Doomsayer Session 23

11 December 2022: Damasa Kovani makes a major discovery about the nature of the artifact, leading to much speculation. Further complications arise on Sura Sindo, including a growing labor movement, a suspicious Sindonese, and the arrival of the Empire. Somi Amersu licks an oyster.

Session 23 audio log

Previous: Doomsayer Session 22

Plot Summary
After their meeting with Vocho the Hutt, Efnir Kis, Nawah Masin, Nomi Amersu, Sekar Mirah, and Vesper Syl'tine went back to Rogue Ronto to meet Brawln and discuss their next steps toward getting Vocho the influence with the Mechanics' Guild that he wanted. None of the PCs really wanted to put Vocho in charge of anything, but liked the idea of organizing various merchants in Avernus into a guild of their own that could put pressure on the Mechanics' Guild while also having enough internal structure to control Vocho if needed. In keeping with some advice from Vic Dantor, they planned to arrange this in such a way that the new merchants' guild would seem like an organic development and present its initial demands after the PCs had left, since the Mechanics' Guild would likely not be happy about this and no one wanted them to know the PCs had a hand in it while the Mechanics' Guild had access to Rogue Ronto. Brawln and Nawah decided to go talk to the female clone trooper who seemed like an influential person, while Efnir and Nomi decided to make the rounds of Avernus and drum up support from whoever else they could find. Vesper, as usual, went off on his own, trying to find any other HoloNet connections in Avernus other than the overpriced one at the cafe. He learned that the Mechanics' Guild had their own heavily encrypted connection, and also found a somewhat flaky one at Vocho's hotel.

On her way out of the spaceport, Nomi ran into Talanis, who mentioned that the Mechanics' Guild had some free time and could get started on the requested modifications to Rogue Ronto if Nomi wanted. Since it seemed like the PCs would be sticking around Sura Sindo for a while, Nomi gave her the go-ahead and agreed to have Vic pay for it by trading his design and engineering expertise later on. She asked Talanis to prioritize installing a faster hyperdrive, followed by increasing the ship's carrying capacity, followed by installing a HoloNet array that would work in hyperspace. Talanis warned Nomi that each of these items would require several days to complete, and that Rogue Ronto would be largely inoperable while the Mechanics' Guild worked on it.

Efnir and Nomi made a good impression on the local businesspeople. One in particular, a Togruta named Curo Varnas who owned Avernus's open-air market, was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of forming a Merchants' Guild and agreed to rally support from all the smaller vendors he rented stalls to. Brawln and Nawah's meeting with the clone trooper (whose name was Sierra) also went well. Though she initially resisted the idea of working with Vocho, saying she thought he just wanted to make everyone subjects of the Hutts, Brawln and Nawah appealed to her desire to break the Mechanics' Guild's stranglehold on spaceport traffic and to have a say in how things went in Avernus. The PCs facilitated a meeting between Curo and Sierra and got the two of them to agree to work together to organize the new guild while also countering Vocho's influence. During this time, Efnir noticed that Nomi seemed different somehow in her interactions with others. They had a private conversation that resulted in the two of them checking into Vocho's hotel and staying there for a few nights, away from the others.

Meanwhile, on Damasa's island, Rhen and Vic were assisting Damasa in artifact research while Somi taught lightsaber skills to Green Coral and friends. (Vic was very envious, since apparently teaching seminars is what Skakoans do for fun, and gave Somi some pointers on how to make an effective presentation.) After some initial challenges related to how Somi (who couldn't swim) was going to handle herself underwater (she devised a way to signal Green Coral if she got into trouble so they would be able to rescue her), Green Coral took her to a deep spot in the lagoon where some other Sindonese had gathered. Apart from Green Coral (to whom lightsaber fighting did not come naturally), her most engaged student was an older Sindonese who Green Coral called Middle Current. Middle Current was obviously a skilled fighter already, and after practicing with Somi's training saber they conveyed to her that they wanted to try dual-wielding her real saber along with it. Somi reluctantly agreed. Middle Current executed some complicated maneuvers with their multiple limbs and ended up brandishing the real saber near Somi's neck, clearly conveying that they could have killed her if they'd wanted to. They then dropped both sabers and swam away.

