Starfinder : From On High
Chronicles of a 1st-level campaign
Chronicles of a 1st-level campaign
The Story So Far : Chapter One
Levels 1-2
A free trader's goal should be simple : get a crew, get cargo, keep flying. But when an eccentric Zaalan vlogger and medical officer, Dr Qalli, vanishes from Embassy Station, Starlyft charter the crew of the cargo vessel Endeavour to investigate. Tensions run high between the Coalition and Qalli's Zaalan rebels, and the fate of a world soon hangs in the balance.
Levels 1-2
A free trader's goal should be simple : get a crew, get cargo, keep flying. But when an eccentric Zaalan vlogger and medical officer, Dr Qalli, vanishes from Embassy Station, Starlyft charter the crew of the cargo vessel Endeavour to investigate. Tensions run high between the Coalition and Qalli's Zaalan rebels, and the fate of a world soon hangs in the balance.
From On High (1X01)
Dr Qalli is something of an extranet celebrity. She is young and eccentric, yet her medical skills are of the highest caliber. Alongside her duties, she runs a vlog documenting her struggle as a Bogwynne activist fighting an uphill battle just to keep her defeatist and splintered civilization from giving up on the skies. After a series of vids calling out HexoGeni on jacking up prices of life-saving drugs that could cure a plague sweeping Zaalan worlds, Dr Qalli disseapears.
A Starlyft crew is initially contracted and assembled to investigate and fly to Dr Qalli's rescue, but they have not given any signs of activity in days. Their backup, Captain Davi of the KSS Endeavour, is a trader in bulk materials, but rising costs and steep competition have left her down to her last credit. She is joined by Starlyft operatives Kil Naykin and Khari Sari in cracking this mystery.
Together, they investigate the doctor's practice. Eventually, they find a trail of clues leading to a listening post in deep space, close to Embassy.
Dr Qalli is something of an extranet celebrity. She is young and eccentric, yet her medical skills are of the highest caliber. Alongside her duties, she runs a vlog documenting her struggle as a Bogwynne activist fighting an uphill battle just to keep her defeatist and splintered civilization from giving up on the skies. After a series of vids calling out HexoGeni on jacking up prices of life-saving drugs that could cure a plague sweeping Zaalan worlds, Dr Qalli disseapears.
A Starlyft crew is initially contracted and assembled to investigate and fly to Dr Qalli's rescue, but they have not given any signs of activity in days. Their backup, Captain Davi of the KSS Endeavour, is a trader in bulk materials, but rising costs and steep competition have left her down to her last credit. She is joined by Starlyft operatives Kil Naykin and Khari Sari in cracking this mystery.
Together, they investigate the doctor's practice. Eventually, they find a trail of clues leading to a listening post in deep space, close to Embassy.
Shadows of Azim (1X02)
The Endeavour has tracked the Doctor's signal to Listening Post WS-44. Upon their arrival, they find the derelict vessel Lyaestra's Bounty - a Kalimshari runabout presumed to be the earlier Starlyft operatives' flagship. Investigating the Listening Post, the crew of the Endeavour finds the missing operatives, trapped behind a steel door and extremely protective of their contract. Nonetheless, Khari convinces everyone to work together.
The technical obstacles are difficult to tackle, but the two crews eventually succeed. They pry the steel door open and enter the facility's control room...To their surprise, all that's left is a singing robot and a lot of data belonging to the doctor.
The rescue teams are late. After having stalled the first crew, Dr Qalli had left on an emergency shuttle. Data on the Listening Post hints that she boarded a Hhrot transport bound for the Gorass system. The Bounty's crew abandon the chase, too battered to go on, leaving the Endeavour to handle the contract alone...
The Endeavour has tracked the Doctor's signal to Listening Post WS-44. Upon their arrival, they find the derelict vessel Lyaestra's Bounty - a Kalimshari runabout presumed to be the earlier Starlyft operatives' flagship. Investigating the Listening Post, the crew of the Endeavour finds the missing operatives, trapped behind a steel door and extremely protective of their contract. Nonetheless, Khari convinces everyone to work together.
The technical obstacles are difficult to tackle, but the two crews eventually succeed. They pry the steel door open and enter the facility's control room...To their surprise, all that's left is a singing robot and a lot of data belonging to the doctor.
