Secrets of the Ancients - Descent, Part 1

The crew rescues a pair of archaeologists and travel to Boughene where they find the Ancient site that Vlen Backet suspected was there.

This chapter is based on Carl and Kay's notes from our July 10, 2022 session. Since we are scattered around the country, we use Discord for voice communications and the Roll20 online virtual tabletop to connect with each other. I rendered the ship image using Blender.

Continued from: Secrets of the Ancients - The Hunt

Location: Beck’s World, Regina Subsector
Date: 284-1110   

1531
Underground, two Vargr guards down, one Ancient Item collector to go...

We heard Bay running down tunnel to our right. Kipenzi followed the sound while Sam tied up one of the Vargr with his own handcuffs and grabbed his weapons. The other members of the Away Team moved up to the mouth of the tunnel.

As Kipenzi gained on the kid, he turned around and hit a button on a box. Nothing apparently happened, and he seemed surprised. Then Kipenzi punched him, and the box flew away.

He had a laser pistol at his belt and was wearing combat armor with a helmet. Bay tried to pull out his pistol, and Kipenzi tussled with him over it. The kid was a little bit faster, and lower, and drew the gun... Kipenzi grappled him, and got him in a bear hug, falling forward on top of him.

The rest of the guys kept coming up the tunnel, aware of the possibility of traps (unlikely here, but being careful.)

As they wrestled, Kipenzi got off a shot and missed, but got a LOT of attention. Fig came up and tried to kick Bay, but missed wildly and kicked Kipenzi instead.

Leon caught up, and more sensibly tried to get the weapon away from Bay. He succeeded, and backed off from the tussle.

Suddenly, Kipenzi noticed two 8 ft tall creatures with claws and fangs, farther away as the tunnel opens up into a cavern, and they’re moving closer. She yells, “Shoot that!”

Kipenzi stood and shot down the tunnel at the creatures and missed. No one else noticed them as everyone was looking at the kid.  Kipenzi moved further into the cavern to get a closer shot.

Sam put a shotgun in the kid’s face and said, “don’t move”.

Kip shot at one of the creatures and missed. She noticed that she felt more panicked than she should, something wasn’t right.

Medicus was watching from the ship through the button cams and didn’t see what Kipenzi was shooting at and told her.

Kip looked at her own button cam footage and still saw the creatures on it.

Bay kept his hands up.

No one else could see what she was shooting at.  Hmmm, the Psy helmet saved her life by fragmenting into pieces, but maybe she sees stuff the rest of us don't because we still have helmets. She asked for a helmet, and Fig let her put his on briefly.

Kipenzi put it on, felt pain, and the creatures disappeared and the feeling of panic went away. She gave the helmet back and they didn’t come back. Even without his helmet, Fig could not see anything.

Returning the helmet to Fig, she could no longer see anything but tunnel.

We grabbed the box Bay had dropped and secured it. Was it some kind of psionic device?

Medicus pointed out something he could see on camera, and we noticed a faint light down the tunnel a ways.

Sam stripped Bay and searched his armor for any sort of technological surprises.  

Fig gave Kipenzi first aid, who really needed it; two injuries to the left and right hips and burns on her head. Kenton used his comm to try to find Prof Volsang and we all heard a beep from a doorway on the other side of the room. The Prof stepped out and cautiously moved up to see what’s happening. Still alive, Stiv was there too, she said she doesn’t know about anyone else. Kenton said, one is unaccounted for: Rayna Ryen.

Kenton informed her of who died.

Until Kenton told her, Professor Volsang did not know any were dead.  Not the best day ever for their expedition.

Rayna is either in base camp (we know everyone there is dead) or between this camp or at the Stairs – we told her we didn’t see her – we just came from there.

We gave Volsang a synopsis of our recent travels and escapades, and asked for her help with the Ancient detector.

1700
We had finally given up on trying to get the comm relay to work– we tried to connect our relays to theirs. Kenton gave it a try too, no go. Medicus thought he understood what to do, and tried to explain it to us, but no luck.

After things settled a bit, we started to question Bay.  As we pushed Bay against the wall, we noticed it had a mural on it and some text in the Ancient language. We could not read it, but in the center was a serpent in a stylized “7” that we had encountered before. (The number, not the serpent). Too bad we didn't have the Skylark databases to reference...

According to Prof Volsang, this area was used as a refuge in the final days of the Ancient war, long ago. She didn’t know the significance of the number seven. Some of the images show them panicking.

She said the light we could see was some sort of control panel, still glowing after all of these millennia. It was one of the things the team was investigating at this site, but had not been able to get it to work.

Kipenzi showed her pictures from Yorbund; Prof Volsang said that they are from one of the “false dawn” civilizations that arose between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago. They were not Ancients; most were destroyed by Ancient war machines left over from the Ancient’s final war.

