The Robot Factory Perplexity

Re-cap of sessions 73 through 75 played on 5, 12 and 19 September 2025.

Location: Lon Marin, mainworld of the Tharsen-Lon Marin system (Halcyon 2014)

Dates: 056–5601 to 060-5601

Your arrival at Lon Marin's class-B starport is excellently timed, for the Dejah Thoris's monthly maintenance is at hand. Even after covering those costs in addition to the monthly mortgage payment, you find yourselves sitting on a cool three million credits, thanks to your various successful ventures in the Randin system. Naturally your thoughts turn to what you might spend these sums on, with various ship upgrades foremost in your minds. Eventually a consensus forms around the idea of installing an advanced electronics suite (comms and sensors) costing MCr2. The ideal place to do this would be at the class-A starport at Denirad (Halcyon 2212), three parsecs distant.

But there's a more immediate concern that occupies you at the moment. En route to the Lon Marin downport, you'd enjoyed cruising through the atmosphere over many thousands of kilometres, admiring the lush vegetation of the planet's land masses and the teeming life of its water oceans. At one point, while flying over a large uninhabited island more than 2,000 km in length, your comms picked up a faint automated SOS signal. Added to the standard message was a voice recording: "Please save my children."

Intrigued, you circle back to hover over the dense jungle while radioing starport officials about the signal. Their reply: continue on your landing vector and ignore the SOS. They claim there's nothing there and the automated signal is likely left over from a holovid crew that used the site as a filming location years ago. Your own sensors, however, reveal that beneath the jungle canopy is some kind of industrial facility of considerable extent, now overgrown with flora after many years of neglect. Clearly the starport officials are covering something up. Seeing no signs of life and detecting no other transmissions, you decide to continue to the downport for the time being.

Lon Marin, mainworld of the Tharsen-Lon Marin system
Source: travellermap.com

Once berthed, you set about investigating the mystery. A thorough search through Library Data reveals that about fifty years ago a company called Sladek Datacorp set up an experimental robot factory at the site where scientists sought to develop terraforming drones of various kinds that would work mostly autonomously, thus speeding up the process whereby the agricultural potential of garden worlds could be unlocked. Although it was launched with much fanfare, the venture was shuttered within eighteen months, with personnel quickly transferred offworld and the site abandoned. What's more, the most easily accessible public records had been scrubbed to conceal any mention of the facility. It was absent on government maps and databases. Only your digging beyond the surface had revealed bits of the story. And the part that really got your attention was this: Sladek Datacorp was a subsidiary of Cloudbank, the megacorp whose named appeared next to a microscopic serial number printed on the brain tissue of your synthetic friend, Captain Nika Jarumi. Could the facility hold clues to what Cloudbank was researching there? Could it shed light on the mysteries surrounding Jarumi?

While some of you are exploring these records, Sasha takes a different tack: she makes contact with an official at the starport, Lieutenant Kapetini Osekra, and sets up a blind date with him. Serendipitously, it turns out that Osekra is a lonely guy who is a more than happy to talk about his planet with an exotic offworlder; it's not difficult to pump him for information. He confirms that his government has actively covered up the facility's existence, but he doesn't know why. All of it happened before he was born. He does reveal, however, that your news of an SOS signal has caused some concern in the highest circles; a military expedition is being organized to investigate. It's due to depart shortly, within the next 24 hours. 

You have no doubt that if the Lon Marin forces get there first, they'll only continue to cover up what Cloudbank was doing. You decide that you need to get there first.

Using the pretense of a hunting safari to the western end of the uninhabited island, thousands of kilometres from the starport and capital, you land the Dejah Thoris in a clearing and fly your air/raft at maximum speed (400 kph) to the facility's location. Happily for you, the weather is fine and appears likely to continue so. Using drones and grav belts to reconnoitre, you quickly determine that, while the facility has clearly collapsed into ruin over the decades, there are signs of occupation — not by humans, but by robots. In fact, two of them are squabbling with each other at the front gate of the compound. One, a dog-sized quadrupedal bot with a circular buzz saw, seems agitated about a recent incursion by humans: "If I see 'em again, I'll cut 'em up!" The other, a small wheeled drone, is far more diffident, even fearful. What strikes you most is that they have distinct personalities: these are not your standard factory robots.

The "guards" challenge you when you approach but are not hostile: they clearly distinguish between you and a different group of humans who, they allege, used violence against some of their fellow bots. "Buzz" agrees to take you to their leader, whom they call "Father." (Confusingly, the other guard, "Wheels," seems to refer to this same person as "Mother.") 

As Buzz escorts you to the facility's control centre, you pass by numerous ruined buildings: broken windows, collapsed roofs, sagging doors. Here and there you see other robots of various kinds, many in serious states of disrepair. Others seem lethargic, perhaps due to low battery levels. The "children" do not seem alright to you: they appear anxious and worried.

"Father/Mother" turns out to be a mainframe Model-4 computer, considerably more advanced than the one on the Dejah Thoris. They explain that they were recently awakened from a long slumber when someone engaged the facility's emergency backup generators. This provided enough power to re-activate many of their "children," robots produced decades ago when the facility was in operation, but the generators will soon fail. Father/Mother wants you to repair and restart the nearby fusion reactor to ensure both their and their children's survival. You explain that it won't matter: outsiders are coming, probably to make sure that the facility is shut down for good. You offer instead to evacuate Father/Mother and the robots. In return, you want to know about Cloudbank.

A deal is struck. Father/Mother gathers their progeny: the hale ones assist the injured in moving to the control centre. There, the infirm bots have their consciousnesses downloaded into Father/Mother's databanks. A hulking bipedal cargo robot nicknamed Heavy will carry the mainframe onto your ship when the time comes.  While this is happening, you have another task: to secure the release of an advanced medical droid, Doctor H0U-53, from a party of human scavengers who have taken it hostage and are holding it in a building on the eastern edge of the facility. 

With Griff set up in a sniper position on a nearby rooftop, Torka and Nogudnyk stealthily approach the scavengers' position. You discover that four of them are holed up on the third floor of the old hab unit, where they've created crude defensive barricades. They seem nervous and desperate. Poor H0U-53 is trussed up in their midst, a helpless prisoner. You create artificial sounds to frighten them (the hoots and roars of dangerous megafauna) and Nogudnky telempathically plays upon their fears and anxieties. But you cannot dislodge them: it seems they are deathly afraid of something outside. Finally, you opt for shock and awe, throwing smoke and stun grenades and following with a charge. Things nearly go awry when one smoke grenade is fumbled, but in the end you subdue them. You learn that they were attacked by a ferocious six-legged robot in a building to the north; its armour resisted their weapons and it dragged away and dismembered a fifth member of their group as it he were prey. Believing that all robots were hostile, they subsequently shot at any they saw as they retreated here. Buzz helpfully explains that in truth one of the "children" has indeed gone mad, believing itself to be a tiger, and now prowls about the fusion reactor as if it were its lair. You decide that it is best left alone. You free H0U-53 and send the scavengers packing; they are only too happy to be quit of this place.

Back at the control centre, you deliver H0U-53 to a grateful Father/Mother, who apologizes for not telling you about the "tiger" beforehand; had you agreed to restart the fusion reactor, they say, they would have given you an appropriate warning.

It's time to move. With Heavy bearing the cumbersome mainframe, followed by Buzz, Wheels, H0U-53 and three other hale droids, you move into the jungle to a location where the Dejah Thoris can land. By the time everyone is safely loaded on board and you're skimming over the ocean waves toward the starport, your sensors pick up signs of the incoming government ships. You've escaped just in time.