What I'm Up To

 I'm sure it has been missed by no one that I have been having trouble finding time for this blog. And it's anniversary has just rolled past. So I wanted to take some time to let you know what has been keeping me busy, as it is mostly RPG-adjacent.

Gaming!

Death in Space

I'm coming up on one year of an intense campaign in Death in Space. My players have managed to survive long enough to salvage a handful of functional ships, hired a crew of salvage and mining experts and built a network of laser communication satellites; they are trying to become a force for hope in the Tenebris system.

The game started as a one-shot pallette cleanser, and just kept going. So I didn't start posting play reports until it is too late.

The Weirth Campaign 

I've also been participating in a long-running campaign run by Stephen Smith that attempts to reconstruct the early 1970s Wargaming D&D experience. We've shifted systems a couple of times, including playing awhile using the 1973 D&D play test rules that were recreated in The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg, fueled with and eventually replaced by Blueholme, and after a few years shifting to a highly home-brewed iteration of Tales of Argosa.

This game uses domain rules that start for fighters at level 2, one-to-one time, patron players, mass combat played in Chainmail and other retro wargames, and a ton of classic modules including the aforementioned Tonisborg, The Tower of Xenopus, Keep on the Borderlands, The Isle of Dread, Temple of Elemental Evil, Empire of the East, Mask of Nyarlathotep, Into the Depths of the Earth, Veins of the Earth, Please Go to Sleep Arthur Cobblesworth, Sounds of the Mushroom Kingdom, and Against the Cult of the Reptile God among others.

Home Game

My home game with family has had a couple of false starts, but I just brought a satisfying end to a DCC RPG campaign and am setting up a game in AD&D.

I've also been playing a solo game in Grok?! 2e, amplified by Mythic Game Master Emulator.

Summer Game

Every year in the Summer I try to run six sessions of a classic OSR game with family, friends, and my favorite D&D people. This year I am vacillating between PARANOIA SP1 or running Operation Unfathomable and Odious Uplands in Swords & Wizardry.

Podcasting 

Two years ago, I founded an audio production company, Stormhead Productions, with terrible timing. The Descript AI changed audio production overnight about the same time I started my business. I was putting up a freelance profile on Upwork the exact same time that the going rate for that work were cut in half and the available jobs shrank by two thirds.

Game Review: Entity

Author: Peter Scholtz
Publisher: Candlenaut
System: Ironsworn-based d10 System
Marketplace: DriveThruRPG 

Entity caught my attention when it appeared in my recommendations on DTRPG. I looked at it, and wrote it down as a possibility for a future review. Then it started to haunt me: I heard it mentioned again and again in discussions with solo gamers, on TTRPG podcasts I follow, and even unexpectedly in ChatGPT windows. The other night, I was surfing DTRPG and found it front and centre on my recommendations once again and on sale, and decided to heed the gods.

I'm glad I gave it a try! My playtest was a little slow to start, but once I got into the rhythm of the game, I thoroughly enjoyed my journey across the bizarre, desolate and dangerous world of the game. It played fast, put interesting challenges in front of me, and things often came together with compelling serendipity. 

In Entity,  you play an IAP, an android built for deep space exploration by NASA in the late 21st century,  and that has served human expansion for 10,000 years. After a Rogue primordial black hole destroyed the Solar System,  IAP crews became the scouts who serve the dispossessed remnant of humanity by seeking out new places to settle and resources to help them survive. The campaign begins when a  mysterious alien pyramid capable of bending gravity destroys your vessel, and brings your escape pod down on an alien world full of strange vistas, unexpected perils, and ancient ruins.

You conduct missions to gather resources and perform research that will allow you to construct a colony that might make the world survivable for you and potentially safe for human habitation.  As you progress in building your colony, you also begin to discover secrets about the purpose of the alien ruins, the pyramid, and the planet itself.

Entity is built entirely as a solo game, and intended to run through 10 procedurally generated missions of varying complexity. Individual IAPs can be destroyed, but the campaign can continue with the same facilities and discoveries carried over between PCs.

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt. 3)

 There wasn't time to guess at how stupid the move was; there was just time to move. Lise disengaged her boots and hammered on the controls in her hand, twisting and turning the cargo pod, building up as much momentum as the tons of medicine could manage with nothing but cheap gas jets, as she rode it out between the closing shutters, sighing with relief when the edge of the pallet caused a mighty squawk as the safety system froze the shutters.

