The Player, J, who has been running a Glassblood Aelbaan Warlock (/ Astrogator / Scout) from the beginning of the campaign offered two of the character's incarnations up to the Dryvv, in exchange for their help in destroying the L'Mori insectoids which had captured them due to a conflict she had inadvertently created with the planet (Astrogators have the Cosmic Sorcery special ability). The Dryvv were very clear that they were not going to attempt to do anything more than break the Warlock out in the exchange, and so the party was rescued in that regard. Meanwhile, Ry's gunslinger (who had been a henchman to a character whose Patron is a Dryvv Litch) calls on her, and she coincides with the rescue such that each group is responsible for their rescue. The group now are paradoxes, as the two incarnations the Dryvv took from J's character were ancestral, rather than future, and so now she is rewritten in reality as the Dryvv version of a Haelbean (Yirinn / Dryvv). Everyone's past has been rewritten except for the gunslinger's as he is technically the oldest character, having his origin in late IVth Era Autumn before the flight from Urutsk.
Next episode, the Strict Machine, AI leader of Ledha, kink-capital city-state, cannot account for a discrepancy in her time stamp, and calls the group to meet her android avatar. Their ship (roughly the same size as the Millennium Falcon) has had the forward Phasic Emitter replaced with an upgrade (which was why they were there before the L'Mori incident), and an NPC as part of their crew who hadn't been part before (she is the incarnate spirit of the gunslinger's former boss's intelligent sword of wounding, Lancet). Lancet ('Set) is wondering why some of them are still acting weird, asking about things that are obvious history from her perspective, etc. The group is examined by the AI, and it is determined that when the Aelbaan version of J's character had invested a point of True Magic into the AI, that accounted for the added picosecond on the time stamp. Feeling very generous, the Strict Machine asked the group to fly a shipment of high tech arrows to an agriplex who had ordered them months prior. Coincidentally, due to atmospheric disturbance, the agriplex was unreachable.
The Dryvv-Yirinn Warlock (etc.) plotted the fastest course to the agriplex, and the cyborg pilot flew to the sagitta of its arc and spotted a planetoid incredibly close to the planet. Moreover, craft were flying from the planetoid and attacking the agriplex, and then returning to the planetoid in some sort of continuous operation. Thriceover, a faint, garbled, alien broadcast was detected behind the paletoid, and it was determined to be Imperial QinqNol. The message was on repeat, and amounted to a scout informing its group that the planetoid had been spotted. The gunslinger knew of these planetoids, having their origin in a previous World Age, where they formed on the homeworld (then, Porphyry) as small balls of matter, and collected living bits and animals, known as Wekanrot, before they left the planet for space. With over 14k years between Porphyry and Urutsk, this Wekanrot's presence so far out, let alone so close to the massive desert planet Arcsend, is peculiar to be certain.
The planetoid attacked the ship with a d11 Tractor Beam, and the d15 ship was able to break free in a few rounds of contested rolls. The crew land the ship, attack two alien shuttles on a landing approach, and disembark to melee the retiloid aliens; the shuttles are destroyed. Ry's Pswordlock character is pretty powerful at this point, and is PKing aliens about, killing each time. The aliens are only using stunners, and are clearly absconding with personnel and other life forms from the agriplex and attempting to return to the planetoid. The Warlock superpowers the agriplex' cannon which is firing at the planetoid, and unlike its own shots, this one penetrates the thick ionising atmosphere, apparently doing the harm the 'plex wanted to achieve. Doc was only Dazed by a Stunner hit, but wouldn't shake it off for another 4 Minutes game time.
We held it there.
If my cobbled-together maths are correct, the planetoid has ~0.17 gravity. The Tractor-beam technology applied as an atmospheric forcefield would retain 1 atmosphere pressure, and the ionisation observed when the agriplex cannon was firing at it was energy dissipation on the field surface. The higher density of the upper atmosphere is due to to the reduced gravity indexing with the field, and acts as a screen against radiation. It suggests that as the Wekanrot (planetoid) approaches a star, its surface temperature climbs rapidly under greenhouse conditions. As the Wekanrot grows, this greenhouse effect will lessen, as the volume of cooler air (not being heated on the opposite side) will increase and the relative density of the upper atmosphere will decrease at the same ratio as it is dispersed in a greater volume of atmosphere. A Wekanrot's growth rate versus its approach distance to the star must remain in balance if the ecosystem is to remain viable.
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