Marooned on Aster 12


#1

We were humming along in Honey, our warp shell. The Broken Sword Crew was heading home with our pockets full of credits and looking forward to some rest. Suddenly, Honey lurched and we were heading down. The entire crew was thrown clear of the warp shell. Everything went black.

We woke up in some jungle. We couldn’t see Honey. “Nova, where the hell are we?” said Ziliax, the purple reptoid gunner. “Bringing up the navigation system now” replied Nova. Once his navigation readout came online, Nova determined we had crashed on Aster 12, a backwater jungle covered system that the Imperium had been mining. Grubber, the old mining mech felt right at home. His whirring saws were ready to clear a path to freedom. Sawbones, the crew’s engineer and medic, pulled her wrench from her pack and said “let’s find Honey and get the hell off this god forsaken rock”.

The crew started moving through the jungle. Nova’s terminal lit up and he calmly spoke into his comm link, “Multiple targets north of us and moving at a high rate of speed”. Ziliax took cover in small cave in the nearby cliff. Sawbones attached a second rip saw to Grubber then hid behind a tree. Grubber and Nova moved forward. We were ready for whatever came out of the trees. A herd of Imperium sweepers rushed into the clearing before us. They were not acting normally. Something had spooked them and they appeared to be running away. They couldn’t resist the metal of the mechs though and moved in hoping to catch us off guard. They would die quickly to the whirling saws of Grubber, Ziliax’s pulse rifle, and Sawbone’s wrench. Nova kept us alive with a crystal shield.

After dispatching the sweepers the crew moved on top a nearby escarpment. We found Honey but it was behind a force field and guarded by Squags. A firefight ensued. Ion grenades were flying. Energy pulses were ripping through the jungle. A well timed hit on the force field generated brought it down. Several Squags and their apparent leader known only as “the Hooded One” ducked down into a hatch leaving a lone Squag to face us. He was a brave one though and our crew awarded his bravery with a hero coin which he used effectively. Then we shot him. As the firefight was going on, something large was moving through the jungles north of us. Being a stalwart warp shell crew, we ignored it. This would come back to haunt us later.

Nova and Grubber turned their attention to Honey, or beloved warp shell. It was held in place with some clamps and being drained of energy. We did not have much time before it would be unusable. We needed to save Honey. Nova hacked the lock on the hatch and we entered the bunker. There were a couple of Squags guarding entrance. We were banged up from the firefight above ground so we approached them slowly. Another ion grenade shook the walls and cracks appeared in the ceiling. Ultimately, the two squags were no match for our superior skills.

We continued deeper into the bunker and found the Hooded One working on some controls. Grubber and Nova moved to engage him when all hell broke loose closer the entrance. A Spear Tooth came roaring into the bunker hell bent on killing anything it found. In the blink of an eye, Ziliax and Sawbones were bleeding out on a backwater jungle planet. The big cat was not satisfied with that. He followed the others down into the bowels of the bunker. Grubber, Nova, the Hooded One, and a spear tooth were fighting tooth, nail, and saw. Nova and Grubber disabled the controls keeping Honey locked up while fending off the cat. The Hooded One started some incantations. The spear tooth was pouncing too and fro now using it’s teeth and claws to rip at everyone in the room. For a brief second, the big cat focused on the Hooded One. This was the break the crew needed. They bolted for the exit. The Hooded One finished his incantation and disappeared.

Grubber and Nova passed the body of Sawbones and checked for life. She was gone. Ziliax had fallen behind some crates and couldn’t be seen. Nova said “Ziliax must already be on the ship, let’s get moving.”. After exiting the bunker and making their way onto Honey, they discovered that they were the only two that made it out. They had succeeded in getting Honey back in the air but at a high cost.

As they lifted off, they noticed another warp shell crew on the ground. They also received a message to rendezvous at the gathering point. Honey did not have enough energy left in it to both help the downed crew and make the jump to the rendezvous. As Grubber and Nova made the decision, they realized they were not alone on the warp shell. The spear tooth had made it’s way onto the ship…


Final Transmission: Broken Sword, Alpha Squad
#2

Oh man that sounds like an intense game! I can’t wait to see what happens next! I’ve seen some of the pictures on the discord and the maps look sweet as well.