This mural looks like Yasterdray culture, same as what we saw on the ship on T’yana. We showed her the T’yana pics, she’s excited.

We ask Bay Venshar where Rayna is and he replied, “She’s dead, one of the Vargr put her body in a side tunnel.”

He wants to cut a deal. “I can be reasonable”, he says. He still thought we were working for the gangster Ven Yasha, and we did not dispel his misconception.

Fig asked how old he is: “212 years”. He’s using drugs he picked up outside of Imperium; he thinks he took a little too much and it had the unfortunate side effect of aging him backwards, he is now a youth.  “If you want some, I can arrange that”.

Talking with him, he came across as cold blooded most of the time. When talking about the Ancients, he alternately comes across with a religious fervor and pure greed. Bay is a private collector who deals in artifacts or black market; sells what he doesn’t want and keeps what he likes.

Bay sent his pinnace to his main ship, the White City, and was going to call it back when he needed it. The 6-member crew on ship included the Vargr bodyguards – so a 4-member crew was still left in orbit.

We disabled Bay’s comm equipment; Med asked him for the ship’s access codes.

We informed Bay and the University of Regina people about the ship we saw at Alell: ½ km across according to our sensor readings with some sort of force field, with a wedge or needle shape. Bay doesn’t know; the Professor said that it sounded like Ancient level tech.

None of them knows anything about the Alahir.

Kip asked Bay how often he interacts with Van Yasha. He said he tries not to.

Kipenzi pulled the U. of R. staff aside and had a quiet talk with the survivors about Bay. Specifically, if the prof is ok with us killing him. She knows he killed the others and if Beck’s world wasn’t administrated by a pirate gang, she’d want him turned over, but here – he’d just bribe them to let him go. She thinks he is a psychopath.

Kip sees another control panel, looks like the same as the ship on T’yana; the layout is different as it is a ground base instead of a ship.

The Professor didn’t know about Ven Yasha and only learned about Bay when he showed up; she doesn’t know Vlen Backett.

Considerable discussing of what to do with Bay and with the camp survivors. Kill them all??? Naaah.   Take them along, either live or in freeze, to Boughene? Maybe...

Leon and Fig went back up the tunnel to check on the Vargr. The tied-up mercenary was still alive, but they made sure of his demise and returned to the group with the sad news that he was dead when they found him.

This excavation is over as far as the prof is concerned; most of her researchers have died. They agreed to go with us to Boughene, because – how are they getting off this planet otherwise?

It took 3 hours to get back to the ship, and we stopped off at their base camp so they could pack their belongings before coming with us.

We discussed the option of them all coming with us, putting Bay into cold sleep, and going to Boughene in a couple jumps to look for whatever it was that Vlen had his eye on. Signals near the gas giant were detected, and the scepter-like artifact was found on one of the moons. Maybe remains of a crashed Ancient ship?

2100
Back at the ship.

We offered to get the scientists off world without the White City knowing.

The box, as it turns out, was a control for Bey's explosives.  It didn’t go off when he used it. Maybe something interfered with comms down there. No one thought to ask him while we were in the tunnels, but Medicus asked when he saw the box in the ship.

Medicus put Bay into a low berth and healed Kip back up to normal, except for the burned hair, some bruising and bad memories.

We scanned Bay after freeze and before closure, found nothing of interest.

We doubled up on the staterooms. The Professor is happy to help us. She thinks it’s not the moon; as the ISS base has been using it for maneuvers.

Prof Volsang was sure the Ancient thingy must be in the gas giant in Boughene, maybe a floating platform. All of the moons have been thoroughly explored and in many cases used for Scout training in scanning studies. She has her G-band scanner with her, so that will help a lot in finding whatever it is there.

Fig pulled the Skylark crew aside and discussed not telling them about the Imperium vs us; we need to plan our arrival near the gas giant away from the Scout base.

Feri has ice planets in the system, but no gas giant. We can gas up at one at a 5AU orbit or a 66 AU orbit away from the primary; it also has a red dwarf companion with two worlds but no refueling there.

We plotted a course for the outer ice world, to refuel and then go.  We figured that by now word of us will have propagated to almost anyplace we jump, so farther out is better.

285-1110  0015
Jump to the Feri System.

292-1110  0303
Out of jump in the Feri system over the eleventh planet in the system.  At 66.7 AU, the main star is just another bright star in the sky. We don’t detect any other ships in the area.

The first time we visited this system, there was a civil war raging on the main world. Then the 5th Frontier War happened, and some of the countries sided with the Zhodani, others with the Imperium, then the Imp Navy came in and there’s only one side now, but with pirates and saboteurs from remnants of the loosing side.

