Hidden Suns session 3: Itty Bitty Spider

Date: 2018-07-31

Player Characters (336 points):
ESA1000 45460 (4-5 for organics), humanoid engineering robot
Gaichu Koschei, android infiltrator/assassin
James Titus Kane, human legendary starship Captain of the Stewards Navy (retired)
Alva von Kirchess, aasimar diva / Captain of the Knights of Golarion (retired), breach and clear specialist

Notable NPCs:
Archibald Grey, renowned explorer

The session started with our intrepid band of explorers getting their bearings after crashlanding in one of the tropical valleys of Glacigneous. Only due to the skill of the legendary starship captain Jimmy Kane did they actually land in the general area where they originally wanted to land anyway.

Jimmy executed a rather smooth crashlanding, and most of the damage the ship suffered was actually due to the debris field when they exited the Drift. The sensor array was damaged but repairable in reasonable time, one of the cargo holds was badly damaged and needed to be sealed off if the group wanted to keep hostiles outside of the ship, but the most damage was taken by one of the two reactors and the reactionless drive. Both were damage beyond repair without notable replacement parts. While the ship still had enough power from the remaining reactor for basic operation, that did little good since it was unable to take off.

So 4-5 and Gaichu put their repair skills to work by stabilizing the ship as much as they could, Jimmy and Archibald spent some time with the comm systems trying to detect any transmissions in range, while Alva scouted out the immediate surroundings. She found no immediate danger, although she did spot tracks belonging to native humanoids and animals. There was also a fight between Alva and Jimmy about sending out a distress signal and who’s supposed to be in charge, but they resolved it as all other of their “old couple” fights. The distress signal was not activated in order to not draw any unwanted attention.

After setting up a perimeter, the group took to hoverbikes in order to deploy sensor probes at a pair of points in the valley, which would together with a probe deployed at the ship give them some nice sensor readings of the area. 4-5 and Gaichu rode on one bike with Jimmy riding on another. Alva remained back at the ship with Archibald.

The ride was… interesting. 4-5 managed to pilot his bike into some thick vegetation and a small pond. Jimmy was busy being surprised and laughing so he got clotheslined by a tree. Nobody suffered significant damage from their respective crashes and 4-5’s bike was banged up just a bit. He needed a couple of hours to fix it. The group was observed by a pack of man-sized dinosaur-like creatures for a while during that time, but the encounter didn’t escalate and the dinos eventually went their way. The party resumed their ride.

The first scanning point, on a bluff overlooking the plains was uninteresting. The probe did it’s thing and nothing eventful happened. The second point, in a jungle clearing, was reached much quicker than the first one, primarily due to no accidents along the way. After the scan, 4-5 and Gaichu noticed something glinting in a nearby tree. They approached it and took a look, the object apparently being some kind of a dagger stuck in where one of the higher branches was coming out of the trunk. Jimmy tried shooting the branch off with his gauss pistols but his needle-like ammo didn’t have much of an effect, so Gaichu blew it off with explosive plasma bolts from his crossbow. The dagger looked quite interesting and ornate.

After getting back to the ship and deploying the final probe there, the group transferred the scan data from the probes into the ship’s sensor computer. As it was processing the data, Gaichu summoned his cyberimp familiar Gregory who pulled out a tiny wrench and fixed 4-5 up, also healing Gaichu with a huge syringe. The sensor computer generated a nice 3D map of the valley and pointed out three locations containing artificial structures. One seemed to be some kind of an overgrown, abandoned jungle outpost, together with the remains of radar dishes and AA turrets. The other was the remains of two small spacecraft landed on the plains, while the final one was some kind of a four-sided stone pyramid, also in the jungle. The group weighted their options and decided to explore the pyramid first , with Archibald remaining on the ship to conclude the sensor array repairs.

The journey was uneventful, and took noabout an hour and a half with hoverbikes, primarily due to relatively difficult terrain. The group got off the bikes a couple hundred yards away from the pyramid, camouflaged them, and stealthily approached. It seemed unoccupied, and there was a single entrance at it base. It actually didn’t seem very large, something like 15 yards at the side and no more than two stories high. The entrance opened up into a hall some 10 yards on the side, with a staircase winding down along the walls. There was nothing but dust inside.

Descending, the party ended up in a series of underground corridors made of large blocks of dark stone. They were 2 yards wide for the most part. Bunches of small, phosphorescent mushrooms grew along the floor’s edges, providing dim greenish light. Not that it mattered since everyone had visors with infra- or hyperspectral vision. The place seemed undisturbed for a long time. Gaichu was uncomfortable, as the place seemed to be a low-mana zone. He took point, looking for traps, while Alva took the rear guard. Soon after exiting the staircase, there was a T-intersection. To one side there was a large stone door, while to the other the corridor continued on. The group chose to explore the side opposite to the door first.

