Episode 5: The Glendale Hotel
In this episode of Dark Star Adventurecast, the crew’s return to Dr. Voss is overshadowed by a devastating discovery: their ship, the Scapegoat, has been stolen.
All signs point north toward Black Harbor, a former military base turned Guardian stronghold. But before they can begin the long journey, the crew must find shelter in the ruined city of Wafisa. Within the decayed halls of the Glendale Hotel, they uncover the remnants of a scavenger’s life, and relics of a world undone by greed.
Will the night bring safety, or new dangers waiting in the dark?
Meet the Crew:
Jeff as Star Master (Game Master)
Brian as Captain Thorn
Stephanie as the warrior Haley
Doja as the wildcard pilot Robert
Scott as the transhuman hacker Felix
Support on Patreon
Special thanks to Brad and Holly, our first Scapegoat Syndicate members on Patreon!
They're keeping the lights on and the airlocks sealed.
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Episode 5
Robert (Doja): [00:00:00] Welcome to the Dark Star Adventure Cast where the stars are cold. The void is endless and danger lurks in every shadow out here. Trust is a gamble and survival is never guaranteed on tonight's adventure cast,
Haleyy (Stephanie): look over to you guys.
Robert (Doja): Smashed him. Haley with two Y's held me down while y'all owed me.
Thorne (Brian): Well, I'm just gonna stride confidently into this building then.
Thorne (Brian): Is there a good reason I should suddenly stop? Short machine. Huh? Be beautiful machine. I like the sound of that.
Robert (Doja): We don't make mistakes. We have happy little accidents.
Thorne (Brian): Yeah.
Felix (Scott): Oh yeah, guys. Welcome back. We're back, baby. Alright,
Thorne (Brian): here we go. We're doing it. We're doing it again. We're here. We're a group. We're about to do a game.
Thorne (Brian): All of those are true facts. Facts
Felix (Scott): of life. This is what's happening. [00:01:00] So the four of you, Felix, Hailey, Robert, and Thorn, welcome back. So last time, you know, you guys did all the stuff on, on with FISA and, and changing over the gas pipeline, and you can finally make your way back to Dr. Voss. It's a balmy 72 degrees Fahrenheit.
Felix (Scott): Very wet outside is a drizzle of rain with the pale green sky of Waa towering overhead. Low cloud cover at all times is incredibly gaseous atmosphere. Here you're just a few scant miles away from Dr. Larvas Hassel VA's research station by another several miles is the Spaceport where you left the scapegoat.
Felix (Scott): What would you like to do? I think the sooner we get back to Voss, the sooner we can figure out what the hell we'd have to do to get back into our ship.
Thorne (Brian): Yeah, the situation ended a little bloodier than I would've liked, but at least it's done with and we were successful. So let's head back there, try to get off this stinky [00:02:00] rock.
Felix (Scott): So you make your way out into the city of Afia. It's still late morning and the light rain I mentioned earlier is just starting to pick up, which thanks to increased methane in the upper atmosphere of this planet smells very different and quite pungent from what you are used to. It's accurate, it's sharp, it's oily.
Felix (Scott): It's actually kind of reminiscent of lighter fluid or gasoline. It even feels a bit slick on your skin and it coats the sheet with a rainbow sheen.
Felix (Scott): Moving out into the wide Boulevards of the city of Wafisa you head south to the research station.
Thorne (Brian): All right, everybody, let's go. The rain's really coming down and it smells.
Felix (Scott): When you're about a mile away from the station and about three miles away from the spaceport, you hear the whine of engines as a medium-sized ship lifts off from the Spaceport. A very familiar looking ship, a very scapegoaty looking ship. Keeping it low, it flies off to the north [00:03:00] and out of sight.
Felix (Scott): Aw, what the,
Felix (Scott): oh, blast
Felix (Scott): That better not be our ship.
Felix (Scott): And you remember that you had left. The ship in the hands of several guardians of work who had taken it over, but you were injured. So you left and you said, we'll, take care of this later. Taking care of it later is gonna cost you because now your ship is gone.
Thorne (Brian): It's
Thorne (Brian): not one thing, it's another.
Felix (Scott): Gods dammit. I thought that would be able to get in while we were gone if we hadn't spent the night. And that,
Haleyy (Stephanie): arg
Haleyy (Stephanie): let's see if Elara has a ship.
Robert (Doja): Y'all don't know if we have like a, like a low jack on that. You think we might be able to track her down? Um, I mean, I, I, I could have sworn. Uh, I put the lock on or, uh, you know, did the little double click.
Robert (Doja): I, I mu must not have heard the little beep beep.
Felix (Scott): No, Robert, it was locked. They had tools to get in. You know, any system can be overcome with enough, uh, determination. We, we should be able to track it though. I think I've got its Signature saved. We should be able to track it as long as it stays on the planet.
Thorne (Brian): Try the Find My Spaceship app.
Thorne (Brian): Spaceship app.
Felix (Scott): Yeah. It'd be nice if it was that easy. Now I'm gonna need to [00:04:00] sit down, I think and figure this out a little bit more. Let's see what Voss can help us out with. Maybe she knows where they could have taken it.
Robert (Doja): Yeah. Do we know anything to the north? Any, uh, major structures?
Robert (Doja): I haven't seen anything over there.