The rescue teams are late. After having stalled the first crew, Dr Qalli had left on an emergency shuttle. Data on the Listening Post hints that she boarded a Hhrot transport bound for the Gorass system. The Bounty's crew abandon the chase, too battered to go on, leaving the Endeavour to handle the contract alone...
What Angel Wakes Me (1X03-1X04)
The Endeavour lands on the surface of Gorass-II, a world on the fringes of the Hhrot Dominion, a prime target for their future and inevitable expansion. Amongst its blue forests and purple seas, they track the transport's signal and oversee several scans before they triangulate the Doctor's likeliest location. As a superheated storm looms, the crew prepares for a lengthy expedition in a cave complex they suspect of being Dr Qalli's refuge.
On their way, they are ambushed by Hhrot patrols. Members of a punitive squadron are tasked with guarding the complex, but after a short fight, they are defeate and taken prisoners. More trouble awaits when wild beasts stir within the complex to spit acid fire at the party. Battered and exhausted, the crew must rest. Kil Khari surmises that the Doctor must be taken hostage deeper inside; Naykin uses her diplomatic wit to defuse a further situation and gain access to the heart of the complex.
They meet with the leader of the platoon, Jabcox, who is overseeing a punitive survey platoon. He is not particularly friendly, even if he is grateful that the intruders spared his men's lives. Naykin presses him on, convinced that he is hiding something. As the situation becomes tense, Khari manages to hold Jabcox hostage. A bloody fight is only averted when a shadowy figure emerges from the complex to meet with the party : the new platoon physician, Dr Qalli.
The Endeavour lands on the surface of Gorass-II, a world on the fringes of the Hhrot Dominion, a prime target for their future and inevitable expansion. Amongst its blue forests and purple seas, they track the transport's signal and oversee several scans before they triangulate the Doctor's likeliest location. As a superheated storm looms, the crew prepares for a lengthy expedition in a cave complex they suspect of being Dr Qalli's refuge.
On their way, they are ambushed by Hhrot patrols. Members of a punitive squadron are tasked with guarding the complex, but after a short fight, they are defeate and taken prisoners. More trouble awaits when wild beasts stir within the complex to spit acid fire at the party. Battered and exhausted, the crew must rest. Kil Khari surmises that the Doctor must be taken hostage deeper inside; Naykin uses her diplomatic wit to defuse a further situation and gain access to the heart of the complex.
They meet with the leader of the platoon, Jabcox, who is overseeing a punitive survey platoon. He is not particularly friendly, even if he is grateful that the intruders spared his men's lives. Naykin presses him on, convinced that he is hiding something. As the situation becomes tense, Khari manages to hold Jabcox hostage. A bloody fight is only averted when a shadowy figure emerges from the complex to meet with the party : the new platoon physician, Dr Qalli.
When the Bough Breaks (1X05)
Dr Qalli has revealed herself. In hiding from an alleged and perhaps non-existent bounty hunter, she has found refuge by working for a Hhrot platoon as a healer and general scientist. When Captain Davi notes that she is stalling even as the plague on Teroshe rages and the death count increases every day, she admits that she is helpless and that her vids did not have the effect she hoped. Desperate for protection, she requests to join the Endeavour's crew, though Jabcox only lets her leave in exchange for 1 tonne of materials.
In the lounge of the Endeavour, Dr Qalli reveals that shortly before her flight, alarmed by the turn of events on Teroshe, she managed to gain precious intel about the movements of HexoGeni shipments. To make up for lost time, she brazenly proposes to Captain Davi to "acquire" a shipment of drugs on the HexoGeni cargo and pharmacetical reseach vessel HHG Ninazu, and deliver them to her medical operatives on Teroshe, that they might reverse-engineer its active composition. She claims to have 50000 credits at her disposal to reward the crew with.
Dr Qalli's demand is a big ask. The galactic community has shown nothing but apathy, but each passing day the plague renders the Bogwynne weak and unable to cope with the pandemic - to say nothing of the risk of the virus passing onto other Zaalan holdings. It is thought that within 3 months, Teroshe will be naught but a graveyard. If nothing is done, the Coalition will be allowed to either buy out Teroshe and the last hope for Zaalan independance, or simply walk in and crush the remaining resistance.