Back at the shore, Somi asked Green Coral if they knew Middle Current. They said Middle Current was a leader in another community, that they were quite elderly ("should have laid an egg already"), and that since Green Coral had not told them the lesson was happening they must have known about it through something like the Foresee power. Damasa did not know Middle Current and denied ever training them, so they must have learned foresight from another Sindonese (which was something Damasa had encouraged her students to do). Somi was disturbed by Middle Current's aggressive attitude and worried that they might be falling to the dark side. She decided to suspend her open lightsaber lessons for now and focus on teaching Green Coral basic techniques in a more isolated area of the lagoon.

Rhen and Vic kept their attention focused on Damasa and the artifact, assisting her in any way they could over the course of three days. Damasa studied it painstakingly, trying to understand how each part of it fit together and what it did. After two days she felt confident that the artifact was not meant as a weapon, but could say little else about it - so she concluded there was no other choice but to take it apart. Using the Force, she carefully removed each component until she was left with a narrow central pillar made out of a black and white marbled material that had previously been concealed by the outer layers of the artifact (and which Vic's previous scans had not picked up). Rhen and Somi could both feel that it exuded dark side energy. Damasa, taken aback, said it was a sample she'd taken from the ocean floor of Sura Sindo on her first visit there, more than 20 years before - though she denied it had felt infused with the dark side then.

Damasa then tried to connect to the artifact with the Force, which she had never previously done. Moments later, she dropped it (Vic caught it) and recoiled. She said to Rhen and Vic before walking away: "You hung on to this thing because Firith asked, so I owe it to you not to do what I'd usually do and just make a decision for everyone. But if it were up to me, I would smash this thing with a rock. Get the rest of your friends back here. I only want to explain this once."

While waiting for the others to arrive, Vic studied the strange material at the artifact's center. It looked like stone, but could not be categorized as any type of stone he'd seen before (and Vic is a geologist). He asked Green Coral about it and learned that it was found mainly underwater, and common enough that the Sindonese built homes, fortifications, and other structures out of it. Vic asked Green Coral to take him to a place where he could get his own sample of it, and somewhat reluctantly walked along the ocean floor as Green Coral led him past the protective reef. During this journey, Vic was shocked to discover that his suit registered the water around him as a potentially breathable "atmosphere" - which, needless to say, was not how water usually behaved. With some effort and after a few dicey moments, he braved the ocean's unpredictable currents to chisel off a bit of the odd "stone" and bring it back to the surface (where Rhen and Somi confirmed that this, too, reeked of the dark side).

Finally, with everyone assembled on the island, Damasa announced that the PCs' original theory had largely been correct. The artifact appeared to unlock a backup of the Jedi Archives - everything in the Jedi Archives. Most of the PCs could immediately appreciate how potentially hazardous this was, since it meant the artifact stored not only useful information but records of dark side techniques and practices, the identities and locations of potentially surviving Jedi and/or Force users, various incriminating secrets that could destabilize governments or jeopardize the lives of innocents, and so much more. Moreover, it appeared that the price of creating such a powerful artifact had been the sacrifice of all of Firith's Force abilities, which were now being used to power the artifact (no wonder the clone troopers killed him so easily). Damasa clearly did not believe Firith had meant to do this or that he would have wanted it to happen, though some of the PCs (Nomi in particular) disagreed.

Though Damasa reiterated her belief that the artifact was too dangerous to be allowed to exist ("Let the past die," she said, "kill it if you have to"), the PCs weren't so sure and thought there was more to learn before making that call. Specifically, they were interested in the fact that the artifact (and/or Damasa herself?) seemed to actually be a key to wherever the archive backup was actually being stored, since Damasa and Vic both confirmed that there was no rational way for that much information to actually fit in the artifact itself. If that were the case, just destroying the artifact might not cut off access to the archives anyway, since an enterprising individual with enough skill in the Force and enough information to go on (someone like Lilikai Singan?) might still be able to find another way in.