Felix (Scott): I'll pop over the map and see if there's anything that like stands out in the direction that the ship was headed. Yeah, so this map is obviously pre whatever happened here. When you look up north on the map, there's mostly just regular city, slowly turning into residential zones, and then it hits a coastline.
Felix (Scott): About a mile before the coastline. You start getting a lot of areas where there's a lot of fishing and things like that. But one thing does stick out to you. There is a military base called Black Harbor, right on the coastline. Folks, if I had to guess, I'm gonna guess they went to uh, somewhere, probably around this area used to be, looks like a military base of some kind.
Felix (Scott): Hailey, you have it on your map too, right?
Robert (Doja): I'm sorry, just to clarify, are you, are you literally drawing as, as he's describing this,
Haleyy (Stephanie): doesn't this [00:05:00] make sense to you?
Robert (Doja): Because Hailey's fully analog,
Felix (Scott): right?
Haleyy (Stephanie): Yeah,
Robert (Doja): yeah. It just has a little land north with a little harbor drawing next to it.
Haleyy (Stephanie): I'm sure you've worked with less
Felix (Scott): and you misspelled black and harbor also, there's a bunch of doodles in the margins.
Haleyy (Stephanie): Look, look. Did we get the methane stuff done? Yeah.
Felix (Scott): We did.
Haleyy (Stephanie): I didn't need to spell methane. I didn't need to spell Wfi to get it done.
Felix (Scott): So Hailey leads you back to Dr. Aara Voss. But really Felix is leading you back with the real map that he downloaded.
Haleyy (Stephanie): Well, this line, the distance is five fingernails,
Felix (Scott): so you find your way back to the research station and everything is still buttoned up real tight.
Felix (Scott): The doors are, are shut and presumably locked. There's no like doorknob or handle. It's just a smooth door and you once again clock the camera and speaker that's above the [00:06:00] door up in the top right corner. Wow, that was fast. Methane production is at 80% and still rising. I am introducing it very slowly back into the systems and everything is looking nominal.
Felix (Scott): Excellent work. I suppose. I thought you were going to fail. Okay. Then when do we leave?
Thorne (Brian): Well, you see there's a bit of a problem with that. It seems like the locals got their hands on our ship and we're gonna have to either find a different one or get it back.
Felix (Scott): God damnit. Well, I guess I'm not coming out then.
Felix (Scott): I'm certainly not just gonna spend the night on the streets in the rain while I wait for you to get your ship back
Thorne (Brian): and say, I recommend it.
Felix (Scott): That makes sense. How about you let us in though? That way we can strategize and plan and then set out from here to retrieve our ship. I wasn't. Ever planning on letting you in?
Felix (Scott): There's a lot of delicate instruments in here. I was just gonna come out.
Thorne (Brian): Listen. What do you know about the, this place that we got on our map here? What's it called? The [00:07:00] lar HaBO. What does this say? Haley
Haleyy (Stephanie): Black Harbor.
Thorne (Brian): Black Harbor. That's it.
Felix (Scott): Black Harbor. Yeah. The town of Black Harbor used to just be a military base on the north side of Waa after everything went down.
Felix (Scott): People needed a place to live and they needed someone to protect them. Black Harbor, the Town and the Guardian compound within it, which used to be the military base. It's pretty much the only beacon of civilization left on this entire planet. Besides pockets of tribes and families or research stations like this one, that's probably where your ship is.
Felix (Scott): I'd be careful if I go there. Oh, I thought you said it was civilized. When I say a beacon of civilization on this planet, that doesn't mean much 'cause it's the only civilization. What did happen here? There was a squabble over gas rights. Gas is the thing that we mine here, primarily methane. You don't want a squabble over gas rights, not with a 2, 3, [00:08:00] 4 military forces.
Felix (Scott): With rebels coming outta the woodwork, things explode. And when things explode, businesses don't want to be around anymore. And when the businesses move off world, they do the jobs soon enough. The people that didn't leave or didn't want to leave or couldn't afford to leave. We're stuck here. There's no way off this planet unless you have money.
Felix (Scott): There's hardly even any operable ship that can make it into outer space. That's it. It's as simple as that. Greed destroyed this planet.
Robert (Doja): Now that, that's my question for you. As we told you, they, they done stole the ship. Um, but, uh, might there be something around here that we might be able to liberate, uh, that, that, you know, you, you have some, as you said, very fancy technology that you probably don't want my hands touching.
Robert (Doja): And a thing you might want to point us towards that might be able to get you off this here rock.
Felix (Scott): What I think he's asking if, if there's another ship we could get, I don't know maybe, but I'm [00:09:00] assuming any operable ships would be controlled by the guardians.
Thorne (Brian): It sounds like even if there was black harbor's the place to look.
Felix (Scott): Yes, unfortunately. Or find a place to settle down. The city is not that bad. If you can find a safe spot.
Felix (Scott): It
Robert (Doja): sounds like, uh, right around Black Harbor might be a place to blend in. I have been known to be a master of the skies. People have said my guises are awful. Any, uh, any chance we might be able to, we might be able to go over and, uh, give a little power to the people, you know, maybe, uh, enlist some people, uh, into, into our great cause.
Robert (Doja): Maybe we could become the great work. What
Felix (Scott): is our cause? I think our cause is getting our shit back and getting a boss off this planet, Robert. Let's not lose sight. Alright? There's problems throughout the galaxy. We can't just get involved with every little local squabble. All right?