When Kil Naykin asks why Dr Qalli didn't hire Vi's Fixers or even Starlyft, she replies that she would rather trust people of honour such as the Hhrot - but concedes that she failed to convince them to help her. She knows of a Zaalan mercenary called Zarama, but was unable to make contact. She begs the party to take her offer, as time is running out, people are dying, and an entire people will soon be at the mercy of the Coalition.
Despite a desperate plea, her claims are met wth scepticism. Naykin finds Dr Qalli's reward extremely overstated and is not overly receptive to her problems - though she has reserves about the Coalition, she finds HexoGeni's offer a fair deal. Captain Davi emphasizes with the plight of the Zaalans, but is not keen to put her ship at risk and refuses to be a pirate.
However, the entire party agrees that something needs to be done. Khari suspects genurgic foul play in the making of the drug. It is too perfect, she claims, and tailored specifically for this plague. The way in which the drug purportedly acts - by repairing a victim's DNA and rendering them immune to the plague - may be benign and perhaps even groundbreaking, but any method of research that yields a drug able to completely rewrite someone's DNA, and its results, are banned in the Stream and have been ever since the first Ark warped into the sector. It is pointed out that a lot of Coalition patents are often exaggerated or falsified to mislead the competition as well as customers, but the drug does seem extremely powerful - and thus, Naykin argues, worth its price.
It takes a lot of deliberation, for Dr Qalli's demand is a big ask. Pressured by Khari and, in an apparent change of heart, Kil, the Captain eventually caves in and decides that the money, if nothing else, might well be worth the risk of becoming an outlaw - especially as she usually does not trade anywhere near Coalition space. Much like Kil, she suspects that Qalli might not have that much money at hand, but also figures that selling the drug to Teroshe for a fraction of the price HexoGeni asks for would be the right thing to do - and lucrative, too.
The party seem to care little about the ramifications of their heist. They agree to help Dr Qalli. They lay in a course for their new target : the HexoGeni cargo vessel HHG Ninazu. They have little yet in the way of a plan, for they figure that they will come up with something once in the Zindra system, where the Ninazu orbits.
Dr Qalli has revealed herself. In hiding from an alleged and perhaps non-existent bounty hunter, she has found refuge by working for a Hhrot platoon as a healer and general scientist. When Captain Davi notes that she is stalling even as the plague on Teroshe rages and the death count increases every day, she admits that she is helpless and that her vids did not have the effect she hoped. Desperate for protection, she requests to join the Endeavour's crew, though Jabcox only lets her leave in exchange for 1 tonne of materials.
In the lounge of the Endeavour, Dr Qalli reveals that shortly before her flight, alarmed by the turn of events on Teroshe, she managed to gain precious intel about the movements of HexoGeni shipments. To make up for lost time, she brazenly proposes to Captain Davi to "acquire" a shipment of drugs on the HexoGeni cargo and pharmacetical reseach vessel HHG Ninazu, and deliver them to her medical operatives on Teroshe, that they might reverse-engineer its active composition. She claims to have 50000 credits at her disposal to reward the crew with.
Dr Qalli's demand is a big ask. The galactic community has shown nothing but apathy, but each passing day the plague renders the Bogwynne weak and unable to cope with the pandemic - to say nothing of the risk of the virus passing onto other Zaalan holdings. It is thought that within 3 months, Teroshe will be naught but a graveyard. If nothing is done, the Coalition will be allowed to either buy out Teroshe and the last hope for Zaalan independance, or simply walk in and crush the remaining resistance.
When Kil Naykin asks why Dr Qalli didn't hire Vi's Fixers or even Starlyft, she replies that she would rather trust people of honour such as the Hhrot - but concedes that she failed to convince them to help her. She knows of a Zaalan mercenary called Zarama, but was unable to make contact. She begs the party to take her offer, as time is running out, people are dying, and an entire people will soon be at the mercy of the Coalition.
Despite a desperate plea, her claims are met wth scepticism. Naykin finds Dr Qalli's reward extremely overstated and is not overly receptive to her problems - though she has reserves about the Coalition, she finds HexoGeni's offer a fair deal. Captain Davi emphasizes with the plight of the Zaalans, but is not keen to put her ship at risk and refuses to be a pirate.
