Operation Korbol

Setting: Human Space

• There is a ping on the datanets on a bounty for Tyler. It is enough money for anyone to comfortably retire on. But that is not what we adventure for…
• The intergalactic bank is trying to track down Tyler to give him lost money.
• Tyler is insulted that the money is only enough to buy a starship.
• Tyler posts an anonymous message that this amount of money is missing, please return to the middle of Robot Space.
• While waiting, Hector tinkers some more on the robot duplicates
• Based on recent discoveries about Horrors and the symbols around them and their resemblance to things on Tyler's homeworld - he suspect a Horror influence there, which might explain them all having psychic powers.
• Lady Thorgeld is in exile and disgraced and may have information on the royal family of Korbol.
• Hector rigs his universal gadget to mask Tyler's brainwaves with Carson's
• Tyler disguises himself
• Tyler and Hector try to find where Lady Thorgeld may be located. Statistics yield that one of the slaver clans is doing much better than normal
• In order to meet with the slaver clan, the group decides to set themselves up as a legitimate slaver clan themselves
• A slightly shady bank is used to set up an account for the slaver company
• With tremendously skillful manipulation of computers, Hector sets up a vast criminal organisation through linking all rumours about him with various expert programs imitating contacts and people in power
• Thorgeld arranges a meeting at an ice asteroid that is surrounded with psychic crystals that the crew had been to before (See episode On The Horror Trail Part I: Smuggling Plan B)
• Rather than going in person and being mind read, Hector brings out the robot duplicates of the crew (See episode To Boldly Go Part V: SPAZ!)
• Blackie is completely wigged out by his double and refuses to use it, going in person instead to the rendezvous.
• The slavers set two groups of clones against each other as a demonstration. Hector baulks at the loss of life and stops the demonstration.
• The slavers doubt that it is Hector and Tyler (as robot Carson) reveals the plan to talk to Thorgeld about Korbol

• Tyler paid a fate point to have the Lady Jane be secretly intelligent
• Hector is suspicious of this and may have had built an off switch
• The robot duplicates are not as good moving as the real thing

• jon hector : We adventure for sexual gratification - why do you think there are so many explosions?

• dirk richter : It's insulting how it's so obviously a trap

• The Savage Chicken has been impounded because it has unusual weapon signatures.
• The officials decide that if it passes at the weapon range, they may be allowed to keep it
• The officials wonder why it uses so much energy and apparently does nothing

Meanwhile…

• The flunkies are happy to set up a meeting with Lady Thorgeld
• Tyler recommends another area of the asteroid for the meeting
• Lady Thorgeld  starts a tirade on Tyler
• Tyler starts negotiating for buying a clone army, in the meantime he finds out about his relations on Korbol and the rebels.
• Gleaning all the information we can, the group leaves for Korbol, but is blocked from proceeding by a warzone n the way
• Blackie checks out mercs gossip about what's happening in this warzone.  It's an apparent war over resources as they've over extended themselves.  One of the planets is unable to expand as it needs because it borders Robot Space
• Of the many factors that caused the war, the last straw was the destruction of a mining colony.
• The war could be long as the sides are well matched
• The Space Patrol has pulled out of the warzone, not wanting to risk their ships and people, this has led to a huge increase in interstellar crime
• The Lady Jane approaches a space station jump point and notices the Savage Chicken- it also notices Tyler's old ship - the Brechtian Rhapsody - its transponder is detected but is going by a different name - The Call of the Deep
• The jumpgate has been sealed because of the incoming fleet which may be boarding ships

Meanwhile…

• Tyler doesn't want to leave as he wants to rescue the folk on the Rhapsody.  He talks to the captain of the ship, but it's not who he expects - but a new owner who bought the ship a few months ago.  Because of his attachment to the ship, Tyler offers to get the Call of the Deep out of there.

Hector hacks the black box and gets fragmentary ships logs from the Call of the Deep. O2STK want us to pick up a person in the system the Savage Chicken and the Lady Jane jumps into

• The system jumped into is a warzone
• The person we are to pick up is called star and is on a lunar facility on a moon of the main planet
• To pass through the warzone, both ships do a very accurate burn, then play dead and drift through, hopefully do slow down once through.
• A cruiser breaks off and starts circling towards the ships
• It's hit by a rocket before it can intercept us
• The ships successfully land in caves on the moon
• The party sets off for the facility on stealth hover sleds
• A few ships from the battle start to attack and defend the facility
• Hacking the emergency airlock, the group finds a woman who is with the Star

• Captain : The station is in lockdown, there's nothing we can do
• jon Hector : Nothing LEGAL we can do…

• The women lets the group in, telling them of several others in the base that need evacuating.
• Tyler senses Horrors have a hand in the attacking ships on the moon base
• The crew enter a decompressed mess hall.
• Blackie finds a mining tool and gets Hector to give it some Wellie
• Tyler and Stella (of the Star) encounter a cowering survivor and they question him.  The survivor is panicky, but Tyler calms him.
• Blackie fires the modified mining laser at the strafing enemy ships
• He manages to take out one of the ships
• Tyler heads towards the professor but is stopped by a door - he contacts Hector to hack the doors
• Hector tasks all the maintenance and repair bots to work on the door mechanisms to make them operable
• Blackie wastes another ship, and then receives a piercing pain in the head from the Horror in the bomber that then targets him.  Letting two bombs free before  Blackie is able to shoot it down.
• Blackie grabs Hector, who is busy programing the computer, and evacuates the area
• The professor is an old women with a custom space suit for her complicated prosthetics
• Tyler uses telepathy to mass communicate with all the survivors in an attempt to get them all to evacuate to the one airlock
• He decides not to as there is a psychic entity out there listening in.  Instead he senses where the survivors are.
• He heads towards the hangar, trying to lead the Horror the in the hopes of using one of the flyers there to get away
• Hector finds all the life signs in a single group except one. 
• Blackie tries to organise them into an orderly evacuation.
• The remaining fighter is distracted away from the fleeing group by Tyler
• Tyler surfs an energy wave from the bombing of the base out of the base
• The survivors are loaded onto the stealth sleds (except for the Professor and her cyberlegs) and take of towards the ship
• Tyler eventually circles around to the Lady Jane- the bomber starts taking out the base in earnest
• The professor was studying patterns and came across a conspiracy theory on how the war started
• The were apparently 30 points in the past  - lynchpins that were manipulated such that the war could happen.  On both sides, these areas were deliberately modified.
• Tyler thinks the Stormlords of Korbal are behind it and mentions their psychic powers - to much skepticism from the survivors
• Tyler recalls the papers left on the Lady Jane dealing with Psychohistory and the use of lynchpins that Carson wrote - and recommends consulting him on this conspiracy.
• Leslie, the beaurocrat in the group explains how she saw some of these lynchpin decisions being made in government while she was there - and these decisions were regarded as bad at the time, but they were still made.
• Most of the survivors are dropped off - but the crew from the newspaper accompany the Lady Jane to the planet where Carson was last seen
• Tyler senses the Carson gestalt
• Carson is willing to think on the problem of the lynchpins if they are given the data
• As the ship approaches Carson's planet, they notice signs of many more, new cloning facilities
• Carson advises on where a person could likely be found who could build a Horror destroying weapon
• The hive mind mentions the two seeds on the ship.  Hector immediately finds them in the sick bay

• blackie: but how do we power the Ancient Seed with a sun in order to make a Dyson Sphere?
• jon hector: With the Adapter of Destiny?