Haleyy (Stephanie): We can do what we can though.
Haleyy (Stephanie): Sounds like we'll need some help.
Robert (Doja): And if we restore the power of methane distribution to the people rather than to the [00:10:00] guardians of the work while we get our ship back, I don't say that's a bad thing, would you?
Felix (Scott): No. But let's, let's keep our eye on the prize. Here we've got a slightly bigger issue is we need somewhere to bed down for the night that I can help you with.
Felix (Scott): There's a busted up hotel, just one block over, mostly intact, not bombed out, not burned. I'm sure there's even some beds in there. A slot opens next to the door. There is a communicator. I've tuned it to the frequency of this research base. Don't mess with that. I've encrypted it. You changed frequencies.
Felix (Scott): You won't be able to talk with me. If you have any questions, just press down the button and ask, and I'll see if I can look something up in our database to help you out. All right. Thanks doc.
Robert (Doja): I back slowly away from the communicator.
Felix (Scott): I will take it. It explodes. No, I'm just kidding you, idiot. Of course it was trapped.
Felix (Scott): It's the oldest trick in the book. One of my character flaws is that he's two trusting, so she recommends that hotel that's nearby. But obviously there's a million buildings between here and Black Harbor. Looking at [00:11:00] the map and at a normal walking speed helix, you estimate that it'll take a full day from dawn until dusk of travel.
Felix (Scott): God, my fucking legs are not gonna be happy about this. All right. I guess we should bed down. And are we objective? This seems like our best bet. He just get a place any to look.
Robert (Doja): Yeah, I'm, I'm definitely, uh, uh, interested. I think we, uh, learned a lesson from, uh, last night though. Um, there are ro Gangs of the Guardians.
Robert (Doja): Um, so if we can get a off the beaten track here, um, and then we post a, uh, guard during the night, I think we're gonna be, uh, might have benefiting. Sounds
Haleyy (Stephanie): good.
Felix (Scott): Okay, so you make your way to the hotel. It's further down this main boulevard. You take a side street and you find a seven story hotel. A big painted sign that's attached to the bottom, like just over the first floor of the building says the Glendale.
Felix (Scott): The letters are all faded and there is looks like some evidence of fire on the sign. [00:12:00] Of course, the lights are all out. And the big revolving doors out front are smash the pieces, just leaving a large gaping hole leading into the lobby of the hotel.
Robert (Doja): May I use my advanced technology papers, a k, a, my binoculars to see if there's been any recent activity here?
Felix (Scott): Yeah, absolutely. So go ahead and give me a wisdom notice. That seems good.
Robert (Doja): Uh, that would be an 11.
Felix (Scott): Okay, great. You use your binoculars for the higher levels to like check everything out. Nothing on the roof. You look as deep into the lobb as you can with and without your binoculars, and it's hard to tell if this is particularly recent.
Felix (Scott): It's definitely after the apocalypse. There's remnants of camps that have been made in the lobby. There's some refuse that makes you feel like people like yourself or vagrants have found their way into the lobby and made a temporary shelter there.
Robert (Doja): Well guys, we better, uh, watch out. Make sure that there aren't any, uh, too many people, uh, still in the [00:13:00] building, kind of hiding out.
Robert (Doja): There Might be, uh, one or two stragglers. Doesn't look like anything too crazy.
Thorne (Brian): Well, we'll be careful, but this rain stinks and I'm soaking wet, so let's do something to get out of it.
Felix (Scott): Okay, so as you're walking in, because of your awesome notice check, just as you're moving across the threshold, you see a tiny glimmer of a horizontal line going across the floor right at Ankle Heights.
Thorne (Brian): Well, I'm just gonna stride confidently into this building then. Is there a good reason I should suddenly stop short?
Robert (Doja): Well, if you could please stop. I, I noticed the thing, and I don't know if I have the, uh, uh, the reflexes or wherewithal to stop
Felix (Scott): you. I love that Robert could see the thing but can't communicate effectively that he saw the thing.
Felix (Scott): Classic Robert, that's so funny
Thorne (Brian): to me. Yeah, it's classic. Robert Glenn, I guess I'll just stand here perfectly still until you point out the danger.
Felix (Scott): So there's a tiny wire of extremely thin [00:14:00] like mono monofilaments going across, not the doorway itself, but inside a little bit.
Robert (Doja): I am imagine myself struggling to be able to, one, communicate and two, stop him.
Robert (Doja): Can we put it in the, the, the hands of the gods?
Felix (Scott): Oh yeah, absolutely. So Thorn, can you give me a wisdom notice?
Thorne (Brian): Yeah, I suppose
Felix (Scott): I could. Robert is tongue tied and can't quite get it out that he has seen potentially incredibly dangerous thing. Well, I rolled a 10 so I can tell that maybe he's, there's something on his mind.
Felix (Scott): Him acting that way makes you kind of stop short. And then you also notice the glimmer of the mono wire filament. It's some kind of trip wire.
Robert (Doja): Yep. I think it's trapped. I was trying to tell you, I just got real obsessed with my binoculars. So there
Thorne (Brian): everybody, there's a wire here. I appreciate the warning.
Thorne (Brian): If you hadn't stumbled over yourself in some way, I might have had no idea there was any danger at all.