After about 20 yards and a turn, there was a much smaller stone door. Gaichu didn’t find any traps, but it seemed stuck, so 4-5 stepped up and forced them open. Beyond there was a roughly 7×7 yard room. There were some small rocks in the walls glowing in a soft orange light, a large stone table, and some iron debris which on closer inspection proved to be the remains of a cauldron. The group sniffed around the room a bit discovering nothing special, and 4-5 took the iron. Opposite the door they came in through, on the south side, there was another similar stone door. It seemed locked so Gaichu started picking it, but 4-5 saw that as inefficient and simply bashed it open.

On the other side there was a snaking corridor, and after about 15 minutes of going down it while looking for traps, the group came to yet another T-intersection. The way forward seemed to end in a dead end after a couple of yards, while the way to the right seemingly led further. The dead end was suspicious to Gaichu who went ahead to investigate it. His hunch was correct – he found a door expertly concealed in wall construction! He started to check it for traps, but 4-5 seemed to have caught a bug from the last time and simply went and bashed it open. Beyond there was another 7×7 room, with a stone fountain and a flowing spring of water in the middle, as well as what seemed as ritual markings and spell components spread in a circle around it. Gaichu concluded that the fountain was used for summoning water elementals. Not wanting to mess with it, the group left the room, even though the scene felt somehow weirdly familiar to Alva (but she couldn’t peg anything concrete to it).

Following the remaining way forward from the last T-intersection, the party eventually arrived to a large, very sturdy looking stone door, similar to the one near the staircase. Gaichu found no traps on it, and 4-5 bashed it open. Beyond there was yet another 7×7 room (the builders must have had a thing for the number 7), empty except for a pyramidal stone pedestal against the opposing wall, on top of which what looked like an ornate stone staff rested. As the group approached, the pedestal transformed into some kind of a spider-like stone construct and attacked!

4-5 reacted first as always (due to his Enhanced Time Sense), and singed the spider slightly with his weaponized arc cutter. And then… Alva flipped out and started spraying the room with her gauss shotgun, including 4-5 and Gaichu who were in the line of fire between her and the spider. She has Phobia (Spiders). She missed Gaichu, but hit both the spider and 4-5. She didn’t manage to penetrate the spider’s stone hide, but inflicted a major wound to 4-5, who failed his dodge and drop roll. He at least managed to avoid the stunning. Gaichu fired a burst of plasma bolts into the spider, only managing to injure him slightly. The spider bit him twice with his mandibles, but he deftly parried the attacks while sidestepping out of Alva’s line of fire. Jimmy opened fire from behind with this dual heavy gauss pistols, managing to injure the spider the most of anyone so far.

4-5 crawled out of Alva’s cone of fire, and managed to shoot and singe the spider slightly. Alva continued spraying the room with her shotgun, with only the spider in her killzone this time, managing to injure it a bit this time. Gaichu bursted down the spider with plasma bolts again, and singed it a bit once more. The spider attacked him again, and Gaichu defended by parrying its attacks and retreating. Jimmy continued his modus operandi, but the spider managed to dodge a couple shots so he only injured it a bit.

Next round, 4-5 loaded in his gunnery program. Alva was still spraying the room, only this time, besides the spider which she missed, Gaichu was in her line of fire as well since he carelessly retreated right into it. As a result, he received a major wound in the back, fortunately passing the knockdown roll. He ran across the room outside of the killzone, reloading instantly with his Quick Reload and shooting the spider, but missing. The spider decided to jump on top of 4-5, who was still laying on his back on the floor. He tried to dodge but failed, with the spider biting him for a couple points of injury. Jimmy did another round of pistoleering, injuring the construct solidly.

Then, 4-5 shot the spider at point blank range with his plasma cutter, hitting with most of his 10 shots, splitting it in half. As the noise of the battle died down, only the clicking of Alva’s empty shotgun’s trigger could be heard.

The group decided to retreat from the pyramid’s underground level, back to the entrance chamber for healing (primarily motivated by Gregory having no penalties to his healing ability due to low mana). Once Gregory was summoned, being his usual mischievous self, he pulled out a circular saw while getting to work on 4-5. That freaked him out so much to refuse treatment and chug a dose of repair nanites instead (healing potion for robots, ergo not cheap). Greg was a bit more gentle with Gaichu, producing only a rubber glove for that purpose.

We decided to end the session there.

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This was the first time when all 4 players could attend, and it was a very fun session. The friendly fire incident was hilarious, and it was a good thing I forgot to apply Suppression Fire when Gaichu retreated back into the killzone on his own turn, instead just applying it on Alva’s next turn. It could have been really, really bad that way.

Real life caught up with me, so my posting on the blog was nonexistent the last couple of weeks. In the meantime two additional sessions happened, which I hope to chronicle in the next couple of days. After that I have a campaign idea inspired by a game I’m playing currently I’d like to put to paper.