EVERYONE SHOULD EDIT TO MAKE BETTER
Session 16
by TomWhile Jak made contact with the ship and arranged for teleportarium rescue from the featureless tunnel he and Simon found themselves in, Cornelius secured Jax who was proving quite reticent.
They reconvened aboard the
Tide of Iron. Octavius and Astrid shared their findings about Jax' work: he had been directing and modulating the beam of warp energy within the spire, trying to use it to transmit a message. The message bore the same tell-tale signs of Eldar encoding which had alerted the Explorers to Jax' wrongdoing in the first place.
It occurred to the team that the Eldar guards must have come from somewhere, and so Jak began frantically scanning the planetary system while the others headed to the Interrogatorium to have a pointed word with Jax.
(I've missed something here - the conversation with Maliss and his takeover of Jax' ship. But I can't remember the order of events where it occurred)
Jax was, under the tender ministrations of Cornelius, most forthcoming. He views his association with the Eldar as a clever business choice, and he owned up to harbouring an Eldar ship - home to an Eldar Warlock, his contact with the xenos, and the four warrior bodyguards. After the questions Simon offered Jax a deal to think about while he remained detained: work for D'Ralier, and keep his life.
Having tracked the escape trajectory of the Eldar ship from Jax' frigate, the
Tide of Iron lumbered after it under Jak's expert hand, determined to catch and stop it.
Session 15
by TomThe Explorers faced off against Jax, both standing on a mesh walkway over a void pierced through the centre with a massive column of glowing energy. The rogue trader ignored them, however, frantically working at the console he stood behind; his indifference was soon explained by a sudden hail of shuriken from four Eldar Dire Avengers hidden under xenotech cloaks.
A bloody battle followed - Simon looked sure to be torn to gobbets by shuriken, but somehow Cornelius was able to charge the offending Eldar warrior flat, ruining his shot, before hurling him over the edge and into the ravening energy beam. Simultaneously a battle of wits resolved itself, as Jax worked feverishly on the archaeotech systems with Octavius and Astrid fighting against him from the control room. When the two of them managed to block his every move and with three of his xenos guards dead, Jax made a break for it.
Pressing a small control device against the wall, the solid surface rippled and became an escape portal. Simon unkindly grabbed Jax's legs and lopped off the arm with the device, while the final Eldar warrior fled through the opaque but permeable wall, pursued by Jak.
With a burst of speed borne of hatred, Jak managed to run down the last Eldar and slice off its leg in a shower of blood. Simon quickly followed, and after a quick examination of the Device which Jax had used, the wall-portal was shut... leaving Cornelius, Octavius, and Astrid in charge of the battle scene and of Jax' prone form.
Session 14
by SteveSuspecting treachery, the crew take the Lightning Fury down to the city, landing in the plaza outside the tower. They speak to the Skitarii sergent on duty and discover that Jax went into the tunnels below the edifice some time previously, accompanied by a squad of troops. With the assitance of a tech priest, Octavius joins with the machine spirit of the traitor's shuttle and determines that Jax is somewhere in the central levels of the tower. Never ones to take the long way, our brave heroes fly up to the tower's roof and rappel down through the hole they blasted previously, followed by Skitarii squads teleporting down from the Tide of Iron.
The tower's strange composition renders scanning beyond the confines of their current level impossible, and so the crew search floor by floor, finding ancient lab complexes sure to be of great interest to the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Arriving at a level that is powered, the first that they have encountered, the team tread cautiously. Heavy bulkheads cover rooms warded with ancient sigils that Octavius translates as warnings against hazardous equipment within, and the presence of backup generatoria. Fearful that attempts to breach the doors by force might alert their quarry, they head on down finding great machines and a warehouse, apparently dedicated to processing the strange ores that create the wondrous material of the tower, and then producing sheets of it for manufacture.