Robert (Doja): Yeah, words aren't really my forte, but any of y'all know how we might be able to, uh, get around this here thing? Maybe jump [00:15:00] in a window? That, that, that, that. Oh my god, dude, my,
Felix (Scott): you're telling me here, what is it?
Felix (Scott): It is a trip wire. Seems to be Alright, hold on. Let me take a look. Anyone who wants to disarm it, it's a sneak skill. 'cause that's how you, the physical security measures. None of us are good at sneaking it. Don't think. I know I'm not
Haleyy (Stephanie): Well,
Felix (Scott): yep.
Haleyy (Stephanie): Barely walk down a hallway.
Felix (Scott): Why don't we just step over it?
Felix (Scott): We're gonna step over it with no one having the proper expertise to deal with this wire, or really even discern exactly what it does. Everyone carefully steps over it. Yep. Mm-hmm. Now that you're on the other side and you take a look, this trip wire connects to a wall that you can see, and then it leads off into the darkness.
Felix (Scott): So you can go investigate if you want, or you can kind of like make your your camp. Oh, I wanna figure out what this is like. I'm not gonna just sit here and sleep in here knowing that there's some kind of security system set up that we don't know anything about. You take a look off into the darkness and you find that the mono will, the mono willow, the mono willow event.
Felix (Scott): The [00:16:00] monofilament wire leads off into the darkness and connects to a tiny device with a pair of speakers attached to it.
Robert (Doja): Guys, I use my binoculars to determine that this wire attaches to a set of tanus speakers.
Felix (Scott): Thanks. Thanks, Robert. So what? It's an alarm. I wanna get a closer look at it without touching it.
Felix (Scott): Really try to figure out what its purpose is.
Haleyy (Stephanie): I could smash it.
Felix (Scott): Well, Felix, gimme a fix intelligence. 'cause fix is how you identify what something is supposed to do. That would be a 10. Nice. So with a 10, you see that it, I mean, unless it's somehow. Subtly trapped. It looks like that this wire triggers the circuit inside to cause it to start playing something throughout the speakers.
Felix (Scott): Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's kind of an alarm. What we're supposed to notify is within hearing distance.
Robert (Doja): If they're within hearing distance, do we want to post up? What are y'all thinking? Do we want to try to [00:17:00] disarm it?
Haleyy (Stephanie): We can use it too. I don't think
Thorne (Brian): there's much sense of disarming now. I'm more concerned about finding out where these people might be.
Thorne (Brian): Yeah. If they're inside, I don't want them stumbling on us in the middle of the night.
Robert (Doja): Yeah. And I'd agree if it, I mean, if it's active, I mean that could work for us, uh, in our advantage.
Haleyy (Stephanie): Can we dis starve it and re-arm it?
Felix (Scott): I mean, we could try, but I don't have experience with like these kind of sensitive like devices.
Felix (Scott): I'm more of a inner electronics kind of guy. I was thinking we might wanna just search the building, see if we could find these suckers. Maybe there's a security system here I can break into.
Robert (Doja): Haley, tell me a little about this plane. Y'all wanna trip it, kill 'em and re-arm?
Haleyy (Stephanie): No, no. I wanna get some sleep. So my thought was we take it, re-arm it outside of whatever room we're in, so it'll wake us up if anyone shows up.
Felix (Scott): I gotcha.
Robert (Doja): I get that. I like it. Relocating. It seems like I'm gonna agree with Felix here. Not be a risk. We could leave it where it is and clear the building, but still use it. I don't think any a a, any random guardian's gonna probably trip that thing off.
Felix (Scott): My gut says not to touch it. [00:18:00] Yeah, I think sweeping the building's a good call.
Robert (Doja): I mean, it's seven floors here, so we're gonna need a tat formation. Haley, up front. 'cause you all. A beat stick. We don't know it. Woo. And uh, a room by room. Seven floors of a hotel. That's gonna take us a minute. Do y'all, do y'all wanna do it together real quick here?
Haleyy (Stephanie): I think that's for the best 'cause honestly, I don't, I don't trust you guys alone.
Thorne (Brian): Putting up seems like a bad idea
Felix (Scott): if you're going to sweep the entire building. It's an inner city hotel, so it's actually fairly skinny. It's seven floors and there's probably four. Rooms per floor.
Haleyy (Stephanie): Oh, perfect.
Felix (Scott): Yeah, there are stairs obviously, but there's also a non-working lift.
Robert (Doja): Lift first and then, uh oh, if y'all are down, lift and then check if there's anything up in the compartment of the lift above it.
Robert (Doja): I was a vagrant, you know, never, not saying that I ever done did it. Um, but, but maybe I did. Uh, that's where I'd at. The
Felix (Scott): doors to the lift are open and [00:19:00] inside nothing. You open the top hatch and you look in and it's just darkness and incredibly stale air. You give it a good listen, you hear nothing.
Thorne (Brian): This thing's clearly broken.
Thorne (Brian): So yeah, I figured we're gonna have to do the stairs.
Robert (Doja): Aren't you like super good with like machines and
Felix (Scott): things? I'm not gonna fix an elevator man. Well, there's perfect. This is not that high building. There's stairs. We can take it. The stairs
Robert (Doja): instead of in stores in your light. Barely even work, you know, whatever.
Robert (Doja): Whatever y'all want. Whatever y'all want, let's deal with it.
Thorne (Brian): Hey, and if, if Felix of all people is willing to use the stairs, then let's just use the stairs.
