[Spaceship Zero] Q-Ship (actually updated 19 May 2007)

"Blast Off!" - Part 18

Outside, the four space adventurers follow a dusty track through the dense tangle of Venusian vegetation. Most of the plants around them have a tubular or bulbous shape, with spined leaves sticking out at all angles. Few have flowers, and even those few that do, resemble cacti more than any other Earth-plant.

"You vill notice ze lack of insects." As they walk, Gustav conducts an impromptu lecture on the surrounding fauna and flora, "ze Venusian plants do not use zem for pollination -"

A woman's scream rings out.

"It came from over there!" Fury points left, then dives into the jungle. Whether he's running toward the scream or away from the Doctor's lecture is no entirely clear. The other three pursue, and within seconds, all four of them are out of sight as they go crashing through the undergrowth.

"Woah!" Fury comes racing out of the jungle, but skids to a halt immediately, arms wind-milling to retain his balance as he finds himself on the edge of a cliff face. Below, in a narrow ravine, a lithe young woman races from rock to rock. As she runs, she screams again.

Half-stalking, half-shuffling up the ravine behind her is a large but clumsy Venusian predator. The beast seems to be having some trouble with the obstructions it is forced to negotiate, but - thanks to the girl's frequent pauses to glance back and scream - it is slowly closing the distance to its prey.

"A Grognor!" S'Ondra skids to a halt beside him, her heat lance held ready as a spear, "Big, but no more intelligent than your Earth predators."

"We have to save her!" the Captain cries, beginning to scramble down the side of the ravine. Behind him, S'ondra rolls her eyes.

"What a great plan. Charge the woman, not the monster."

Racing across the rocks, Fury reaches the woman's side, and swings him behind her.

"Don't worry, Miss!" he calls over his shoulder, "I'll keep you safe."

Sighting his atomic pistol on the Grognor, he presses the firing stud. Unfortunately, the power capacitor shorts out, causing a shower of sparks, several of which ignite a nearby bush. Behind the Captain, the woman whimpers, cowering away from the flames.

"Damnation." Fury curses mildly as he tries to work the capacitor free, "Must have burned out then I disintegrated that rock." He glances up as the Grognor draws nearer, raising its clawed hands above its head and bellowing.

"Yaaaaah!" S'Ondra leaps at the creature from the side, drawing its attention away from Fury and the native woman. The Princess' stab with her lance fails to draw blood, but it does fulfil its primary role, as the beast turns, swiping clumsily at her.

"Get back, leibchen!" Gustav calls. The Doctor is hanging from Archie's back as the robot trundles across the ravine floor. The twin exhausts of Archie's plasma burners are turned toward the Grognor.

"Indeed, Princess. Please stand clear as I sterilise this contaminant."

S'Ondra leaps back as two jets of superheated plasma spray out over the creature, which bellows in fear and rage. The woman they are trying to rescue whimpers again, huddling and clinging to Fury's leg.

Despite the massive injuries it must have suffered, and the patches of its skin that are still on fire, the Grognor charges forward, one clawed fist pounding against Archie's shoulder. The robot is undented and undaunted, but Gustav is forced to slide off his back.

"Keep avay from my leibchen!" the old man shouts, brandishing a wrench. His leibchen, meanwhile, makes use of the space that has opened up between her and the creature. Spinning her heat lance up to her shoulder, she sights along the shaft. The crystal head glows orange, and a bolt of concentrated heat energy flies from the tip. Unfortunately, the Grognar drops to all fours as she fires, and the shot goes over its head.

Bellowing again, the creature charges toward the Princess, swinging its head down to try and bite her. S'Ondra manages to twist out of the way of its teeth, but the creature's powerful lunge knocks her from her feet.

"Now you've made her dirty!" Archie lumbers in, clouting the Grognor with his fists. Gustav and Fury also attempt to pound at the creature, but they lack the robot's sheer physical strength. The Grognor, bellowing in anger, batters its way free of all three, rearing up over S'Ondra with a triumphant roar.

