The Aurora

Sep 16

Wafisa, Part 4

Finished the episode? Hear the Star Master Log for behind-the-scenes narrative insights here.

In this episode of Dark Star Adventurecast, the crew’s investigation takes a sharp turn down Millbrook Lane, where shadows of the past refuse to stay buried.

What begins as a simple lead pulls them to a hidden storage unit with secrets, and treasures, from ages past.

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

Episode 6
Thorne: [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: that's a small location. Let me get up in their faces.
Robert: Yeah.
Thorne: Little do you know Felix, that an average Loki pond duel only takes about eight minutes, so I think we'll be fine. Getting excited, guys. I'm getting excited Now let's make a deal. This is the Dark Star adventure cast.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, my God.
Star Master Jeff: Good. That was
Haleyy: pretty rough where we ended on the last one.
Star Master Jeff: Oh man. You're bringing us down right away. Yep. Yep. I missed the scapegoat.
Haleyy: You're setting the mood.
Star Master Jeff: I know. We're all cheering and it's like [00:01:00] some dude starved to death with his wife.
Haleyy: Yeah,
Felix: they're just humans. They're just humans.
Haleyy: Oh my God. They're getting their last words.
Felix: Most of those last words were useless
Haleyy: when we figure out something to do with all this money. Are all these goods. You don't get any?
Robert: No. Oh, I thought you were gonna be like, we're gonna dedicate them to Claire and Michael.
Star Master Jeff: Robert says that he wants to dedicate things to Michael and Claire, but mere moments ago he was frisking a, the Claire's dead body.
Star Master Jeff: Trying to pillage coins off of her. Well, that was before
Thorne: you knew her personally.
Robert: God damn right. I was, I was trying to, I'm, I'm, I'm paying it forward. You gotta, you gotta take from the, the pour to give to the,
Star Master Jeff: we're not rich yet. We'll be rich soon, but we're not rich yet. Yeah, you leave that to me. Pay it forward.
Star Master Jeff: Steal things from dead people for me. Pay it forward. I don't understand. They're dead. What are they gonna do with it? Yeah. What are they gonna do about the company? What are they? Pharaohs up in their, their high hotel room. Can't
Felix: take it with [00:02:00] you. They did. Ken Uck Pharaohs.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, they did. They were mummified.
Star Master Jeff: Modern day pharaohs. So modern day Pharaohs. That brings me to our first topic of conversation. In an awkward segue, what do you guys wanna do? Are you guys going to 17 Millbrook Lane to see the Harrow household? Are you heading north to Black Harbor to see about your ship or ship something else entirely?
Star Master Jeff: There's a whole city called Waa on this planet called Waa for you to explore.
Robert: Are we rested?
Star Master Jeff: Yes. You closed off floor seven of this hotel and you were able to go through like shifts. So everyone, so there's always someone on watch. Everyone got a good night's rest. Those of you who were injured previously are waking up with some stiff wounds.
Star Master Jeff: So I believe Thorne was shot a few days prior. That's still healing. But thanks to advanced medicine isn't as bad as it could have been. Space medicine,
Haleyy: actually, lemme check something. 'cause [00:03:00] like I'm pretty sure can I heal that? Oh no, I can just stabilize. I can't actually heal people.
Star Master Jeff: So you've basically played a cleric in every game of mine that you've been in.
Haleyy: I really like clerics. I think I got away from it once, but that might just be a fever dream from playing Balders Gate three, where I also played a cleric on my first play through.
Thorne: Yeah, and I will say, I'm with you on this one, Steph. I am also a cleric
Star Master Jeff: in every single game that I play. It's the best
Haleyy: class.
Star Master Jeff: Yep, it is now. Now Thorn though your class,
Felix: which I don't even know what it would equate to in a non, I believe commoner is the word you're looking for.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah. Fergi. Yeah, I'm making a character whose goals are to have run a successful business and get rich. Well, you're well on your way to neither of those so far.
