Stranded in Space is the On-Line game I am running in the forums at the Resource Masters site as a Playtest for the HARP Sci Fi game, now available as a beta release. If you want a bit of a sneek peek at what can be done with HARP Sci Fi, drop by and take a peek. http://www.rpgrm.com/rmsmf/index.php?board=96.0
Here’s a summary of the second part of the adventure, the summary for the third part is coming soon, and part four is just wrapping up in the most recent thread.
Phill fires at the smaller robot, The robot’s clipboard falls to the floor as his arm melts in a flash of smoke and flame. It stands there and looks dumbly down at the clipboard
Dutch fires his rifle at one of the larger robots at the back of the landing bay, The robot falls backwards against the wall, leaning against it.
The Doctor hits the large Robot at the back of the bay dead center in it’s chest, causing a very impressive display of sparks and smoke. However, the robot doesn’t seem as impressed as everyone else as he promptly plugs the Doctor with shots from both hands. The Doctor doesn’t fall, but is weaving a little. He retreats back into the doorway
Reegus and Phill both fire at the smaller robot in the cab of the crane, Reegus just misses, but Phill manages to wing him with a decent shot.
Ryan points his pistol up at the cab of the crane, then pulls it back down and starts fiddling with something on his pistol.
The other larger Robot limps into the airlock, still leaking fluid from his arm, punches a button with it’s good arm, then gets chucked to the back of the airlock as Dutch nails him again, destroying the robots other arm.
Ryan calls out, “Someone keep that door from closing!”
Dutch yells “I’ll get it!” and jumps off the top of the ship and starts running across the landing bay, taking another shot at the robot that shot the Doctor as he dashes towards the airlock.
Reegus snaps a quick shot off at the robot in the cab of the crane, the laser bolt deflects off of the chest of the robot and into the control box of the crane, causing a fairly impressive display of sparks and a sizable dent in the robot.
The larger robot switchs it’s targeting from the Doctor to Dutch but obviously suffers some sort of malfunction as it blasts the small robot under the ship with it’s stunner. The targeting error is quickly corrected as Dutch gets grazed on the arm by the laser pistol. While it is shooting, it also moves over a couple of meters to get some cover behind a stake of crates.
Happily humming the “short people” song, Phill blasts one of the arms completely off of the robot in the cab of the crane, adding a nice little fireball to the spark display.
Prescott leans over the edge of the ship slightly to see the other small robot that just got blasted by the larger robot. Like shooting fish in a barrel, he pops a shot into the robots head and it promptly topples over.
Ryan and Toulan both squeeze off shots at the robot in the crane, but the sparks and the fireball must be distracting as they both miss and the robot sinks out of sight to the floor of the crane cab.
Dutch basically rolls off the top of the Jenny Allen, landing heavily with a ‘woof’ but on his feet. He starts moving toward the closing airlock.
Ryan quickly says to the others, “Give me some cover.” He then rises up and races to follow Dutch.
Reegus fires a shot into the crates that the last remaining robot is hiding behind, damaging the crates but not much else. He does however shift the crates just enough that Phill gets a quick glimpse at the robot and nails him right below the neck with a very lovely shot. There is a small explosion and the robots head does an impressive arc through the air, bounces off the back wall and rolls to a stop on the deck about 10 meters away.
Prescott starts making his way down the ladder, Ryan jumps down, stumbles a little and takes off after Dutch who is making a mad dash towards the closing airlock door.
Dutch does a final sprint to try and get to the Airlock before the door finishes closing, but doesn’t quite make it. He makes an impressive dive to try and stretch and get his rifle jammed into the doorway but misses by a fraction of a second. Ryan is right behind him, but just a little too far away to do anything. The door closes.
Everything gets quiet in the landing bay, other than a few snaps and pops from the shot up robots.
A bit of a recap the Jenny is parked basically in the center of a large landing bay, which is about 150 meters wide and 100 meters deep and 40 meters high.
There are the large bay doors behind her that open into space, but are now closed. There are the two airlock doors against the back wall, about 30 meters apart that the robots came out of. The door on the right hand side is now closed, Dutch is just picking himself up off the floor in front of it and Ryan is now standing there with him. Prescott is on his way over as well. Behind that particular door is a shot up large robot, quite likely out of commission. This is the same door that Zaras and the Medic went through earlier.
The door on the left is still open. A couple meters ahead and to the left of the door is a fairly large stack of crates, stacked 4 meters high, 2 meters deep and about 6 meters long. Each individual crate is about a meter long and 1/2 a meter deep and wide. Several of these near one end have now been shot up and the second large robot is laying in pieces behind the crates, his head is laying further away, about half way between the two airlock doors.
There are a few other stacks of crates along the back wall as well. One stack appears to be barrels of some sort rather than crates. This one is towards the right hand wall.
