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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Deuce Traveler" data-source="post: 6919972" data-attributes="member: 34958">Iron DM 2016, Final Round, Deuce Traveler Submission (The Hulk)Name: The HulkGame System: TravellerIngredients:Ancient CurseMoonlight SerenadeHate StorySanctioned KidnappingsDirty LaundryAwakened BehemothUnstable CargoSail of StarsSynopsis:Revori Enterprises, a Solomani corporation specializing in xeno-biological research and development, is looking for freelancers to journey to the Mantabi of Sivalus V.  The Revori representative, Gary Kay, hires the crew and its ship to visit a particular tribe called the Waanu, and watch how their lunar ceremony is performed when both of the planets moons have waxed in the sky.  The characters are told that when the moons are full, the latent psychic powers of the Mantabi are multiplied exponentially.  Therefore the party should report any hallucinations witnessed.Although the party lands with needed medicines, the Waanu are unfriendly towards outsiders.  They do not explain why, except to say that all offworlders are thieves and liars.  The issue will be dropped there unless a freelancer takes time to befriend one of the Waanu.  It turns out that around a hundred years ago, a starship visited the tribe and stole away a young child named Flower.  Flower's mother, Clara, was an unusually strong psychic and raved after the loss, telling her peers in graphic detail how Flower was being harmed by her kidnappers.  Her newfound hatred for offworlders and her stories of what Flower suffered deeply affected the tribe's own views.  Clara cursed those that took her daughter and soon after took her own life.  The tribe finds it important to bury the dead with detailed shrines celebrating a Waanu's life, and the party is allowed to visit Clara's grave site.  An empty plot for Flower is left next to where Clara lies.Although generations of time has healed most of these emotional wounds, the tribe still maintains its distrust.  They will allow the freelancers to attend the ceremony in exchange for the medicines they are bringing, but they make no attempt to hide their disgust at their presence.  The party will negotiate with the chief of the tribe, and the tribe's priestess, in order to try to change the tribe's disposition.  Showing genuine curiosity for the tribe's customs helps while smug displays of superiority will alienate the Waanu.   Medical and farming aid is also appreciated, as is any other skill set that can help the welfare of the Waanu.  The tribe's final disposition towards the characters will come in play during the ceremony.If one or both of the tribe's leaders are positively swayed towards the characters, then villagers will explain that the ceremony is primarily for the young.  As the young come to age psychically, their fears and emotions generate powerful hallucinations.  The tribe comes out to sing to the youth in order to give them psychic stability during the waxing lunar periods, when the youths' powers are strongest.  The fears of the youth often become physical manifestations, and sometimes the young lose complete control of these temporary psychic creations.  The creation can be destroyed with physical weapons, but care has to be taken, for the weapon will easily continue its path through the apparition.  Energy weapons are better options as they have a visible impact against the animated psychic energy.The combined song of the ceremony helps improve the youths' control of the hallucinations, while helping avoid insanity from what they witness.  If the villagers as a whole feel more relaxed with the freelancers, the psychic conjurations that inevitably shake their mental leashes do no real damage to the characters and seem more of a nuisance.  If the characters do not improve their relations with the villagers, they are surprised when some of the youth lose control.  The villagers' distrust inadvertently fuels the power of these creations, with the result that they are more fearful and do energy-based damage that can wound or kill.  This might result in the party lashing out and accidentally injuring villagers if not careful.  If such chaos breaks, the tribe grabs their young and disperses into the wild.  Revori Enterprises finds the information that comes out of either scenario revealing and offers the party a following mission.  One of their research ships was transporting goods from the Waanu a century ago, but the vessel was lost in transit.  The ship was recently located and Revori Enterprises wants its property back.  If the characters find out about Flower, Mr. Kay will seem surprised by their knowledge and confirm their suspicions, but will insist that she was brought aboard the vessel as an honored guest.The drifting ship is the Cavanough, an ion-powered ship that employed two wide, foldable solar sails.  Mr. Kay informs the party that the ship seems to be without power and with its solar sails torn and retracted.  He wants the party to get on board via an airlock near the bridge, employ the solar sail so the ship can start running on auxiliary power, and see if they can recover the research files from the Cavanough.  He also wants the party to redirect the ship towards the nearest station with Revori Enterprises representation so that it can be recovered.  The party can keep any salvage they find in the cargo hold.The Cavanough is a elongated ship with rounded traverse tunnels separating box-like crew sections.  The sections are from front to back: the bridge, navigation, common room, crew quarters alpha, crew quarters bravo, research lab, engineering, and the cargo bay.  Two airlocks allow for access, one operational in between the bridge and navigation, and another between the research labs and engineering that appears damaged.  The ship is cursed and haunted.  