Episode 7: Black Harbor
The crew finally makes their way to Black Harbor to recover their lost ship, encountering a surprise enemy and uncovering a plot that may take their very lives.
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 7
Star Master Jeff: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Dark Star Adventure Cast where the stars are cold. The void is endless and dangers lurk in every shadow out here. Trust is a gamble and survival is never guaranteed On tonight's adventure
Thorne: cast. We got one heavily armed man and one woman with very heavy arms
Haleyy: eat shit.
Felix: Ah, yeah, I know. Does somebody have any snacks?
Robert: You're gonna be cleaning the train so fast. It'll make your fucking head spin.
Star Master Jeff: So sit back and enjoy. This is the dark star adventure cast.
Chaos: Hey, we are back. Go. We're recording the podcast that we started as a bunch of friends.
Star Master Jeff: Okay, everyone, welcome back to Dark Star Adventures. Previously, you were helping froggy dj, voice of the Wastes repair his radio tower because you wanted to attempt to [00:01:00] use his tower to triangulate the position of your ship.
Star Master Jeff: And after your roles from last time and taking a couple days to do that at the beginning of this session, you have succeeded at that. So you've. Fixed the generator. The radio tower is now pumping out that good signal. And Felix, you're able to very easily hook into that system and using the other antennas that are placed through throughout Waa.
Star Master Jeff: Ping around and detect the signal from your ship. It is for sure right in the middle of Black Harbor.
Felix: Alright, well we got a beat on it. We know it's there for sure. Well done Felix.
Haleyy: Thanks Felix.
Felix: Wait, you guys are leaving. Sorry, froggy. We got
Thorne: stuff we need to take care of.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah. But like I thought we were all like friends.
Thorne: Well, sure. But you know, we're not from around here. So you stay here and you become the new voice of the wastes and we're gonna go get our ship and live our lives and you come back and you get me right?
Robert: Of course, DJ froggy. But [00:02:00] I'm gonna tell you, you're not just our friend. You're our comrade.
Felix: I'm your comrade.
Felix: Comrad at arms and, and listen, listen, froggy, the generator will be fine for a long time. Don't touch it. Okay. I, I saw what you did. Just, just don't touch it. Okay. It, it'll be fine. Just refuel it when you need to, but don't touch it. Okay. And then you'll come back and you'll get me.
Haleyy: You're doing good stuff for the people out here froggy.
Haleyy: And they need you a lot. It sounds
Star Master Jeff: like you're not gonna come back and get me and I'm starting to get worried about that. Yeah. You just, you just keep holding onto that hope. Yeah. We come back and get you then who's gonna be the voice of the waste? I don't wanna be the voice of the wastes. Well, I thought I did, but now it's sort of like I have friends and that's kind of cool.
Star Master Jeff: Ah.
Thorne: What if I told you that our friendship was contingent on you being the voice of the wastes?
Star Master Jeff: That's
Thorne: yeah.
Star Master Jeff: What? And at that moment, a Tinging noise resounds throughout the room, you look down to see an odd spherical container has bounced in through the window. Everyone rolls. [00:03:00] Saving through evasion. Oh God.
Star Master Jeff: Oh no. Thorn failure. Haley failure. Robert Failure. Felix failure. No. Oh God. A bright white light as bright as the sun lashes in front of your eyes blinding you. The piercing scream of a banshee fills the room fall to the ground, holding your hands over your ears, rocking back and forth. Barely through the den and the fire that has been beset upon your eyes.
Star Master Jeff: You see two shadowy forms coming through the doorway. The silhouettes of long rifles in their hands. They're shouting commands at you, but you can't quite make them out. You can't move, you can't think through the den. You eventually hear one of them say,
Chaos: say on the ground. Put your hands on your head.
Chaos: Hands on your head. Get on your bellies.
Felix: I do that. I'm, I'm already on the ground. I, I remain on the ground in a prone position.
Haleyy: I, I also do that 'cause, you know, oh God,
Robert: yeah, I, I [00:04:00] go to the ground, but I might resist a little bit. How do you resist? I, I, I look sternly at them and don't make it easy for 'em to cuff me.
Star Master Jeff: You think that you're looking sternly at them, but you're like squinting real hard from the flash bang that just destroyed your OC. Octal nerves. Octal nerves, ocular nerve, optical oc, ocular optical
Thorne: nerve,
Star Master Jeff: and you're all laying on your ground on your bellies like a bunch of stuck pigs and your eyes and your ears are slowly coming back.
Star Master Jeff: Felix, your. Hands are being bound behind your back and you hear another guy back by the doorway. Everyone hears this guy speak into a radio and say, yeah, we've got five. Bring back up. Felix, your hands are now bound. Thorn. They're starting to work on your hands. Zip tie feels like
Thorne: I swore I would not go back to prison.
Thorne: I say begrudgingly to my comrades, but I don't do anything about it. I mean, those guys have guns and I have a still freshly [00:05:00] healed wound from the last time that I got shot, so I'm not looking to cause any trouble in that department.
Star Master Jeff: Okay, so they bind you up and then you hear you. I take it down the ground, go down the ground, and everyone's eyes and ears have now cleared.
Star Master Jeff: And you look up to see froggy standing in the DJ booth. Down the ground, go down the ground and all at once, he makes a dash for it. Out the door of the DJ booth vaulting over your bodies and reaching the door to the roof. He swings it open, but the soldiers are faster. The crack of the gun, the bullet piercing his breast.
Star Master Jeff: He slumps against the wall. He's still alive, but he's choking. Oh, he's gasping for breath, froggy. The man gets back on the radio. Scratch that. We've got four, four for retrieval. Who are you guys? What do you want with us? The man that was tying up Thorn's hands comes back over to you, gives you a SW slap across the face.