Felix (Scott): Yes, sir. So you begin to weigh, make your way up the stairs, and with four rooms per floor, most of the rooms have been bashed open. So it's pretty easy.
Felix (Scott): You go, you take a look around, you go up to the next floor, you take a look around, a few of the doors are closed. But you're able to open them. They're not locked. There is one door on the fourth floor that you run into that is either stuck or locked.
Haleyy (Stephanie): Look over to you guys. Smash tent. [00:20:00]
Felix (Scott): We gotta see what's in everything.
Felix (Scott): Hailey, I give you the fist pump.
Haleyy (Stephanie): All right.
Felix (Scott): Okay, Hailey, give me an exert strength. Hailey braces her shoulder against the door and slams her shoulder into it, popping it open easily. Huge blast of rank air flows out over you from this seemingly airtight time capsule of a room,
Haleyy (Stephanie): disgust, stink
Felix (Scott): mold, and the smell of death and dampness just clings to you out in the hallway and you gag reflexively.
Haleyy (Stephanie): I think we're good guys. This is awful. I
Robert (Doja): don't know what's up. What's up in there, Hailey?
Haleyy (Stephanie): I, um, do that like stance kind of leading with like my flashlight, I think. In my pistol, I walk into the room ready to fight anything that I see
Felix (Scott): in here. You find a dead skeletal body on top of the bed, which is a queen size bed on the right side.
Felix (Scott): Underneath the covers, its face is completely gone because it's so skeletal now. The flesh is basically all shriveled and [00:21:00] mostly started to deteriorate very heavily. Long stringy blonde hair is splayed out over the pillow behind it, and there's just goo all around it. From what you can see soaking through the bed, apparently just melted flesh over time.
Felix (Scott): Disintegrating flesh on the bed table next to it, there's a jewelry box with a very nice amulet displayed and the jewelry box is open facing towards whoever this was in the bed. There's also a desk in the room, a writing desk. Sitting at the chair at the writing desk is a man also deceased and slumped over forward.
Felix (Scott): In front of him is a old fashioned looking laptop, like a clamshell design, not like the modern hollow design and a small USB recording device.
Haleyy (Stephanie): We're taking this jewelry box and the laptop out to the hallway tech guides. I have something for you to look at here.
Felix (Scott): Oh, good. Good call. Thanks. Thanks, Haley. So you're grabbing the [00:22:00] laptop, the jewelry box, and with the amulet
Haleyy (Stephanie): in it?
Felix (Scott): Yeah. And the amulet. Are you taking the USB recording device?
Haleyy (Stephanie): Yep.
Felix (Scott): Okay. You take it out to the hallway and you are sitting out in this, like the smell is reaching you out in the hallway, but it's much more bearable.
Robert (Doja): While they do that, I am going to go through all of their pockets because I am nose deaf
Felix (Scott): in the room.
Felix (Scott): The woman under the covers does not have pockets, but you look around that area, I need you to roll a notice. Wisdom.
Haleyy (Stephanie): I have to say, I kind of feel bad that women's clothing with like an. Non-functional pockets, no pockets is like something also in the future.
Felix (Scott): Well, in this case it's because she doesn't, she's not wearing a lot of clothes
Robert (Doja): and in this case, I roll a six.
Robert (Doja): I might not even notice that she doesn't have 'em have pockets.
Felix (Scott): Yes. You kind of frisk her and like you don't really find anything. The guy does have pockets, so you, you rifle through his pockets and you find a handful of coins. Each coin has a [00:23:00] golden shield stamped in it. The coins are octagonal and made of a metal that you don't readily recognize, though it does have coppery bronze quality to it.
Felix (Scott): But there's also, as the light from Haley's torches playing over the room, there's an iridescent quality to like the top of the coin along the shield itself, especially. And that's, that's a 17 of those coins. They're quite small. They're like the size of marbles. I showed
Robert (Doja): the entire party. I don't know if this is gonna help y'all with the laptop, but uh, it might help y'all sleep a little better tonight.
Robert (Doja): Oh God. Y'all might wanna sleep a couple of beds away from me. Think I smell awful?
Thorne (Brian): Yeah, you smell worse now. For sure. Let me have a look at those coins, trying to see if I could tell what they're made of and how valuable they are.
Haleyy (Stephanie): And I also wanna look at my amulet. Is it a lock it, I'm wondering.
Thorne (Brian): It is not a lock it.
Thorne (Brian): Okay. I'd also like to take a look at that and see how valuable that might be. 'cause you guys are basically bringing treasures out and the exchange of treasures is [00:24:00] sort of my specialty.
Felix (Scott): Aha. Okay. Yeah. So I'm gonna ask you to roll your trade intelligence.
Thorne (Brian): Oh, I'm glad that you said that because not only do I have good trade and good intelligence, but.
Thorne (Brian): I also have like, I can roll 3D six and drop the lowest on trade, so Oh
Felix (Scott): nice. Yeah. That's your thing, right?
Thorne (Brian): I got an 11.
Felix (Scott): Okay, so I'm just gonna ask you for one roll, 'cause this is one like appraisal session. So you're looking at the coins. They do indeed to seem to be a sort of. Alloy. So not like straight of one metal type.
Felix (Scott): Yeah, they're not
Thorne (Brian): pure.