In the course of much debate the PCs began to wonder whether the archive backup might actually be stored somewhere on Sura Sindo. Apart from the source of the central component and how profoundly weird the moon was in general, various bits of evidence pointed toward this as a possibility:
 * The artifact hadn't drawn energy from nearby power sources on Sura Sindo the way it did in other locations - maybe because it was physically closer to the storage location?
 * All of the Force-sensitive PCs had noticed the "structured" nature of Sura Sindo's energy in the Force - could some part of the moon have been engineered to store information?
 * The Sindonese themselves were all kinds of strange. Vic med-scanned Green Coral and discovered that their vital signs were incredibly out of whack compared to what any living being's should be like. Rhen also shared (with Damasa's permission) that Damasa had told her that she'd tried to bring a Sindonese apprentice (Deep Light) back to Coruscant with her after her first visit, but the apprentice had inexplicably died after leaving Sura Sindo. Was it possible that some sort of energy source on the moon was both sustaining the Sindonese and storing the archive's information?
 * When the PCs asked Damasa to check the archive backup for data about Sura Sindo, she found nothing about it at all - not even the reports that she herself had once filed. Someone with access to edit the Jedi Archives (a very short list of people, as far as Efnir knew) would have had to remove this after the fact. But who, and why?

As this discussion wore on, Somi decided to take matters into her own hands. She found one of Krune's hallucinogenic oysters on the beach and licked it, hoping to gain further insight into Sura Sindo's nature. What she got was another encounter with the same dark presence she'd sensed before, this time without any tentacles in between her and it. The presence regarded Somi hungrily and whispered to her, "You're going to fall, just like your master did." The others were somewhat bemused to find Somi freaking out and learn what she'd done (Damasa: "Yeah, those things will get you really high. That's why I only did it once. Well, twice.") but took this as another data point in favor of the growing "something weird and/or evil is happening on this moon" theory.

Further conversation was interrupted by the sudden sight of a large cargo ship flying low overhead, passing over the horizon and away from Avernus. The symbol of the Empire was embossed on its underside, and it was escorted by TIE fighters. Alarmed, Vic called 3D6 back at the spaceport and learned that the Empire had just landed there in large numbers and was occupying Avernus. Vic told 3D6 to stay put, and 3D6 reminded him that it had no other choice because Rogue Ronto was in dry dock. (It was at this exact moment that Nomi realized she never told Vic about any of this in or out of character and the game paused for uproarious laughter.) The PCs had no idea what the Empire wanted on Sura Sindo but, remembering what Talanis had said about scouts in the area, reasoned that they must have learned the moon's location through some other means and probably didn't know about the PCs' presence there - yet.

Not wanting to be spotted either on Avernus or Damasa's island, the PCs asked Green Coral whether they knew of any places underwater where gas-breathers could safely stay. Reluctantly and with difficulty due to the language barrier, Green Coral admitted that they knew of such a place, but that they would not venture there because it was the home of a dark and powerful deity, which Sindonese religion warned them to avoid at all costs. Naturally, this only made the PCs want to go there more. Green Coral flatly refused to have any part in this adventure and departed, leaving the PCs to pinpoint the location using Somi's Seek power. (Damasa, however, accepted the PCs' invitation to come along.) In order to travel underwater, Vic used all the spare parts he could find on the island to temporarily convert the rented catamaran into a submersible, which would work long enough to get them to their destination (but would require maintenance once there if they wanted it to bring them back). The PCs and Damasa all climbed aboard and departed together.

Things to Remember

 * The Togruta open-air market owner on Sura Sindo, Curo Varnas, should be considered Nomi's ally going forward (Triumph on Leadership).
 * Rogue Ronto will be in dry dock for at least a few more days. The improved hyperdrive, when it is installed, will decrease the hyperdrive's class by 1 and take up 1 hard point. Vic still owes Talanis labor in trade for this.
 * Vic rolled 1 threat while researching the rock from underwater
 * Efnir rolled 1 threat on Lore while trying to remember who has the power to expunge information from the Jedi archives
 * The PCs let it slip that Green Coral told them about what Damasa did with her lightsaber ("In my defense, it was a really deep trench. I'm not completely irresponsible.")
 * Damasa probably only licked the oyster five times (just be glad you didn't describe them as "clams" for the last three sessions before admitting this about your Very Serious NPC -EZ)

Next: Doomsayer Session 24