Star Master Jeff: We'll ask the questions. Geez, when he [00:06:00] does that, you spot a very familiar looking insignia on his shoulder. Omnitech the very company that you work for. Hey, hey, wait a second. You guys are with Omni. So are we, we're out here on a mission. Yeah. You're with Omni. The same way that a fly is with shit, man. What do you mean by that?
Star Master Jeff: He walks over to Hailey. Hailey, he, he pulls your arms behind your back to start zip tying you.
Haleyy: No, we're with Omnitech. We're here to get an omnitech. Shit. What's your mission?
Star Master Jeff: To stop you from getting an omnitech? Dirty thieves.
Haleyy: Dirty thieves. What? Whoa,
Star Master Jeff: whoa, whoa. What's that supposed to mean?
Haleyy: Go. Do you get your orders from, do you know who we are?
Star Master Jeff: A bunch of nobodies who stole a ship and he finishes zip tying your arms together. He walks over to Robert Ross and pulls your arms behind your back.
Robert: Now, I don't know if you guys are familiar with, uh, who we are. What, what, uh, what division are you y'all with? Uh, you ever heard of blackout one? Nope.
Star Master Jeff: He pulls out a fresh zip tide for you.
Robert: Wow. Before you do that, I would radio [00:07:00] your higher ups. Give him our call sign. Make sure that, uh, what you're doing is what you're supposed to be doing, because you're gonna be cleaning the train so fast, it'll make your fucking head spin.
Star Master Jeff: He gives you a swift elbow to the back of the head, bouncing your forehead against the ground, and he says, I know who you are.
Star Master Jeff: That one's gonna cost you.
Robert: Oh yeah. How much? We'll see. We're racking up a tab here. What you gonna do next? Little kid. He flips you
Star Master Jeff: around having not zip tied your hand yet, and he grabbed you around the collar. He says, listen, old man, I do this as a job. You don't know who you're fucking with,
Robert: then tell me I heard your call sign yet.
Star Master Jeff: My call sign's confidential. Mm, top secret.
Robert: Mm-hmm. That sounds a little like a stolen valor
Star Master Jeff: to me. He pushes you back down to the ground and he pulls out a, a plasma pistol. Maybe we're just gonna bring back three. I think some of these guys need to pay, pay a little bit more than what [00:08:00] Raddy is gonna do to them.
Star Master Jeff: Dyne, what the hell?
Haleyy: What does verad want with our omnitech mission?
Star Master Jeff: Well, with risk assessment, all right. Or with damage control. You stole a ship. You're all resources of Omnitech and you're on the lamb. That simply does not do, but maybe we've only got three of you back. Maybe this fourth one, this old man didn't quite make it and he gets real close to you, Robert Ross, and presses the gun to your chest.
Haleyy: Am I in a position where I can like knock this guy over somehow?
Star Master Jeff: Your hands are tied behind your back and you're on your belly, but your legs are free.
Haleyy: Yeah. Can I like kick him in his feet or shins?
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. You can try.
Haleyy: Yeah, I don't like this. Like Robert. You're important to me. This is awful. We do not like these people.
Haleyy: Yeah. So I kick the guy in his shins,
Star Master Jeff: okay? Yep. Roll. To hit
Haleyy: each hin
Star Master Jeff: you hit with a 21. And because you are an unarmed specialist, you do massive [00:09:00] damage. Oh my God. Fuck him up. You rolled max damage for 10, you shattered the poor man's femur in half. Not only do you kick his legs out from under him, you practically kick his legs off of him.
Star Master Jeff: He crumbles to the ground. The gun falling from his grasp. The other guy brings his rifle up the bear. And with that, we will roll initiative.
Haleyy: God. Who is omnitech hiring these days?
Star Master Jeff: I'm just gonna try to wiggle into a corner as fast as I can.
Star Master Jeff: Haley, you had a surprise attack and now you also won the initiative. So you kick this guy's legs, breaking his femur, he screams in agony as he falls to the ground, the other soldier runs up to you drawing his rifle up. What would you like to do?
Haleyy: Like my hands are still tied. I think I'm, I'm rolling over.
Haleyy: Gonna try to do, all I have to work with is my head right now and my legs, so. Can I headbut?
Star Master Jeff: Yeah. So you spring to your feet and you jam your head into his nose on the way [00:10:00] up.
Haleyy: This is my day.
Star Master Jeff: Its, oh my God. Eight
Chaos: points of damage. You guys are only first level. Oh my God.
Star Master Jeff: Combat is done as quickly as it started.
Haleyy: Awesome.
Thorne: Yeah. Speaking, speaking of froggy though, uh,
Haleyy: oh. Oh, oh my God. Froggy. Are you okay?
Haleyy: Oh, you can't talk. I, I have a, I have a Lazarus pat, a survival kit, a Lazarus patch. Let me, let me see if I can stabilize you. At least
Felix: you can. Your hands are bound.
Haleyy: Oh God.
Haleyy: Someone I have a survival kit in my bag.
Robert: Robert, would you give her a hand? I run over, I grab that survival Lazarus pack and try to apply it to a DJ froggy as good as I can
Star Master Jeff: so you can roll an intelligence heel or a dexterity heel skill.
Robert: Oh, I'm gonna be all nimbly bimbly and use the, the, the fastest reflexes that I can to see if I can fix DJ froggy [00:11:00]
Star Master Jeff: for a
Robert: 10.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. So even though, and good thing you rolled a 10 because you had a minus three and the difficulty was six, and the reason you had a minus three is for each round after the first is a minus one penalty to the skill check when applying a Lazarus patch. It's been three rounds since you got shot. You apply the Lazarus patch and he breeds a sigh of relief and falls unconscious.