However, the entire party agrees that something needs to be done. Khari suspects genurgic foul play in the making of the drug. It is too perfect, she claims, and tailored specifically for this plague. The way in which the drug purportedly acts - by repairing a victim's DNA and rendering them immune to the plague - may be benign and perhaps even groundbreaking, but any method of research that yields a drug able to completely rewrite someone's DNA, and its results, are banned in the Stream and have been ever since the first Ark warped into the sector. It is pointed out that a lot of Coalition patents are often exaggerated or falsified to mislead the competition as well as customers, but the drug does seem extremely powerful - and thus, Naykin argues, worth its price.
It takes a lot of deliberation, for Dr Qalli's demand is a big ask. Pressured by Khari and, in an apparent change of heart, Kil, the Captain eventually caves in and decides that the money, if nothing else, might well be worth the risk of becoming an outlaw - especially as she usually does not trade anywhere near Coalition space. Much like Kil, she suspects that Qalli might not have that much money at hand, but also figures that selling the drug to Teroshe for a fraction of the price HexoGeni asks for would be the right thing to do - and lucrative, too.
The party seem to care little about the ramifications of their heist. They agree to help Dr Qalli. They lay in a course for their new target : the HexoGeni cargo vessel HHG Ninazu. They have little yet in the way of a plan, for they figure that they will come up with something once in the Zindra system, where the Ninazu orbits.
The Opal Star (1X06)
En route to Embassy Station, news break out that the Teroshe Plague has become officially out of control. With the death toll spiralling ever upward and HexoGeni's stubborn refusal to offer a rebate on their life-saving wonder drug, things look dire for the Bogwynne based on Teroshe. Dr Qalli reminds everyone that if the Bogwynne fall, the Zaalans will end up reverting to a pre-FTL civilization. Conceding that there are no losing moves for the Coalition, who will force massive power grabs on Zaalan assets anyway, she isolates herself into her cabin.
As they near Embassy Station, power fluctuations suddenly rock and wreck the Endeavour. The ship is forced to drop out of hyperspace. The crew scrambles to restore some measure of operational control to their stricken vessel and work out the source of their trouble. A viral attack is ruled out and the power core and hyper drive assembly are functional. When Khari dives into the bowels of the ship, she realises that power couplings in entire rooms were blown out, and entire sections of the cabling were destroyed.
As the crew inspect every part of the ship, they finally find the culprit : a gelatinous Hetzuud, a metallic and sentient changeling puddle of goo wrecking havoc across the ship. Kil engages it, soon joined by the rest of the crew. After a tense and dirty struggle in the narrow corridors, Captain Davi brings her warbot online to dispatch the threat once and for all. While combat rages and various systems continue randomly going offline, a Hidarid shuttle drops right above the Endeavour : the Opal Star, an armed shuttlecraft belonging to Hiderid con-man and pirate Bunasa. He opens comms and offers to tow the crippled ship to Embassy, for an extortionate fee of 5000 credits, the amount the party is due to recover from their Starlyft contract.
Kil and Khari establish that Bunasa must have somehow planted the Hetzuud aboard the Endeavour, perhaps well before their departure for Embassy, in order to cripple and "rescue" them later on. They refuse to accept his obvious attempt at extortion., and switch off comms.
Nonetheless, their ship's power grid is still in needs of repairs. With only 250 credits to their name, they are not in a position to bargain. Captain Davi asks for suggestions and Khari reveals a sinister side to herself when she suggests luring and killing the pirate, then claiming a bonus on their Starlyft contract for the Opal Star. Captain Davi initially objects, claiming that "We can't just... shoot people." to which Kil points out that, in fact, they definitely can.
The Opal Star proceeds to dock with the Endeavour, and Kil urges Qalli to run for cover - as it might well be her bounty hunter about to come out of that airlock. The party stands ready to fight, warier than ever..
- Captain Davi, turning to her officers : Suggestions?
- Kil Naykin : We could lure and kill him.
- Khari Sare : We could even take his nayeer's ship and trade it in as salvage to Starlyft.
- Captain Davi : ...We can't just shoot people like that. That isn't the Kalimshari way. And I'm still not sure how he sent that goo.