Reaching the lowest level at which Octavius' scan determined Jax might be found with no sign of their prey, the Explorers decide that he must be on the generator level and so return, eager for answers. The ancient codes and input system of the door controls momentarily stump Octavius, and Simon applies mighty Imperial technology to the problem, blasting the doors asunder with a rain of blows from his power fist.
Always concerned for safety of his colleagues and betters, Cornelius takes point, stepping through the breach in the bulkhead into a corridor beyond. Peering through a window he sees their quarry and quickly ducks down, signalling to the others. Creeping forward past the window to the corner ahead Cornelius looks round and spies three battle servitors, equipped with heavy bolters and the xenotech power sources that the stowaway units on the Tide of Iron carried. As before a number of servo-skulls accompany the hulking brutes.
A furious battle ensues, hails of high caliber bolt shells temporarily pinning several of the crew, whilst answering fire shreds the lead servitor. Unphased by the enemy fire Jak uses Cornelius' grenade launcher to provide a smokescreen, and deftly despatches the two servo-skulls with a double shot from the House D'Ralier plasma pistol. He and Simon then advance through the smoke to engage the machine-men in melee.
The guards despatched the brave quintet chase after the elusive Jak, cornering him inside the tower's core where the pale beam of pure warp energy lances upward. They catch him just as the presumed traitor manipulates a control console across the other side of the open shaft.
Session 13
by JasmineThe Explorers turn into a long, dry sewer system and find themselves staring down an Ork War Boss, several Nob Boys and a handful of Orks under their command. The Explorers opened fire upon the War Boss, only to find their bolt shells did little damage to his superior Ork armour.
Simon and Cornelius charged the War Boss, Cornelius undertaking the brave and questionably wise task of attaching a limpet mine to the War Boss' armour. The task was completed successfully and finally the armour was penetrable.
With help from Maliss, Octavius, Jak and Astrid, the War Boss and its accompanying party were vanquished, leaving the Explorers with the spoils: an excellently crafted set of the War Boss' armour, which Simon and Jak have discussed displaying on the
Tide of Iron`s bridge.
Following their return to the ship, contact was established with Maliss and an officer from Jax's ship, and the Explorers shared their latest information. Soon after, the combined brilliance of Octavius' scanner manipulation and Astrid's warp sense detected strange modulations in the warp beacon on the planet. Octavius determined possible Eldar elements to the transmission as well as Imperial codes and traced the origin of the signals to Jax's ship. After making discreet inquiries it transpired that Jax was somewhere in the city...
Session 12
by TomWith troops sweeping through the Gargant, and organised ground forces coupled with orbital bombardment and air support routing the Orkish foot troops in the city, lifters quickly descended to attach mag-clamps and lift the Gargant bodily through space to stow in the
Tide of Iron's hold.
The Explorers oversaw the fighting until the core of the city was safe enough for some looting to take place. They turned their attention to the massive central spire, and flew via Lightning Fury to the roof, hoping for an easier egress than the scorched and formidable front doors.
Sadly they were thwarted, with no entranceways visible on the roof. Testing via auspex and guncutter showed that whatever the tower was built out of, it was stronger than Imperial admantine; eventually a plan was devised whereby a section of the roof was teleported away, allowing access to the interior of the tower... although, finding it to be a maintenance room, the Explorers immediately became bored and pursued a new venture: scans having revealed tunnels criss-crossing the city, they made a risky teleport directly into them with their accompanying Skitarii.
They quickly found long, empty tunnels that seemed to follow crystalline structures within the planet's core, though the crystal itself was hidden. Following the tunnels, they reached the centre of the city and looked up directly into the central spire, which at its base held a massive, pulsing crystal which shot a coruscant beam of energy directly upward; gantries circled it on the interior of the tower, all the way to the top.
It was pure Warp energy, the Astrid realised as its presence began to beat on her mind; and so it was decided to sell it to the Mechanicus and the Explorers went to find the Ork Warboss instead. They managed to triangulate his position by vox-waves, and moved in through the long-dry city sewer system.
