The story begins with our cast of lovable retards, 3 Marines and a Union Teamster: my boy Jack - retired soldier with a twinge of computers experience, I want to say Constantine, but that's probably not right - retired soldier with a smart gun, Bosche - former Communist party Commissar (he got kicked out for a reason that eludes me at present), and "Teamie" because he ain't a marine, and his name is thusly not important. After a quick stint of RP culminating in everyone meeting up at a bar then proceeding to go to the local "Unemployment office" at the behest of our Teamie, because existing ain't cheap. We find ourselves on a sort of under-the-table fetch quest to get some suit his crypto wallet back, and after some tense negotiations we find ourselves piling into a data courier ship packed with servers (payroll data, I'm not kidding) and 5 hypersleep stations, as the GM's setting operates on Alien style FTL with reality kind of falling apart when you get to major fractions of the speed of light. So we punch in our destination coordinates, take our hypersleep solution shots, and drift off into the cold embrace.
Cut forward 6 months ingame time, and we awake at our "destination," well, at least that's what our nav computer says. Not that it matters much because our hyperdrive keeps spitting out some generic, undiagnosable error. So we're not going anywhere really fast, which is fine, because we're probably here; a rogue planetoid with a moon and a ship graveyard to make Davy Jones' blush. Running the ship's sensors we find a geological surveying ship with power issues nearby, and forgetting that we know the name of our destination (Defiance, but that's not important now), we head over. Docking with the survey ship, we find ourselves in a dusty airlock; it is immediately evident that there isn't much if anything alive on this ship. So being Marines, we set to work clearing the floor. On our current floor, we find the Captain's quarters, and what appears to be an empty, at least on thermals, crew quarters. Going into the Captain's quarters, we find his terminal running on emergency power, logging into the terminal itself we gather that the ship had arrived at its destination 2~ weeks ago, but not much else, and as we're leaving the Captain's quarters, the power comes back on, and we hear it. Something thrashing fiercely on a deck below us.
Fearing the worst, we rush back into the Captain's quarters. 15~ minutes pass, the thrashing stops, but the power stays, for a little bit at the least, so we continue clearing the floor. Now that the power is back on, we go and check the crew's quarters, and see the bunks filled with corpses covered in white sheets, and a single person glued to the ceiling Xenomorph style. Weird, but we're not going to let us get freaked out by that. Having cleared those rooms, we proceed to the flight deck where we find our first survivors: the two android pilots. One endlessly tapping away at a dead terminal, and the other half the android he was (missing his lower body from the hips on down) slumped against the wall. Moving in we find their nav room is destroyed, someone probably took an axe to the hardware in there, it is unrecoverable. Turning our attention to the androids, we begin to talk with the one that seems sane enough. He warns us about something one of the survey teams brought up, and how it's been eating the crew. The party; however, is excited, as none of us have any flight skills, as we now have half of a pilot. From there, we ascertain the location of their hyperdrive coolant. Down in the cargo hold, were the artifact is held. (Fun!)
Proceeding down, not knowing how much time we have left before whatever that was returns, we rush into the cargo hold and see the artifact. It can only be described as a stone statue of some deep sea eel. At its base, was 6 naked people with markings drawn all over them in what could only be oil prostrated hexagonally around it, their eyes transfixed on the plinth, and in the way of us getting that sweet, sweet, hyperdrive coolant. Edging around the... "assembly" Jack recovers a couple casks of hyperdrive coolant, and the party begin heading back up to the top deck to finish looting the ship, scuttling it, then fucking off; however, as Constantine is leaving the cargo room, the eyes from the statue's supplicants turn in unison to stare at him leaving the room, and as the door begins to close behind him, we hear the sickening creature emerge from the statue and we begin to make a break for our ship's airlock. We make it to the stairs leading to the upper decks before whatever it is escapes the cargo hold and begins pursuit. One round later, and Jack is up at the top of the stairs with a cask, urging everyone else to "Hurry the fuck up, or you'll become sushi!" or something, meanwhile the Teamie in a distant second, Bosche right behind him, and Constantine are attacked by the thing, which now that we have a better look at it, is a flying electric lamprey eel looking thing. Constantine, missing with his smart gun, and sacrificing his helmet in the process, gives Bosche enough time to shoot the eel twice with his hand cannon, terminating the damned eel. With the immediate threat handled, and admittedly, I wasn't there so all I know is we, the party, loot something else from the that ship and bring on our new pilot, set, as a final farewell, the reactor of the survey ship to overload and destroy the damned thing.
