And it appeared that his gambit had paid off. Even though he had recorded their activities on the Acreon and the Drift Rock, he still wanted to hear their report firsthand. They filled in some of the blanks, including the encounter that resulted in Clara-247 switching sides from hired assassin to ally of circumstance. After their report, Nor thanked them for delivering the crate as requested and upheld his end of the bargain, transferring 1,100 credits – 500 more than originally agreed upon – into each of their accounts as payment for the task.

The ambassador also offered to help piece together any of the clues unearthed on the Drift Rock that the crew hadn’t been able to interpret. He did not recognize the alien language, but he was able to decipher the complex alien computer code found in the Drift Rock’s ancient control room. The equipment in the control room seemed designed to operate minor subsystems of some larger structure or device, though the control room was obviously no longer connected to that structure. The exact nature of the missing structure remained a mystery, though references to systems such as “Backup Power Transmission,” “Maneuvering Thrusters,” and “Auxiliary Fire Control” hinted that it may have been some sort of space-based weapon system. In addition, the data revealed that these systems and the control room itself were incredibly ancient – possibly even millions of years old.

In fact, it appeared that the Drift Rock was not just an asteroid that was repurposed as a control center, but that it was a part of the larger structure that was designed and artificially constructed at the same time as the machinery and controls there. And if all that was true, then the Drift Rock represented a find of major significance, for not only is it a piece of heretofore-unknown technology of exceedingly advanced age, but the larger structure it was once a part of may still be somewhere among the stars, just waiting to be discovered!

Finally, Nor asked the crew their opinion about which organization should be granted ownership of the Drift Rock – the Hardscrabble Collective or Astral Extractions. The crew had discussed this on the trip back from the Acreon. Galakrond and Twitch had abstained, but Winslow had been adamant that the Hardscrabble Collective deserved the Drift Rock, and Boske had agreed with the shirren. Kusanagi had debated back and forth, but eventually came to the same conclusion, in no small part because Astral Extractions had already ordered one Starfinder killed, and he didn’t feel right rewarding that behavior. The android told the ambassador the crew’s decision. He thanked them for their efforts, and they parted amicably.

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Absalom Station – Lorespire Complex

The crew reported in to Chiskisk back at the Starfinder headquarters, and told them most of what they had learned out in space and from the ambassador. They left out any mention of the crate that Nor had asked them to bring back, feeling that discretion was better … for the time being. The nature of the device puzzled Chiskisk, but the Society was still shorthanded and in need of the crew’s services on other tasks. The shirren host said they would submit the footage along with the crew’s report to the Dataphiles, who had access to the Society’s detailed databases, and could search for any prior appearances of the language on the Drift Rock’s displays. At Kusanagi’s recommendation, Chiskisk agreed to reach out to the Hardscrabble Collective to facilitate additional information gathering from the Drift Rock itself.

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Absalom Station – Moons of Sleep

The crew were a little surprised to find Clara-247 and Roger waiting in the bar. The android woman reminded them that they had taken most of her stuff and her petty cash, so she hadn’t had a lot of other options. Roger glumly reminded them that he’d lost all of his companions on the Acreon and didn’t have much idea of what to do next. The crew suggested approaching the Starfinder Society, since the Acquisitives were still on a recruitment kick. The goblin exchanged a glance with Clara-247, and they mumbled noncommittal answers. A bit of gear was exchanged, and the crew wished the pair well.

Galakrond found the noqual recovered from the akata cocoons aboard the Acreon in the warehouse that Nor had indicated. Pleased, he started the effort of selling off all of the loot the crew had taken that they weren’t going to keep. The crew took some leisure time, spending a portion of the thousands of credits their first Starfinder mission had earned them.

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Absalom Station – Lorespire Complex

A few days later, they received a message from Venture-Captain Arvin, summoning them for a briefing. They made your way to his office, and the doors slid open with soft pneumatic hiss. Inside was the well-lit and blue-carpeted office with which they were already familiar. Arvin sat behind his desk, eyes riveted on a glassy display. After a heartbeat, he glanced toward the open door and motioned everyone to enter.