The roar suddenly chokes off into a confused mewl of shock and pain. Staggering, the beast tries to force out another bellow, but manages only a tired wheeze. It staggers back from the Princess, and the source of its sudden distress is apparent: S'Ondra has driven her heat lance deep into its chest.

"Never hunt more than you can handle." The Princess quietly observes, as she scrambles to her feet. The Grognor cocks its head at her, as if trying to parse this concept, but then its legs give way and it tumbles to the ground, stone dead.

"Remind me never to get her angry." Fury holsters his atomic pistol and hurries to the side of the Venusian native. As he does so, she cowers down, throwing up and arm to shield herself, and he slows his approach, "It's okay. We're here to help."

No Venusian of this universe can ever have heard human speech before, so the words are meaningless, but the tone of them gets through to the young woman. Slowly, trembling slightly, she lowers her arm.

"Mein gott." Gustav's wrench clatters to the ground.

"And mine." Fury agrees, staring at the woman with a mixture of shock and pleasure.

Despite the streaks of dirt on her skin, and the bikini-like furs that she wears, there is no mistaking it: the woman is S'Ondra.
 

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Fury's roll was bad, but not quite that bad. When I was running the game, I explained his miss as an exploding capacitor setting something alight for three reasons:
(a) it's much more interesting than "you miss" :)
(b) to establish that the Venusians didn't have fire (hence Savage S'Ondra's reaction to the flames)
(c) to give them a non-lethal way of driving off the Grognor, should they wish to use it. Burning torches would have scared it off, had they tried to use them.

As can be seen, the players were happy to simply kill the Grognor, instead. They went on to use fire as a plot point in ways I hadn't expected, however - but more on that in later posts :)
 
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How on earth did I miss Q-Ship when it first appeared? I've not had as much fun reading as this for years!

I'm *seriously* going to have to think about running Starship Zero (or persuading RobberBaron to run it for me :))

This is going to be one of those rare storyhours that I subscribe to, just to make sure that I don't miss anything!

Cheers
 

I think this would be a real blast to run, but it would siphon off some creative juice from my D&D1+ and Star Wars games.
Or, it could take PS's effort away from Kyri. Nooooooooo, I want to play Trajan!

Aaaarrrggghhh! I can't take it! There are too many great games now, and I want to run and play all of them. There are simply not enough weekends :( .

SICD (slumps in chair despondantly).
 

I found Spaceship Zero reinvigorated my creative juices instead of siphoning them off. It's a very different genre from my normal game, and as a result the game makes me think quite differently when when I design characters and adventures. That's a good thing.
 


Here's the link to the product page of the game, and here's my character building sheet to make character generation MUCH faster. I put in some formulas to do most of the work for you. There's a sample character in there, too, to demonstrate how it works.

EDIT - attachments are sluggish right now. I'll add the character sheet later.
 

"Blast Off!" - Part 19

This Savage S'Ondra stares up at Fury, who stands silhouetted against the red glare of the Venusian sky, smoke still curling from the fused power capacitor of his atomic pistol. Then , with a choked off sob, she hurls herself into his arms, kissing him passionately.

"My," Archie observes, sensors whirring as he analyses the dirt-streaked Venusian girl, "How unsanitary."

"Yeah." The Q-Ship's version of S'Ondra scowls and steps forward, pulling her twin's arm, "Get away from him - he'll give you all kinds of nasty Earth diseases."

Savage S'Ondra at first tries to pull free of her civilised counterpart, but when the latter persists, the fur-clad princess turns to face her. Instantly, her face goes pale, and she huddles behind Fury, peering past him at her doppelganger.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, pull yourself together." S'Ondra snorts, in a tone of voice that sets her twin cowering further behind Fury: a development that the Captain does not seem to mind at all.

"I do not zink she can understands English." Gustav observes, peering over his glasses at the two S'Ondras. "How vill ve communicate? Perhaps I can be making ze translation device."