Star Master Jeff: Well, let's
Felix: get a bit further by hitting up 17 Millbrook, because I think that
Star Master Jeff: segue. Wow. Good side. Do you wanna run the game? Yeah, I know, right? So 17 Millbrook Lane. [00:04:00] So you, you have decided to go there first. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So it is not on your way to Black Harbor, which is where your ship is currently.
Star Master Jeff: At least that's your best guess based on what a La Voss told you. But if you start making your way towards Black Harbor and then switch to the north and then head West for a few hours, you'll be able to hit Millbrook Lane and then be a couple hours out from,
Felix: yeah, I don't wanna get locked outta this Quest line later.
Robert: And I can't imagine denying thorn the potential of this treasure trove. Hey.
Thorne: Yeah, that's a really good point. Thorn loves troves.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah. I don't know if I, if anything in here said things about a, a trove of treasure. I think there's a book in a machine
Thorne: and the bay, there's a whole bay. We have a code too.
Thorne: Yeah, we get a whole storage locker that could be full of like. More Loki coupon cards. Oh my God, I forgot about
Haleyy: Loki. Yeah, well I would, I'm really hoping that once we get to Black Harbor, we're sitting there, we come up [00:05:00] with our Loki coupon cards. 'cause I took, I think we took them from the car place and yep, we have the coins now we are just gonna be like ready to go.
Haleyy: I dunno. Trade for cigarettes or something?
Robert: No. Okay. Who's gonna be able to play for like high stakes Gwt? I'm sorry, Loki Pond With our coins and our hard stash, it's gonna be glorious. That
Felix: made
Star Master Jeff: me think. Are we sure these are coins and not pogs? Ooh. Oh, good point. They are only on one side, so they could definitely be pogs.
Star Master Jeff: There's one that's way larger than the others, so it could be a slammer. So yeah, you start making your way out to Millbrook Lane and the storage unit is also on Millbrook Lane, a couple blocks away.
Felix: I think hit up the house first.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. You make your way to 17 Millbrook Lane and you find yourself in the suburbs.
Star Master Jeff: There's actually, according to the map that you've referenced multiple times now, there's a lot of residential area leading up to the coast. And then when you get to the coast, that's where Black Harbor is surrounded by some residential, like apartment buildings, but mostly [00:06:00] commercial areas, restaurants, tourist shops, stuff like that.
Star Master Jeff: So 17 Millbrook lives in that middle zone between the industrial area that you're leaving and the commercial area that's on the coast. So 17 Millbrook, which is where the harrows lived until their untimely demise by starvation in the Glendale Hotel is a fairly small, modest suburban style home. There's a yard out front, also small.
Star Master Jeff: Completely overgrown and untended. It's been potentially a decade or more since it was last taken care of. There's weeds that have pushed outta the yard and burrowing through the cracks in the sidewalk outside of the house. There was once a nicely tended garden here, but now it's a completely untamed mess of thorny bushes and vines.
Star Master Jeff: There's a idyllic low white picket fence here, chipped and weathered, leaning at odd angles. The porch leading up to the house. [00:07:00] Looks like it's almost ready to collapse. A lone rocking chair sways in the wind. Its paint also chipped and a forgotten wind chime clang softly, but everything else on the street is eerily quiet.
Thorne: It's eerily quiet while we still need to be careful. So let's scout the place out. Make sure that nobody's been here recently, and then see if we can't find that key.
Robert: Says the man who damn near walked into the trap two seconds ago.
Thorne: Alright, first of all, Robert, that was yesterday. Second of all, thanks to your cunning wit, I did it.
Robert: Well, thank you. Well, you know what? In that case, let me pull out my specialty bionic eyes and see what I can see.
Felix: Robert. Those are not bio guys. They're binoculars.
Star Master Jeff: How many times do I have to tell him, Felix? Felix, just let him have this. Oh my god. Robert, give me a notice wisdom.
Robert: And on that I rolled a 12.