She rode the pallet of medicine out into open space, her heart was pounding; oxygen consumption rate alarms blaring over her helmet comm.  She twisted the pallet and let it drift slowly towards the hull of the station parallel to the plating. Keying the pallet to follow her, she began the task of trudging across the hull between her rings of detection. Everything in her screamed to hurry, but in space, as they used to say in the 'Corps, rushing will get you killed.

 "Holden, are you reading?"

"I'm here."

"I just barely got out of the OT. The Bandits were early. I've got the payload. Monitor comms for me, would you?"

"You're cute when you talk like a soldier."

"Scan now; flirt later." 

"Yes Ma'am!"

Lise smiled in spite of herself. She'd needed that. There was nothing to do now but keep walking her strange, drunken route along the Space Station's hull.

"...Okay, there's nothing about the uh... OT.. in the Station Sec' channels, but we did just get an unauthorized work pod launch, and somebody's running interference to keep it from getting intercepted."

"Shit. I want you to start venting the Arrow's cargo bay now, and start warming up the M-Drive. Keep on sensors. Low energy sweeps. Let me know when the pod is coming."

Holden paused she could hear him interacting with her bridge computer.

"Look, Lise, scanners I can do, but I'm not a pilot."

"Take your time, even double-timing it I'm probably 17 minutes out. Remind me to invest in a thruster pack when I get paid."

Breathe easy. Breathe slow. You're in more danger from tearing your suit than anything else. Lise focused on taking slow steps and steering the pallet. She carefully registered a flight plan for the 'Arrow as soon as she was on board. But some part of her wanted to claw out of her skin.

Pain lanced through her ribs, as she took a particularly narrow turn and for a moment she was on one knee crying and cursing softly. 

"What's wrong?!"

 "Another Spasm", Lise said as she knelt on the plating for a moment. Tears floated free, starting to form a shell of liquid on the inside of the helmet. "I just need to breathe and keep my head in the game. I'll be there in 7."

"Is there a reason why you are still wobbling around the ship like a drunken Bwap on Holiday? They already know you're out there."

"The Bandits know I'm out here, but they are avoiding official channels. If I don't trigger any alarms it stays that way. They have no legal right to stop my departure or search the ship."

Come on!

She forced herself back to her feet and started making longer, faster strides. There was no time for pain.

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt.2)

This is part 2 of a fictionalized version of my solo game of Mongoose Traveller (2022), which I wanted to share with you all.  

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt.1)

One of the things I make a point of doing any time I am reviewing a TTRPG is to play a couple of sessions of it in solo mode so that I can get a feel for how it plays at the table. If I am going to share a game with you, I want to make sure I am doing my best to have good information. It is not enough to describe the mechanics of a game; I want to have a sense of game play.

This unfortunately slows down my reviewing process - a lot.  Recently, one of my kids has developed some pretty extreme issues related to the way his autism expresses itself. I have had to drop everything - including work - to take care of the little guy. Finding the time to sit down and take a trip into a dungeon or into outer space has been hard as of late. And when I do, it has been more for the joy of playing than for the purposes of the blog.

 But I wanted to relate a cool story from a recent solo game. I decided to sit down and play a round of the 2022 Mongoose edition of Traveller so I could have a better basis of comparison to Cepheus Deluxe and Stars Without Number, which I want to finally review properly in the near future.

This is the first adventure of my home Traveller campaign; and I will present it in four parts to make it more digestible than last year's Death in Space story. 

Game Review: Cepheus Deluxe, Enhanced Edition

Author(s): Omer Golan-Joel, Richard Hazlewood, Josh Peters, & Robert L. S. Weaver 

Publisher: Stellagama Publishing

System: Classic Traveller / Megatraveller

Marketplace: DriveThruRPG

 Cehpheus Deluxe, Enhanced Edition is a retroclone that mixes elements of Classic Traveller with Megatraveller and a few more modern upgrades to make it play a little more smoothly.

About two years ago I ran a campaign using White Star: Galaxy Edition as a base set on a starship called the C.H.V. Natani, and posted play reports here (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). It was meant as a short game to give us a little break while some of our players dealt with life issues that made dedicating time to our heavier more involved Silver Gull campaign was difficult. While I was playing White Star with my friends, however, I kept running up against the limitations of the system.

My players didn't find starship battles in White Star as exciting as they wished they were. A couple of players wanted to dabble in mercantile endeavours, which White Star wasn't built for (heck, one of my players was a gmae dev' on Elite: Dangerous and was hoping for a game experience like it) And while they enjoyed some of the silliness of space-faring rockstardom and jedi powers to an extent, they ultimately preferred the adventures where the characters' odd superpowers didn't come into focus. In other words, they really would have been happier playing Traveller.