Over the time that I was gone a week, the party continued scavenging the graves, acquiring more rations than we could reasonably haul from a wooden spaceship (think Disney's Treasure Planet's ship in terms of style), and maybe a few other things from a wreck or two. Then, our salvaging was cut short as our ship was pulled down to the planetoid's moon by a gravity crane. Thankfully, our new android pilot was able to set us down with relative safety. This next section because I was absent the week this happened, I will describe from my character's, Jack's, point of view. As soon as we land, the rest of the party checks the computer and sees that there are a couple of establishments nearby, one being the crane and the other being a colony of sorts. Eager to make contact with people, they rush off, leaving Jack behind without telling him a damn thing. It is important to note, that this moon has breathable atmosphere, is a comfy 70 Fahrenheit, 294.2611 Kelvin for you communists out there, and the most jarring thing about it is as soon as you step out into the landscape, the color drains from everything, fading into some grayscale nightmare. Being left to his own devices, Jack proceeds to do what he did best, entrenching. So over the next few "days," another thing worth noting is as there is no star, there is no day/night cycle on this moon, Jack begins to see figures peeking over the tops of nearby dunes. Jack, not really knowing whether or not they were friendly, begins locking the door to the ship when he sleeps. Unbeknownst to him, the rest of the party had made contact with what can only be described as a downed colony ship turned weird cannibal cult. The cult, having heard of new arrivals to the moon were all too eager to greet them, sent out a few members to "investigate" the downed ship, upon learning this, the party rushed back to the ship to inform Jack that they weren't hostiles.
After what can only be described as a frantic chase between the party, they eventually come into contact with the ship and find that Jack has dug a series of entrenchments around the ship for safety's sake. Upon informing him that those shapes he has been seeing were in fact people. Now reunited, the party decides how to proceed, Jack and Constantine wanted to get off this rock and continue with our original objective; however, Bosche, the former Commissar, wanted to stay longer and free the people from the cannibal cult. It is worth noting, that cult members "donate" body parts to The Soup, as when they landed they did not have much food. Over the time we were repairing the ship, one of the non-cult colonists, an emaciated teenager, "covertly" makes his way towards our little group, and, upon arriving, pleads with us to end the "giving" tradition by killing the two in charge of the cannibal traditions. The colonist, having made his point, further cemented Bosche's opinion that the Colony needed to be freed of this cannibalistic tradition. As part of this, Teamie and Constantine stay behind to continue repairs to the ship, while Jack and Bosche head off to visit the Gravity Crane crew, with hopes of negotiating assistance in exchange for some rations. On the way to the Gravity Crane setup, Bosche and Jack come across an un-looted container, deciding to loot it on the way back, the duo continue to the Crane grounds. Upon arrival, we are greeted by John, the man in charge of the Crane, having inherited it from his predecessor. It is worth noting that the Crane crew are not part of the cannibal cult.
After an initial exchange, John leads Bosche and Jack into his office, now that colors beyond black, white, and the grays in between have returned to us, Bosche tells John of the plan. I forget if we, the players, discussed what we were going to do beforehand like I said, but Jack and John are taken aback. John errs on the side of caution, citing the cultists having greater numbers, Jack advises against this citing second and third order effects we can't predict, but neither really resist Bosche. After further talk, partial convincing, a wheel of cheese left behind, and acquiring a portable radio tranceiver backpack, John offers Jack and Bosche a ride back to our ship. Taking him up but stopping at the unopened container, the guys who gave us the lift, comment that the container must be a gold mine, and by God was he right. The container itself was loaded with military equipment, enough to arm a platoon. Jack attributed this to divine intervention, Bosche dismissed such notions citing coincidence, and treated it as a sign that he was doing the right thing. The party divvied up the loot, a couple of pulse rifles, a combat shotgun, and a spare SMG, Teamie had picked on up during the scavenging of the graveyard, and radioed the Crane crew to let them know the rest of the container was theirs and that we're going through with the overthrowal of the Cult.