Star Master Jeff: Nice. Yeah. With rolls like that, didn't, maybe you are the scout. Yeah. So [00:08:00] you take out your binoculars and you look over the yard and the door and everything that you can see. It looks like many of the houses on the street. It's never even been broken into.
Robert: Oh, y'all, I think this might be a, uh, fresh loop here.
Robert: I don't see any. Signs of looting disturbances, they don't even know what's laying
Star Master Jeff: ahead. So you make your way up onto the porch, it creeks underfoot. The rocking chair is slowly moving back and forth next to you. There's a door in front of you and it's locked the front door of 17 Millbrook.
Felix: All right, now who remembers where that key was?
Robert: Third brick from the left. Oh no, that's a small red notebook. Oh shit. I done forgot. Hailey, y'all remember
Haleyy: third brick from the left?
Star Master Jeff: All right, let's pop open that brick. So you go and you move the brick to the side and behind it is a key easy
Felix: peasy.
Star Master Jeff: You take the key, you unlock the door, and you move into a dusty and completely uninhabited and untouched house.[00:09:00]
Star Master Jeff: No one has been here in a very long time. So you enter in from the front door and you find yourself in the living room. There's a comfortable couch, large coffee table. Shelves stacked with books and family photos. It leads off into the kitchen where you find appliances rusted out and caked with grime.
Star Master Jeff: The dining table that's here in the kitchen, there is no separate dining room in this small house. The chairs are scattered about the table is a cluttered mess. There was a remnant of an unfinished meal here. Obviously they had to leave quite quickly. For some reason. There is a set of stairs going upstairs.
Star Master Jeff: You look at the hallway that's next to the stairs here, expecting to find like a side table or something with a bottom drawer, but nothing going upstairs. The stairs creaking under your feet. You find yourself in another small hallway. This one has three doors going off from it. There's a bathroom, a master bedroom, and a child's room.
Star Master Jeff: A [00:10:00] very young child past the nursery stage, but definitely not a teenager. There are clowns and dolphins and all sorts of childlike imagery pasted all over the walls, and the child's toys are scattered About here in the hallway there is a small dresser. It has three drawers.
Thorne: I open 'em up and see if there's anything good inside.
Star Master Jeff: So you go up to the dresser and you go into the bottom drawer and behind the red book that was spoken of
Thorne: just as the prophecy foretold.
Haleyy: All right. Get my tissues.
Robert: Yeah, one of, one of y'all has to read it. I'm not into it. I'm not good on the reading. So, Felix,
Star Master Jeff: you crack it open and it's full of page after page of measurements and equations and mixtures and strange experiments, handwritten
Felix: notes, I assume.
Star Master Jeff: All handwritten, it looks like it's like one sort of experiment per page or two each with a title. It's kind of hard to read the [00:11:00] handwriting though.
Felix: Yeah, I flip to random page to see if I can make out anything about it. Is it medical technical?
Star Master Jeff: It looks like mostly measurements and ways to combine measurements.
Star Master Jeff: Go ahead and roll your notice. Wisdom A six. Okay. Yep, that's fine. You meet the low DC for this. Really struggling to read it. This handwriting is terrible. Also, the handwriting is different throughout the book. So at the beginning, like first 20 pages, it's one handwriting. Then you notice it switches to a slightly neater handwriting that you can actually read a little bit of.
Star Master Jeff: So flipping through those pages, you're instantly annoyed because it's. Just a family recipe book. And you're currently on the page for Strawberry Shortcake.
Felix: Oh my God, this is a damn waste of time.
Haleyy: It is. Wonderful.
Felix: Handed it Hailey abruptly here if you think it's a wonderful you have it. Sorry,
Thorne: thorn. It's a bust.
Thorne: That may not be entirely true, my friend. I think that, uh, [00:12:00] our family back in the hotel room took the contents of this book pretty seriously. I wouldn't write it off so easily. You say so, man,
Star Master Jeff: I just, I'm now picturing Thorn finding like some recipe in there he likes and he packages it up and put Claire's face on it and it's like Mama Claire's salsa or something.