And so I looked for a Traveller-based game that I could grab in hardcopy at a reasonable price, because I am fed up with .PDFs. Ideally I wanted something I could get both physically and digitally, and so I settled on Cepheus Deluxe and I am glad that I have.

Channeling My Inner 10-Year-Old

My last two articles (pt. 1, pt. 2) covered the creating of a cozy campaign I had intended for my family for slow and rainy days. It was a response to the spell that the game Stardew Valley seemed to have over my wife and kids.

Personally I am quite proud of the creation, and thought it could be a lot of fun. But, sadly, its reception was, at best, lukewarm. Serves me right for jumping into a project before getting the buy in, I suppose.

So I asked my kids what they wanted in a role-playing game, and the best answer I got was "I want to do awesome stuff!"

"What kind of awesome stuff?" I asked.

"You know! Awesome!" was sadly as far as the answers got. 

So, I sat down and thought about what my kids seem to think is "awesome."

Broken Wings

Q: How do you make god laugh?

A: Announce your plans. 

This month has seen me go to the funeral of two beloved relatives and between them fight my way through two different stomach bugs. My great hope of making May the month I breathe life back into Welcome to the Deathtrap went completely down the drain. I am even going to have to be a week behind on episode 19 of Swords Against Madness.

I have not let my creativity slack off, however. I took the time to put my notes on the Death in Space campaign I told you about earlier in the month into a downloadable format for anyone interested

Broken Wings includes:

• A pitch for a campaign set on Amissa based on scrounging in ancient industrial ruins.
• 6 PC Origins that fit on my interpretation of Amissa
• 20 Alternate PC backgrounds for a desert planet
• 6 Alternate equipment packages for characters who live on a planet

 And rules for incorporating them into a running game of Death in Space whether it is set on Amissa or not.

Download it Here

Artful Vaguness in Setting Design

 Earlier this month, I started a campaign of Death in Space with a few friends. Life and scheduling conflicts have forced me to put playing Undeadwood on hold. 

After my solo game last Christmas, I've been itching to play more Death in Space. I love flavour of dark science fiction that DiS brings. 

More importantly, The Tenebris System is an amazing starting point for a campaign setting. It has plenty of the ideas to get you rolling, but vague enough that you can put your stamp on it without too much difficulty. In fact, The Tenebris System is a brilliant case study of the technique of Artful Vagueness. 

Artful Vaguness:

Artful Vagueness is the skill of using suggestive or open language to elicit a response in a way that encourages the other party to use their creativity in answering.

An Atari-inspired Campaign for Traveller/ Cepheus Engine

I have been tinkering with a new campaign to play at home with friends and family inspired by my current binge of old Atari games and retro sci-fi. I wrote it specifically for Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition from Stellagama Publishing, but it should run with almost any form of Traveller with a few tweaks.

8 want something lighthearted that captures the kind of fantastical popcorn Space opera that you see in the premise of 80s SF movies like The Last Starfighter or in the manuals and comics that came with early console games.

The bad guys are vile, the good guys fly cool ships, and the stakes are very high. It is definitely not like the Third Imperium... although I decided to keep some of the best ideas of that setting.

Here's my pitch:

Cepheus: IRATA

My Holiday in Outer Space: Cepheus Engine and Mongoose Traveller

Is is January 12 already?!

2025 has been absolutely crazy for me, readers! And not necessarily in a good way. I haven't had much time for hobbies since my Christmastime Dead in Space solo game. But I have had some new things land in my lap and on my hard drive over the Holidays.

Cairn 2e arrived on my doorstep as a late gift last week, and it looks amazing! I am trying to steal some time for a solo game to sink my teeth into it so that I can give you all a fair review. I was also able to replace my ruined copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia with the generosity of everyone who picked up Strange Ways last month.

But the more interesting thing that landed in my lap was synchronicitous.

Spending My Holidays in Outer Space

This Christmas I wanted to travel to outer space, so I brought my hard copy of Death in Space along. Death in Space is awesome, and I played a lot this holiday, but I wanted a bit of variety... 

For years I have had wanted to give Traveller a try as well. Originally written by Marc Miller for the impring Game Designer's Workshop in 1977. It was one of the first role-playing games, and was designed to be able to handle a wide range of different kinds of Science Fiction. It's fans have supported the game with such devotion that it has been in publication pretty much constantly since 1977 in some form or another, and the game remains backwards compatible with products released in the 70s today.

