Watch us play this session on YouTube at https://youtu.be/U5B3EFZHLXI.

The crew left the collapsed Securitech office behind and ventured to the edge of the earth mote where Drez and Zaleria waited for them in the hovering Raza. Drez tried to land the ship but lost control. Wesley quickly accessed the ship’s flight controls remotely and corrected its trajectory before it crashed into the earth mote.

Once on board, the PCs stopped to ponder their next destination. They decided to visit the House of Renewal before heading to the Temple Found. Somehow they also decided the ship needed an Artificial Intelligence and Wesley worked on his “special projects” during the quick trip to the House of Renewal. In route, they also took a short rest.

The external portions of the House of Renewal reminded Nuil of medical facilities from her homeworld. As they approached, Wesley sent Canary to scout the area. Wreckage and ruins had crashed down around much of the building which caused damage and portions of the building to collapse around the edges. Switch inspected the front doors, found they were not locked and heard some rustling noises on the other side of the doors.

They entered and found themselves in a ruined waiting room. Charcoal drawings covered the walls and two kish warriors were loitering inside. The warriors were startled by the PCs and drew their weapons in alarm. Quick thinking, Ryder intervened and talked the warriors down from a fight. His approach worked and bloodshed was avoided.

Nuil mentioned Tyzael which caused tensions to rise again. When last they spoke with Hoyfeq, Tyzael was outcast and they had orders to attack her and her people on sight. Ryder tried to reason with the warriors one last time and managed to talk them down once and for all. Wisdom prevailed. One of them let it slip they had been waiting for too long. The other told him to hush.

Intrigued, Ryder pressed and offered the PC’s help. The warriors considered his words and confess they had come to the House of Renewal with two of their friends who were injured in the battle with the Cult of the Devourer. Their friends had gone into the holy site and if worthy, they would be healed. Nuil asked what the rules of the site were. The lead warrior explained that if the individual meditated before entering the inner temple and found balance, the ancestors would deem them worthy and heal them. Ryder was confident his team would be found worthy and could help. He then eased the transition for Cypher to enter the room (having become fully aware of the effect ysoki had on the locals after their encounter with the cultists). Nuil asked the names of their friends and was told the two who went inside were Hien and Tzuyu.

The PCs searched the room for any systems to access (functioning or otherwise) but found nothing of use. The building was lit but there was no network connectivity. However, they found they could interact to a limited extent with the powered systems around them.

Based on the descriptions of the effects of the House of Renewal by the warriors, Nuil recalled similar technologies on her homeworld but noted they were rare and expensive. She asked the warriors what to do with their friends when the group found them. They answer as expected but they mention an ill fate which sounded suspicious to the group. The warriors explained if their friends were unworthy they would be Noshku, a word which only Nuil could translate as similar to “rebuilt.”

Drez opened the door into the next area and found a short hallway mostly blocked by the collapsed ceiling and junk. Additional doors exited the hallway to the north and south. Above the junk, Wesley noticed some air duct connected to the rest of the facility. He decided to send the drone forward to scout further inside. He managed to navigate the tight duct system and found a darkened room. Canary picked up low levels of radiation. He looked around for a bit before movement flashed across the camera. He quickly retreated.

Through the northern door, the PCs found a thoroughly scavenged storage room. Inside they found a techno-magic hybrid device which Nuil identified as an Mk II Ability Crystal.

Through the southern door, they found a “receptionist’s area” with another door which led south. There was some paperwork left in the room but little of value to them.

In the next area, they found lockers covered in more charcoal drawings. Wesley suspected they were close to the area where he had seen movement in the darkness and he warned Drez to be careful. The room looked promising for loot but they quickly realized the room had already been looted.

Drez approached the pile of junk in the southeast corner. A pylon was rigged to impale the next person who approached too closely. Drez spotted the attack at the last second and rolled with it but still took 70 points of damage when it struck him. Fortunately, the soldier had 72 points of stamina. The wind was knocked from his body but he survived. The blow would have killed almost anyone else in the crew. The group took a short rest so Drez could recover. He had never been struck so hard in his life before.

Recovered from the trap they went through the door Wesley suspected led into the dark room. The crew planned for a bit before they decided for Wesley to overload the lights in the room when they opened the door. Wesley hacked the lights, Drez opened the door, and the lights suddenly grew in intensity and then exploded. There were three creatures inside and two of them looked up at the lights and were dazzled by Wesley’s attack.

[[ The battle begins at the 1 hour 18 minutes 30-second mark of the video. ]]

Drez charged past the first “rebuilt” kish and it smashed him with a tentacle as he went by. The blow was nothing compared to the one he just suffered and he shrugged it off. The vesk soldier spun and slashed through the creature’s side with his doshko.

Switch used the opening made by Drez, swept past the first rebuilt, and attacked the second one on the far side of the room. He slammed his weapon into the creature and it wailed on him in return, exchanging blows. The android taunted the vesk with his prowess.

Wesley moved TIM-X into flank the closest rebuilt with Drez and blasted the creature with his projectile weapons. The bullets ripped through the monster and damaged it but the pain of the attack did not seem to register.

Ryder fired on the closest target and encouraged his crew, “Get ’em!”

The third rebuilt closed with Switch and thumped him with a tentacle. Despite being dazzled, the creature still seemed capable of landing attacks against the threatening PCs.

Cypher maintained a safe distance outside the entrance and conjured his holograms to trick attack the closest target. He blasted the creature, knocked it off target and burned away its flesh. Cypher taunted both soldiers having demonstrated his superior operative abilities.

