String fullTitle = 'Planet Pirates Quest #3';
int postNumber = 5985361;
String image = '1713918820657783.jpg';
String date = '04/23/24(Tue)20:33:40';
String comment = 'You are a PIRATE, the scourge of the Fringe and cursed from Diplo to Bretagne by the cowardly merchants and traders whom you prey upon.
It’s been hundreds of years since the Federation of Sentient Planets was founded, and while the formidable Fleet patrols spacelanes and performs countless interdictions on so-called freebooters, just as many pirate vessels evade blockades and continue to smuggle, slave, and profiteer off of the rest of interstellar civilization in any way they can. Gangsters, muggers, washed-out mercenaries, and the general flotsam of the known galaxy crammed into starships of all kinds, they lack only the romance once associated with the pirates of Old Earth. But perhaps you are different.
The arrogant, domineering ways of the Federation disgusted you, so you deserted from the Fleet and took up life as a corsair. Now you command the mighty vessel Flow My Tears, from which you command a crew of miscellaneous spacers with your executive officer, Shis’so (a spider gestalt).
In our two previous threads, you successfully conducted a raid against a commerce station and commandeered a prize ship. After that, you enjoyed some productive time off picking out new clothes, making connections, selling information, and poaching a retrieval job. You proceeded to the forbidden planet Burn Caladh, entering a Central Service brainship in search of a mysterious, high-value container. Unbeknownst to you, the ship was wide awake and is none too happy with intruders…
———
Hello anons, my deepest apologies for the delay — yours truly was busy finishing some historical research, but is now back in the saddle. Feel free to join in on the action even if you’re a new reader, as I intend to make the quest easy to understand for any newcomers. Here’s hoping it hasn’t been too long since the last thread.
Archive: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.
'FRINGE WORLDS
On the surface of Burn Caladh
Until at last the frigate
Shot the pirate's mast away.
The lights in the main room flicker as Kunzea wrenches on the console, but despite a brief break in the engine’s hum, there seems to be no other change. Your operations officer throws her hands up and looks at you in despair.
“Deserving attempt,” the ship says during a pause in singing. “Anything else up your black sleeves?”
“You sing well,” you reply, trying to recall the lyrics to that ancient tune. Unfortunately, you’ve buried far too many of your Fleet memories to bring the words to mind. “...might you regale us with more?”
“A charmer,” the ship says, and sings out mellifluously:
The ship it was their coffin
And their grave it was the sea.
A sailing down all on
The coasts of High Barbary
You rub your eyes and glance over to your new pet bird. It hops about, apparently unconcerned by the ruckus, fruitlessly running its beak into cracks in the console for food. You pace, feeling the air grow thin as the ship steadily drains the atmosphere. Shis’so might have been more able to exploit the ship’s weaknesses, though it appeared now as if it had none. At least the ship didn’t blow up, you reflect, though a fiery end might have been better than your current suffocation. You draw your laspistol and begin to advance toward the door, dialing the power settings up to maximum, but before you bring the weapon to bear, Fraus suddenly strides out from his corner and approaches the silvery column in the center of the room.
Kunzea’s panicked exclamations over the console and the increasing volume of the ventilation system prevents you from overhearing the sequence of words that slip from the client’s lips. A moment after he finishes, however, the air whooshes back into the chamber, the console is suddenly compliant, and the metal sleeve around the column begins to retract into the floor.';
'Speechless, the three of you watch as a disfigured, infant form is revealed. Despite the breadth of unsavory sights you’ve taken in, this one still manages to draw from you a potent mixture of pity and appalled fascination. Despite the many medical advances made by the Federation and the Central Service, some cases were truly untreatable. This... lifeform, was no different. You wondered how this person would ever have been able to walk, had it grown up normally. In fact, they probably would have been confined to a moto-chair or similar device for the rest of their natural lifespan.
“Shellpeople’s physical bodies are put in stasis prior to their linkage,” Fraus explains in a low murmur. “She is no different.”
“Can she hear us?” Kunzea asks, turning her ice-blue eyes to the column’s permanent inhabitant. Fraus shrugs.
“Possibly. I only paid for the disarming phrase, it wasn’t explained to me. I’m glad it worked.”
“Some kind of posthypnotic trigger,” you muse. He nods in confirmation.
“Very expensive on the black market. Renders the ship completely safe for us, however.”