It's biggest influence was the book Space Viking by H. Beam Piper (the second of a trilogy), and a lot of elements, including how hyperspace works in traveller, the Sword Worlds faction, and elements of the history of its original setting, The Third Imperium of Man are lifted straight out of Space Viking.

Interestingly, a lot of pop sci-fi makes reference to Space Viking, but if you missed it (which is easy to do) you wouldn't catch them. For example, Space Viking includes a planet called Hoth and a starship called the Rozinante, which are borrowed respectively by Star Wars and The Expanse.

You can read the book on Project Gutenberg if you are curious. I did as part of my hoiday in space, and I don't think you'd be sorry.

I also made sure that Cepheus Deluxe, Enhanced Edition, was on my tablet so that I could finally give myself a taste of Classic Traveller.

If you missed it in my Old-School Science Fiction Roundup, Cepheus Engine is a thrid-party retroclone of Marc Miller's original Traveller RPG, with a few minor quality-of-life tweaks. It was created a few years ago in order to have an open-source version of the game during a lull in its production by its current IP-holder Mongoose Games.

My wife took an interest in Cepheus Engine when I described its life-path character generation Although she didn't enjoy it in practice it led to us both taking a deep dive into the history and various versions of the game.

So imagine my surprise and delight when I saw that Bundle of Holding had a Traveller Bundle featuring a stack of manuals including both the 2024 update of the core rulebook, and the light-weight Traveller: Explorer Edition.

A Solo Play Report: Death in Space, 51 Ehlee

So, last night I wanted to break in the Zoom H5 I got for an early Christmas present and have fun with a solo RPG at the same time. I'd played Death in Space a couple of times, but I hadn't really managed to try everything the game had to offer, so I decided it was high time to really give it the shakedown it deserved. And its dark, apocalyptic setting seemed the perfect cure for the Holiday blahs. I coupled it with Mythic Game Master Emulator 2e, and dove in.

I recorded my entire 1 hour and 37 minute session, with the idea that maybe I could turn it into bonus content for Swords Against Madness; I would record me figuring out the game Extemporanneously, and then redo it as a story and cut them together in the style of one of my favourite RPG podcasts: P.J. Sack's A Wasteland Story.

That is a podcast well worth your time if you like the older Black Isle / Van Buren Fallout setting, by the way.

As it was, Death in Space lived up to its name, and I didn't make it more than five encouters into the game before my PC died horribly. And you know what? It was incredible fun, but I just don't have enough for a good podcast episode, so Instead I decided I would write it up as a short story to share with you all.

The story includes a couple of horrible torturous deaths, exsanguination, piracy, and inappropriate treatment of a corpse... but I don't think I need to sell it too hard.

Detectives in Space, Desperate Cowboys, Freezing Barbarians, Mystic Pilgrims... Or all of the Above!

Looking to start a game? I have some campaign ideas that might inspire you.

How I Pitch my Campaigns

When I am ready to start a new campaign, I put together a handful of "pitch documents" that give the players a taste of what they might expect with the game. The style of my pitch documents varies a lot by mood and inclination.

Recently my wife and I concluded a one-to-one Fabula Ultima campaign, and have been, after a couple of false starts and a few weekends where life just got in the way, looking to start something new. I recently prepared a document with four campaign pitches for a one-to-one game based on our current leanings, taste, and media intake.

As this could be a useful tool for assembling a group, I thought I would share a (slightly tidied up) PDF version of the document.

Pitches May 2024

Generally speaking, I give a fictional preview either written like a movie trailer, or a summary of precipitating events written like the back of a book cover.

Then I create a couple of paragraphs explaining the game of choice, the role the PCs might start with, and what kind of overarching experience I hope to provide.

I used to add in some evocative art hunted down on Pinterest. These days, I try generating something custom using an AI. It seems like a good, non-commercial use for the tool.

The Pitches

In this case I have a Scifi Detective Noir that is drawing a lot on Philip K. Dick, as well as an old favourite podcast, Black Jack Justice; a natural fantasy story based on a fusion of Babylon 5: Crusade, The Slayers: Try, Legend of Mana, and Sorcerer Hunters; A cowboy story that is intended to be a massive and dark expansion of my Vulture Rock wargame scenario played in Cowpunchers; and there is an AD&D scenario there inspired by the copious amount of Manowar that has been on my CD player in the last week (I'm also on my 15th play-through of Skyrim).