- Kil Naykin : We can just shoot people, Captain. Welcome to the real galaxy.
- Bunasa : It looks like you've been involved in an accident lately..
- Captain Davi (shooting at the Hetzuud from cover) : I don't even own this spaceship! It's a ruse!
En route to Embassy Station, news break out that the Teroshe Plague has become officially out of control. With the death toll spiralling ever upward and HexoGeni's stubborn refusal to offer a rebate on their life-saving wonder drug, things look dire for the Bogwynne based on Teroshe. Dr Qalli reminds everyone that if the Bogwynne fall, the Zaalans will end up reverting to a pre-FTL civilization. Conceding that there are no losing moves for the Coalition, who will force massive power grabs on Zaalan assets anyway, she isolates herself into her cabin.
As they near Embassy Station, power fluctuations suddenly rock and wreck the Endeavour. The ship is forced to drop out of hyperspace. The crew scrambles to restore some measure of operational control to their stricken vessel and work out the source of their trouble. A viral attack is ruled out and the power core and hyper drive assembly are functional. When Khari dives into the bowels of the ship, she realises that power couplings in entire rooms were blown out, and entire sections of the cabling were destroyed.
As the crew inspect every part of the ship, they finally find the culprit : a gelatinous Hetzuud, a metallic and sentient changeling puddle of goo wrecking havoc across the ship. Kil engages it, soon joined by the rest of the crew. After a tense and dirty struggle in the narrow corridors, Captain Davi brings her warbot online to dispatch the threat once and for all. While combat rages and various systems continue randomly going offline, a Hidarid shuttle drops right above the Endeavour : the Opal Star, an armed shuttlecraft belonging to Hiderid con-man and pirate Bunasa. He opens comms and offers to tow the crippled ship to Embassy, for an extortionate fee of 5000 credits, the amount the party is due to recover from their Starlyft contract.
Kil and Khari establish that Bunasa must have somehow planted the Hetzuud aboard the Endeavour, perhaps well before their departure for Embassy, in order to cripple and "rescue" them later on. They refuse to accept his obvious attempt at extortion., and switch off comms.
Nonetheless, their ship's power grid is still in needs of repairs. With only 250 credits to their name, they are not in a position to bargain. Captain Davi asks for suggestions and Khari reveals a sinister side to herself when she suggests luring and killing the pirate, then claiming a bonus on their Starlyft contract for the Opal Star. Captain Davi initially objects, claiming that "We can't just... shoot people." to which Kil points out that, in fact, they definitely can.
The Opal Star proceeds to dock with the Endeavour, and Kil urges Qalli to run for cover - as it might well be her bounty hunter about to come out of that airlock. The party stands ready to fight, warier than ever..
Honour Amongst Thieves (1X07)
The airlock opens and reveals a dark, empty ship. Cautiously, the crew steps in, the airlock door slamming shut behind them. Captain Davi leads the way using her darkvision - the ship is dark, seemingly unused, echoing and rusty. The hull creaks constantly and the oxygen is not properly vented. This ship is barely functional, and old, predating the arrival of the Kalimshari. There is no sign of Bunasa. The party pushes on.
Engineer Sare notices a flickering light in the distance. Soon, a female voice taunts the party. This turns out to be a Mewei crew member named Origin. She stalks the party as they progress, lurking in the shadows unaware of Captain Davi's darkvision. Eventually, the party reaches the atrium. Dim, dirty lights turn on, revealing Origin to all - as well as a suite of rusty security bots. Operative Naykin grabs her rifle, but Captain Davi attempts to defuse the situation, and demands to see Bunasa. Origin refuses. She instead stalls for time, whilst security systems discreetly activate.
The crew refuses to "trade" cargo in exchange for being let go, at least until they get to meet Bunasa. Origin claims he is "indisposed", which only raises the party's suspicions. Sare does not take part in the argument. She is too busy attempting to hack into the ship's systems, but finds them far more elaborate than the ship would have let on. Indeed, the computer is linked to a sophisticated core, probably tacked onto the ship far after its launch. Naykin admires Origin, but both Davi and Sare find the Mewei acting and looking very suspiciously. When Sare throws a projective towards Origin only for it to harmlessly go through her body, they realise that she is a hologram, perhaps even an unbraked AI.