Haleyy: Oh my God.
Felix: Well y'all, I think he's still alive. Yeah, I don't really care if he's still alive. Can you wanna tie me in? I think these guys are still alive and they, and I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure they radioed in for backup.
Robert: I don't know. I feel like Hailey kicked this one dude's skull into the back of his teeth.
Star Master Jeff: The other guy is whimpering and holding his leg, but otherwise not talking or screaming or anything like that.
Robert: I run over and, uh, try to. Unrestrained Hailey first so that she can, you know,
Haleyy: Hey, I'm gonna get in this guy's face.
Star Master Jeff: Exactly. Okay. So you release Hailey and then you, you snip everyone's bonds.
Thorne: [00:12:00] As soon as thorn's, bindings are cut, he gets up and grabs one of those rifles that fell on the ground and points it at the fallen guys, just so that we have the upper hand in the situation.
Felix: And the first thing Felix does is I, I grabbed the data pad that the one guy was talking on. Begin looking to see if I can get access to it to figure out what's going on. So it's more like a radio he had like attached to his Oh damn shoulder. Damn. All right. Do they have any I, all right, well, I wanna look, I wanna look him over then to see if they have any electronic equipment on them that I could use to, like they do, they both have an armband with a
Star Master Jeff: digital display.
Felix: Okay. I'm gonna grab that and start analyzing that to see if I can gain access to it.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. All four of your pictures are on a dossier and it says quite clearly that. This is a risk management operation for Omnitech as ordered by parent company Raddy, to reclaim the stolen ship and assess the severity of the broken contracts.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, this is
Felix: not good. They're saying we broke our contract.
Haleyy: We've been doing our [00:13:00] mission this whole time.
Felix: Yeah, I know.
Haleyy: Yeah. What kind of,
Felix: there was no time limit on our mission. What's going on here? I knew you could never trust a corpo.
Robert: Are y'all able to glean any extra data off of that data pad? Felix? Uh, can you, can you tap into the, the source it's coming from?
Felix: No, I think that's pretty much it. It's pretty much locked in on that.
Robert: Damn it. It's just Is is this the only group or we gotta start moving? I mean,
Felix: we heard him radio in Robert. We gotta go. We gotta go now.
Robert: Yeah. Let's what I'm saying, we, let's move, let's move, move, move people.
Star Master Jeff: So you guys are leaving the radio station?
Star Master Jeff: You guys are just leaving froggy there?
Thorne: No, I think that, uh, on the way out the door, like, as everyone's like, Hey, we gotta get outta here. You know, I, I, I hate to say it, but I feel like Thorn is gonna just sling this rifle and just grab the unconscious froggy and bring him with us without even thinking,
Haleyy: thorn, you can't lift that guy up.
Haleyy: I'll just give him to me and I just throw him over my shoulder. Let's get
Robert: to the Aurora. Lord, you're really, you're gonna mess up. He, he's bleeding so bad. You're, what do you think that's gonna do to the value of our car?
Star Master Jeff: [00:14:00] Can we have like a tarp or something? We damn well, better we do
Felix: actually.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah. You guys specifically got a tarp at one point?
Felix: Yeah.
Star Master Jeff: Your car was covered by a tarp. It was over the car. Yeah. Uh, so you make your way to the aurora, uh, which is covered by the tarp that you found it in. You guys recovered it, and you put the tarp down in the backseat and you throw froggy in.
Thorne: This thing barely seats four. So with Froggy it's gonna be a tight ride, but I couldn't leave him.
Robert: Hey Robert, can you drive? I mean, I, I, I, I think I can, uh, handle it. I, I, I, I've done a, a fair bit of driving in my, my day. Uh, now where are we headed, y'all? Are we, uh, are we going the black armor? Oh yeah. Head that
Felix: direction.
Haleyy: Yeah. Gotta get off this place
Felix: tho. You still got that communicator that Voss gave us?
Felix: Yeah. Alright. I think we gotta call her, but we gotta like, not let her know that Omnitech is. After us now. All right. We gotta find out more about Black Harbor.
Thorne: All right. I pull out the, the communicator and uh, I give the keys to Robert and 'cause you know, you don't, you don't want to be using your hands and talking on the phone while you're also operating a motor vehicle.
Star Master Jeff: [00:15:00] Very mature vehicle. I put Tony powered
Thorne: vehicle. Yeah,
Robert: I grabbed the keys. Give him a little wink, letting him know you ain't getting these back.
Thorne: Just keep it under 9,000 RPMs there buddy. Immediately hit the gas as hard as I can.
Star Master Jeff: And you're on your way to Black Harbor at the same time you are calling Dr.
Star Master Jeff: Voss on the radio?
Thorne: Yeah, so I put it on the appropriate channel and
Star Master Jeff: I,
Thorne: you know, radio it into her and I just essentially call out Dr. Voss. Do you have a read? This is Thorn.
Star Master Jeff: Thorn, yes. This is Dr. Voss. Have you gotten the ship back?
Thorne: We are en route to picking up the ship. Now, uh, we ran into a slight complication that, uh, means that time is now a factor.
Thorne: Uh, just wanted to know from you what we should expect when we get to Black Harbor.
Star Master Jeff: Well, I'm sending an aerial map taken from before the collapse OFA to Felix's data pad. Now Black Harbor is a coastal [00:16:00] sediment that's under control of the Guardians of the great work. So it's mostly full of Fisher folk and farmers who essentially live in squalor and the military is in complete control of them and is extracting their wealth via taxes or just by taking their goods to try to fund their impossible dream of.