Having rested for the "day" the following "morning" with our ship now flight capable again, the party concocts a plan to infiltrate the cult. Since we were already invited to join (we being everyone else but Jack, but he's probably not excluded from that). The plan was, we'd go in, posing as new recruits, and the Crane Crew would come in and reinforce us. So we set out, the Marines joking between ourselves about having been in combat, the Teamie and escapee being sick to their stomachs at the thought of having to kill people or witness people die, and we arrive at the compound with the Crane Crew 30 minutes behind us. Upon arrival Bosche states that we have come to a decision and wish to join the cult, but first we had some questions. The greeter, an elderly woman is overjoyed by this and takes the party, sans the escapee, in, showing us the above-ground enclosed farm. Animals on treadmills wearing VR headsets. Not the strangest things, given the setting, but nowhere near as unnerving as the welcome we were getting from this woman. A short time later (5~ minutes, 25~ minutes till backup arrives), one of the two head cultists comes up to greet us. He is missing his legs and rolls around in a wheelchair; this man is their head scientist. We talk with him a little bit, about our decision, the escapee and his influence, to which the scientist's mood immediately changes to derisive annoyance, citing how ignorant the teen is and so on. 5~ minutes later (backup is now 20~ minutes out), he leads us down into the first sublevel of the compound, where after a little bit we meet the head medical "professional," the man behind "the giving" ritual. Making an excuse to disappear for a moment, Constantine goes to the bathroom and attempts to make contact with our backup to little avail, and 5 minutes later (backup is now 15~ minutes out), returns to us. The scientist goes off to the control room, and "The Good Doctor" leads us to the medical area for 24hr quarantine, citing that because of the colony's unique situation; their vaccines have run out, and their immune systems are relatively compromised due to the nature of this moon, we, the party, need to stay in quarantine for a day so that we don't have any diseases that could tear through the colony.
So we make small talk for a bit until we hit backup being 5~ minutes out, and the Doctor is probably beginning to lose his patience with us as we don't want to go into the holding cells, and Bosche starting to lose his patience as well, racks a shell into his combat shotty and mistifies the Doctor's head sending the compound into alarm. From there, combat breaks out, through a series of fucked up rolls, the party manages to neutralize the loyalists in the hallway with a couple of close calls, a loyalist's gun jams giving Jack a glance at death. We then storm the control room, to find that the Scientist had retreated into the secure section of the compound, content to let the man rot, the Teamie, at Jack's suggestion, begins to weld the Scientist and his assistant in. Jack and Constantine circle around, to head off any attempts at getting out the other door to the secure area, and Jack with a well placed grenade turns two more loyalists into a nice chunky salsa with a well placed grenade. All this, is to the sound of cacophonous gunfire topside. As Bosche is heading up to the secondary door, Jack cleanly eliminates another cultist trying to get the drop on him. Over the intercom, the Scientist begins taunting the party. Bosche cracks the door, only to nearly get shot by someone from within, and the taunting continues. Bosche then cracks the door, throws a grenade in, killing the Assistant in the process, but not the Scientist. Halfway through, the gunfire up top slows, and going to investigate, Jack heads topside with Constantine, while Bosche and Teamie handle the Scientist. Jack and Constantine then discover that the Colony's livestock had been slaughtered, likely at the behest of The Scientist, and, after eliminating another loyalist and detaining, another link up with the Crane Crew. Having then learned from John, that the SEEDS THE COLONY NEEDS TO SURVIVE WERE STORED IN THE SECURE AREA WHERE THE SCIENTIST WAS, the party gets one of the Crane Crew to bring over some cutters so we can get into the vault area. The Scientist still taunting the party from the intercom laughs at us and states something cryptic about the party's ship. Constantine tries to raise our Android pilot on the radio to no avail, and fearing the worst, Jack bolts for the ship. Upon arrival, he discovers it has been shot up, the main drive thrusters were damaged beyond immediate repair, the hull punctured in several places, the servers inside ruined (of lesser consequence, but still bad regardless), and 2 of our 5 hypersleep pods were, eh, shot. Meanwhile, the party gets the vault open, executes the Scientist and his remaining lackey, and discovers that the only remaining plants in this colony, were up in hydroponics, which were not a lot.
So at the end of all this, we have a now doomed colony because we couldn't leave well enough alone. Makes me think of how people summon far gods to get boons only to get their wishes granted in the most horrendous ways. "Congrats kid, the cannibal cult is largely ousted, but now your colony is fucked."