Once the characters get close to the ship, their psychic thoughts awaken what lies inside.  Once every 2-12 hours, a curse powered through Clara's restless spirit will cause something to go wrong with either the Cavanaugh or players' starship.  Flower's ghost causes a psychic apparition once every hour.  Roll 1d6 when this happens.  On a 1-3, one or more characters suddenly hears the pleas and cries of the different children that were kidnapped for experimentation.  On a 4, an alien child appears to harmlessly punch or slash at a character before disappearing into nothingness.  On a 5, the harmless apparition takes on the appearance of a gun-wielding Revori mercenary or scalpel-wielding surgeon.  On a 6, the psychic creation is more physical and will fight as a normal person until it disappears when 'killed'.  Parts of the ship have multiple bodies from the last hundred years, as various scavengers have died exploring the hulk.Working Airlock: If the airlock is opened from the outside without a boarding tube, the recent body of a Revori employee floats passed and into space.Bridge: Access is easy once power is restored.  Inside is the horrid mystery of how the crew died.  From their blue-tinged skin, the five present crew members seemed to have suffocated while trying to weld through to the traverse tunnel. However, life support is working and the door operational.  The corpses wear ancient Revori uniforms.  The bridge records show nothing odd until the last entry.  This is an audio entry of a crewman yelling for the captain to send help as he is trapped in the cargo room with some sort of beast.  The audio ends in a blood curdling scream.Navigation: Second section of ship.  There is a manual crank for employing the solar sail.  Once employed, auxiliary power is established, but imperfectly, causing lights to flicker on and off.  Life support has stale-smelling air.  The solar sails are seen to be torn and needing repair before the ship can navigate properly.  For some unknown reason, the sail will somehow retract on its own when worked on, potentially injuring or ripping the space suit of whoever is working on it unless they're reflexes save them.  Clara's curse in effect.Common Room: Serves also as dining facility.  A freezer room in a floor compartment accessed through an electronic hatch.  Inside the freezer room are three frozen bodies of recent Revori employees.  One has a data stick with messages from Mr. Kay asking them to recover the hulk.  While in the party is in there, the hatch locks and apparitions of the three dead employees attack the party.Crew Quarters Alpha: Personal affects of the crew are scattered all through this room.Crew Quarters Bravo: A suicided geonee scavenger is found among the ransacked items.  A note reads "Can't get out.  Can't stop hearing their cries."Research Lab: The equipment and tables still look pristine.  As the characters enter they can hear the wailing of children.  Shortly after the lights flicker off, then back on, and the tables seem occupied with small bodies underneath white sheets.  A moment later, deadly psychic creations leap forth to attack, appearing as children of various races.Research files can be found on the computer.  They state that the company leadership sanctioned kidnappings of psionic children.  Experiments were conducted to find the DNA code for psychic potential in an effort to compete with the Zhodani.  Several children died during the experiments, while others were delivered to a larger research facility and their fate left unknown. One of the last log entries mentions Flower and reads, "Patient seems to have tapped into the psychic residue of previous candidates.  She mentions names she should not know.  Dr. Carl theorizes that she is able to tap into this residue and increase her power further; an exciting thesis that makes Flower our most promising subject."Damaged Airlock: Something burned the door, leaving residue and melted parts. Engineering: A diagnostic report reveals that the booster fuel tanks are unhooked.  They are needed to get the ship up to speed before depending on the solar sails.  Someone needs to go to the cargo bay to reconnect them.  Once the tanks are ready, the engines above the cargo bay can be manipulated from here.Cargo Bay: Flower's corpse is among the cargo.  As soon as the character get near her body, their thoughts are sensed by Flower's ghost and it begins to animate organic material around the corpse.  The face of the resulting behemoth wears goggles and a blue face mask, reminding the characters of a surgeon.  Other parts of the coalesced monster are taken from the fears of the freelancers.  For instance, if one was bitten badly recently by some sort of beast, then a second head grows from the monstrosity resembling the beast.  Flower, and the haunting of the ship, can be stopped in several ways, while  Clara is tethered to Flower's ghost and will follow her daughter's fate.Killing the behemoth results in Flower's discorporation as she puts all her fears and energy into the creation.  Finding a way to separate Flower's corpse from the center of the beast and eject her body into space also stops her from influencing the ship.  Finally, the freelancers might use recorded sounds of the lunar ceremony to quell Flower temporarily.  But her power, as well as her anxiety, waxes and wanes as the party uses the lull to travel through different parts of space.  The ghost will rest if the party can get Flower's corpse to the Waanu burial grounds.  Revori Enterprises would like to sweep this incident under the rug and plans to pay the freelancers well for their continued silence.  If the party decides to air the company's dirty laundry, Revori Enterprises is greatly harmed, but will prosecute the freelancers for breech of contract.  The party will have new foes and new allies depending on what they do with what was learned.</blockquote>

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