Felix (Scott): Yeah. And there's an iridescent quality to them. You think That was probably painted on some sort of like transparent paint and it's just over the shield itself. The shield is not etched on, it's actually an embossment, so it sticks out. And the shield you actually recognized as a shield that was on.
Felix (Scott): The chest plates of the two guardians. Of the work that you met when you arrived here at the city? Mm-hmm. It looks like almost exactly the same shield [00:25:00] design. This one's a little bit more ornate. On the back of the coins. There's no design whatsoever. It's almost like it was created on a production line and only the front of it was meant to ever be shown.
Felix (Scott): So it was carved beautifully and embossed beautifully, but on the back it's like completely unfinished. You think that these are fairly worthless unless someone is specifically looking for these objects. Hmm.
Thorne (Brian): Okay.
Felix (Scott): The what Haley thought, maybe a ruby necklace is a garnet amulet on a 14 karat gold chain.
Felix (Scott): So it is worth something, not a ton, not something like you're gonna repair your ship with it, but it is worth something on the back, on the, uh, the clasp that holds the garnet. Is inscribe something in a language that you do not understand? It looks like maybe Swahili. Where's there
Thorne (Brian): a Xeno linguist.
Felix (Scott): When you need one.
Felix (Scott): I wanna remind you that people on earth speak Swahili.
Robert (Doja): We [00:26:00] do have a communicator and um, I would love to watch you try to describe the symbols. Yes,
Thorne (Brian): there's like a little e but it's like backwards and kind of like tilted
Felix (Scott): Swahili, Zanzibar. You don't wanna get canceled this early in the podcast. Oh no. If you're listening to this, please don't cancel us.
Felix (Scott): We're cool. We're hip. Yeah. So you can't read the Swahili on the back of this amulet.
Thorne (Brian): Do I know for sure that's the language or are you just saying it's something Greek? To me,
Felix (Scott): you have encountered a lot of languages in your trade. You're not positive this is Swahili, but it has the same block and.style as Swahili.
Thorne (Brian): Yeah. Okay.
Felix (Scott): So it's either that or some derivative language.
Thorne (Brian): By the looks of it. These are some kind of coin, but I can't be sure if they were never finished or if they're for display only. I don't think they're worth much for the metal they're made of. But this shield symbol, that's the same shield that those guardians were wearing, maybe this is some currency they use or used to use.
Thorne (Brian): It's tough to [00:27:00] say. Maybe keep 'em just in case this ambulance though, this is, uh, definitely real gold and this gem is probably not. Not too shabby either. I mean, it's not worth a fortune, but it's definitely nice. There's something written on the back here. Can't say I recognize the language, maybe Swahili or something.
Thorne (Brian): It's up to say whatever it is. I don't read it.
Haleyy (Stephanie): Got that written down. Okay. I'm in my notebook, like jotting down notes, taking our inventory.
Felix (Scott): Haley's so useful. So you have a laptop and you have a USB recording device. So yeah. So I'll start by taking a look at the laptop. Okay. The laptop has no power left in it right now, so you're unable to turn it on.
Felix (Scott): Oh, damn. Can't get into this. We gotta see if we can find some power downstairs. We got batteries.
Robert (Doja): Yeah. A fail. Any, any chance I can deep dive back up into that room, find a charger.
Felix (Scott): Well, I mean, we can find a, a charger, Robert, but as, as far as I could tell, this building doesn't have a whole lot of juice. Oh.
Felix (Scott): See that's why you got the big brain on you. Now. I might be able to route some [00:28:00] power from my pad to it for at least a little bit, but I don't know if that'd be worth it. I've got an extra type a power cell. What does it take? I could draw a, rig it with a type A, I think. Um, yeah, let's, if we can make that happen.
Felix (Scott): Okay, so go ahead and roll a Fix Intelligence.
Thorne (Brian): Any help with that? No, I've
Felix (Scott): got it.
Felix (Scott): All right. There we go. Let's see what we got here. This looks like the laptop of a man who works in some sort of financial sector, probably before the fall of the city, finding a lot of spreadsheets about gas and gas prices and the sales of gas prices in the stock of all of that. Nothing is particularly interesting here on the laptop.
Felix (Scott): However, you do find a document titled Everywhere. There's also a email draft in his unsent emails that he never sent out. It looks like pretty basic stuff here. [00:29:00] I've got some documents. Let me open, I, I open up the everywhere document just to kind of see what it looks like. It's a text file and it's a bullet point log of sightings from the hotel window detailing the movements of different factions, the guardians of the work, the red squad, other unidentified rebels or gangs.
Felix (Scott): There's mentions of the different symbols they wear, such as like the red arm bands. Or the guardians of the work shield and the only entry that has any sort of commentary on it says, saw them drag a man into the street today. They made him beg, then they made him run. This is weird. I like these. It looks like these people, and I'm, I describe it as I'm going through, it looks like they were maybe monitoring the activity.
Felix (Scott): I don't think the trap was there for folks like us. And then there's a folder named Claire. Yeah, I open up the folder. So the folder named Claire, which is right on the desktop. It's photos of a man and a woman, presumably the man and woman that were in that hotel room. [00:30:00] Oh yeah. Vacations, birthdays, candid shots in their home, not in the hotel room.
Felix (Scott): There's actually a short video of them. They're laughing together as they cook some meal, uh, on their stove. They're drinking wine, and then it cuts to them later in the night, dancing in the living room. And then you hear the voice of a small child. The man says, I'll put him to bed. It goes dark.