Star Master Jeff: Exactly. And then you can start a whole salsa business.
Haleyy: Do we think it might be more than a recipe?
Star Master Jeff: It does look like just a family recipe book that's been handed down for three generations Wonder and Wonderful. And there's still over a hundred blank pages in the back. Oh look. Places to write our
Thorne: own.
Haleyy: Wonderful.
Thorne: Hopefully the storage unit has something a bit better for us. Why would the heroes care if the guardians of the work got their hands on the cookbook?
Felix: Well, I don't think they cared if the guardians did. Remember what he said. He said, I don't care if you're a guardian or not. They just wanted the recipes to continue.
Felix: I guess
Star Master Jeff: he did say something similar to what you're saying, Thorne, but he was talking about the machine in the storage unit.
Felix: Oh, that's
Star Master Jeff: what I'm thinking of. I see. Yeah.
Felix: Anything else in this house? I think we should go over to the storage unit. Is there anything [00:13:00] else in this house?
Robert: Yeah, I try.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, there's, it's just a normal house.
Star Master Jeff: There's really no, yeah. So
Thorne: did the kid collect Loki coupon cards
Star Master Jeff: though? Oh wait. Out of pod, all the listeners, stop listening. Everyone. What was loon? Is that something that we made up?
Thorne: Yeah, we made it up when we first got to Wolffia, I was just searching through wreckage and in a random car. You like randomly decided that there was like some old trading cards or something like
Star Master Jeff: that
Thorne: and we invented Loki Pwn.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. Listeners, you can turn the volume back up. Okay. Yeah. Loki pwn, of course. Yeah. Here's what I have written. A sealed pack of base set Loki ponds, probably 20 years old,
Thorne: and also a deck box with an old deck. Probably valuable to the right buyer. And then in quotations I've written, gotta avoid them at all costs.
Star Master Jeff: Okay? Yeah. So you find two decks that this child has made of Loki pond monsters. Flipping through 'em. The decks are not [00:14:00] very good, but there are some rare cards in there, so you can put that. You've now gathered 80 cards, two 40 card decks. Nice. I mean, as long as we're going into it. What's the deck cap for a lo Keyon deck?
Star Master Jeff: Is it a 40 card deck? It's 40 cards if you're playing competitively, but there are other modes. We can go unlimited or a lot of casuals. We'll do 60 like casual stores. But in competitive play, you don't really want more than 40. Uh, so yeah, you can write, you have two Loki Pond decks that were constructed by the child, Liam Harrow.
Star Master Jeff: Oh, I know the kid's name now. He might be fine. Okay. So having found two Loki Pond decks, you make your way to the storage facility. The storage facility on Millbrook Lane is a fairly nondescript small storage facility that's meant to be for overflow treasures of the families that live around here. So as you approach the Millbrook storage facility, there is a half broken neon tubed sign outside with the words mill [00:15:00] and storage.
Star Master Jeff: Anything that else that was on that sign has been completely broken out. The security gate is rusted but open, it's keypad is smashed. There's a chain link fence that surrounds the facility. It's very old, rusting and sagging. It's barely a barrier at all anymore. There's also faded markings on the asphalt where once there were parking spots, but now it's just littered with a bunch of debris, a lot of it from the smashed open storage units that lay within.
Robert: And I deeply want to get into the storage unit base 17, but on my way here, does anyone want to help me construct a Loki pond deck? Is there any way I can roll for like power level of Loki pond deck?
Thorne: We've got three, three decks right here. I mean, I could teach you to play's. What insane are we getting into a game with it?
Thorne: A game?
Star Master Jeff: Well, so let's do this. I mean, I love this, so let's. Wait until you guys are bedding down for the night, and it can be like a fireside game that you guys can play [00:16:00] when you're like in a safe spot.
Haleyy: Oh, I like that.
Star Master Jeff: Love it. We'll roll off for it. Love it. Yeah. There are skills that could work for that.
