The Ghost does not lead you to any survivors so apparently 'water' has some other significance.

Likewise, no one has any idea what the significance of the image means. Since it doesn't seem to register on any sensors nor with anyone's abilities, that only leaves some sort of psychic residue left in the aftermath of the battle.

However, by the time the shuttle returns, Culhayn the Scholar thinks he's figured it out a bit.

"I only know a bit about the Hesper," he says. "I think that was the captain of the ship. Or at least the image of him. He was sort of wearing a uniform."

"I'm pretty sure he was the psychic representation of the entire crew that died. Similar occurrences have been reported. It is thought that this is some sort of spiritual effect of the species."

"He... it... they... are giving us a warning.... no, not a warning... guidance. I can't help but thinking that it is connected to the Vesk... perhaps indicating that we are not yet through with this... encounter just yet. After all, we are both here in this section of The Drift at the same time."

"Is it a touch of relief, Phelar, that it isn't always going to be about you?"

Back on board with the few prizes they gathered Revonoss is a little bummed out they found no survivors. Then he does a wide area scan for ice fields or water in the area.

You are now traveling through The Drift on a several days course before you reach your exit point. which is why your wide-area sensor scans don't locate any ice fields or elemental plane of water incursions... not just right now at any rate.

Continuing to analyze and investigate the components still doesn't produce any results. If the cube is some type of power source... as seems likely... the dispersion of that energy is possibly keyed to a location, a time, or some external stimulus that you've yet to work out.

As it is, you have yet to think of an energy source that would be capable of doing what was done or needs to be done. The sheer magnitude is nearly incomprehensible. Revonoss, if he attempted to build something like this, would have machines the size of planets!


With nothing more to be done or learned here, the ship resumes its course, always on the alert for the Vesk... or water.

Revonoss compiles some code to alert him when they run into any bodies of water on the scanners and retreats into his workshop again. Much like a mad professor he mulls over each and every possibility to extract power from the cube without direct contact and without expanding she ship to the size of a planet. He comes to the idea of making some induction contraption to draw power wirelessly and starts building till other priorities take him from his work.

LeAuil frowns, "Is it by chance a significant part of their culture or technology? If it's important to either impacted ship or vesk then it may still provide relevance. Perhaps oceanic water would better suit our purposes."

Since Phelar didn't take her water bottle, Sabin decided to take a drink from it as she considered Le'Auil's question. "Or they could be asking for water because they lack it?" Sabin finally suggested. "Vesk Prime is a large, hot, and dry. Its land forms a super-continent; the rest consists of two oceans and small seas... but the rest of the Veskarium might not be so.. arid."

Now, the other vessel on the other hand," Sabin said between another sip from her bottle, seemingly considering things before answering.

Other than the usual significance of water needed for life, the Vesk place no more emphasis or importance on water than any other species. But, yes, it is somewhat more significant on the dryer worlds. No specific cults or religions or secret societies have grown up around 'life-giving' water, though.

The reference to water would seem to have its source with the Hesper, not with the Vesk. It may even be dissociative with either species and be something endemic to The Drift. The Hesper would seem to have some sort of psychic presence even after and beyond death.


Revonoss spends more time and effort studying and analyzing and experimenting with the relics. He does find some success with the cube-cum-power source when he tries electromagnetic induction. He is able to get a trickle of energy out of the cube for a minute before it gets sucked back in!

He soon realizes that there's no way induction could ever produce the necessary level of power needed. He's not even sure a charging station the size of a planet would do the trick.

However, in the course of this experimentation, he manages to grasp an insight into the potential source: differential energy states.

Overly extatic on the fact he actually managed to draw out something of the cube. Then upon the realization on the involvement of differential energy states he sets his computer to crawl the archives for any and all information on the topic to build a model with that to find a way to extract the energy inside the cube. He already feared the moment they would be able to unleash it and it would go out of control

In a way, Revonoss compares falling water as the differential energy states. Somewhere deep within the cube there are at least two (possibly more) energy states of different levels. It seems to be this (vast?) difference that produces the necessary energy, though exactly how the cube taps into this he can't figure out. Possibly he could get an answer... or at least a theory... if he knew what the source of those energies were. He's starting to get the idea, though, that they may just be two different points in time and space... like NOW and TOMORROW. 'Tomorrow' could just be falling down time-space continuum trying to 'catch up' to 'Now'


In any case, the trip through The Drift continues on for 3 more days when the ship suddenly finds itself entering a large ribbon of water. Sensors put it at about 100 miles across, flowing and fluctuating through The Drift, too, and confirm that it is a 'piece' of the Elemental Plane of Water... no doubt ruptured from its plane by a Drift engine.


Still no sign of the Vesk ship, though.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:28, Sun 12 Mar 2023.

“Well, if we have a water bomb, we now have water,” observed Sabin from her corner of the command deck. She looked, eyes wide, at how much water there was, though part of her realized that the vastness of space compared to the amount of water was negligible.

"Well at least it was something the victims signed us but to be honest it feels to far away from their original location to feel we are in the right place."

LeAuil nodded and after a thoughtful moment that wasn't shared, he shared, 'Maybe their drift engine was damaged while connected to the Plane of Water... If their engine was then taken- is it even possible that at one end of this ribbon is the Vesk with an open elemental floodgate?' his attempts to do the math were poor and he only had an understanding of the mystical side, he didn't have a clue what could go wrong mechanically or what that might do to the hybrid Drift engine's magic.

It doesn't take long to determine that the flow of the water is improving your Drift speed by around 27%. At the rate you are going, you'll exit The Drift a day full ahead of schedule.