Star Master Jeff: Restoring Wolffia to its glory, which is obviously never gonna happen. This place is done for, there's some important areas on there. So if you take a look at the map, you'll see that there's some docks. There's the market, there's the rust yards, which is just a big junkyard. There's the outer farms, which is where they grow this strange purple flower, which is used in drugs for medicinal purposes.
Star Master Jeff: And there's of course, the guardian compound, which takes up about half of the total land mass of Black Harbor. Inside the compound is an airfield, and I'm assuming in that airfield is your ship. There are three gates to get in on the west side, the south side, and on the [00:17:00] east side of Black Harbor. Going into the east gate would bring you straight to the airfield, but it's probably the most heavily guarded by the guardians.
Thorne: I got the map right here. What do you think, Felix?
Felix: Oh yeah. This is gonna help us out a lot. Thanks doc. Alright. It looks like our ship is right here in the airfield. Unfortunately within that, uh, compound area you mentioned Doc. Uh, it looks like we're gonna have a hell of a time getting in, guys.
Thorne: Well, I guess the question becomes.
Thorne: Do we take the east gate or do we try our luck getting in the city otherwise and go through that compound On the west side? Time is a factor,
Robert: and I'd love to see how high these fences are. I mean,
Star Master Jeff: oh, the walls 22 and a half feet to 24 feet, depending on where you are inspecting the walls. They're also about 18 inches thick on average.
Felix: Yeah, that's still good. Any chance of us coming at it from the water?
Star Master Jeff: Yes, that's possible. There are docks, the walls do go out into the ocean a little bit. And the ocean is only slightly toxic to humans. So you should be mostly okay. Just make sure you're in a [00:18:00] dirigible and not swimming.
Felix: Thorn. Do you know if this car could hover over bodies of water?
Felix: Sorry. No luck on that department. It's not meant for that. It hovers, but not like that. I mean, we could always try Robert. No, it it, it will not work. Machines. Machines don't. Just try.
Robert: Sounds like the water might be out. Unless DJ Froggy had some, some wetsuits or some something for us, but, uh, that, that, that might be, uh, it looks like the gates are where we're gonna go.
Robert: Do we wanna try to go through the, the heavily armed gate or, uh, maybe create a little distraction? What are y'all thinking? I.
Thorne: Unless we're going in there guns blazing, grabbing the ship and blasting out. I think they east skates outta the question.
Haleyy: Guys, let's go back to basics. I'm grabbing the radio from like Felix or Robert.
Haleyy: I don't know. I'm still in chaos mode. I'm like, I had a really great battle. You
Thorne: guys, the blood will just is still like fueling your actions
Haleyy: a Laura, if we set the flowers on fire, what's gonna happen
Star Master Jeff: if you set the flower? You mean the purple [00:19:00] flowers in the field?
Haleyy: Yes, the medicinal ones.
Star Master Jeff: Well. Depends who's down wind.
Star Master Jeff: But anyone that breathes that in is gonna have either a really good time or a severe allergic reaction.
Haleyy: How? How common are the allergies?
Star Master Jeff: Oh, one in every 1,250 people have a reaction in trials.
Haleyy: Oh, that's not good.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. It's essentially a heavy narcotic.
Felix: Now you're speaking my language. I just glare it, Felix.
Star Master Jeff: But when I'm calculating the number of residents of that village and I'm looking at local weather patterns, I think if just the right field was set on fire, it would only hit the Black Harbor compound and not the actual civilian population.
Haleyy: That's very kind of Yola. Thank you for that thought. Guys, I think we can set some flowers on fire.
Robert: Uh, yeah, it's a great idea. Haley, uh, love me.
Star Master Jeff: Fire. Yeah, that, that'll, that'll definitely do her. So, you drive a couple miles away from Black Harbor and you're starting to get to the beginnings of the Purple Flower fields. You see that there's [00:20:00] acres on both the left side and the right side, and the road goes straight to the Southern gate, which is directly in the middle of Black Harbor itself.
Star Master Jeff: So, like Dr. Lavas said. Setting the right field on fire with the current wind, which you test, and she's alarmingly accurate, should only float dust from the fire or smoke from the fire over that half of Black Harbor. So you have several different ways that you can create fire. So what's the grand plan here?
Star Master Jeff: What are you planning?
Haleyy: I whip out my notebook for my gear and I'm like, all right guys, my notebook thought we set fire to these fields. Like Ola said, it's gonna take out their military presence over here in Rock Harbor. What we can do next is sneak in through the gate, use this confusion to our advantage, and get into that airfield and take your ship when everyone else is incapacitated.
Robert: Hello, A boy boss. I love it. Definitely a fan. Now one thing I'm gonna add, 'cause uh, I, I want this car. Whew. It's a nice drive. We gotta stash it somewhere where we're gonna [00:21:00] be able to pick it up on the way out.
Felix: We just drive it in.
Haleyy: True. We, we could drive the car.
Felix: They're gonna bluff us in. They're all gonna be high
Thorne: as hell.
Thorne: Should be no problem. Just stack natural. Take advantage of the situation. Cruise right up to the scapegoat. Can offer this plan. Perfect.
Haleyy: I love it.
Felix: Now as far as getting this fire going, I think I, I grabbed Haley's notebook from her. I think if we overload a few power cells at these spots, that should get us enough momentum for a good raging fire to get going.
Haleyy: Love it.
Robert: Anything else we need to prep? Do we need to wait to a certain time of day or are we just gonna let her rip?
Haleyy: I think we gotta get this done before the wind changes.