“Apologies, please come in. Be seated if you like, although this shouldn’t take long.” Arvin tapped a button on a console and murmured to a digital assistant, “Croyd, put everything on hold for a few minutes. If anyone calls, please explain I’m in mission briefing and I’ll get right back to them.” He then darkened the display to give the crew his full attention.

“Right. I have an assignment for you. This one is a little a different than others you might have received.” He paused before he explained, “It’s an internal matter. You’re probably aware that after the Scoured Stars incident many of our colleagues elected to leave the Society. That is unfortunate, but not surprising. We hate to lose good field agents, but no one is conscripted into our ranks. Normally we wish them well and that’s that. In this case, the defector, former field agent Reynald Talbot, stole an artifact from the Lorespire Complex before departing. Theft is where the Society draws the line; I need you to get that artifact back.

“Unfortunately, Talbot left weeks ago and we only discovered the theft in the last 24 hours. We launched an immediate investigation to determine the identity of the thief and their last known whereabouts. It’s our bad luck that Talbot was smart enough to get off the station and head to Akiton, where there’s no central government or law enforcement to easily call upon. I need you to track him down and recover the artifact. We know Talbot caught a shuttle to the Akitonian city of Maro, so that’s a great place to start. The Society will, of course, cover your travel expenses. Any questions?”

“What is the artifact?” Twitch asked.

“Good question, but the answer is complicated because it’s actually two questions: what the artifact is and what Talbot thinks it is. We’re operating under the assumption that Talbot thinks he’s stolen an object from old Golarion called a philosopher’s stone. Legend has it that the stone could transmute matter, among other properties. What Talbot actually stole was recently re-cataloged as a charlatan’s stone. It does something similar, except the effect is a potent illusion and only temporary. We think ancient con artists used to make false gold.”

“Did he act alone?” asked Kusanagi.

“We think so. He’s smart, capable, a bit brash, and a reasonable field agent. Talbot is also self-entitled and ambitious. After the Scoured Stars incident, he expected to be promoted to venture-captain, but the Forum felt he needed more time. He got angry. We think this theft is retaliation.”

“What should we do with him?” asked Galakrond.

After a meaningful pause Arvin said, “I want the stone back. Talbot’s not worth the expense of dragging back here, so you can do whatever you think is necessary with him. That said, you don’t have a license to go on a mass killing spree. Don’t make the Society look bad. It might be tough to do on Akiton, but don’t take that as a challenge.

“As for why we’re bothering to go after the stone, we need to make a statement. Rumors of the theft are already circulating through the Society, and it’s important to send a message that we’re not going to tolerate that type of betrayal. Also, if we don’t react, we convey that our work is not very important because it’s not worth defending. That said, the charlatan’s stone is not worth dying over, so be careful.”

There were no other questions, so Arvin offered one final piece of advice. “Akiton has a thin atmosphere, and we don’t have the luxury of giving you weeks to get used to it. It would be smart to make sure you some way of coping with it, or some armor. Any armor, even the lighter sets, offsets the difference.” With that, the Venture-Captain dismissed the crew.

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Starship – Sunrise Maiden

While the crew prepared to leave, they did some research on Akiton. The Pact World was smaller than the Golarion standard with one-third gravity and a thin atmosphere, as Arvin had mentioned. This meant that non-acclimated beings, like the crew, could jump about three times as high and carry three times the normal weight. Likewise, without environmental protection, they would run the risk of becoming fatigued by the oxygen-light atmosphere. You also learned that Akiton had suffered an economic crash when the revelation of Drift technology rendered the numerous pre-Drift fuels mined on the planet virtually worthless.

Akiton was generally lawless, except for whatever laws a local authority might impose. Akiton survived on trade and commerce, and strangers tended to find loyalty hard to come by, especially in the big cities. Newcomers were consequently likely to be observed and watched, especially if an organization believed it could take advantage of the strangers. If Talbot acted or did anything at all out of the ordinary, someone was likely to have noticed. To avoid being found, it was unlikely he had stayed in Maro for more than a few days.