"We shouldn't need to." S'Ondra - the original - sighs, and then, softening her tone, calls out to the cowering woman, "It's alright, I'm here to help, but you need to move away from that man. He's diseased.(1)"

Savage S'Ondra's only reaction is to look confused, and her Q-Ship counterpart throws her hands in the air.

"Bah! She's too stupid even to understand her own language."

"So she doesn't talk? My kind of woman." Fury smirks, "Maybe we can get her to take us to the nearest settlement. We might be able to find some way to communicate with them."

"Ja. I am sure I could rig up a machine to allow communication, if ve could only hear zere language."

"If they have one." S'Ondra mutters darkly.

"Well, sign language should work." Fury suggests. Pointing at the body of the creature they slew, he mimes eating, then rubs his belly as if satisfied with a meal. His actions prompt a timid smile from the fur-clad Venusian, and - after a little more coaxing - she gestures for them to pick up the body, before pointing to the west and repeating Fury's eating mime.

Shying away from the fire, Savage S'Ondra leads them along the ravine floor. Archie brings up the rear, carrying the creature's body and muttering plaintively about the unsanitary fluids and bacteria.

Eventually, their slow progress brings them within sight of a cliff face, which is marked with many cave entrances. There is no sign of any huts, nor fire-pits, but there are several fur-clad figures moving around. Savage S'Ondra stops and points, exclaiming "Dogar!" again and again.

"Definitely a settlement of some kind." Fury shades his eyes, "Not large, though."

"Given ze apparent lack of technology, zey could not gather in large groups." Is Gustav's analysis. The Doctor has an electronic device in hand. The back of the device is open, and he is probing with it with a screwdriver, muttering about the 'spectromic converter'.

"What's that for?" Fury asks, taking a half-step away.

"Zis was a biological analysis device from ze ship." Gustav explains, "I am attempting to convert it, so zat ze machine will pick up and analyse sounds waves. Perhaps zis vay we can interpret ze language of these primitives." He glances at S'Ondra, "No offence meant, leibchcn."

S'Ondra, who has been listening to her counterpart's excited chatter, grunts and holds up a hand,

"I don't think we'll be needing the device, Doctor." She nods in satisfaction, "I didn't recognise it at first, because the accent's all wrong, and there grammar's non-existent, but she is speaking Venusian - just with a very limited vocabulary. I should be able to communicate with them."

As the group approaches the settlement - and Gustav obliviously continues to work on his translator, despite S'Ondra's words - the largest and strongest of the male Venusians moves to intercept them. He brandishes a club and barks a greeting - and a challenge:

"Me chief. Who you?"

"What did he say?" Fury asks, hand on pistol. S'Ondra ignores him.

"Me woman chief. We friends." S'Ondra gestures at the carcass of the Grognor and thumps her chest, "We kill beast. "

The chief grunts, staring at the dead beast for a moment, then giving S'Ondra and the others a thorough inspection. Finally, he nods.

"You mighty." He acknowledges, then points at S'Ondra's twin, "You want girl?"

"No. She weak. She fears. We not want her." S'Ondra waves her hand dismissively.

"You look her."

"No. She look me."

The chief obviously does not understand the significance of this distinction, but he shrugs, then sweeps his club, gesturing at the motley group before him. "You strange. What tribe you?"


"Uh ..." S'Ondra glances at the others, "He wants to know what tribe we are."

"Tell him we're from the stars." Fury responds immediately.

"We can't do that." S'Ondra objects, "They'll think we're gods, or something."

Fury shrugs,

"And what harm will that do?" he asks, "They'll be more likely to help us, if they think that."

"I'm not making a bunch of humans into my people's gods." S'Ondra snaps, "Even if my people are all ignorant savages in this world, they deserve better than that."

"We could help them, if they thought we were gods." Archie offers, "Teach them the value of cleanliness, and dedicate them to the battle to destroy germs ..."

"We from far." S'Ondra decides to ignore the 'advice' of her companions, "You not know."

The Venusian considers this answer for a moment, then shrugs, and thrusts his club toward S'Ondra,

"Me chief. You chief. We mate. Strong tribe."



(1) everything in green text is translated from the original Venusian
 


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