Felix (Scott): Also, in this folder is in letter to Claire. It says, I'm so sorry I couldn't get you out. I should have found a way. I should have been stronger.
Haleyy (Stephanie): Oh my God.
Felix (Scott): What else was there? There's three more things. There's the email draft, there's another video recording and there's an encrypted file titled Don't let them have it.
Felix (Scott): All right. I'm gonna look at the email draft. It's depressing. What's depressing? Nevermind. Alright. So this is a draft address to, it actually has something in the address field, but it's like a hash of alpha [00:31:00] numeric, like just a bunch of garbage. Basically as the address, the email address, the subject line says if someone's fine, this go to 17 Millbrook Lane, the body that says there's a book in the bottom drawer, and then there's nothing else in the email.
Felix (Scott): This one's just some kind of goddamn treasure hunt. Hey, you wanna copy this down? Yep. I know you love this kind of shit.
Haleyy (Stephanie): It's the best.
Felix (Scott): The video recording you open up is entitled The Final Entry. It's the same man from the previous video, except for now. He's incredibly gaunt and hollow eye. The woman is in the background on the bed.
Felix (Scott): Unmoving speaks in a low, shaky voice.
Star Master Jeff: This is
Felix (Scott): my last update. My God. Claire's gone. She's gone. I'll be next. If you find this, don't stay here. Don't wait. Don't hunker down. Don't try to wait it out. Leave this planet as soon as you can. [00:32:00] There's nothing left here for people like us. And it cuts out was it very useful And all that looks after that, is that encrypted file.
Felix (Scott): Finally, something of interest. Let's see if I can crack this bad boy. Hey, give me a program Intelligence seven. You actually may have found your match on this one. You're unable to access the encrypted file. Alright.
Haleyy (Stephanie): Um, quick question and I'm sorry if I missed it. Was there a child in one of those videos?
Felix (Scott): Yeah, I saw, I figured there was a, a sound of a kid in the background of one of them.
Haleyy (Stephanie): Okay.
Felix (Scott): It wasn't here though, it was like a different location. He probably didn't make it to the hotel.
Haleyy (Stephanie): 17 Millbrook.
Felix (Scott): Yeah, probably. Okay,
Robert (Doja): and can technicians re-roll once per scene?
Felix (Scott): Oh, I can't. That's a good call, Robert. All right.
Felix (Scott): I'm gonna re-roll my program then. Okay, great. That'll do it. You are able to [00:33:00] hack, pass the password prompt for the file. It was Claire Claire, 1, 2, 3. You're able to open this text file and inside it says we couldn't take it with us. It's just too big. But it's too beautiful of a machine to just leave.
Felix (Scott): There's a storage facility near my house, bay 17. I built a false wall right inside. Code 32 87. That's all it says right now. This might be something. A machine, huh?
Thorne (Brian): Be beautiful machine. I like the sound of that. You're all for a treasure hunt as soon as it's for a machine. Who wouldn't be a any treasure's treasure in my book.
Felix (Scott): And the final thing you have is the, the USB recorder. And I assume his house is 17 Millbrook, correct?
Thorne (Brian): It is indeed. Now what about that bottom drawer? Was there some kind of dresser or something in that room or do you think, I think it's
Felix (Scott): at 17 Millbrook. There's something there. So I think we, you know, we'll check the map, see if it's on our way.
Felix (Scott): See if it's not gonna delay us too much from [00:34:00] our main mission, but uh, could be worth our while. Never a little harm lying in our own pockets while we're on a job. Now you're speaking my language. So this USB device, let's see here. I plug it into the laptop, you plug it in and it kind of powers up. And there is a, a play button right on it.
Felix (Scott): Yep. So once it's charged up, you feel like you could just use it as a recorder so you hear the same man's voice, not quite as weak and raspy as it was in the last video, but getting there.
Star Master Jeff: If you're hearing this, we did make it, if you, if you're listening to this, we just, were not around anymore. Her name is Claire, was Claire.
Star Master Jeff: My wife, she's gone now. I'm trying to hold on longer. I'm trying. I just don't see that it's worth it. I thought someone would come. Jesus. There's no one left. There's just no one left. There's only them. The guardians. We ran out of food days ago, weeks, maybe I don't, I don't know. We ran out of a good [00:35:00] meal to have weeks ago surviving on a 10th of what we need.
Star Master Jeff: It doesn't. It doesn't matter. It does not matter anymore. Even if we could have left, where would we have gone? There's no more ships off world. Every time I look out the window, I see them searching for survivors for their Gods forsaken town. They're building on the north side of the city. They have knives, they have rifles.
Star Master Jeff: We have nothing. I'm just so tired
Star Master Jeff: if you're listening to this, I don't even care if you're a guardian of the work. I need something from you, whoever you are. Please do one last thing for a dying man and his already dead wife. Our house at 17 mil plain, the key is under the third brick from the left of the front step inside at the end of the hall, there's a dresser, bottom drawer.
Star Master Jeff: There's a small red book. It belonged to Claire. It was important to her. I don't want it
Felix (Scott): fall into obscurity. Please [00:36:00] take it with you. Especially if you can leave this planet
Star Master Jeff: behind. I've been hearing them in this hotel for the last couple hours. If they don't find me in here, it'll be a miracle though. I suppose that might be a quicker death than starvation.