Finally, they gleaned that wealth was hard to come by on Akiton. If Talbot had fled to the red planet, he had done so for a reason. It was likely the ex-Starfinder had a plan, and that plan involved gaining a large number of credits. Given Akiton’s unstable economy, such a surge should be identifiable for those who “follow the money.”

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Akiton

A few days later, the Sunrise Maiden entered the orbit of their destination. Outside the observation window floated Akiton, a world the color of blood, rust, and red clay. A thick shell of white capped both poles, and the starship descended toward the planet. A barely perceptible shift in gravity occurred as the Maiden’s artificial gravity began to lessen and the planet’s natural gravity began to take hold.

From suborbital heights, a handful of small towns, large complexes, and industrial sites that spewed noxious fumes into the thin atmosphere surrounded the trench city of Maro. A spidery web of dirt roads scratched into the rust-colored ground by regular traffic connected these sites to the metropolis.

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Akiton – Maro

Maro, the so-called City of Lights, came into view as the ship began its final descent. The city occupied more of a vertical space than horizontal, built into a six-mile-long section of trench that was half as deep and a half mile wide. Entire neighborhoods and business districts were built into the walls, accessed by patio entrances. Lights, neon signs, and holographic advertising bejeweled either side of this urban canyon, while an active spaceport and industrial zones occupied the ground level. As they landed, they did so beneath the backdrop of an immense mural of brightly glowing neon-green graffiti that read in Common: “Git Out! Planet’s Broke!”

Their goal in the city was to determine where Talbot had hid out after his arrival on Akiton. Twitch had Kusanagi help him try to find the money trail. Given Talbot’s time of arrival and the specific shuttle he’d flown in on, they had a solid starting point. They didn’t find any particular trail leading to the ex-Starfinder, but they did discover a strange anomaly. AbadarCorp, the largest corporation in the Pact Worlds, had recently purchased a large amount of Drift engine fuel from the nearby small mining town of Tasch. While the discovery of Drift engine fuel on Akiton was impressive, the fact that the AbadarCorp fleet that had purchased the fuel was two days overdue for departure suggested something was likely amiss with the delivery.

Meanwhile, Boske – a professional bounty hunter before he’d become a Starfinder – sought out his usual sources of information while trying to track the fugitive. He spent a few hours plying his trade and was able to discover that Talbot had departed Maro for Tasch, which was only a few miles outside of the city. The crew theorized that Talbot had used the stolen charlatan’s stone to (temporarily) convert thasteron into “Drift engine fuel” and made the sale to AbadarCorp. But it appeared that the fuel may have already reverted back and the corporation was aware.

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Akiton – Tasch

The crew rented an elongated dune buggy on the Starfinder’s credit to transport them from Maro into the red dunes of Akiton’s surface, a journey of only two hours. A long dusty road, lined with single-story dwellings, ran through the town of Tasch, and several powered vehicles rested chained to their owner’s homes. A small general store stood near the center of town, illuminated by flickering white lights. Another building, full of locals, hosted a signpost that reads “Digger’s Dive” – clearly the town bar. Although the sun beat down on the desert town, its citizens meandered around the bar in good cheer. Most were ysoki or humans, with the occasional lumbering four-armed shobhad mingling among them.

Their first course of business was finding where Reynald Talbot was. The inhabitants walking the streets were too busy for idle chatter, but they suggested that the crew take some time to stop by Digger’s Dive if they were just passing through the town. Mentioning Talbot provoked a cheer from the townsfolk – clearly, this was not a great place to talk badly of him. Uncertain about the unexpected development, the crew made their way to the bar.

Digger’s Dive was a single-story structure built using imported wood. There were no windows, but there were small rectangular openings in the exterior walls at ceiling height to allow for ventilation. The front entrance was a swinging waist-high wooden half-door. Faint electric lights dangled from the fifteen-foot-high ceiling, while the open sky was visible from cracks between the planks that served as a roof. The floor is solid wood, and the interior walls and ceiling supports were mud brick, the latter being carved in a rare attempt at ornamentation.

