The Void Between The Stars (game thread)

Putting the batteries in and inserting the hearing aid makes thing a little easier.
Anna wracks her brain for any memories on cryo sleep.

Maybe 6 months would be the most without waking up for awhile. Yeah that sounds right. Any time up to 9 months can give nausea, getting worse as 6ou go on.

She reads the autopsies. Who are they, and more importantly, what killed them.

@ Dimitra: Give me a 5x5 roll.

@ Anna: Yeah, it comes back to you now. 6 months is considered the limit for safe cry sleep duration. Anything past that, and your risk of suffering from cryo sleep sickness increases dramatically. This is why the normal procedure is a period of 4 to 5 months of cry sleep, then waking up the crew for a couple of days so they can get a little something to eat, walk around and exercise to avoid muscle atrophy. Past the 9 months mark, the symptoms of cryo sleep sickness gets much more pronounced, with temporary amnesia being the worst symptom... This mean you were in cryo sleep for at least 9 months, probably more... This is very unusual. Well the good news is that your memories should gradually come back in the next few days, the bat news is that you have a little less than 5 hours left to deal with this hypermass problem before you're all turned into spaghetti...

@ Squat: You search the logs for the cryo chambers. It seems Dimitra had awakened early and went back to cryo sleep almost immediately. An inspection run? You then notice that a whole bunch of data has been erased maybe a month or two after Dimitra's returning to cryo sleep. Looks like somebody else was up and busy...

@ Lorenzo: You give the ship's intercoms a try, they do seem to work (those in infirmary will hear your test and be able to respond to confirm the intercom system works...).

@ Dimitra: A 0, that's a success! You sit into the pilot's chair, grab the controls, and look out the diamond reinforced windows (well, at least you hope they're diamond reinforced windows, you're pretty sure you've heard some horror stories about less sturdy glass types) to try and spot the hypermass. In front of you, off starboard, you see distortions in the stars' light. Yeah, this feels natural, you've done this before. Slowly, you give the ship a gentle tug towards port, giving it some thrust, turning it away from the hypermass... Or at least, this is what you're sure should have happened... The ship is not responding. No, you did everything right! As you start checking out your station, this is when you notice it, a small panel under the controls looks loose...

@ Lorenzo: You leave your station to make your way towards engineering. Getting up you notice two things on the wall: A big picture of all of you, plus three people you do not recognize... The missing crew members perhaps? Looks like it was taken on some space stations or colony, there are a lot of plants in the picture as well... And a ship's diagram. You doubt it is in scale, but it is still better than walk around guessing your way. Looks like to go to engineering, you need to go down one or two decks (engineering seems to take two decks), then head to the back of the ship.

@ Frederick: You sit in the captain's chair and start going through your logs on the captain's chair datapad. Seems like you're a simple mining/prospecting vessel. You were mining in some system and now that you filled your cargo holds with ores and minerals you were heading back to Earth and deliver your cargo to the EU for processing and manufacturing...

(So what is the name of the star system where you were mining? And what is the name of this vessel?)

Anna flips on the intercom.

We need to have a meeting. Three of our team are dead, and...well, we need to have a meeting.

I know time is of the essence, but if we could get together for a quick thing...come to medical please.

@ Anna: Hmm, looks like something is going on in the bridge if the news of murdered crew mates has not phased them that much...

@ Dimitra: You open the panel and look inside. 4 vital components which allow you to steer the ship are missing! Sabotage! (what 4 components are missing? Feel free to go crazy with your techno babble!)

@ Frederick: While waiting for Dimitra's report, you continue browsing through your log. You do find mentions of the dead crew members and understand Anna's insistence for the meeting.

@ Lorenzo: When you open the door to engineering your jaw drops. You've never seen such a mess of machinery, pipes, conduits, vents, wires (well, maybe you have, you just don't remember...). If you felt the corridors were claustrophobic to navigate, this maze-like mess is much more worse. This definitely confirms the theory that this ship was an old pre-FTL ship later refitted to have an FTL drive. And they made sure to use as much space as available during the refit! Now, you only need to find your way through this mechanical maze... Make a 5x5 roll.

So you are all reunited in the infirmary, minus Lorenzo still poking around engineering. The situation was put to you rather bluntly: 3 of your crew mates are dead. At least one was murdered, and the ship's controls were sabotaged... It is entirely possible one of you here is a traitor and a murderer, problem is, would you even know if it was you?

@ Lorenzo: You start poking around, picking one passage at random to start your search. You'd like to say you know where you're going, but after a point, all those conduits and bundles of wires and pieces of machinery start all looking alike... You then hear captain Frederick's voice coming from the ship's intercom telling you about the ship's missing components. You rush to the nearest intercom you spot in the hopes of answering him, but that's when you trip on something. You turn around to see what it was and you find a small metal box, lying on the ground, which is a bit bigger than your average shoe box. Looks like it was tucked underneath some piping, but was sticking out a bit, and that's what caught your foot. You open it thinking this might be your lucky day and that you've already found one of the missing components...