An Artist's Rendition of a "Hot Jupiter,"
This session consisted of negotiation with The Confederation of Trust (a heretical human/alien client state of the Tau with a socialist/Star Trekian attitude towards cooperation and a slow and sustainable attitude towards expansion), tense silent running to slip past pirate patrols to reach a tomb world, cowing pirates with threats of force, hearing a dangerous offer from pirates and raiding a Mind Mold tomb.
Part 1: The Explorers (Cornelius, Alkron, Avixis, Felix Fortunato, Szaak Zero, and Aganamor) began the session in negotiations with Captain Nwabudike Morgan of the Confederation of Trust, with his alien allies the Rexgar and Wernau present as well. Essentially, the Explorera came seeking the advanced translator devices that these people used. There was a discussion of just pulling one from a dead crewman, but propriety won out, and the group ended up traveling to the planet Trust, apparent capital and logistical center of this alliance.
In the end, the explorers received overwhelming amounts of data, crates of outdated PDAs with translation software intact (and the admiration of weirdo old-school tech nerds on Trust), and a number of translator implants. While visiting Trust, they discreetly scanned the Trust Station, a massive orbital facility, finding out about the defensive capabilities, and a few vulnerabilities. As part of this exchange, the explorers provided a highly sanitized account of Imperial history.
Part 2: The Crew jumped a short distance (a week or so) to the actual star system containing the tomb world and found 3 terrestrial worlds, 2 saturnian gas-giants, and one hot jupiter (further out than most such failed stars would be). As they had been warned, there was a pirate base, and a warning satellite in system, forbidding approach to the tomb world itself (a tidally locked moon of the hot-jupiter). After careful scanning and listening to pirate transmissions with the help of the translation PDAs, the explorers learned rough patrol routes and numbers of foes. With that, they made a plan to set a course, accelerate as much as needed, and then run completely silent on just momentum, shutting off nonessential power and engines in order to merely appear to be a 5 km long hunk of metal to any scanners.
After some excellent piloting and planning, this worked almost perfectly, with the ship coming within short range (50,000 km or so of the moon), and hours away from the pirate patrols before bringing the ship back on line, sending a landing party, and getting in contact with the pirates. With a little bit of well-backed up intimidation, the pirates backed down and did not approach during the landing. Instead, they offered the explorers information and a powerful lance-like weapon of alien design in exchange for assistance in destroying Trust Station and ruining the logistical capabilities of the Confederation of Trust.
Part 3: While the group mulled over this offer, they made a landing on the Tomb World itself, a badly nuked little world with plains of glass and atmosphere clinging to little valleys full of post-nuclear/radiation blasted life. After dealing with some local resistance, the group commenced scanning and digging, eventually finding a shaft through the rock leading to a bunker. After sacrificing a servitor to test the defenses, they broke through and made their way into the bunker. There, they were met with robotic guardians with plasma weapons. The group prevailed, but several elite troopers were killed, and Avixis came close to his end after 2 consecutive point blank headshots with a plasma weapon.
With the security bots taken out, the explorers were able to extract their precious cargo, leaving them with one question... What's next?