The tavern was divided in two halves by an energy field with an opening on the northern end. The bar lining the southern wall was open to either side, with a wall of half-empty bottles behind it. The tables were wooden and makeshift, but solid. The east end had a square wooden platform about a foot above the floor. A door sat ajar on the southern wall on the west end of the common room, and a single closed door provided an exit behind the west end of the bar.

Several miners and their families occupied the bar, where a sharp-tongued ysoki woman named Podswald slung drinks. Her mixing – at best – consisted of combining only two liquids and nothing more. Twitch climbed on top of ARTE to see over the bar and ordered a drink. Before he could reach for his credsticks, a local offered to pick up the tab, thanking Reynald Talbot for the extra credits. The rest of the bar cheered enthusiastically. Twitch exchanged a glance with his companions, then casually asked the barkeep about Talbot.

Podswald readily talked about Reynald Talbot, the town’s savior, and his miraculous means to transmute thasteron into a more marketable fuel. The miners had started excavating thasteron again for Talbot to transmute, which had already resulted in a lucrative sale to AbadarCorp. The sale benefited not only Talbot, but the entire town. Most of Tasch’s citizens had belonged to jobless families thanks to the thasteron bust, but now had some hope for the future. Consequently, many of Tasch’s citizens were out celebrating. The miners seemed to be unaware that anything could be wrong with Talbot’s “transmutation process.” Fortunately, they were all too happy to let the crew know that Talbot was likely in the nearby thasteron mine outside of town.

Boske ordered eight shots of scotch and dropped a small piece of bread in each. When the barkeep asked if he was going to pass them around, the vesk grinned and proceeded to knock all eight back himself. A minute later, he began to sway in his seat before falling to the floor of Digger’s Dive. A sympathetic cry came from most of the patrons, and Winslow grumbled to himself as he started tending to his drunk companion.

Shaking his head at the commotion, Twitch asked if any representatives of AbadarCorp were still in town. Podswald nodded and gestured to a long table in the southwest corner of the common room. There sat a shirren and a pair of hulking vesk that seemed to be bodyguards. All three wore dark armor trimmed in silver. The crew were a little surprised that they had not noticed the trio before then. We should talk, the shirren telepathically projected to Twitch. The ysoki nodded and made his way over, accompanied by Galakrond and Kusanagi.

Greetings. I am Philt. I assume you’re familiar with AbadarCorp, the shirren said in their minds.

They, of course, were. AbadarCorp was hands down the largest, wealthiest, and most influential corporation in the Pact Worlds – in no small part because it was also the church of Abadar, god of civilization, commerce, and wealth. In addition to the manufacture, transport, and sale of a wide variety of goods both magical and technological, AbadarCorp also provided a multitude of other services, including banking, financial, labor, legal, shipping, and utility services. Most of the crew’s financial accounts were held by AbadarCorp.

When they nodded, Philt continued, his mental tone casual. Anyway, I represent the corporation. My fellow agents and I overheard you talking about Reynald Talbot, and AbadarCorp wants to know your interest in the man.

Twitch held up his palm and activated the Starfinder Society subdermal graft. Talbot stole something from our organization. We are here to recover it, he responded.

I see. Then it seems he has wronged us both. Talbot approached corporate buyers in Maro with a new, alternative fuel for Drift engines. The fuel was purchased for analysis, and if it had checked out, it would have been evaluated as a new commodity on the galactic markets. To our chagrin, the fuel reverted to common thasteron not long after the AbadarCorp ships made to depart Akiton’s orbit. The fuel was purchased on good faith and AbadarCorp does not tolerate outright fraud. We’re here to collect him for proper punishment.

Our goals appear to align, projected Kusanagi. Perhaps we can retrieve our stolen property and remand Talbot into your custody … somewhere outside of Tasch.