Session 11
by TomWith the whole messy buisness of the Maw of the Void dealt with forever, the Explorers turned their attention back to the Orkoid planet of Captain's Choice. Further scans revealed that the polar jungles were heavily infested; it was decided that Jax and Mallis would turn their guns on the vegetation and set it alight, destroying the jungles and burning the Orks.
Meanwhile, Simon enacted his plan to capture the whole Ork Gargant that was stamping around the city: first using the ship's lances to score enormous ditches that the Gargant - or any other Ork vehicles - would be unable to cross, effectively hemming it in and cutting it off from support of the milling Ork hordes. Then, under cover of the storms whipped up by the climate imbalances caused by the burning poles, the command crew took the
Lightning Fury accompanied by several lifters of armsmen and dropped out of the sky; a volley of krak rockets dropped the power fields surrounding the machine long enough for the Wierdboy Pylon to be exploded off and the crew - less Jak, who stayed to pilot the guncutter and provide support as needed - to grav-chute in through the hole.
A brief combat with the Mekboy and support grots in the gargant's brain-room left the Explorers in command of the shambling war machine; outside, the orbital bombardment and lifters of troops fell on such Orks as were nearby to be a threat, and routed them.
Session 10
by JasmineAfter battling with the warp-entity possessed servitors with the help of Confessor Rubricht, Cornelius and Octavius were left injured. The disconcerting panting seemed to have dissipated from the destroyed machines, but Astrid and Octavius continued to detect, by various means, a presence in the cargo bay at large. The heavy panting sound also continued to emanate from one of the cargo control offices above the cargo hold.
The party made their way towards the offices. The first one, despite careful checking, was found empty aside from a mug of ice-cold recaf. The second office the party came to gave off a high warp signature. In the corner, the party discovered an old man, curled up, eyes red-rimmed, unnatural and strangely dark, the source of the heavy, uncontrolled panting sound. Before any of the party could act, the man breathed,
"I'm not the one you're looking for!" before his insides literally exploded from his eye sockets. The resulting fountain of gore outlined a daemonic presence of horrific appearance. Despite terrible fear of it, Simon, Octavius and Cornelius managed to dispatch the entity with much haste.
This still left the issue of whatever haunted the cargo hold. Checking the cargo manifest revealed that the crates contained a kind of grain well-liked for long void journeys because it remained alive, after a fashion, for months after being harvested - a fact which seemed ever more relevant as it was possessed, spilling from the bursting crates in a swirling, black cloud. The party decided that the hold should be spaced. Octavius contacted the bridge to relay the orders.
However, by this time the hold had filled with possessed crewmen. The Confessor, along with Simon, had gone to investigate the grain while leaving the others to watch and provide cover from the office, and were being hemmed in slowly by the zombie-type men.
Navigator Crimson used her terrible warp eye to dispatch thirty men in a blink, before Simon and Confessor Rubricht used their power fist and chain sword respectively to hack down any that came near, as the hundreds of crew swarmed into the hold and began to drag them down. The two managed to don their void suits before the hold was voided. However, the priest's hold was not as good as Simon's and he was voided - but thanks to some quick piloting by Jak, he was saved by the gun cutter.
As the cargo bay finished voiding, Simon was left with a terrible message from the entity: "It did not have to be this way, my Prince." As was Astrid, who heard: "I am the Maw of the Void. I see you, my eye that pierces, and I have come to claim my bride."
Session 9
by TomRegrouping after the terrible battle, the three Rogue Trader vessels - Jax sheepishly returning, his 'emergency repairs' complete - took stock of the damage and began some close scans of
Captain's Choice's surface. They quickly outlined a planet wracked by the remains of partially-successful terraforming: red deserts covered the mass of the land, with thick jungles at the poles and a ring of equatorial mountains flanked by rolling foothills and mesas. They quickly found the location that Mallis' information had hinted at - a great city built on and into a sixty-kilometre-wide plateau created from a sheared-off mountain; two artificial ramps, themselves kilometres wide and long, approached the plateau's surface; scans also indicated a number of smaller, natural, valley accessways.