Nuil moved over just enough to see the target Cypher had blasted and summoned her mystic powers. Twin missiles of magic leapt from her hand and slammed into the creature. Under the combined onslaught of multiple attackers, the first rebuilt collapsed and decomposed in a slithering pile of goo and body parts.

Drez charged one of the remaining rebuilt. He was determined to move the creature aware from Switch who Drez knew was quite proficient at cleave attacks. He managed to move the unwieldy beast 5 feet but not far enough to clear Switch’s threat range.

Switch chuckled and cleaved the two adjacent rebuilt, doing more damage than the operative. He quickly taunted Cypher with HIS superior combat skills.

Wesley sent TIM-X to charge the closest rebuilt and yelled, “Flash him!” The combat drone rushed the monster and went crazy. It was a dirty trick but the chaos was lost on the mindless creature. It was not hindered by the automaton but he was taunted by it. The creature turned on the drone. Wesley used the distraction to fire his pistol and tore into the taunted monster.

Ryder moved to fire on the creatures and was also distracted by TIM-X’s display. The envoy fired wide and filled the air with a spray of bullets.

One of the rebuilt tried to back away from the soldiers but Switch clipped its leg. His quick reaction forced the creature to stay where it was and Drez slashed through it with his doshko.

The second rebuilt smashed two tentacles down into TIM-X and drone components went flying all over the place.

New holograms danced through the air but did not distract the rebuilt this time. TIM-X still held the monster’s attention and Cypher missed with he fired his laser pistol.

Nuil stood her ground and conjured a more powerful barrage of three magic missiles and slammed into the creature on which the PCs were focusing their attention. Her magic pummeled the beast but this time the rebuilt was not destroyed by her final attack.

Drez knew the creature could not have much more left in it and stepped into a powerful swing of his doshko and slashed through it. It crumbled into a second pile of goo.

Switch launched a full attack on the sole remaining rebuilt and destroyed it.

The battle ended, the PCs wondered if these creatures were the kish who had been brought here. Nuil examined the remains and determined there was enough mass here to account for three kish.

Now they had time to examine the room in earnest and found a circular metal plate surrounded by stone statues engraved with the holy symbol of Talavet. Nuil recognized this as a base for the kind of healing technology she remembered from her homeworld.

Wesley dismantled the plate and claimed 29 UBPs from the salvage.

Nuil cringed but wondered if she should try to claim the Bio UBPs from the fallen rebuilt. She realized at the last moment their bodies were tainted. In the end, she decided to collect the “volatile” biological material, 212 Bio UBPs with the keyword “mutation.” These should be tracked separately from the other Bio UBPs as Tainted Bio UBPs.

Seeing the damage to TIM-X, Nuil cast Make Whole and repaired 22 points of damage to the drone.

They studied the statues briefly and Cypher realized they represented the ancestors judging those who passed through the chamber.

Drez opened a door in the north wall and found the remaining hallway on the other side of the collapsed ceiling. The hallway had three doors leading north and one door to the east of them leading south.

They checked the first door and found a room which had not been entered in some time. Scavenging the room they found 3 mk III serums of healing.

Through the second door, they found a room similar to the first one but this chamber had been ransacked already.

Through the third door, they found a partially collapsed room with thick dust on the floor. In the dust, there were heavy footprints. They examined them and realized normal footprints had entered the room and something fell in the corner. Then the footprints leading out were much different than the ones leading in. A charcoal drawing was left on the wall by where the figure collapsed. It was a farewell letter from one of the two kish who had come here and been transformed into Noshko.

Cypher quote after rolling a crit on his third (or fourth) Culture check in a row: “I wrote a book about Istamak and its primitive screwheads!”

Amidst the kish’s belongings, they found a masterwork kish battle axe and an ancient kishaleen jet pack (armor upgrade, claimed by Wesley). Nuil noted scraps of clothing which matched scraps of clothing on the rebuilt they had encountered earlier.

The last door was stuck. Nuil summoned her magic again and cast “Knock.” The door popped open safely. Inside, the group found a capsule attached to a console. Nuil recognized it as a Maltur Chamber of Renewal. Offerings like one would found on an altar were laid all across the floor in front of the capsule. Nuil checked the console and realized it was definitely malfunctioning. No matter who stepped inside the chamber, there was a 25% chance they would be mutated into a rebuilt. The problem was found in one of the emitters inside the chamber which would malfunction and bath the patient inside in high levels of radiation which would cause the mutation.

The techies set about repairing the chamber and successfully restored its functions in roughly an hour. They sift through the console’s systems and find it was configured primarily for Kishaleen biology but they find hundreds of species listed in the system including lamertians AND ysoki. The entry for the ysoki indicates they were also an engineered species created by the Maltur. Nuil downloaded all of the data. Everyone accepted this revelation immediately because “how else would rats suddenly walk on two legs?” Cypher was offended.

However, he was more occupied with the potential profits of the chamber of renewal. In a corner, he found a Kishaleen datapad and reconfigured it for his own purposes. It was a Tier 5 computer.

There was one last door in the south wall which led to a mostly collapsed room filled with rubble and junk.

The PCs returned to the warriors who waited at the entrance. Ryder informed them he had communed with their goddess and garnered the favor of their ancestors. No longer would the chamber harm their people and was renamed the Chamber of Nuil now. Ryder instructed the warriors to return to Hoyfeq to tell the chieftain the PCs had retrieved the “magic password” and were on their way to the Temple Found.

As they stepped outside a laser blast hits Cypher and cuts through his shoulder. The PCs had found Li Shao Sho…

END OF SESSION