Sare's excitement at meeting an AI is cut short when she accesses the ship's security systems and Origin turns hostile. She focuses her response as well as that of her security robots on the chief engineer, but Naykin throws herself on one of the bots, disabling it. Meanwhile, Captain Davi expertly makes use of her rifle to disable the other bot and cause it to implode. This is too late - in less than twenty seconds, they have shredded the chief engineer's armour and wounded her heavily. Despite that, she is able to soldier on and reroute security codes to her omnitool, and is able to shut down Origin as well as security systems. Once the danger is passed, she retreats to the Endeavour, to be treated in Dr Qalli's makeshift sickbay. She leaves her bot Maggie on the Opal Star.
With Origin gone, the crew struggles to find Bunasa. Room after room is filled with worthless trash and a rancid smell permeates the ship. They find him, eventually, cowering, hiding on the bridge. He is clearly unhinged, and shows withdrawal symptoms. He pleads for freedom and reveals that he was once an important Hiderid businessman in the Coalition. He took some risks that did not pay off, and found himself with millions of credits in debt. Unwilling to turn himself in, he transfered that debt to his teenage daughter, figuring that they would not go for a young person and that it would buy him time to find a solution. This gamble also did not pay off. His daughter was arrested and he found himself on the run. With no practical skills outside of business, he found himself soon reduced to piracy and con games, and would have surely failed were it not for meeting Origin on a heist on a Core World ship as well as the Hetzuud the party defeated earlier.
Their plan was flawless : Origin would steer and command the ship with amazing precision. The Hetzuud would infiltrate weak but lucrative prey, destroy cablings, and Bunasa would swoop in to "rescue" the stranded ship. This worked a dozen times, though it did not bring Bunasa anywhere close to saving his daughter from indentured work nor to paying off his debts. However, his efforts at garnering sympathy are shut down by the entire crew. Sare, through Maggie, berates him for running away from trouble (though the Hiderid Naykin finds that "dumb"). In a last ditch effort to save his life, he offers his unconditional surrender, though he also reveals that he picked Davi for her idealistic attitude and that, even in defeat, he does not believe she would have it in her heart to kill him - and wouldn't have killed the Hetzuud if she had known it was sentient, either.
While she discussed the situation with Naykin, Bunasa attempted to shoot a concealed laser pistol at both. He misses and is gunned down in the legs by Naykin. He laughs, and in frustration, Davi also shoots at the pirate, narrowly missing him. She blinks, shocked at her own actions, but rallied and established her authority and her principles. She ordered him patched and locked away in the brig, claiming that it is not worth killing him, for every reason.
With the ship secured, the crew works at preparing to tow it for salvage and a hefty Starlyft bonus. A day passes as Sare heals and the Endeavour is repaired, and off they go, warping in the distance, finally arriving in the relative orbital safety of Embassy Station, ready to cash in their Starlyft contract and take on supplies.
Meanwhile, on the Embassy Docks, a Zaalan Vanguard peers quietly from the shadows, observing as the Endeavour docks...
- Kil Naykin, to Origin : I don't judge a person off their species, so I don't trust you, no.
- Bunasa : Brood-sister! You killed my friend! Have you an idea what you've done? My precious daughter is rotting in jail, the debts I've contracted in her name I can't even hope to pay back now! You've doomed an innocent girl!
- Khari Sare : Destroy dozens of crews' lives and you're laughing. Lose once and it's a tragedy? A tragedy of your own making no less. Don't make me laugh.
- Kil Naykin : And you doomed your girl the instant you decided on piracy over business.
- Khari Sare : If you cared about your daughter that much, you'd have indentured yourself to pay the debts instead of selling her for them!
- Kil Naykin : I mean.. okay, no, that's dumb Khari.
- Captain Davi : He's not worth killing, Kil. Just lock him in one of the cabins or a closet or something.
- Kil Naykin : Oh? And in what way is he not worth it, captain?
- Captain Davi : In every way that matters.
The airlock opens and reveals a dark, empty ship. Cautiously, the crew steps in, the airlock door slamming shut behind them. Captain Davi leads the way using her darkvision - the ship is dark, seemingly unused, echoing and rusty. The hull creaks constantly and the oxygen is not properly vented. This ship is barely functional, and old, predating the arrival of the Kalimshari. There is no sign of Bunasa. The party pushes on.