Feel free to steal and use these, and I am happy to answer questions, if you want more information about how I intended to use them.

But these particular campaign pitches just didn't sing. They weren't quite what we were looking for.

Trying Again

I sat for awhile trying to think of what I might try differently, and started taking the most appealing elements of each into a totally different beast.

I am currently enjoying the novel Hyperion by Dan Simmons as well. If you're not familiar, it is a dark and surreal (and much more serious) science fiction take on The Canterbury Tales which involves a group of pilgrims being sent to their deaths on an alien world, telling about their experiences on a previous voyage there. Hyperion is a pretty influential book in science fiction media, but is not itself very well known. If you have played Borderlands, Bio-Shock, Mass Effect, or Amnesia games, you have probably heard a lot of references to it.

I decided to blend my four campaigns together: a dark western story, but with a mystery focus, set in my own science fiction world, to which I would add in some heavy metal notes. And while I was at it, I decided to toss in some elements of Mass Effect and Borderlands (a fantastic Sci-Fi Western setting)

 What I ended up with is a frontier space colony world full of ancient hyper-tech ruins that can create miracles, where runaways, psychics, criminals, and cultists are rampant. I called it Adaro. 

I've written a lot about realizing a science fiction setting in the past. One thing that I find to be axiomatic is that if you are not using an established setting, you need to work a lot harder to tell your players about it. When I write science fiction pitches, I add a lot more detail to it before I pitch it.

Adaro is written as a series of three monologues from very different perspectives, and two dossiers written for a government agent, plus a couple of definitions, and I feel it does a great job of doing heavy lifting.

Steal This Planet!

Tragically, it just didn't sell to my wife as a home game setting. However, i feel like Adaro might be just the thing someone else is looking for, so I am going to toss the pitch document up here, and see if any of my readers want to steal it and make it their own.

Download it as a PDF here:

Adaro: A Mythic Space Western

Game Review: Death in Space

Author: Christian Plogfors, Carl Nibeaus

Publisher: Stockholm Kartel, Fria Lagan

Engine: Mörk-Borg Compatible (OSR)

Marketplace: Fria Lagan, Amazon, DTRPG

Death in Space is a sci-fi horror game set in a distant future where the Universe is beginning the process of heat death, and humankind, after aeons of expansion across Space, are now in steep decline.

The game's setting, which is heavily baked into the structure, is the Tenebris System, a star system that had been at the heart of humanity's final war; many powerful mega corporations and space empires fought for centuries over gems found on moon in Tenebris which were so flawless and possessed such fantastic properties that they would revolutionize the manufacturing of spacecraft, computers, and hyperspace gates 

By the time the war was over, humanity was so beggared and in such steep decline that it didn't matter anymore: no one had the means left to use the gems.

Now humanity is clinging on to an existence where they make nothing new: everything has been repurposed and recycled over and over again. An alien force, the void, is creeping in, infecting, tainting, and mutating everything it touches, and that can be heard in strange whispers on radio waves across the Universe.

 Humans live in poverty in the wreckage of their once great empires. In Tenebris, most of the population lives in The Iron Ring: a hoop of fused hulks of space stations and starships in orbit around the moon where the gems were once discovered.

Swords Against Madness

 Swords Against Madness, my new gonzo OSR solo TTRPG podcast launched today, and I have to start by saying that I have never felt a more warm welcome for anything I have ever done. Abel from The Iron Realm, Simon from Legend of the Bones, John from Tale of the Manticore, and T15 from Legends from the Fireside all dropped by and said hello, and asked me how they can help and promote me. I am blown away by how awesome a crowd this is already.

Swords Against Madness is played using Swords & Wizardry Complete and a bevy of tools from tables stolen from ICRPG to the Pendulum World-Building Assistant, to the Dungeon Dozen. I am turning the gonzo weirdness is going to be turned up to the max.

If you are interested in Swords Against Madness, you can learn more here! Or listen to it through YouTube here:

My A.I. Gm Experience: "Day Tripper" pt.1

 It is no secret that I love playing around with machine-learning models to create images, songs, and the like. "Generative A.I." is entertaining, even if its products are usually dull and uninspired. And you can get some damned good results with ethically sourced tools.But the moment you try to create anything too complex with it you end up witnessing otherworldly horrors beyond human comprehension.

(Believe me, if my hand's weren't fucked up, I would be doing my own illustrating! It would be less traumatic.)