However, the water is interfering with your sensors a bit. Visually, of course, you get the typical defractional distortion, but somehow, it's doing the same thing to the other sensors, too. Any blend of Computers, Perception and Physical Sciences skills can attempt to reduce this distortion... DC15.

This becomes significant a day before destination coordinates are reached because you suddenly find yourselves moving alongside the Veskarium ship! It's avoiding the water as it moves but isn't quite adept at it because of its size and the fluidity of the water. At one point, there's less than 5' between the two ships, but the Vesk don't seem to know you are there.

After a few hours of this, the Vesk pilot apparently gets tired of playing 'chicken' with the water and veers off at a tangent.

Revonoss lets loose his physical sciences to add the refraction modifier to sensor and camera data to obtain a clear view.

ooc: Yeah barely made it.
 16:33, Today: Revonoss rolled 15 using 1d20+11.  Remove disortion PS.

LeAuil assisted Revnoss' adjustment if he saw anything the fellow missed, "That is some good work!" he complements as Revnoss finished up.

When the Vesk ship comes on the scene he considers for a moment, ambushing them. Though he settles for creating several funny faces on their hull. Only a foot across and with an hour of existence the Vesk would likely never know... But he would know.

Le'Auil rolled 22 using 1d20+13.  Perception in liquid.

“Not often we can have a good look at a Vesk ship and evaluate their combat readiness,” Sabin said, a little bit awed at the fact that they haven’t been found yet. “I’m no strategist, but we need as many details about that ship so that we can figure out their weaknesses and exploit them. Who can interpret that sensory data?” She asked.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:31, Sat 25 Mar 2023.

"Well. now we know what that whole thing with the water was," Sol says. "They were telling us the water blocks sensors. If you guys hadn't made those adjustments, we might not have ever detected the Vesk ship."

"Good thing we left it alone--it was like 800 times larger than us!"

"So, did we get any good intel from shadowing it that long?"

While everyone considers an answer to Sol, the ship slips out of the water flow as the flow veers off on a different course. And then the ship exits The Drift back out into the Vast.

And all hell breaks lose!

Alarm klaxons sound, collision alert bells ring, reports of multiple incoming are announced, the ship gets hit with multiple impacts...

Everyone needs to make a DC 17 Reflex saving throw to see if you were sitting down and strapped in... or you got tossed aside (for 11 points of damage) from the violent shaking of the ship under the sudden assault.

He was in mid-stride when the floor suddenly jumped up and smacked him right in the face! Then he was tossed across the room to slam into the wall. Sliding down to the floor, he found it just easier to lay there for a moment... or two... or three.

20:29, Today: Dranthalas rolled 11 using 1d20+3 ((8)).

"Owwwwwwwwwww..." he moaned as he now assessed what was going on.

Sabin was about to take another sip of water when all hell broke loose. She bruised her eye with the nib, fell over one of the sensor computers, and thinks she received someone else’s elbow to her torso. “Kfaaaaar—“ she yelled before landing with a loud thunk “—kkkkkkkkk”.

21:38, Today: Sabin Shess rolled 14 using 1d20+5.  Dex Sav.

SMASH!

An easy way to destroy a table is to have the ship turn up side down while you were walking causing you to land on said table on your back! The table wasn't that sturdy.

23:21, Today: Orlando Freedom rolled 7 using 1d20+4 ((3)).

As he rolled off the table onto the floor, he tried to take in what was happening even while the ship did its bizarre dance.

Revonoss with all his years of experience and more likely the fact that he was sitting at the scanning equipment to do a scan the moment they left the drift is quickly able to put on his belt and does a full scan to asses the threat. As he speaks he seems quite calm under it all. Maybe because he had achieved the age that death was no longer scary?

"Analyzing the threat!!"

ooc: 07:05, Today: Revonoss rolled 28 using 1d20+13.  Computers Scan!!
07:03, Today: Revonoss rolled 21 using 1d20+6.  Strap on!!

She'd just grabbed a corblon and a fizzbar from the galley when the sky fell in!

Transitions from The Drift into normal space were not usually so... insane, but you still needed to be wary. THIS went way beyond 'wary'!

00:56, Today: StarMaster, on behalf of Phelar Morilla, rolled 8 using 1d20+2 ((6)).

In the sudden topsy-turvy world that the ship had become, she wound up wearing the corblon and had no idea what happened to the fizzbar... sent flying across the deck when she slammed an elbow into a console.

He'd only laid down an hour ago for a quick nap before transition, so he was a bit surprised to be bounced out of bed and halfway across the room!

01:39, Today: Culhayn rolled 14 using 1d20+5 ((9)).

"What in the Nine Hells is going on?" he managed to spit out as he gained his feet. The ship was still doing the bugaloo!

Under the circumstances, the first impression everyone got was that the ship had come under massive and sudden attack! And while it felt and sounded like that, there was an odd quality to it--no weapons fire could be heard.

Second impression was that the ship was being smashed by asteroids.

And then the Captain managed to get the ship under control, and Revonoss's whiz-skill with sensors sorted it all out.

Not an asteroid bombardment, but close--debris field. The Starhawk had exited The Drift right into the middle of a massive space battle debris field!

Revonoss is detecting over 500 destroyed ships--2 different designs and 7 different classes. One design style is a flying split wedge covered in a black-red-gold  semi-camouflage pattern... as if it could hide in a volcano. The second design appears technorganic--it has a large spherical front that has an assortment of tendrils that sprout from it and twist their way back to the tail, narrowing as they go.

Revenoss is able to tweak the sensors to reveal this battle took place around a thousand years ago. While most of the debris is stationary, some of it still shifts, particularly when the Starhawk began colliding with it.

Little external damage was done to the ship, and even that disappeared once the Captain raised the shields.