293-1110  0503
Ice planet refueling took a little longer than usual, about a day total.  With some good flying, we were set to jump out by 0600.

293-1110  0900  
After final checks and clearing the 100-diameter limit, we jumped to Boughene.

Arrival in Boughene will be, if possible, at a minimum distance from the gas giant and with the gas giant, Komesh, directly BETWEEN us and the local Scout base.

300-1110  1727  
Out of jump in the Boughene system about four hours out from Komesh .  Our jump was pretty good, right on target.

2030
In low orbit over the gas giant, ready to start refueling.

The Prof., Juni, said we could start scanning while we’re gassing up, so we started configuring our sensors to use her scanner.

2105
We got a message from the Alahir, which was at the Scout Base, "Stand Down. We are on our way". We must have been picked up by an automatic sensor of some sort.

Given the Alahir’s 5G acceleration, it will take 4 days to get here and will take 20 minutes for them to see us not standing down. We calculate their arrival time as about 1800 hours on day 304, so we planned around that.

We started our gass-up maneuver with Medicus piloting, and Sam, Fig and Juni running computers and scanning.

Refueling took a little longer than we expected, but we were scanning while we did it anyway.  Haven’t had this much refueling trouble since we tore off one of the laser hard points, many jumps ago. This time we didn’t lose the whole hard point, but did lose both beam lasers on the starboard side.

301-1110  0000
Medicus aced the second refueling try. Scanning continued for anything of interest that was more intense that time around, and we got a ping.... Something was out there and we had a rough direction pointing below us.

0900
Juni picked up the G-band interference that she was looking for. It is below us and she had a rough direction. We moved to a new location and continued scanning. We knew that one vector would not be enough, so kept on trying to triangulate the signal.

Needing THREE successive vectors complicated things.



0930
We lost it.

1000
3rd location re-acquired the signal and our readings gave us the impression that our 'target' was moving as we searched.

1100
We got a 4th location.

1200
5th location.

1600
We found it. It’s definitely moving, an artificial platform or ship at the 100-atmosphere pressure depth, about 35,500 Km altitude. That is pretty deep; the ship should handle it, but there are squalls and high winds, it’s risky to fly down that far.

It took us 6 hours to get to that depth. No doubt the captain of the Alahir was cursing us and wondering where we went.

2200
We got within visual range, but it was still hidden by clouds; G-band was picking up energy. We could see fragments in the purple clouds, mostly lit up by our running lights, and lightning in the lower atmosphere.

Sam, on sensors, noticed that we were not alone. He found a gas bag with tentacles, looks like some kind of local life form, not part of the artifact.

A hydrogen squall hit the ship, but Medicus handled it very well. It could have gone MUCH WORSE.

We broke though into clear sky and found the Ancient ship. It looks more like a living creature or maybe an abstract sculpture inspired by some alien lifeform, than an actual ship. There are no straight lines or symmetries, just curves and spirals. Judging size and distance is difficult, but it looks about a kilometer long.

The upper half of the ship is a mostly smooth expanse of greenish metal, pock-marked with the occasional strange barnacle-like structure or growth. As we flew closer, we saw geometric shapes on the hull, reddish squares, and rectangles with fuzzy edges. A shimmering, semi-transparent energy field wrapped around the upper section.

Towards the prow of the ship, there was a twisted spire like a narwhal’s horn mixed with the organic complexity of a banyan grove. The gas clouds parted ahead of this spire, perhaps a magnetic field displacing it? Closer examination of the gas clouds suggests that the gas is being sucked into one of the pods in the lower section.

The lower section of the hull is a tangle of silvery cords, wrapped around dozens of greenish-grey spheres. These spheres range in size from three to fifty meters in diameter. Some show clear signs of battle damage; there are blackened scars along the hull, shattered hollow spheres and twisted strands of the greenish hull metal trailing behind the wreck. Every few seconds, there is a stuttering discharge of energy, as the energy field wrapped around the upper hull extends to the lower section. The extended field lasts only a fraction of a second before snapping back to its original configuration.

There are no discernible fuel tanks, no thruster plates and no sign of a jump grid inlaid in the hull.


Continued in Descent, Part 2


See Also: Dramatis Personæ, Skylark 2, Campaign Starts, The 2nd Adventure, The Chamax Plague, Horde, Shadows, Research Station Gamma, Twilight's Peak, Prison Planet, Leedor on Aramis, First Call at Zilla, Trade War, The Bloodwell, ANNIC NOVA, The Kinunir, Kesser's Return, Justice, Mission to Mithril, Outback, Skylark and the Pit, Last Flight of the Amuar, One Crowded Hour and Secrets of the Ancients.