An interesting proposal, Philt mused. We would prefer Talbot alive, if possible…

That is our preference, as well, Winslow projected from where he was tending to Boske. We will bring him back to face justice.

Philt inclined his head. Very well. We will leave things in your hands.

Having learned Talbot’s location in the nearby thasteron mine and having peaceably dealt with AbadarCorp’s delegation, the crew exchanged satisfied looks, preparing to set out. Which, of course, was when the universe threw them another curveball.

A deep booming female voice echoed from outside the front of the bar. “Intruders! We know you’ve come to Tasch in search of our savior. I give you this one chance. Lay down your weapons and leave our town. You will not disrupt the salvation of Akiton, not when Reynald Talbot has come so close to saving our world! You have one minute to decide.”

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Temple of the Twelve

Drift Rock

The bullet grazed Boske’s arm. The crew looked toward the ceiling where they saw five heads looking around the side of a stalactite. They poured into the room and opened fire, taking out most of the holographic clones before hitting the actual attacker. She got one more shot in before falling unconscious, escaping death by virtue of Winslow’s non-lethal mind thrust. Kusanagi, who had continued walking along the ceiling collected the assailant – an android female, by the look of her. Galakrond put her in restraints before collecting her weapons and other gear. Twitch reminded the vesk to leave the armor so they could communicate with their captive in the vacuum of the Drift Rock.

After some discussion, the group decided to question the android later, leaving her bound and connected to a cable, floating in space. Galakrond took her to the tunnel exit and noticed something unsettling: the Hippocampus was gone. More than a little concerned, he quickly returned to the others to let them know. A brief argument erupted, and the space goblin Roger was accused of hiding other members of his crew. He insisted that there had only been the three, and he was the only one alive. Kusanagi suggested they call Ambassador Nor to report this development.

Nor told the crew that station authorities only agreed to loan the shuttle to take them to the Acreon, not bring them back. Concerned that they might discover something dangerous on the ship or the asteroid that could threaten the entire station if they brought it there – the same reason they quarantined the Acreon in the first place – the authorities decided to wait and see what, if anything, the crew found first. If there were no problems, they could always send the shuttle back to pick them up. Until they completed their investigation, they were stuck on the Drift Rock. The ambassador apologized for having failed to mention this condition, but he assured them that his people would ensure that none of the items the crew had stored on the ship would be disturbed.

The crew decided to go ahead and interrogate their prisoner. The recording drone continued to follow its apparent programming to stay with the majority of the investigators, so Kusanagi and Galakrond woke the android woman up. She introduced herself as Clara-247 and admitted that she had been hired to kill whoever came snooping around the Acreon, but she didn’t know who her employer was, since they had used shell companies to hire her the previous day. She also said she didn’t know anything else about the derelict ship or Drift Rock other than the rumors circulating Absalom Station.

Clara-247 claimed that she wished the crew no further ill will; she’d had two chances to take them out and failed both times, so she was willing to let bygones be bygones if they were. After all, she would need a ride back to the station with her ship destroyed, to which Galakrond muttered under his breath about needing a ride themselves. She even offered to help them explore the rest of the Drift Rock, but they declined, deciding to leave her floating in space, bound to a tether.

The crew regrouped and returned to the cavern where they’d encountered the void zombie. Sticking with their original plan of exploring the “natural” tunnels first, they headed south around a dogleg and into another cavern. One other tunnel exited to the northwest, and an incongruous door, more akin to what one would expect to find on a space station, stood in the south wall. Of more immediate concern, however, were two more void zombies – former crew members of the Acreon. The undead had apparently not noticed the crew’s approach, since they ran dark – relying on natural or technological darkvision – and silent by virtue of the vacuum. Despite the advantage of surprise, Boske had his blood drained by feeding tendril a couple of times before the crew managed to drop the creatures.