Engineer Sare notices a flickering light in the distance. Soon, a female voice taunts the party. This turns out to be a Mewei crew member named Origin. She stalks the party as they progress, lurking in the shadows unaware of Captain Davi's darkvision. Eventually, the party reaches the atrium. Dim, dirty lights turn on, revealing Origin to all - as well as a suite of rusty security bots. Operative Naykin grabs her rifle, but Captain Davi attempts to defuse the situation, and demands to see Bunasa. Origin refuses. She instead stalls for time, whilst security systems discreetly activate.
The crew refuses to "trade" cargo in exchange for being let go, at least until they get to meet Bunasa. Origin claims he is "indisposed", which only raises the party's suspicions. Sare does not take part in the argument. She is too busy attempting to hack into the ship's systems, but finds them far more elaborate than the ship would have let on. Indeed, the computer is linked to a sophisticated core, probably tacked onto the ship far after its launch. Naykin admires Origin, but both Davi and Sare find the Mewei acting and looking very suspiciously. When Sare throws a projective towards Origin only for it to harmlessly go through her body, they realise that she is a hologram, perhaps even an unbraked AI.
Sare's excitement at meeting an AI is cut short when she accesses the ship's security systems and Origin turns hostile. She focuses her response as well as that of her security robots on the chief engineer, but Naykin throws herself on one of the bots, disabling it. Meanwhile, Captain Davi expertly makes use of her rifle to disable the other bot and cause it to implode. This is too late - in less than twenty seconds, they have shredded the chief engineer's armour and wounded her heavily. Despite that, she is able to soldier on and reroute security codes to her omnitool, and is able to shut down Origin as well as security systems. Once the danger is passed, she retreats to the Endeavour, to be treated in Dr Qalli's makeshift sickbay. She leaves her bot Maggie on the Opal Star.
With Origin gone, the crew struggles to find Bunasa. Room after room is filled with worthless trash and a rancid smell permeates the ship. They find him, eventually, cowering, hiding on the bridge. He is clearly unhinged, and shows withdrawal symptoms. He pleads for freedom and reveals that he was once an important Hiderid businessman in the Coalition. He took some risks that did not pay off, and found himself with millions of credits in debt. Unwilling to turn himself in, he transfered that debt to his teenage daughter, figuring that they would not go for a young person and that it would buy him time to find a solution. This gamble also did not pay off. His daughter was arrested and he found himself on the run. With no practical skills outside of business, he found himself soon reduced to piracy and con games, and would have surely failed were it not for meeting Origin on a heist on a Core World ship as well as the Hetzuud the party defeated earlier.
Their plan was flawless : Origin would steer and command the ship with amazing precision. The Hetzuud would infiltrate weak but lucrative prey, destroy cablings, and Bunasa would swoop in to "rescue" the stranded ship. This worked a dozen times, though it did not bring Bunasa anywhere close to saving his daughter from indentured work nor to paying off his debts. However, his efforts at garnering sympathy are shut down by the entire crew. Sare, through Maggie, berates him for running away from trouble (though the Hiderid Naykin finds that "dumb"). In a last ditch effort to save his life, he offers his unconditional surrender, though he also reveals that he picked Davi for her idealistic attitude and that, even in defeat, he does not believe she would have it in her heart to kill him - and wouldn't have killed the Hetzuud if she had known it was sentient, either.
While she discussed the situation with Naykin, Bunasa attempted to shoot a concealed laser pistol at both. He misses and is gunned down in the legs by Naykin. He laughs, and in frustration, Davi also shoots at the pirate, narrowly missing him. She blinks, shocked at her own actions, but rallied and established her authority and her principles. She ordered him patched and locked away in the brig, claiming that it is not worth killing him, for every reason.
With the ship secured, the crew works at preparing to tow it for salvage and a hefty Starlyft bonus. A day passes as Sare heals and the Endeavour is repaired, and off they go, warping in the distance, finally arriving in the relative orbital safety of Embassy Station, ready to cash in their Starlyft contract and take on supplies.
Meanwhile, on the Embassy Docks, a Zaalan Vanguard peers quietly from the shadows, observing as the Endeavour docks...