Session 18 (8 September 2023)

Location: Aboard the Dawnstar, in orbit around the ringed gas giant Karvor IX in the Lansote system (Far Home 1329)

Date: 109-5600

Travellers: Griff Kodiak, Torka Jax, Ada Windsor, Jacobe Kyman, and Sasha Danlami

NPC: RG10-4BXUR general service robot ("Archie")

With Archie powered down and securely locked inside the low passage compartment, you continue your sweep of the Dawnstar. Jacobe and Sasha head to the bridge where Sasha transmits a suitably vague reply to the incoming patrol cruiser, saying only that you are investigating an unusual situation. Jac attempts a perfunctory clean-up of the grisly spatters adorning the pilot's station and undertakes a more thorough investigation of the ship's maneuvering capabilities. Torka eventually heads there as well, focusing his efforts on the ruined ship's computer. He manages to retrieves some memory storage fragments that may, with laborious investigation, reveal more details about what happened here. Having done this, he sets to programming some drones to assist in searching the ship.

Meanwhile, Ada and Griff continue with their old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground sweep, weapons at the ready. Making your way down the tween-deck ladders, you find yourself in the vast open space of the cargo bay. You move carefully amongst the stacked containers, watching your corners and sixes. Sealed up inside your pressurized combat armour, you're not entirely sure how silent you're being, but caution seems warranted: the killer could be anywhere. You open a door on the port side of the bay and find yourselves in an engineering section. It's empty.

Meanwhile, Sasha elects to leave Torka and Jax on the bridge and join in the sweep. As she passes the low-passage compartment on her way to the shaft, she notes that the door is open. Weapon in hand, she moves in and confirms her fear: Archie is, inexplicably, gone. Wasn't he turned off? And how did a general service droid learn to hack electronic locks?

Once Sasha's warning comes over the comms, you grip your weapons a bit more tightly. Jac and Torka head for the forward tween-deck ladders, emerging onto a catwalk overlooking a forward section of the cargo bay. Below they see a bizarre sight: a large cage (at least 8 metres to a side and almost as tall) in the centre of the deck. The floor inside appears to be stained with grease, oil, and other fluids. It's a terrible waste of valuable cargo space ....

Suddenly Griff spots Archie making his way across the cargo bay, having apparently descended in a lift. He's heading for a door directly opposite the room you're in. Alerting the others, Griff fires a burst from his gauss rifle, catching the robot squarely in the back and staggering him. Undeterred, Archie makes it to the door, opens it, and enters what is evidently a starboard engineering section similar to the one you're in. As you approach, he closes the door behind himself. Ada decides to exit the ship via a hatch in the port engineering section, spacewalk around the Dawnstar's stern, and enter a similar hatch in the starboard engineering section, hoping thus to catch RG10 in a pincer movement. Some skilled zero-G maneuvering makes this trip a lot faster than it might normally take! Archie is soon to be surrounded.

Sasha joins Griff at the cargo bay door; he provides cover while she overrides the lock. The iris valve swishes open and you see Archie seated at the engineering control panels, his thick metal fingers stabbing swiftly at various buttons and switches. Another shot from the gauss rifle catches him in the side and exposes his inner machinery. Sparks flying, he slumps over the controls. His head swivels to regard you and he speaks his final words even as his voice circuits fail: "I just wanted to be free ...."  Sasha moves in and, peeling back the maintenance cover on the back of his "head", sees an astonishingly sophisticated brain inside. Determined to prevent a second awakening, she gives it a serious bashing with a spanner. A glance at the engineering station shows that Archie was trying to trigger a catastrophic explosion in the fusion reactor.

Robots fighting

The pieces of the mystery begin to fall into place as you complete your search of the ship. Near the cage in the cargo bay you find a veritable armory of bladed weapons: swords, axes, and a bewildering variety of polearms. On one rack is a still-bloodied cutlass. Under the captain's bed you find a box containing a standard-model robot brain — evidently it’s what was inside RG10 when it shipped from the factory. In her desk are other clues: a notebook containing records of gambling which Jac plausibly interprets as showing many months of wins and losses followed by a very recent streak of steady, sometimes spectacular, gains. Finally, a handheld camera contains extensive footage of cage fights onboard the Dawnstar: robot vs robot and sometimes robot vs xenofauna. RG10 is visible in many places, fighting with fists and weapons against numerous foes. You deduce that, in an effort to increase her robot's victories (and thereby her earnings) from this disreputable pastime, the Dawnstar's captain replaced Archie's factory brain with an experimental model allowing advanced intelligence... of a sort. Clearly her scheme had worked — at least until Archie rebelled against the degrading servitude he was forced to endure. What was he planning at the end — to destroy the Dawnstar and the Dejah Thoris? Did he hope to throw himself into space before the reactor failure and await rescue, whenever it came? What kind of existence did he hope for? It seems you may never know his final thoughts.

It remains for you to decide what you will do with this mess. Will you await the arrival of the patrol cruiser in two days? Will you tell the authorities everything, or is there something you wish to hold back? Will you take anything from the Dawnstar? 

Whatever happens, you'll need some hydrogen before you can jump again. The great rings of the gas giant Karvor IX dominate the view as you peer out of the portholes and reflect on the tragedy that unfolded aboard this ship.

Image credits: Photograph of robots fighting from oregonlive.com article about Robot Combat League tv show on SyFy.