Part two has been added in a post below! Cheers! o7
Friends and I have a couple of hours to play ICRPG during the weekend, this is session three of their adventure, and they got to explore half of the Red Sword in this game. They plan on exploring the rest in a couple of weeks, when they are free to play again.
The crew
Previously, their trusty Sesheyan pilot Alfred bet money he did not own to some stranded, Reptoid pirates. My players did not allow an escalation of violence by offering the pirates a lift… to the Red Sword.
My friend plays Kairo, a red Reptoid wizard who can turn into a bear and his wife (whom I have introduced to RPGs at the beginning of this campaign) his wife plays as a deposed noble named Lady Rita. They travel through the stars in a non-Warp Shell ship called Le Magnifique Magnifico. I intend to reward my players with the powerful ally that is the Warp Shell later on!
Rulesflash
The basic rules of the game are known to them, but I slowly introduce more as long as they find these new rules interesting. The current addition was that of languages: they got to pick 1D2 + INT tongues from a small list I’ve made, each with their own quirks to broaden the fictional universe through implications. If you’re interested in these small, homebrew rules I’ve stolen from somewhere I would be happy to share them! The next thing I’m working on are five paths, appropriate to sci-fi characters. If they don’t like it, which is fine, I’ll just use the items on the list as milestone rewards! 
The slayride
My players have mostly ignored everything about the Darkstar up until the end of the session. They chose to dive to the airlock rather than hook their ship to the Red Sword. Since I am using the Argent Dawn as the map for the Red Sword, they have a choice to hack or peel open the door to the infirmary or proceed left to the unlock door of the science bay.
I would usually deliver more exposition in that room thanks to the curiosity of the players, but they ignored the bodies in the vat tubes, the blinking lights, and the cracked glass to open the chest and continue forward. No biggie, it might be useful later and allow me to expand the scope of the events in the Red Sword.
Battle 1
Their first fight was in the middle of the ship: the escape pods, the chest, and the broken down, portable turret offer a lot of opportunities for both the DM and the players. In this case, Lady Rita used the nano-swarm to repair the turret just in time for the second wave and replace a companion who lost his life…
He’s MORT Jim!
As for Kairo? He turned into a bear and couldn’t hit enemies until I found a plush bear (“nounours” in French Canadian, but you can also use that word to describe a soft giant) a plush bear which I turned into a token for his transformation.
Half of the second wave were supposed to come from the escape pods but the players ejected all of them within the first turn of that revelation. The trap doors left instead of the escape pods allowed the mutants to throw Zot outside the ship and for Kairo to do the same to one of them. Rita saved Zot and the battle was over not too long after.
Battle 2
The party reached the bridge. Krask made Kairo aware of the Red Sword’s setup: that it only required a manual overload of the engines to blast off into the Darkstar. Meanwhile, Rita learned of the Darkstar’s power when a flare of pure evil passed through the ship while she was on her way to the armory… the energy resurrected the heroes’ companion and dealt one point of corrupting damage to Rita.
The ambush happened on the bridge as scripted and the fight was on. Kairo got to cast the spell Molok’s steel on the captain’s mighty chest. The now animated chest crashed the window, as illustrated in the screenshot below, and finished the battle early.
Alfred got the chest, don’t worry!
The session ended when Rita knocked down their mutated ally with the intent to heal him later. Frankly, I don’t think the solution is on a pirate ship nor in a medical lab. The Darkstar’s curse is magical and I have introduced the Zurin monk in an earlier session, so I think that it would be nice for my players to receive the Warp Shell from the monks if they go see them. Especially after my players have rid the universe of such a mighty, evil force!
This is it for now, my players still need to truly figure out what is going on here and they have not explored the armory, the infirmary, nor the engines’ room. I have a lot of fun playing with them and the feeling seems mutual, so I hope to come back to this thread with the last part of the Red Sword report in a couple of weeks!
Take care, roll fun, and God speid! o7