Robert: That's how smart to
Felix: make. Yep. Agreed. Sooner the better.
Star Master Jeff: So plan planned out. You set a fire in the right hand field, set several different points of fire, and the field goes ablaze and [00:22:00] thick. Plumes of purple smoke rise into the sky, caught by the northernly wind. Sweeping it out to the sea and directly over the Black harbor guardian fort
Felix: I I do try to grab a few monk bulls.
Star Master Jeff: Oh yeah. Okay. So go ahead and roll. A mental saving throw. Terrible roll. Terrible. You are a high as hell. You are. You are high to the point where you're not super useful.
Haleyy: Oh God. Oh
Star Master Jeff: yeah. Yeah. And you guys seeing the effects that it has on Felix? Known drug abuser. You're starting to worry about your own ability to resist it when you eventually have to inhale it by going into the fort.
Haleyy: So, um, does the car have windows?
Star Master Jeff: The car does have windows. Take it easy.
Felix: We still on a mission. Oh yeah, I know. Does anybody have any snacks?
Haleyy: Guys, we gotta roll up the car windows. We can not all end up like them.
Star Master Jeff: Roll 'em up. The strange thing about this car is everything's automatic except for the windows.
Star Master Jeff: So everyone starts popping the windows, just rolling them up.
Haleyy: We love that retro [00:23:00] flare.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, there's a lot of, there's, there's one retro feature in this car. Actually there's a bunch because the guy had a leather driving jacket and leather gloves, so he's sort sort of a retro aficionado.
Thorne: I am wearing them now.
Thorne: So
Star Master Jeff: it's also a manual hover car, just to be difficult.
Thorne: Not that the transmission is manual, it's that the hovering is manual, there's
Star Master Jeff: grates in the floor, and everyone just has to like. Blow really hard. It's like the
Thorne: Flintstones, but with your lungs. So
Star Master Jeff: the everything's on fire. Well, not everything. A field of purple flowers, which is probably incredibly valuable to this community, and you're probably desti instituting everyone that lives here
Thorne: some
Star Master Jeff: more, some more is now on fire, and you're safe and sound inside of your extremely expensive hover car.
Star Master Jeff: Luxury, luxury retro throw. It's so luxury that it has roll up windows and you are on the. Southern Road that leads to the Southern gate, but there is a road that loops around to the Eastern Gate as well.
Thorne: That's the one we want.
Haleyy: The Eastern Gate Road.
Thorne: [00:24:00] Yeah. I pull up the map and I point at Robert who's supposed to be focusing on the road.
Thorne: Honey, we wanna go head for this road and this gate here.
Robert: I'm sorry. I'm just inhaling a little bit of smoke here. Yep. Yeah. No, no, no, no,
Haleyy: no. Hit inhaling. Don't breathe. It's
Robert: rolling the window down. Hey buddy. So it's so good. Just drive. I'm not even trying to, y'all. Uh, but I think, I think it's this road or is it that road?
Robert: No, is it, is this one okay. Just slow as steady. Nothing to see here. Don't be weird.
Felix: I try to reach over Thorn to roll on the window so I can get a bit more. I
Thorne: slap his hand
Felix: while we're driving. I'm, I'm checking Froggy's pockets for snacks. Okay. In Froggy's
Star Master Jeff: pockets, you find something wet and you pull it out and it kind of looks like a, you know, when a tissue gets super wet and starts to disintegrate, it's like that, but it's like a brown thing and that's it.
Star Master Jeff: That's all. That's all that's in his pockets and his pockets. His pockets are not wet, just his object is wet. I make a weird face and I kind of. Wipe it off on his cheek. So now he has a brown blob on his cheek. [00:25:00] Meanwhile, he's still bleeding pretty good, but it's, it's stopping because of the Lazarus patch.
Star Master Jeff: And as the brown sludge runs down his cheek, he kind of like licks at it in his sleep,
Thorne: he licks in the troublemaker. He's so different when he is high versus when he is sober. When he is sober, he
Star Master Jeff: is just mad all the time. Yeah, he's not fun when he is sober. I don't know if that's the message we wanna be putting out here, but listen, if anyone's, if anyone's listening to this podcast, being high is, makes you a more fun person.
Star Master Jeff: Any kids. 10 or below. If you're listening, you shouldn't be. This is not a good podcast for you.
Haleyy: It is not. Oh my God.
Star Master Jeff: So Robert Ross, you take the Eastern road and you make your way over to the Eastern gate. As you pull up, you see that the gate is actually flung wide open. There are two guards outside of it.
Star Master Jeff: And they're maybe 20 feet to the east of the gate. So as you're approaching them, they're between you and the gate and behind them there's just like five other soldiers, no guns or [00:26:00] anything. Just like hacking up a lung and like leaning against the wall and like looking dizzy or laying on the ground.
Robert: I do not just blow pious the gate.
Robert: I make sure to slow roll up to it. And give 'em a little bit of a, give 'em a little bit of a wave and see what the, the guards do.
Thorne: Leave this one to me.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. So as you're slowly pulling up to these two guys and they're walking towards you, you can see they're kind of stumbling a little bit. One. Goes on the driver's side at the driver's side window, and one goes to the passenger side window.
Star Master Jeff: Thorn, you were on the passenger side if you're the one talking to people.
Thorne: So my plan here was kind of just to not make a big thing out of this and just flash something that could easily be misconstrued as identification, and then just have Robert keep going.
Star Master Jeff: He knocks on
Thorne: the
Star Master Jeff: window and he knocks on the window a second time.
Star Master Jeff: Open the window. Yeah, I crack it.
Thorne: What do you want?
