Previously, on the Aslan Route... Misjumping into deep space, the crew of the Macavity find the wreck of a huge survey vessel, where factions of the surviving crew compete for resources and an alien infection is gradually turning them all into zombies. But they have a plan...
Spoilers ahead...
Void 8, 1108 Weeks 40-42
Mazun decides the first order of business is to issue an all-hands call on the internal PA system, explaining that his ship is here to rescue the survivors and there is room for everyone, but it will take some time so please be patient. As the point of this is crowd control, he carefully doesn't tell anyone where the ship is, and given where the Macavity docked and where the survivors are, none of them can actually see it, though Mazun suspects the bridge crew knows where they are. He does, however, explain the plan: The engineers of both ships will work together to fashion a drop tank for the Macavity and recover a sufficient number of emergency low berths to hold all survivors. These will then be frozen in small groups, and the low berths thoroughly disinfected and moved to the Macavity's hold. After that, the Macavity will make a multi-stage jump to Zuflucht, that being the closest system.
The Captain of the Deepnight Endeavour agrees to reinstate the Chief Engineer's command privileges for the purpose of refuelling their rescuers, and while she will still have to answer for mutiny, they are both pragmatic enough to defer that until they land somewhere civilised.
While Vila supervises the Endeavour's engineering crew in building a drop tank, Rex and Kharrash lead other engineers into the bowels of the ship to select and recover the most promising emergency low berths. This leads to a firefight with zombies during which they lose a couple of engineers and Kharrash suffers bumps and bruises.
While that's going on, Mazun notices a battered figure with a laser rifle setting up an ambush by the airlock bay the Macavity is docked to, which has a small circulation space and access to both personnel and cargo locks as well as a lift to the Endeavour's starboard PSM. They start talking using the airlock comms, and the figure explains that it's nothing personal, but given how dangerous the infection is, she simply cannot allow anyone to leave the wreck, for the survival of the species. Mazun patches the camera feed through to Doctor Matauranga, who deduces from a remote examination that the poor woman has gone psychotic under the stress of the situation. The Chief Engineer identifies her as the ship's Weapons Officer, who blew up the fuel cache - that action now makes sense, and Mazun and the Doctor hypothesise that in the early stages of infection, victims go insane in a way directed to make use of their skills; the astrogator caused a misjump, the weapons officer blew up the fuel cache, and this makes them deeply suspicious of what the Chief Mission Specialist might be up to in the science pod.
However, Mazun manages to keep the woman talking long enough for Vila to sneak up behind her, get The Drop, and zap her with his stun pistol. While she's processing that, Kharrash rappels down the lift shaft and zipties her, and before she can deal with that, Dr Matauranga places her under heavy sedation.
They now settle into a risky but straightforward execution of their plan. The drop tank is plumbed into the cargo bay and filled. The crew is called forward, twelve at a time, to be checked over by the good Doctor, frozen in low berths, the berths disinfected and loaded into the cargo bay. The science crew bring lots of data, records, and some samples of the alien life form. A few of the crew are infected, and these are diverted into separate and easily-identifiable low berths. The Chief Mission Specialist gives Mazun and Matauranga a bad feeling, so she gets her own low berth. Twice, groups of zombies try to join the party, but they have to come through a carefully-prepared kill zone in a single corridor, and any that get past Rex's dual-wielded laser SMGs are cut to pieces by Kharrash.
Mazun takes Vila and Kharrash aside; Vila he asks to make completely sure that nothing is getting out of those sample containers, and Kharrash he orders to move into the cargo bay for the duration of the trip, with permission to take lumps out of anyone - anyone - who tries to get at them.
As their final acts before abandoning ship, the Captain and Chief Engineer are persuaded to open the ship to space and shut down the power plant, to deny any possible comfort to the infection.
Jumping into deep space, the Macavity refuels from and then jettisons her drop tank, then jumps again, and staggers out of jumpspace at Zuflucht.
Zuflucht, 1108 Week 43
Dr Matauranga has spent the time in jump poring over the records from the Deepnight Endeavour, which may or may not come in handy later. The crew as a whole spent much of the time debating what to tell the authorities once they arrived; they settle on a cut-down version of the truth.
"We misjumped, and found ourselves near a wreck. We rescued the crew in low berths; some of them are infected, those are in separate marked low berths. Be very careful when you open them up."
If pressed, they decide they will reluctantly hand over the coordinates of the wreck, which Vila wants to sell to potential salvagers, and admit that there used to be a fuel cache there but it's gone now, in case the Navy jump there confident that they can refuel and become stranded themselves.
Zuflucht has an Imperial Navy "base" which is actually just a few offices with liaison and intelligence personnel; these explain that as per normal procedures, they would like to debrief the Macavity's crew in person aboard the orbital station.
The Macavity docks, and the crew disembark.
To be continued...
GM Notes
I did not see the PA call coming, but having established that the PA was still working and checked the motivations for each faction, it did in fact bypass a lot of the potential conflict in the scenario. Having established for other purposes earlier in the campaign that low berths can be transferred between ships without having to defrost the occupants, the players sacrificed their cargo to get everyone off the wreck; that wouldn't have worked otherwise.
The data dump to Dr Matauranga would've happened anyway in game, since he has Curious as a Major Hindrance; but it also allows me to establish the crew as experts on this infection, which gives me a lead-in to the larger campaign Deepnight Revelation later.
I'm not sure we want to do that; Deepnight Revelation is one of the few Kickstarters I regretted backing - if you can create stories of Man vs the wonders of the Universe, Star Trek style, week after week, then you don't need the campaign, and if (like me) you can't, it doesn't help you much.
However, Deepnight Endeavour is a nice little adventure, good for a session or two, with a good balance of combat, NPC interaction, and puzzle-solving; I commend it to the House. In hindsight, I should have made more use of the survival horror aspects, but the players seemed happy to avoid those and had solid plans for doing so. Likewise, I could have run more combat - that would have extended play time quite a bit - but the only combat-loving player couldn't make the relevant sessions, so such combat as there was we handled with Dangerous Quick Encounters.
Onwards to Great Rift Adventure 1: Islands in the Rift.
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