Felix (Scott): And then there's a faint rust there. The recording ends.
Felix (Scott): This book must have been pretty important to them. Wonder if it's worth anything. Hopefully. So
Robert (Doja): now, um, I've been reading over your shoulder this whole time. I gotta tell you, we gotta, uh, do a little damage to these, uh, guardians of the work. I don't like the cut of their jib.
Felix (Scott): We were planning on doing some damage to them, Robert, in the course of getting our ship back and leaving this planet.
Thorne (Brian): Yeah, I haven't liked their jibs since they stole our ship.
Robert (Doja): What I'm saying, thorn. It's what I'm saying. I, I, I, I, I like how they're approaching this, but lemme tell you, I've heard there's some treasure at 17 Millbrook Lane.
Thorne (Brian): I also have heard that. And let me tell you, Robert, you see that big thing you got strapped to your back long [00:37:00] barrel trigger.
Thorne (Brian): Yes sir. That's our retribution right there. Alright, so what do you say? Check your map. Where's this Millbrook?
Felix (Scott): Let's see what we can see. So Felix, you pull up your data slab and you open up the map and you are able to search for 17 Millbrook Lane. And it's not exactly on the way up to Black Harbor. But at least it's not behind you.
Felix (Scott): It'll probably take you an extra couple hours to get to it, and then from there you can continue on to Black Harbor if you choose to do that.
Haleyy (Stephanie): I think we should. Family clearly meant a lot to the sky and wanted to know more about what happened here.
Felix (Scott): Yeah, it's not too far outta the way I think we can make it happen.
Thorne (Brian): He left us like three intriguing mysteries to check out
Robert (Doja): all in the same house. I'm really hoping the base 17 is the same thing.
Felix (Scott): Now, but I think Bay 17, that there's a storage unit. If I look, uh, lemme check here. Yeah. Yeah. I can see there's a storage unit, like really close by to this house, so we can just check that out there too.
Felix (Scott): But before we do that, we gotta clear, fit it clear in this hotel and get some shuteye, because I am wiped.
Robert (Doja): [00:38:00] Yep. Um, Hailey, you, you, uh, you've, you fit to be, uh, our, our wrecking ball again. Yep. Three floors to go. If you could find a shower, I smell like, I'm pretty sure if I took a shower there'd be like a layer of things that came off of it.
Felix (Scott): Oh, we know Robert. We know
Haleyy (Stephanie): we're gonna find a way for you.
Felix (Scott): You're still covered in a lot of grease from, well, actually it's been a couple. It's been like a month since you guys were on. Yeah, I said we were on that ship for like a month at least I think. I think we would've made him watch that grease up
Robert (Doja): against my will guys.
Robert (Doja): Against my will. I was like, I'm a master of disguise and I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, Hailey with two wives held me down while y'all hosed me
Felix (Scott): as you deserve. I feel like Robert is desperate for human contact. And he is like, I can't wash myself. I refuse. You're gonna have to do it for me wing.
Felix (Scott): Oh no, I'm being held down and washed. So you're able to clear out the last three floors. Most of the rooms have been bashed open. There's a couple that haven't. It seems like any room that was already kind [00:39:00] of unlocked or accessible in some way wasn't bashed open. 'cause who's gonna waste energy doing that?
Felix (Scott): But any valuables that you could find seem to all be gone. There are showers in every single room. But none of them work. The plumbing no longer works in Wolffia. And with that, you find a good room to bed down in or a good floor to bed down in. You can easily defend an entire floor with one stairwell.
Felix (Scott): And we are at the end of our session for tonight. So we will move on into diary entries.
Thorne (Brian): Pretty interesting situation with that. Michael and Claire Couple that we found in this hotel. I'm very curious about the coins, but I'm mostly curious about what these people have stashed in their house at 17 Millbrook, something tells me that there was a lot.
Thorne (Brian): Of trouble on Wolffia before it got into the shape that it's in now. Can't say that I like these [00:40:00] guardians of the work, and I think that Robert's got the right idea that maybe we can give him a little bit of justice before we leave this place. That is, if we can leave it all with the scapegoat stolen, I don't even know what we're gonna do.
Thorne (Brian): Last time we tangled with these dudes, I ended up with a hole in my torso. So hopefully we can talk our way outta this one.
Haleyy (Stephanie): I know it's gonna take an extra couple of hours to get to this house, but it was worth it for Michael to use some of his last words to ask someone to go there and find that book.
Haleyy (Stephanie): So we're here for this other job, but this is gonna be pretty important too.
Felix (Scott): God damn it. I hated to see the scapegoat play away like that. We'll either get it back, we'll put another way off this rock. Luckily, even if things don't pan out with Voss, I think we got line on something profitable here. These, uh, these two people, Michael and Claire, I think they have some messages about some kind of book, but more importantly, a machine of some kind that piqued my interest.
Felix (Scott): I can't wait to see what they got hidden in that storage unit. [00:41:00] Hopefully something of use or of value.
Robert (Doja): I could not believe seeing our ship taken when we knew we couldn't defend it. But I, I believe in my hard hearts, we're gonna get her back scapegoat forever.
Felix (Scott): Well, everyone goodbyes are hard, but this has been another awesome adventure of the dark star adventure cast.
Felix (Scott): Tune in in two weeks for episode number six. We can't wait for you to hear it. Thanks for listening, and as always, keep following that signal.