Star Master Jeff: He says, what do you want?
Thorne: It is a routine delivery.
Star Master Jeff: Who are you? Wait, what do you want? Wait. Huh? [00:27:00] Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?
Thorne: We we're making a routine
Star Master Jeff: delivery. Why does my voice sound so weird? Who are, and he is looking over the car at his friend.
Star Master Jeff: Who are you? Why is my voice? Your voice does sound weird, dude, right? Oh my. Who are you? Who are they? Sound like that. Who are you? Who are you? What is that? It's, it doesn't mean anything.
Thorne: Move your lips More. My lips. My lips. Listen, we gotta go. We're really busy. So just let me know how that goes though.
Star Master Jeff: My
Thorne: lips.
Star Master Jeff: And then you guys just drive away. So the window was cracked. I'm sorry to say, oh no, a little bit got in. Just enough for the person directly next to the window to perhaps be affected. Go ahead and roll. Save and throw mental. He's a mania. That's a failure. Oh, so you are not as bad off as Felix because he failed spectacularly, but you just got a little bit like the actual real medicinal amount and your.
Star Master Jeff: Gunshot wound. That throbbing [00:28:00] pain that you have on the side of your chest goes away almost completely. Oh, I think,
Thorne: I think I got a little bit there as I'm rolling up the window. I, I hate to encourage you, Felix, but man, this, this stuff works pretty well. Yeah, yeah, it does.
Star Master Jeff: So you drive in through the open gate and you find yourself in the airfield.
Star Master Jeff: So the airfield of Black Harbor is essentially flanked by two rows of warehouses and is obviously not supposed to be an airfield in the original layout of whatever this was, it's two rows of warehouses with a big open space between them that was once very glass grassy, but is now just like spotted with dead grass and has been just run over by spaceships and jeeps and various.
Star Master Jeff: Four wheel vehicles over and over and over again. Turning it into like mostly just a bunch of mud. On the far south side of the airfield, which is where you are, there is a guard station completely empty. There are two guards outside of the guard station sitting outside of it, laughing, [00:29:00] talking, hugging, and leading along the airfield As you follow it with your eyes, going north are several derelict spaceships.
Star Master Jeff: That have been completely gutted. And then two, I wouldn't say pristine, but spaceships that look like they could actually fly. One is the scapegoat and the other one is a triangular affair with landing gear under each point of the triangle. Kind of looks like a stealth bomber. So the scapegoat is just a couple hundred feet away from you.
Felix: There she is. Oh my God. She's more beautiful
Star Master Jeff: than I remembered. The hatch is down. And there is one soldier outside of the hatch bearing the omnitech insignia on his shoulder.
Thorne: Easy there. Robert. I'm worried about this one.
Robert: Yep. Now, um, do we wanna do anything about this, uh, here, other ship? Because, uh, we might, we might want to make sure that it can't follow us.
Star Master Jeff: Does
Thorne: it have any, uh, any markings that we can identify?
Star Master Jeff: No. It's just a black [00:30:00] triangle. It is an, an incredibly aggressive looking ship. But no insignia, no markings, no nothing.
Haleyy: You either myself or Robert, recognize the ship type or is it something weird and experimental?
Star Master Jeff: That is an excellent question. So, Haley, you wouldn't know what this is necessarily You men, you mainly spent your time in drop ships if you were in a ship at all.
Star Master Jeff: Robert Ross. You can go ahead and roll pilot to see if this is something that you ran into during your training.
Robert: And with that, I roll pilot intelligence of a 10. So Nice. I'm curious. This might be something that I got trained on. I actually think Hailey with one YI might have shown me how, uh, how this here works.
Robert: So
Star Master Jeff: Robert, you've seen this before. And you know that it's a stealth spaceship used for covert missions, but you're not aware of like its model or designation or even how many have been produced. [00:31:00]
Robert: Yeah. Y'all, we, uh, used these for some, uh, wet work back in the day somewhere. We, uh, we're neither now supposed to be seen or heard.
Robert: Now that, that I'm worried about may be a problem if it follows us. But I don't know, everybody's too hot to know what they're doing. So, uh, do we want to ignore it and keep rolling onto the scapegoat? Or, uh, what does the team think? Do we want to do, we want to get up in there, maybe do a little sabotage.
Robert: I'm mostly worried about that
Thorne: guy right there, standing outside the scapegoat.
Star Master Jeff: So the, the hatch is down for the scapegoat and this guy's standing directly in front of the hatch and he has a, a breather on, so he doesn't seem to be affected by the gas. Is the hatch a, a walkway or is it like a ramp that we could drive the car up?
Star Master Jeff: It's a ramp. It goes directly up into the first cargo hold, and then from the first cargo hold to the second cargo hold, there's only a walkway. So the first cargo hold's for larger cargo only.
Thorne: Hey Haleyy quick question.
Haleyy: Yep.
Thorne: You ever killed a man with a rifle in a moving vehicle while holding your breath?
Haleyy: I'm more of a puncher, but No, I mean,
Thorne: [00:32:00] would you
Thorne: like to?
Haleyy: Yeah, yeah, I would. That'd be great. Just wanna, yeah, let's do it.
Star Master Jeff: Okay, here we go. So what's happening, you guys are quickly closing the distance between you and this man in front of the, in front of the scapegoat. And as you get closer, he notices that you're not stopping and you seem quite hostile.
Thorne: He's about to find out exactly how hostile, 'cause my thought here is that Robert just keeps us going and Haley just takes this omnitech thug out before he even gets a chance to notice what the heck's going on. Okay, well,
Star Master Jeff: time's Up. You guys are basically just like a hundred feet from him now, and he sees that you are now an aggressor and he begins to open fire.