With the ship’s eponymous brain offline, Kunzea is able to release the rest of the lockdown through the console, in addition to pinpointing the cargo and updating Crane on the situation.
>Take a closer look at this shellperson.
>Interrogate Fraus about his resources. [low to medium DC depending on write-in]
>Proceed to the cargo bay, everything else can be dealt with later.
>Write-in.';
'>>5985363
>take a closer look at this shellperson
Did we just find Fiana?';
'>>5985363
>Interrogate Fraus about his resources. [low to medium DC depending on write-in]';
'“Peent!”
“Yes, Neptune,” you say soothingly, summoning a name for it from the depths of your Academy memories. “It’s all right.”
The bird’s anxiety seems to be slowly dissipating as your own adrenaline rush comes down. You run a finger over its small head and gaze into its glossy black eyes, receiving an alien stare in return. “Better?”
“Peent!”
You let it rest on your finger for the moment and look back up at the brainship’s column. You knew very little about the highly secretive process by which people were transformed into a starship, though it was at least common knowledge that the Central Service only admitted individuals who were in their infancy. The idea was that humans at such an age would be too young to experience the trauma of going from an articulate body to a shell. Shellpeople graduated from their civil service training program with colossal amounts of debt that they then had to pay off before finally becoming free agents, but in return they received a cutting edge courier vessel and had their brain essentially fused with a supercomputer. You’re not sure how much you’d consider that a benefit, but clearly there were those who supported it.
Given the kinds of tasks that Central Service ships tended to embark on, you could imagine the security that their encased pilots would need. You were then surprised that Fraus had the posthypnotic trigger to turn the ship inert. Perhaps he really did have friends in high places…
But before you can interrogate him further on that matter, he turns and begins to leave the central chamber. “Let’s grab the container and get off the ship as soon as we can,” he says. “I don’t feel like sticking around any longer.”
“Peent!”
As you and Kunzea walk with him, you comm the shuttle pilot and order him to bring the craft in closer to the brainship, now that you know it’s safe. Fraus seems just as antsy as he had been earlier, and he leaps ahead toward the cargo bay, rounding the corner without waiting for you. At the same time, Kunzea murmurs:
“Skipper, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
You’ve got a similar feeling, but instead of saying so, you just raise an eyebrow. The red-skinned operations officer gestures back toward the ship’s center.
“The client said on the way here that he didn’t know any more about the ship than we did, but then he pulled that code out of nowhere. Posthypnotic triggers are specific to each shellperson, right? So he knew not just that it was a brainship, but this specific one.”
“That’s true,” you allow. Kunzea wrinkles her nose.
“Plus, how did the ship even get here to begin with?”
“It has always been the role of the hired party to do what they’re paid to do, and not ask questions,” you reply in order to stop her speculation there. “Let’s get on with the job.”';
'She acquiesces, but as the two of you catch up to Fraus, you privately entertain the same questions that she was asking. Of course, it had been clear to you even before this that the client was withholding information—but that wasn’t totally unusual. Now, though, he had knowingly put you in danger and given you no prior warning.
The cargo bay is as empty as it was before. Fraus is pacing the walls, looking for any obvious signs of a hidden compartment. You gesture for Kunzea to do the same, before stepping over to inspect the central lift. Like everything else in the ship, it’s built to perfect tolerances. Lowering it would give you access to the ground underneath the ship, though you suppose that the crash landing it experienced might make that impossible.
Neptune hops down off your hand and hops around the floor awkwardly, unused to the slick metal surface. You watch it explore the hold for a minute, then return to the center, quietly observing. The cargo bay is the largest part of the ship, covered with scratch-resistant metal floor plating, walls with study bulkheads and several miniature tractor field emitters to stop cargo from shifting during transit (complete with backup tie-off points to manually fasten items). What few service panels the ship did have were very well concealed. The overhead lights covered the entire area in a sterile light.
“Peent!” Your bird has taken an interest in a floor panel. Maybe it thinks there’s a crab under there.
>Bring in some scanning equipment from your ship to find wherever the cargo is hidden.
>Let Fraus search a little longer. Maybe he’s got something else up his sleeve.
>Conduct your own search (describe your course of action).
>Write-in.';
'>>5986743
>Conduct your own search (describe your course of action).
Search where the bird is looking.';
}