#3

You want speartoofs? This is how you get speartoofs.


#4

The damn thing was hunting in the jungle…hunting Streakers of all things… and when it finally got a chance…it went for bigger prey…


#5

After twenty years of cryosleep, we find ourselves crashed with our Warp Shell Nessy on a jungle planet and almost get overwhelmed with spiders. But I’m thinking ahead of myself, this is my story.

My name is Dji-tan and I’m a Xill Zurin. I recently joined the Warp Shell Nebuchadnezzar by cheating on a card game to get me into the crew. After going through hyperspace on a next mission, we finally wake up. There is a rumble in our stomachs and our limps are tingling as we stand up from our cryopods. Something must have gone wrong, we tell each other, while we don our armor and take up weapons.

Together with Ezzerharden, the Fragment, I investigate one of the engines. It cluttered with spider webs. Thee, our Reptoid Ghost, throws in a flare to set it on fire and soon enough a swarm of these buggers are coming out. The spiders drained the Yog crystal of the warp shell as if they were feeding on it. As Krall, the Gunner, takes up a fire extinguisher to freeze the spiders and Ezzerharden finds a Duranium Hammer in the next chamber, we must retreat for a bit, because it is clear that we will be overwhelmed. The whole ship has spider eggs and webs.

Ezzerharden and Thee get into an EVA suit, while I dash out of the ship. The plants break my fall, but Ezzerharden is not so lucky. Thee waits for the heroic Krall to make his way to us and together they close the doors and try the environmental controls to kill the spiders in our Warp Shell while we are away. Our Warp Shell, lovingly called Nessy, must wait here for us to us return.

We are lost in a jungle full of spider webs. As we jump out, we hear the feint skittering of spiders, and there are more spiders, and more. Ezzerharden find a rover vehicle, locked a few feet high in webs and we decide to make our way for it. Krall cuts down a tree with acidic pine cones and take sa few, in case we need it.

The spiders overwhelm us. The heart stone I’m carrying on me was needed, as the spiders bit into me, draining me of all my energy. Ezzerharden went down, while trying to free the rover. My ways to heal were just not working on him. I crawl underneath the rover to get away of the spiders and Krall makes it fall down when I’m barely at the other side. We jump in, powering the guns and make it out. But I haven’t even told you the main event here yet.

There was a voice saying we had to go back. We needed to go away, it said and Thee was seeking where this voice came from. It will remain a mystery to me who it was, as we speeded away with the rover, without a clear goal. Maybe our goal was to get away from the spiders, as they will haunt my nightmares forever.

We get a reading on a yog crystal somewhere further in the jungle. We decide we need it to save Nessy. We have all made it into the rover and takes turn with the med kit. When we get there, I can still barely walk, but I’m ready to give my last breath for my team. Although that was not needed.

There was weird chanting at the Yog crystal. I did not hear it, actually, but the others say so. Ezzerharden and Thee run forward towards some kind of priest or zealot, apparently charmed by his chants. I drain the life out of the priest and use it to heal my wounds. We manage to quickly dispatch of him. But more monks are coming our way.

We use the Duranium Hammer to slam the Yog Crystal into smaller pieces and tow the larger piece with the rover, while we all take a smaller piece on ourself. We drive away before the monks come and have now the capability to get off this planet.

As soon as we come back to Nessy there is the God Queen Mother of Spiders just sitting on our frickin ship. Krall and Thee come up with a good plan. We bind a acidic pine cone to the Yog Crystal, put some Dukto tape around it all and glue it unto the Spider Queen. Thee runs off to stick the makeshift Yog bomb unto the body, while we distract the Spider Queen to get away from our ship. With combined effort of Kralls guns and the makeshift bomb, we manage to blow the Queen in pieces, also harming Nessy (for 54%, it reads on our scanners).

With our repair spiders it takes three days to repair the damages and make Nessy into shape again for flying. We put the yog crystals in the engine and that is where we are now.


Xevos Command: Broken Sword Operations debrief by Dji-Tan
#6

Alpha Squad had our second session, and the write up is over here on this thread..


#7

Wow, I love the imagery of that God Queen Spider on the ship. It must have been a helluva conversation to figure out what you were going to do XD