The region was in the throes of an enormous sandstorm which blocked some sensor readings and made visual confirmation impossible, but nevertheless the acuity was enough to reveal the ancient city, its teeming Ork population, and the unmistakeable energy signature of a Gargant plasma combustion engine, as well as the attendant shanty town which, Simon remembered, Orks nearly always built at the feet of their mighty war machines during construction.
Navigator Crimson, gazing down at the planet from an observation chamber, felt the pulsing, threatening pressure of the massed Orks and the fearful energies of Orky psykers - but startlingly something
else, something unwholesome, on the ship itself. Confined to a minor area at the back of the ship, it was nevertheless the taint of a Warp entity, somehow aboard ship.
Astrid make Simon aware quickly, and in turn the command crew were pulled into secret conference. It was decided that the area would immediately be sealed and all access blocked by security teams while the Explorers - and only the Explorers, with the exception of known warrior-priest Confessor Rubricht von Helsing - investigated the source of the tainted warp-signature, and excised it by whatever means necessary.
As soon as that decision was reached, however, the whole ship lurched violently - the attitude thrusters had gone haywire and completely beyond the ability of the tech-adepts to adjust for. Jak was forced to remain in the pilot's chair to compensate for the bucking torsion, lest the ship be torn apart or flung from orbit onto the planet below.
The remainder of the group commanded security details secure the perimeter of the infected area, and went in to investigate. At once they were struck by how silent the area was - even accounting for the dreadful losses sustained at the hand of the xeno, there should have been visible crewmen, and there were none. Before long, over the vox system came a ragged, gasping, panting sound, as though of someone terrified and unable to get enough breath into their lungs; the sound was persistent and without apparent cause until some clever thinking allowed the Bridge crew to trace the origin back through the internal comms network to the second of the two overseer's offices which attended to the nearby Cargo Hold 456-B. Octavius' augur array could detect nothing apart from a strange reading of which he could make no sense - until he correlated his data and found it matched, perfectly, the horrid gasping sounds.
Deciding to ignore the crew compartments in favour of heading directly to the problem, the command crew moved along the corridor and into Cargo Hold 456-B. They stepped through the roll-door into a gloomy chamber, forty metres high but stacked to 35 metres by metal crates holding foodstuffs. As the last of them did so, the door suddenly slammed shut behind them with a rattling clang; the Explorers whipped round, only to have their attention immediately taken by the nearby Servitor Bay, and its complement of eight monotask loading servitors - which, eyes glaring red balefire, turned their heads in unity, opened their mouths, and began panting, gasping, as though choking.
Reacting quickly the group blew many away with bolter fire, but the remaining machines flew at them with unholy strength and speed, even leaping from walls of crates with magnetic boots to come crashing down. Despite the fury of the attack the machines were only servitors and could stand up to the Explorer's skill and expertise. Octavius and Cornelius suffered some cracked ribs but were largely unharmed.
Session 8
by JoshMallis angered the Orks greatly with his taunting, and they made haste to engage the small imperial taskforce. As they approached, Jax made a foolish move and gave away the position of the ambush. Moving to engage, their plan foiled by Jax's incompetence, the firefight began.
Cutting in close to
Captain's Choice 4, Jak managed to evade the Ork frigates long enough for them to commit to attacking Jax and Mallis. The
Tide of Iron planned to use the time to position themselves in the Orks' rear arc and destroy them, but one of the Ork captains spotted them at the last minute and executed a dangerous manoeuver in an attempt to ram the
Tide. Deftly avoiding the Orks' attack, the
Tide was forced to fire its main weapons - most ably manned by Cornelius York - on their primary agressor to devastating effect.
Beyond the gravity well of the planet, an exchange of fire was taking place - the Imperial taskforce was losing. With the huge Ork cruiser entering the sector, things were looking grim. Taking a heavy pounding, and failing to return the favour, Jax fled the field to ostensibly repair some critical damage. Fighting on, and taking catastrophic engine damage, Mallis damaged one of the Ork frigates. As he was doing so, he plunged out of sight into the gaseous interior of CC4 - presumed lost.