Star Master Jeff: Got a bowl in the Aurora. You guys are unrolling the window and Hailey's sticking half her body out the window and getting ready to fire. But before all that happens, this guy gets a free shot. I rolled an eight. His shot goes low, Hailey.
Haleyy: Unfortunately, I have minus one on shoot, but let's do it. Oh, [00:33:00]
Star Master Jeff: you miss, your shock goes wide.
Haleyy: I pass it back.
Star Master Jeff: No. Have confidence in yourself. I shoot again. Well, you can just choose to hit,
Haleyy: oh, I, yeah, seriously? Yes. I hit him. I hit him for eight.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. Your shock goes wide. No wait. No it doesn't. The laser, Kareem just. Boom. Hits him in the chest for eight points of damage. He goes flying backwards. His breather falling off of his face, and he takes a big old sweet inhale of that sweet, sweet purple flower as he falls into oblivion and dies.
Haleyy: Oh God. Oh, got it. I roll up the window,
Star Master Jeff: Robert. You drive over his sports boom, and then you drive up the ramp and into the scapegoat. You are now in Cargo Bay one, the one that. Felix fixed with a giant hunk of metal plating on your first spacecraft.
Thorne: Yeah, you can still see the metal plate welded to the wall over there.
Robert: Feels good to be home. Y'all
Thorne: we're not home yet.
Haleyy: Gotta get outta here.
Thorne: I pushed some buttons on a control panel that makes the cargo bay ramp close.[00:34:00]
Star Master Jeff: I snap awake. What? What happened? You're in the back of the car alone. Everyone else has already gotten out and you're talking to yourself. He's talking to froggy, froggy's, unconscious. It's the more froggy. Yep, that's
Robert: the, the unconscious backseat
Star Master Jeff: you're laying on. Froggy. That's where we
Thorne: put the unconscious people
Star Master Jeff: you've like matched the brown sludge into your own face as well.
Star Master Jeff: At this point, I wipe
Felix: it off, I pat 'em on the chest and I open the door and make my way outta the car.
Thorne: Alright, everybody, get to your stations. We gotta get this Xeno linguist and we gotta get outta here before Omnitech gets word. Okay, what's up? Be so hasty
Star Master Jeff: because as you all exit the cargo bay, you hear a slow clap coming
Thorne: from the bridge, like a person sarcastically clapping or like something, making a clapping sound slowly.
Thorne: The former.
Star Master Jeff: Great. The clapping continues as you follow the sound to the bridge. I start clapping and I join it in with the clapping on off beats.
Felix: Just to ignore, [00:35:00] just to annoy whoever. It's, I think it's like, I think it's like congratulated us for getting the shit back. So I'm like clapping. Come on with it.
Felix: Good job. Us guys. The ship's clapping for us.
Haleyy: I ready my, my fists.
Star Master Jeff: I pull out my pistol. So you follow the clapping noise all the way to the bridge. Felix clapping along enthusiastically. And there you see sitting in the captain's chair, a man with shaven sides of his head, long blonde hair on top, brown eyes, square cut jaw, the uniform of a Vedy Laboratories employee, the jet black with a white trim, slow clapping, one leg crossed over the other, and he says, I was wondering when you were gonna show up.
Star Master Jeff: Who the hell are you? Who the hell am I? Well, quite an interesting way to make an introduction. Well, that's how I act when there's a stranger on my bridge. I'm almost offended. You don't know who I am. My name is Victor Strike. Have you heard of me? Have I? No.
Haleyy: No.
Star Master Jeff: Can't say that I have you. You haven't. [00:36:00] It's fine.
Star Master Jeff: You don't. It's fine. I'm people know of me. Which people, people know you're dumb haircut. Oh, it's, it's a popular. It's popular where I'm from. Just like me.
Haleyy: Where are you from?
Star Master Jeff: That's top secret.
Thorne: Well, anyway, that leads me to my second question. What the hell are you doing on my bridge?
Star Master Jeff: That's your first mistake.
Star Master Jeff: This is not your bridge. This is my bridge. This is a ship owned by Omnitech. And Omnitech is owned by Raddy and I am Rady's top risk management officer. You've stolen this ship. This is my ship. We are taking it back and we are taking you with it. You'll be questioned. We will find out everything that happened and then you will pay for your crimes probably in Corpo jail.
Star Master Jeff: I am not going back to prison. Well, newsflash, yes you are.
Haleyy: Victor, we came here on a mission and we are very close to finishing it. So what changed?
Star Master Jeff: The only reason I haven't arrested you yet is 'cause I'd like to know exactly what you think you are doing. You're certainly just meandering across the sector.
Star Master Jeff: You certainly aren't [00:37:00] acting like you've stolen a ship from Omnitech. You're acting like, well, you're acting incredibly disrespectful. And to be a bit honest with you, it was way too easy to catch you an embarrassment. In fact. So what do you think you're doing here?
Felix: It was easy to cut just 'cause we weren't running man.
Felix: We were just on a mission. We got the ship like on orders from Omni Tech and we're here to get like Dr. Voss,
Star Master Jeff: ah, Dr. Ola Voss. I suspected this traced back to her. You know, I just didn't think she had any help. But now that I know that, we'll grab the good doctor. The four of you can come with us. And we'll get to the bottom of this once and for all.
Star Master Jeff: You're
Felix: quite constant. You keep saying us, and I just see you and a Pat Robert and a Pat Haley.
Robert: Yeah. I'm, I'm, uh, wondering what. Stopping us from, uh, taking this ship real quick here.