On the far left hand side of the bay, there are some vehicles, small tractors and forklifts that would be used for moving cargo and there is a ladder leading up to a catwalk which gives access to the cab of a crane that is mounted on the ceiling. There are cables and rails along the ceiling that allow the crane to move around above the landing bay. The catwalk extends around the back of the landing bay and to the far right hand wall. There is another ladder on the right hand wall. This ladder goes up to the catwalk, then appears to continue up to a hatch in the ceiling. There also seems to be some sort of control booth at floor level against the right hand wall. There is also a stack of large freight car size cargo containers against the right hand wall, stacked two high and six across.
The crane itself is about 15 meters above the Jenny Allen and about 25 meters to the left.
There is a small robot presumably still in the cab of the crane and there is still a little smoke coming out of the cab. There is still a cargo container hanging from the crane. The bottom of the cargo container is about 3 meters above the deck.
Doctor Octavius Gribble, The Baron Toulaan, Phill, and Reegus are still on top of Jenny, since that is where her emergency airlocks come out. There is a small, no longer functioning, robot lying on the ground underneath the Jenny.
Doc goes into Jenny to get a replacement arm for his Space Suit
Dutch finishes getting up off the floor and looks at the arm of his suit
“Damn, I’d better get mine fixed too, Hey Doc, can you grab a spare suit arm for me while you are in there?”
He then moves over to the other airlock door
“The inside door is still closed on this one, I bet if I stick a crate or part of this dead bot in the doorway so it can’t close, then the inside door won’t open”
He starts dragging the torso of the dead bot over towards the door.
Phill up the ladder and onto the catwalk, then climbs out onto the crane girder and moves reasonably quickly out to the cab of the crane. The robot can be seen laying on the floor of the cab of the crane, not moving and some smoke still coming out of the hole where the arm use to be attached, the arm itself is laying against the wall of the cab.
It takes a minute or so to figure out the best way to get off of the girder and into the cab of the crane, but he gets in safely.
Part of the control panel is damaged from a deflected laser bolt, but it looks like it can still raise and lower the cargo container.
Phill shoots the robot in the head, throws the robot to the floor after yelling look out bellow…. then tries to lower the container on it. There is a resounding crash as the container does a free fall drop for the last 2 meters. The thing is the size of a freight car, so everybody jumps… But it does squash what’s left of the robot quite nicely.
Prescott spends a couple minutes practicing with the forklift, then hops off to look at the grey powder that is in the crates.
An inspection of the crates reveals that there is tar and cement powder. The cement powder would probably be mixed with large amounts of sand, gravel and water to make concrete, and there is enough powder here to make an awful lot of concrete if you had the other ingredients.
After checking out the forklift, Prescott can tell you that it is very old, but well maintained. Some of the parts are new but the design is one that hasn’t been used in decades. Nothing about what you saw of the ship while landing or flying by seemed familiar to any of you.
The robots are also of a design that you don’t immediately recognize, but might seem vaguely familiar in some regard. Perhaps similar to something you may have seen in a museum somewhere?
Toulaan goes to the door last closed by the damaged robot and tries to scry beyond it.
The doors themselves are metal, but there are plexiglass portals in them. The inside and outside doors are both closed in the airlock that the damaged robot is in, you can see the robot just laying there inside the airlock, it isn’t moving at all. You can see a corridor that extends past the airlock on the other side, but nothing moving there.
The other airlock is open on the docking bay side and closed on the far side. Looking out the portal on the far side, there is a short 3 meter room, then a stairway going down. There is some light coming from down the stairway. There is a keypad on the inside of the airlock and what looks like a card reader attached to it. The only other exit that you are aware of is the ladder going up to the ceiling off the catwalk (and the main bay doors of course )
Reegus is fascinated by the one green container in a sea of gray ones, so he heads that way to check it out. Since it has many “normal” doors and no apparent ramp, he’ll take a look at the center-most door on the side nearest him and see if he can find any lock or security on it. Reegus scoots up with no problem, there is a ladder in one corner of the gray container, then scoots a couple meters over along a ledge to the first door.
It opens into what strongly resembles a dorm room, or a crew cabin on a small ship. It has a single bed (no mattress or sheets) and a desk and a small closet and not much more. It’s about 4 meters by 3 meters. That would make it the full width of the container, but it looks like it is only about half the height. There doesn’t appear to be another exit from the room
There is enough of a ledge that it is fairly easy to move from door to door. The next door has a stairway that goes up half the height of the container (level with the ceiling in the first room) then has doors to the left and right that open into rooms that are similiar to the first one.
Near the middle of the container, there are a couple different rooms. On the bottom floor is a larger common area that has a kitchen, a laundry area, and what seems to be an entertainment room. Again, these are laid out with some basic items that are bolted done (counters, tables, etc) but nothing that is loose. Above that room on the second level is what is probabaly an office with several workstations.
You figure the whole container seems to be something you might put down on a worksite for a large construction project.
This is confirmed when the first couple grey containers are looked at and they contain earth moving equipment, steam rollers and other construction equipment.