After collecting a pair of guns floating in the chamber and a credstick still in a pocket, the crew took the last natural tunnel. At the end of it, they found a chamber similar to the other excavated caverns within the Drift Rock, with corridors to the north and west that were finished and paneled. A ghostly astronaut wearing an old-fashioned space suit with a cracked helmet turned toward them with malicious intent. “Driftdead,” said Winslow. “Undead, incorporeal outside of the Drift. Bullets are useless unless they’re magic.” Boske stabbed Galakrond in the back of his armor. “Oh,” added the shirren, “and a confusion aura.” He dazed the addled vesk to prevent him from trying to hurt anyone else.

The driftdead extended a hand toward Kusanagi on the ceiling, and reality tore open near him. The android narrowly evaded whatever the creature had intended, and a game of cat and mouse began. The extraplanar undead latched onto Twitch, chasing the ysoki around the cavern and through the tunnels, floating through the floor and the walls to get to him. It took over a minute, some mystical healing, and a lot more ammunition than they liked, but the crew finally managed to bring the driftdead down.

The northern passage ended after about fifty feet, where the ceiling has collapsed in a wall of fallen rock. The short western corridor connected back to the chamber where the crew had encountered the first void zombie. They sent ARTE down the northern corridor from there, and the little drone reported back that it was a perfectly hallway for about a hundred feet until it ended at a hole facing the void of space. There only path forward was through the strange door to the south.

It opened into a five-foot-wide hallway that came to a T-intersection after about twenty feet. To the east, ARTE reported a chamber whose various lights and controls on the machinery provided dim light. The chamber seemed torn between two worlds – its southeastern half was an unfinished rock wall, while the northeastern portion of the room was finished with the same ceramic-metallic plating found elsewhere. To the west, the stealth drone found a ten-foot-wide hall in stark contrast to the caverns elsewhere inside the Drift Rock.

The chamber looked more like a room on a space station or starship. Rather than the unfinished rock of the asteroid, the walls, floor, and ceiling were all clad with finished sheets of the polished, metallic substance, along with components of unrecognizable equipment. Panels on some of the walls flashed with lights and mysterious symbols, and an almost infrasonic hum of unseen machinery pulsed through the walls. A damaged security robot patrolled this corridor, and the crew moved to engage the sentinel. It did not last long.

While Boske and Roger discussed how many credits they could get selling the disabled robot as a curiosity to some scholar or collector, and Kusanagi, Twitch, and Winslow puzzled over the machinery and strange alien symbols – coming to no concrete solutions – Galakrond found a concealed hatch on the lower portion of a wall panel in the northwest corner of the chamber. It was barricaded from the inside, but this proved to be a minor inconvenience. It was obvious that the small chamber was once a storage area for spare parts and small maintenance and repair robots, but the crew found it empty save for a dead body and its possessions.

They recognized the dead woman here as belonging to the driftdead. Winslow noted that numerous wounds were visible, but the cause of death appeared obvious: a self-inflicted wound to the head. The body still wore an estex suit with a force field upgrade, though the battery was depleted. It also had a pair of spell amps of lesser restoration in a pocket, which Winslow used to restore both vesks’ strength. The doctor also picked up an empty static arc pistol on the floor next to the woman’s outstretched hand. Twitch found a datapad and popped in a new battery to access the device. It contained the owner’s final message.

In a recording, the woman identified herself as Moriko Nash, the captain of the independent starship Sunrise Maiden, and briefly related her discovery of a strange asteroid in the Drift. She landed her ship in a cavern on the asteroid and began exploring other chambers inside it, but she was attacked by a terrifying monster that seemed to consume life energy and could walk through walls. Wounded and unable to escape the monster, Moriko managed to modify her armor’s force field to extend in a bubble around her, as the monster seemed unable to pass through the force field. Nevertheless, she realized her force field would eventually run out of power, and the monster would finally be able to reach her. She ended the recording with the following.

“I think I’ve come to terms with it. I won’t survive, but at least I’ve explored strange worlds and seen wonders I would never have dreamed of as a child. I guess everything comes to an end eventually. I’ve always been the master of my own fate, and I’m not going to change now.” Captain Nash held up a pistol. “When my force field goes down, I’ll fight. But I’m saving my last charge for myself. My life, my death.