I seriously doubt that an A.I., especially one trained by a large corporation, could do a great job running a game. But could one carefully trained by an indie developer do a halfway decent job? Recently I tried out the Scifi LLM "A.I." role-playing experience "Day Tripper" by Tod Foley, designer of Core Micro and Uniquicity, (and generally fun interlocutor.)

I am still processing my experience with "Day Tripper" and I am going to present a transcript of my first adventure here. And then I will pick Tod's brain to clarify my thoughts, and share my analysis of the experience with you in my next post.

In Search of the Best Crapsack Future

 

So I have had two (video-) gaming obsessions and three podcast obsessions that have managed to collide in a perfect storm of inspiration

And that has had me grinding away like mad at my google docs for about a week now.

CSV Natani: Death Match of the Bands

Iria Ocano, generated in Unstable Diffusion
by her player.

 

 This is a quick report on what has happened in my White Star campaign over the last few sessions as the PCs played their way through Cascadia's bloody and perilous Deathmatch of the bands.

Session 9: January 22nd, 2024: Intrigue and Politics

Ciara tapped deep into her deviousness to help Leedo sabotage the Black Sun mercenaries. She started by sending anonymous warnings to Princess Dorala. She then faked a legal siexure of some major dockyards on the Taurelian home system, forcing their representative to jump home to sort matters out immediately and leave a proxy to observe the Festival of the Culling.

She also wove a botnet into the local film production systems so that she could weaponize the camera drones being used in the filming.

The band began to plan their tactical strategies while Ciara wrestled with whether to be on stage in a mask, or simply hide so that there was no choice of begin seen by the Alterrians that might yet be hunting her.

Iria, Leedo, Ciara, Pavo, along with newcomers Hrungg and Dj'hurk finalized their contracts as the band Iria and the Bloody Murder and began participating in the 3-day multi-stage concert / gladiatorial event.

CSV Natani: The Big Rock Manouvre

 

This is yet another update of the last few sessions of my White Star campaign, where the players are members of the crew of the tramp star freighter, the Natani.

Session 6; Dec. 18th, 2023: Keep on Rockin' in Free Space

With the Dusk of Hope, a mysterious private star freighter on their heels, the Natani hyper-jumps to the Solara Vortex system - a backwater space station in orbit around an unstable blue giant. Aside from collecting solar energy, skimming the star for hydrogen, and collecting radioisotopes - all jobs for robots - there is virtually nothing to do in this station but refuel passing ships. In fact, Solara has three permanent residents: Myra the bartender, Mack the Mechanic, and Tendi an administrator who also runs the local banking, commodities exchange, and and law enforcement services (in theory.)*

Entering the system they are hit almost immediately by one of the system's incredibly violent ion storms, and are forced to do both some blind flying and emergency repairs on their comms array in order to safely make it to Solara Vortex Station.

CHV Natani: Shady Dealings and Ominous Portents

This is the third campaign report from my CHV Natani campaign, which is played using White Star, an OSR space opera game based on Swords & Wizardry. This a summary of the fourth and fifth sessions of the campaign. You can see the session zero and session one here, and sessions two and three here.

Session 4: December 4th: Ice Pirates

Shortly after finishing the asteroid scan, Leedo was alarmed to hear noises coming from Dr. K'twik's cryo tube. The alien tomb raider screamed, glowed, and then suddenly imploded into a mass of goo and bone fragments.

Leedo asked Iria and Roth to examine it, which left Iria vomiting and mildly traumatized. She vowed never to listed to Leedo if he said "look at this" ever again.

Before parting the Veles Sector, the Natani set down on the colony of Veles VIII; the inhabitants of Veles VIII are a group of eccentrics and anarchists who call themselves the Ice Pirates, and do their best to imitate a mashup of alien piratical subcultures throughout history,

The team agreed to split, up and get tasks done quickly, while Iria, feeling ill, decided to take a rest in the cryo tank on its restorative cycle.

Once in, Kuna made his way to the Friend Co. terminal to collect his pay for refuelling the Yszwa and then the system exchange terminal to collect pay of his navigational scans of the outer belt. While he was there a shady alien in a fedora approached him and asked if he was interested in moving some Tarelian Brandy, an expensive but controlled substance known to get those drunk on it into either  homicidal ranges, or sexual manias... depending on body chemistry. Illegal in some systems, and controlled by special import licenses in others. Kuna asked the alien to wait so he could do his research.