Thorne: We got one
Star Master Jeff: heavily armed man and one woman with very heavy arms. He spreads his hands wide, and then your radio crackles. Dr.
Star Master Jeff: Voss [00:38:00] comes over the radio and says, have you got the ship back yet? I sort of teach you to come back. Right now.
Thorne: I just grab it and I radio, yeah, working on it.
Star Master Jeff: I'm not alone here, and they're coming in whether I like it or not. Oh God, they've got a drill now.
Thorne: I look at the guy sitting in, presumably my chair, friends of yours, I assume,
Star Master Jeff: yes.
Star Master Jeff: I brought a few soldiers on loan from Omnitech. They really want their shit back. Gonna pull out my pistol. He just grins at you and I'm gonna shoot him. His grin stays on his face even as he dies. He slumps over in the chair.
Haleyy: Oh no.
Star Master Jeff: What
Felix: an annoying piece of shit, Robert. Get this guy off the
Robert: ship. Yeah. I'm giving him the old hea ho.
Robert: No,
Haleyy: no. Pat him down first.
Star Master Jeff: Mm-hmm. On the body, you find absolutely nothing. Well then
Haleyy: is, is the body bleeding?
Star Master Jeff: Yes.
Haleyy: Okay. It's not a robot.
Star Master Jeff: No, it's not a robot. No. I would know if it was a [00:39:00] robot, I would've smelled it. So Robert, you grab his body, sling him over your shoulder, and just jump him out the side of the ship.
Star Master Jeff: And you power up the ship. Everything slowly warms up. The back of the ship has finished closing. The engines begin to spin the familiar hum of the scapegoat that you heard for months on end as you were traveling between Kari four and Wolffia fills. The cabin. Everyone takes their station and you lift off
Felix: Atta girl,
Star Master Jeff: thorn out to the front of the ship.
Haleyy: Oh no.
Star Master Jeff: As Robert is lifting you off, you are looking out the front windows of the ship and you spot that stealth fighter A hatch opens on its side and from out of it comes Victor Drake. Ah. He grins up at you as you fly off.
Felix: Did anyone else see that? What? Huh? What? I was hugging my console, the creep with a weird haircut.
Felix: Yeah. One I killed. No, I just saw him get outta the steal fighter. Must have been a clone or something. [00:40:00] Now it must be his weird brother. Now we're gonna have like a family view on our hands. Ugh, those are the worst.
Star Master Jeff: And so reunited with the scapegoat, you mark a headache for Southern wafi to pick up Dr.
Star Master Jeff: Ellar va, whose last transmission to you was concerning, to say the least. But those are problems for another time. Oh, what was
Thorne: I thinking?
Thorne: Always said people before product, but this, oh, that Victor, straight guy. That situation resolved itself way too easily. I'm sure I saw his identical twins step outta that stealth ship.
Thorne: No way. That's the last we hear of Dyne. You can't trust these corpo scum one bit. Why are they saying we stole from them after they sent us on this mission? Was it a setup? Something doesn't add up. And this mess. Oh, why did I bring this froggy guy with us? I couldn't just leave him there. He has good music taste and everything.
Thorne: Oh, but the Aurora, the backseat interior is covered in [00:41:00] blood in some kinda weird brown goo. And the body's full of bullet holes. So much for the collector's value. When Froggy wakes up, he's gonna be spending long hours helping me clean this old girl back up. Of course, that's assuming we get off this stink hole alive.
Thorne: Damn,
Felix: this flower is starting to wear off. Well, it was nice to be high for a bit because otherwise this day was a huge pain in the ass. Finally fix that goddamn mess of a generator. That DJ Brown goo Froggy fucked up. Which by the way, nobody thanked for only to wind up on the run from Omnitech who I thought I was working for, and I really do not need this kind of attention from them right now.
Felix: Not what I've been fine under their radar. For so long, but now I've gone and killed one of their apparent top men while also angry in his psycho looking twin brother. So, I mean, who knows what kind of heat is going to come down on me now. I really just cannot wait to go get Dr. Voss, get the hell out this planet and try to put some of the pieces [00:42:00] together to solve this puzzle because I really just don't have the answers right now.
Felix: And it's starting to piss me the hell off.
Robert: Ooh, I love seeing Haley kick some ass and take some names in her little notepad course and Froggy gets shot and Thorn has to bring him along. God. Now we got another mouth to feed. I swear if he steals my orange juice, I'll space him. I mean, I had a whole plan make froggy the voice of the wastes, lead a revolution and other things were gonna happen.
Robert: I hadn't gotten there yet. Well, that all went up in smoke. Speaking of, I cannot believe Felix and Thorn were getting high on mission. I mean, Felix, I expect Thorn. Wait. Damn it, that was my opportunity. I should have challenged him to loon next time. And what the hell was that Victor? Strike nonsense. Well, it wouldn't be the first clone and I have [00:43:00] seen, man, this whole thing wreaks.
Haleyy: This mission has been off the rails since we met the drift rats and it just keeps getting worse, so might as well lean in. Guess we're adding arson to the problem solving options list. Felix, getting high off the flowers was acceptable. Collateral, we did manage to get the ship back. And hopefully that's the last we hear of Victor, Drake or Odine until we figure out what's going on with Elara and get off this planet.
Haleyy: Jobs are not supposed to be like this. Verne Omnitech. Not sure what is going on, but we're gonna figure it out. We're gonna take care of this stuff with Elara and we're gonna get off fucking with Visa.
Star Master Jeff: Will the crew be able to save the good doctor? Who is Victor Strike and what exactly is going on with their Omnitech contract?[00:44:00]
Star Master Jeff: Tune in next time for the answers to these questions and more on the Dark Star Adventure cast.