“This is my last will and testament. To whoever finds this recording, I leave the Sunrise Maiden to you. It’s a good ship, and no matter where I’ve gone, it’s always brought me home… until now. If you treat it right, it’ll do the same for you. Leave my body where you found it – we came from the stars, and to the stars I’ll return – but the Maiden deserves to keep flying.” Nash took a deep breath and ended the recording.

Kusanagi recognized the Sunrise Maidenas the name of a starship that had been reported lost in the Drift in 242 AG. The ship and its crew had never been found, but perhaps the crew could find their own way off the Drift Rock after all. Galakrond respectfully returned Nash’s body to the sealed bolthole that she had chosen for her tomb, and the crew headed back down the hall to the west.

Twitch’s first attempt to access the control panel ended in a severe electric shock, but after Winslow spotted and disabled the short-circuiting components, the mechanic was able to gain access to what was left of the system. Understanding the alien programming proved to be an obstacle beyond any of them, however. Wounded and tired from their exertions aboard the Acreon and the Drift Rock so far, the crew decided to return to the derelict ship and rest a while before risking an encounter with the creature that had inspired Nash’s end.

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The Acreon

Clara-247 talked the crew into letting her help, to earn her passage back to Absalom Station. They gave her pistol back and Kusanagi’s second skin¬, since he had taken hers. To her credit, she didn’t complain. The crew settled into their usual downtime routines for a few hours. Winslow drew strength from his connection to the life force of all things. Twitch made modifications to ARTE. Boske and Kusanagi ran wind sprints down the halls of the ship. Galakrond altered his armor and conscripted both Roger and Clara-247 to help him test it out. Eventually, the crew and their conscripts settled down to rest.

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The Drift Rock

The door exiting the ancient control room opened into a corridor that terminated in double doors to the east. The crew took a collective breath before pushing these open. With its vaulted sixty foot ceiling and smoothed stone floor, the sprawling cavern beyond had the appearance of a primitive shuttle hangar or landing bay – an impression reinforced by the presence of a starship taking up the majority of the space. Only the western wall was finished with the ceramic-metallic plating found elsewhere in the complex; the remainder of the cavern was hemmed by natural rock walls. Huge doors stood in the eastern wall of the chamber – doors easily big enough to accommodate the starship parked in front of them. Of more immediate interest, however, were the two human bodies splayed on the floor just inside the western doors, their internal organs spread artfully on the floor around the corpses – the last two crew members of the Acreon.

“It’s vulnerable to electricity!” said Winslow to the confusion of all. “The garaggakal!” the doctor elaborated then lifted his arc pistol and shot at something lurking under the ship. Ah! More snacks! came a voice in everyone’s head just before a winged horror emerged and rushed the crew!

Things moved very quickly after that. After taking a few shots from the crew, the garaggakal retreated into the air, leeching Winslow’s life as it went, which appeared to revitalize it. The shirren held out his arc pistol to Kusanagi, who was a much better shot, and the android advanced into the hangar. His first shot was well-placed, and the doctor’s assessment of the outsider’s weakness proved accurate – the electric shot caused it to spasm in pain. It flew around the side of the starship, absorbing Kusanagi’s life force as it fled, but that didn’t save the alien for long. Superior numbers won out, and the garaggakal fell lifeless to the hangar floor a few seconds later. It was finished.

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The Sunrise Maiden

The Maiden was a Sanjaval Vagabond, a common if somewhat outdated model of starship known for its toughness and dependability. And according to Moriko Nash’s recorded statement, she now belonged to the crew. They loaded the security robot and several unusual art objects that Boske had found in the hangar-cavern into the cargo hold, where they found additional trade goods worth another couple thousand credits. They settled into what had become their usual roles on the ship with Clara-247 and Roger as passengers. Then, they opened the hangar doors, fired up the ship’s power core, warmed up the thrusters, and took flight, bound for Absalom Station.

Unfortunately, another ship was lying in wait, ready to attack as soon as they were clear of the asteroid!

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Incident at Absalom Station