Jax's flight and Mallis' sacrifice were not for nothing, however. During the fight between the frigates, the
Tide was able to manoeuver freely and land devastating blow after blow. The first frigate suffered a disabling hit to its engineering sections, destabilising it's warp drive causing a small warp-storm to spawn - the next was hit so hard it shattered into a million pieces, hulked.
Realising their mistake, the Orks turned and engaged the cruiser, making good account of themselves. The
Tide suffered moderate damage before seeing off another of the frigates.
As the third frigate was destroyed, the Ork cruiser engaged, firing a massive barrage of macro shells, pounding the
Tide in an attempt to soften it for a blast from its massive central cannon. Taking a number of macro hits, the
Tide was hit by a blast of coruscating energy, which arced off surfaces and exploded consoles throughout the ship - when the energy finally dissipated, the ship emerged miraculously unscathed. From that point, the Ork weapon seemed unable to hit the vessel.
The fight continued, with the remaining frigate and the cruiser taking a pounding from the
Tide, and reciprocating, before Mallis' ship erupted from the atmosphere of CC4 and distracted the frigate. Taking the opportunity, the
Tide rounded and destroyed the RCS system of the cruiser causing it to careen out off the field.
The remaining frigate was quickly dealt with, and the cruiser hunted and destroyed - its build meaning that it could only return fire in its forward arc, but had no way to turn without its RCS.
The Rogue Traders emerged victorious, with five frigate and one cruiser kill to their credits - but with massive damage to their hull and crew.
Session 7
by TomHaving taken bloody vengeance on the small-minded idiot who had slighted Octavius and provoked Simon, the insertion party lead by Jak and Cornelius took the lift to the top floor where, in a bunker under the observation dome, they found the hideous mutant leaders of House Gaul and exploded them with bolter and power weapons.
Unfortunately Jak started to feel a little strange, and - as it turned out - fell prey to vast quantities of weaponised aerosolised Frenzon that was circulating the air system. This lead him to take a squad of Skitarii and go on a red-mist rampage through several areas until he fell unconscious.
After a period of recovery in the medbay, both Astrid and Jak were ready to act again, and after a quick bidding war to sell off the newly liberated House Gaul assets the
Tide of Iron was on its way, accompanied by the Jax and Meriss ships. Thanks to a perfect course set and flawless execution by Navigator Crimson, the flotilla arrived at the co-ordinates within a week, and there was much rejoicing.
Initial sensor sweeps indicated the presence of crude xenoform ships, which Jak and Simon identified as Ork vessels. On silent running, the
Tide of Iron coasted out from behind the moon they were using for shelter and got a better look: five Ork vessels of various size, though none as large as the
Tide of Iron herself.
After a brief discussion, the D'Ralier and Jax missions stood waiting in ambush behind the moon, while Meriss took his frigate and blared out a challenge to the Orkish vessels - which took the bait and began powering toward the well-set trap...
Session 6
by GarethAfter waiting a while to see if Jak re-appeared on his own, the Explorers concluded he might be in trouble, so used the sensors to locate Jaks comm-bead. Finding him trapped in a small cell deep in the Gaul asteroid, a plan was formulated!
The Arch Militant was dispatched to recover Jak by clandestine means. As soon as his safety was assured, the
Tide of Iron swung into action, targeting the Gaul family's two frigates
Justified Paranoia and
Carmichael's Wrath.
The smaller vessels were caught off guard by Jak's stunning piloting -
Carmichael's Wrath nearly snapped in half on the
Tide's prow, while Simon lead a teleportarium fire-blazing party to the
Paranoia's void shield generators.
The Frigates tried to fight back valiantly, but were badly outgunned, out massed, and unable to capitalise their manuever advatage in the face of Zanatov's expertise.
