Richard the alternate reality low-tech Fighter has a safari ship which he uses to capture / hunt exotic creatures in the Thousand Spiders asteroid belt. The crew and his hired mercenaries ( a Dragonborn and a Dwarf ;; shrug ::) enter a region known as the Badsands, filled with sand, ooze, and water as well as asteroidal islands in search of a creature most like Horeshoe Crab, but fully enclosed and more insectoid.
The pilot was abusing Stim to stay alert while moving through this treacherous terrain and was relieved by the BioScience officer who suggested that they park and let the creatures come to them. It was during this time that the Dwarf spotted a glittering light outside. A quick telescopic enhancement revealed it to be a ship flying in a semi-random course. Boarding it required fancy piloting and a zipline (the Gnome used his Wings of Flying), and it quickly became apparent that a bloody struggle had transpired; a female crew member's broken body floated in the shifting space of the ship's hall.
TL;DR: Biological Research and Seeder ship from a foreign polity had gone to the trouble to alter creatures and plants to maximise their adaptability to the Badsands and was doing it as clandestinely as possible when attacked by Chimp-Dog-like pirates. A hot conflict forced the pirates to reconsider a return boarding and the intact crew of the foreign ship paid the PCs 1,000 Gold units to help repair and tow them in the direction of home. The trajectory will take the ship near creatures 3 and 6 on the safari list. The foreign BioScience crew helped the PCs with their Double Horseshoe Crab nab, with a mating pair.
Sunday Game-
Eleis the Aelbaan Frost Wizard was converted to her pre-Porphyry analogue, Elspeth Coldwell, a British archaeologist and anthropologist (covers for her magic use), in the Tunnels & Trolls 5.x / MSPE / Porphyry game system. Together with a female version of Phillip Marlowe from the back of the MSPE book, the two had been invited to Savage island where Kenneth Allard (Stormhaven product from FBInc.) had invited numerous guests for a symposium on how best to solve each other's problems and make the world a better place in the process. Among those attending were photojournalists covering war-torn regions, civilian commercial space explorers, archaeologists, nature documentarians, industrialists, extreme sports athletes, explorers, scientists in all fields of study, etc. Stormhaven's guests began to dwindle as emergency calls and alerts called each away in turn. Consulting social media and news outlets provided a pallet of reasons: economic crisis in the markets, arsonists burning the capitol of Kazakhstan, Sunni-Shiite reconciliation under a Jihadist banner violently sweeping up the Muslim world, and the discovery of a new, luminous object in the Solar system, among others. This linked up with the detective's current case of a series of seemingly unrelated murders where the victims had been killed in various classical-element-related fashions, as well as other occult components.
Those guests who remained were invited by Allard to join him globtrotting in search for answers to these crises. While aboard his high-tech dirigible, Elspeth discovered that an area of the ship not marked on the map was concealed from scrying, and brought the detective along to explore. Gaining entry to the room with the hidden door, the two entered a modern wizard's study and work room. Allard met them there and gave Elspeth a copy of Anam Cara so she could investigate the occult symbols in the Celtic work, as their first stop would be the British Isles. The archaeologist and detective are then asked by Allard to attend an esoteric play seemingly combining early forms of Theseus and the Minotaur, and Oedipus Rex and the Sphinx, starting at midnight. Interested int eh original manuscript, Coldwell contacts the translator and arranges to read her digital copy. As the pair leave in their hired cab, they are followed, but the tail gets into a traffic accident. A random hail storm ponds the cab, and Elspeth befuddles the driver to drive through. Around the time he wakes from the effect, they are out in the woods on roads covered with acorns and shrouded by the canopy of old oaks. A short but memorable drive further over a rickety bridge brings them to a colonial African manor under a dome of ancient trees completely blocking out the sky; a figure is seen at the open door, and we hold it there.
Those guests who remained were invited by Allard to join him globtrotting in search for answers to these crises. While aboard his high-tech dirigible, Elspeth discovered that an area of the ship not marked on the map was concealed from scrying, and brought the detective along to explore. Gaining entry to the room with the hidden door, the two entered a modern wizard's study and work room. Allard met them there and gave Elspeth a copy of Anam Cara so she could investigate the occult symbols in the Celtic work, as their first stop would be the British Isles. The archaeologist and detective are then asked by Allard to attend an esoteric play seemingly combining early forms of Theseus and the Minotaur, and Oedipus Rex and the Sphinx, starting at midnight. Interested int eh original manuscript, Coldwell contacts the translator and arranges to read her digital copy. As the pair leave in their hired cab, they are followed, but the tail gets into a traffic accident. A random hail storm ponds the cab, and Elspeth befuddles the driver to drive through. Around the time he wakes from the effect, they are out in the woods on roads covered with acorns and shrouded by the canopy of old oaks. A short but memorable drive further over a rickety bridge brings them to a colonial African manor under a dome of ancient trees completely blocking out the sky; a figure is seen at the open door, and we hold it there.