The group comes to the conclusion that this ship feels more and more like an arkship or colonization ship of sorts although the size and outdated equipment are puzzling.
Prescott takes a few minutes to look at the airlock door mechanism, it seems to be a pretty secure setup and would require either an appropriate keycard to open or likely some sort of signal from a robot since a quick check of the robots doesn’t reveal any cards on them. Bypassing the mechanism could be very difficult.
Dutch looks at the scratching of heads and says “Ok guys, stand back and let me slot my authorization card up this locks arse” Shoving his pistol back in its holster he grabs from his utility belt something that resembles a protien stick. Ripping the orange rapper off it, he slaps on the lock something that resembles sticky plastic. “Time for this party to see some fireworks” Dutch says, as he sticks in the timing detonator. ‘Oh yeah, you guys might want to find somewhere to hide; that is unless you want the inside of this docking bay to be in a reddish colour.” Dutch sets the timer for an appropriate countdown.
Just as Dutch is about to stick in the timing detonator, the Doctor does a very impressive looking spin kick, hitting Dutch in the chest and knocking him back a foot or so from the airlock door. He staggers backward a couple more feet, “Son of a bitch!” Dutch gasped trying to catch his breath, “Bloody hell, Doc! All you had to do was to asked me to hold up,”
He bends down and picks up the detonator and clicked the button on showing the small green LED flashing; he then clicked it off. ” I can’t blame you for being tense,” Dutch gave a cough,”But Duck me fead, you can certainly throw a kick!”
“Sorry Dutch, I guess I get kinda twitchy at the thought of having to breathe vacuum.”
The Doc pulls out his med kit and a ‘nano patch’ to heal the bruise.
Dutch begins to chuckle and shake his head. “Don’t worry about it Doc, I’ve had worse.” Dutch said as put the detonator back in his utility belt.
Phill decides to check out the hatch while he is up on the catwalk, there is a wheel in the center of the hatch which sticks a bit when he turns it, but does move with a bit of effort and a disturbing grinding noise. The hatch then pushes up, a couple of liters of dirty water dribbles out and the ladder extends up into a dark access tunnel of some sort.
Phill is surprised as he sticks his head up into the tunnel to take a look around and sees a very large rat staring back at him. He’s even more surprised a second later when he could swear the rat says “Crap!” and turns and starts running down the tunnel into the darkness.
Phill puts his rifle in the hall and blasts off a few rounds to discourage any other rats from getting too close to his sandwiches. He shouts to the rest of the folks below.. “Guys there is something alive in here… really big talking rats.”
A voice comes from down the tunnel:
“Hey you big git! What the hell are you shooting at me for? I’m not the one coming into your home uninvited?”
Sniff Sniff
“Hey, are those fresh sandwiches? Hey guys, the big fellow has snacks!”
Prescott and Toulann climb up to the catwalk and walk over to the short ladder that Phil is standing on. Dutch and the Doctor are close behind. Toulann pauses for a moment and concentrates, then gets the following response to a mental message he has sent to the rat.
” If he’s that trigger happy over sandwiches, what the hell does he do over beers? ”
The doctor hurries over as the baron and Phil seem to be having some kind of panic attack. “Talking rats! Classic symptoms…” he says to himself. He plunges one tranquilizer into the baron’s buttock (bonus from behind) then starts climbing the ladder with the other in his teeth until he can reach the next patients leg.
Snorting a quick chuckle Toulaan replies psychically to the little furry creature, “Uh, you probably wouldn’t want…” The thought is interrupted by the doctor’s misguided attempt to help. Toulaan yells, “FRELL DOC! What the frell did you do that for?” Upon feeling the needle bury itself into his backside Toulaan jerks his leg, hopefully discouraging the doctor from further unrequested help with a knock to his head or upper body. He then returns to speaking with the hungry creature, “You or your kind didn’t help me out earlier did you? I noticed a very strong and malevolent psychic presence.”
The rat replies, “The big nasty’s don’t bother with us and we don’t do anything to attract their attention”
The doctor moves closer to Phill, talking in calm placating tones. “That’s okay, Phil. You just have a sit down for a minute.” He starts to put the syringe away as he reaches out to guide the poor, deluded spaceman to a convenient seat. His efforts to calm Phil down are disturbed somewhat when Phill gets about half way down the ladder and a large rat head (presumably attached to a large rat body) pokes out from the hatch and says
“Hey, where are you taking the dude with the food?”
The doctor looks from the rat, to Phil, back to the rat, to the baron and then somewhat wistfully at the syringe. He hesitates for a moment then packs the syringe away and takes a very long draught from his hip flask.
“Hey, you’ve got dope and booze too? Have you got a new deck of cards by any chance?”
The rat’s head is rapidly darting back and forth while he is talking, keeping an eye on everyone that is anywhere near the hatch.
The baron is thinking “I had a question for the telepathic, snack, dope and booze questing, card playing giant rat, what was it and why isn’t this disturbing me? I’m sure something about this whole situation is odd”
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