A text-book broadside lead by Yorke hulked the damaged
Wrath, assuring the
Paranoia's surrender (at least, once her Commander had been permanently relieved by a much smarter officer).
With that, the lord Merchant opened a hail to the Gauls, to negotiate for the return of the already-rescued Jak. Unfortunately, they didn't want to negotiate, so the only remaining fun to be had was to storm their base.
Jak, Cornelius and Astrid took a small squad of Skitari and proceeded to blow things up, until Astrid was injured. Astrid has returned for medical attention via Teleportarium, and Simon is considering joining the away party with a few thousand troops.
Session 5
By GarethWith the party over at port Wander, the Tide of Iron moved on into the Koronus Expanse, looking for riches and adventure!
Navigating the maw was dangerous, harrowing, but ultimately successful thanks to Lady Crimson's skill, though the Tide's idiosyncratic engines delayed our arrival a full two months.
Upon re-establishing a time-signal, we decided to wait for our Rogue Trader friends to arrive, intending to go bomb some orks before messing about with the mining operation in Grace.
Our first stop-off was the interstellar junk heap known as Footfall, where some punks tried to scan us so we pointed macro-cannon at them and laid plans to steal and/or sell their ships. While considering the details, we laid on supplies, got the men some R&R to make up for the voyage through the Maw, and attempted to buy some expensive things to go on the mantlepiece. Then Jak got drunk and woke up in a cell somewhere.
Session 4
by TomWith the threat assessed and the largest concentration of illegal combat servitors destroyed, it was a simple matter for the Explorers to lead security details in cleaning up the rest. The journey to the forge world of Skorgulion was uneventful, and once the Tide of Iron arrived Adeptus Mechanicus crews set about repairing and refitting the once-crippled ship. During the weeks this took, the Explorers took the opportunity to recruit some Skitarii-brand crew from the forgeworld orbitals and to leverage some personal equipment out of the technophile Adeptus - significantly, the Lightning Fury was fitted with force shield technology, making it EVEN COOLER.
Examining the newly outfitted Tide of Iron, the Explorers found everything was shipshape (arf arf), and - to their surprise - the Tech-priests had even seen fit to install a hallowed archeotech device, the revered
Teleportarium. The Sunsear laser batteries installed at Scintilla were augmented by Mars-pattern Macrocannon Broadsides, and the prow was made fearsome with the addition of a battery of lance weaponry.
Eager to be off, the Explorers set course for the only place they knew they had to go: the Koronus Expanse. The warp journey was uneventful and short, and the Emperor was roundly praised in the lower decks, and soon the Tide of Iron pulled into Port Wander, the last Imperial outpost before the chaos of the Maw and the Expanse beyond.
The first thing that was decided was that there should be a party, and since nobody else was throwing one, it was down to House D'Ralier. A thousand invitations were sent out to all the nobles, officers, and merchants of the Port, and the function deck illuminated in dazzling 3D display by modified tenebro-maze holoprojectors.
In brief: Jak got drunk and made a date to go grav-surfing with a member of House Meriss; Simon more usefully managed to wrangle out some details of xenotech trading in the markets, and arrange a profitable detour or two as well; Octavius assessed the worth of those merchants in the Port who might be willing to trade in things not strictly permitted under Imperial law; and one such merchant was invisibly detained by well-commanded security crew aboard the Tide of Iron for further questioning.
Session 3
by TomThe new ship parts were fitted over a few days, in which members of the command crew took care of some minor business: overseeing repairs, recruiting capable voidborn crew from a number of different Scintillan orbitals, getting the paperwork in order, or finding out that they'd been shunned by their House Nobilite.
The warp translation was relatively straightforward, the journey taking less time than was anticipated. The Emperor was roundly praised, at least amongst most of the crew.
Shortly after tranlating back into realspace after the journey, Jak noticed a number of anomalous energy signatures moving in one of the depressurised, sealed sections of unrepaired internal hull. Simon took this as an excellent opportunity to prove to the crew that he was a worthy captain, and so after contact with the first security detail sent to investigate was lost, decided to go himself; Jak went without question, Octavius went along to protect the D'Ralian interest that Simon represented, and even Astrid, feeling the need to exercise after being cooped up for the voyage, loaded in her inferno shells and tagged along.
Suited up and on the alert, the Explorers investigated the airless part of the ship where the signatures had been located. Energy interference from venting plasma conduits prevented vox-communications over anything more than a couple of metres.
In the silence, the Explorers found unknown servo-skulls and combat servitors infesting the section, some of which were armed with forbidden Eldar xenotech weaponry and, it seemed, power sources. In the mute battle which followed, four combat servitors were destoyed - with a great deal of aid from Cornelius Yorke, arch-militant and bodyguard to Kavanagh who had been trapped by sealed bulkheads while on his way to the bridge. Minor wounds were sustained by some of the Explorers.
Retreating to a less exposed location with less electromagnetic interference, the command crew debriefed Cornelius, and prepared to vox through to the crew to see how many anomalous power signals remained...
Session 2
by GarethAboard the ship, the group was met by the crew, or most of what remained. The ship had suffered immense damage to all sections from weapons of both Imperial and Eldar design. The gundecks were lost entirely, 2/3rds of the crew were dead, the bridge had had to be rebuilt entirely en-route, one of the sheild arrays was offline, acres of hull plating was lost... the whole thing was fragged.
An
asshole Archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus came aboard, concerned about the House's 'carelessness' with the holy relics of the Omnissia. After some discussion, lies and negotiation, he was talked into helping with the ship's repairs in return for the following conditions:
Those parts provided and fitted by the Admech would be done for free, but would remain Admech property until the house proved 'worthy' of them.
The Adeptus Mechanicus would have the right to bid on all Xenotech found as well as Archeotech, should the D'Raliers choose to sell said items.
The Adeptus Mechanicus had full salvage rights on what remained of the D'Ralier fleet at the Sekrit Meeting Place.
Details of the 'contract' are to be rendered in Legalese at the shipyards at the nearby shipyard of Skorgulion, where the work will be completed.
While emergency repairs were finished and the ship took on supplies, the group put it's money, connections and luck to work, acquiring better sensors for the ship, and fitting the gundecks with some Sunsear batteries, hopefully discouraging would-be pirates in case the ships' journey to the forge world wasn't uneventful.
Session 1
By GarethAttempting to broaden his cousin's social horizons, Simon took Octavius to meet Jak at the Gilded Dragon. Before the D'Raliers could leave the office Astrid Crimson arrived, seeking Simon to arrange transit to the Tide of Iron on it's return. Simon invited her to the meal as well, ostensibly to 'interview' a pilot (Jak).
Following the meal, the four agreed to meet again at a party organised by Lady Maragor, where there was schmoozing, drunkenness, and eventually a lawyer.
The lawyer Guildstein brought a big ol' datapad which needed Simon's signet and genecode to activate, and a message to Octavius that the firm, (Guildstein, Guildstein & Guildstein) could no longer represent house D'Ralier. Shortly thereafter, a message was received from the office, saying that men had come and taken lots of documents with warrants.
While the datapad worked away ominously, the party was gathered and we all returned to the office to see what's going on (Simon damn-near kidnapping the Navigator, bringing Astrid along on the sole basis that she was still contracted to the House).
As we flew to the office, the datapad pinged, informing the party that Simon D'Ralier was now
Lord Merchant Simon D'Ralier. The house charter had passed to simon, meaning that not only was the old Lord dead, but so was everyone between him and Simon, including Simon's Brother.
Unfortunately, there was little time to mourn, as the office was in uproar: the Administratum had ceased huge amounts of information, claiming that House D'Ralier no-longer controlled it's off-world assets. then, against all expectation, the
Tide Of Iron arrived in-system. As it pulled into orbit assisted by Naval tugs, the group made their way to high orbit to meet it.