Star Master Jeff: Oh God, I'm gonna be so bad and it's gonna be glorious. Perfect. It's probably something thorns is gonna be really good at. Yep. So inside the facility, you already know that you're going to storage. 17. As you get closer and closer to storage, 17, you're getting increasingly worried because every. Single storage room has been broken into and things have been pulled out.
Star Master Jeff: So there's chairs, tables, dressers, deteriorating pieces of clothing or curtains and parts and all kinds of just junk everywhere. It's been pulled out and left scattered, and there's even like piles where someone was sorting through it and left there like, don't care about this pile behind, and then you reach 17.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, like all the other ones, the keypad has been smashed in the door has been forced open, and everything that is in there has been pulled out and spread across the asphalt.
Thorne: Well, it's clear we're not the first ones
Felix: here. No. But hopefully they didn't find the false wall that, [00:17:00] uh, Michael was telling us about.
Star Master Jeff: Someone Go ahead. One person, a representative from your team. Go ahead and roll. Notice wisdom. Sounds like Robert's job.
Robert: I was about to say, I, I know this isn't normally my thing, Felix, if there's any. Possibility you could give me some technical advice on what I might be looking for here. 'cause my mind's on Loki pone,
Felix: what you're looking for is a wall.
Felix: Yep. That's false.
Robert: Ooh. So it's not a real wall like a, it's
Felix: like a wall that's, it's not like a forever wall.
Robert: That's like not a wall.
Haleyy: You know? I think I might be able to help here.
Felix: That'd be, that'd be great. I can't talk to him.
Haleyy: I think I might wanna take a look for it.
Robert: Haley. I mean I have my binoculars out here.
Robert: I'm looking for it. But if you know what this knot wall is, take a look.
Haleyy: Yeah, I'll, I wanna take a look.
Star Master Jeff: Okay, so roll notice wisdom and Robert, you spot a red cardinal in a nearby tree.
Haleyy: I got a [00:18:00] seven.
Star Master Jeff: You go in, you start tapping around and being like, does this look right? I don't know a lot about walls. And you're kind of moving around and you actually find small air vent that's been drywalled over.
Star Master Jeff: So you rip off the drywall and that air vent acts as a grip and allows you to just fully pull a whole section of the wall off.
Star Master Jeff: Now there's a crawl space in the bottom right hand corner of the back wall that leads to the storage space on the opposite side, peeking in. You can see that there's some wide hulking steel shape in there in the darkness.
Haleyy: Guys.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah. What do you got, Hailey?
Haleyy: There's something pretty crazy back here.
Thorne: Ooh, I love crazy.
Thorne: Let's see what we
Felix: got.
Star Master Jeff: So everyone crawl through.
Felix: I snap on the light on my, my data slab. It's got a flashlight built in.
Star Master Jeff: What you see is a steel machine that's mostly [00:19:00] covered by a tarp. You can see there's like a ring of steel that's flush against the ground, shiny chrome. Getting excited, guys, I'm getting excited.
Star Master Jeff: I know. I'm really teasing this. Take
Felix: it
Star Master Jeff: off.
Felix: It's like, like a swing set.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, it's three garbage cans.
Robert: I mean, if you tell me three booster packs of Loki Pond, I'm gonna go nuts.
Felix: I'm gonna grab that tarp and pull it off.
Star Master Jeff: You swing the cloth to the side, dust billows up into the air and in the dancing lights of your flashlights, you see a sleek, low slung machine once the height of luxury across the modern galaxy.
Star Master Jeff: A relic that many worlds no longer have upon them a post-industrial pre ai. Luxury sports. Hover car. Well, hello, thorn. You immediately recognize it as an Aurora LX 90. They haven't [00:20:00] made these in forever. It's a pre collapsed luxury sports hover car, built for speed and elegance. Aerodynamic with a curved, obsidian black frame accented by fading gold Trim.
Star Master Jeff: It's Gullwing doors easily slide open and the inside glows because the plutonium core of the engine never runs out of energy. Four grab thrusters currently clogged with dust and grime come off the end in beautiful, well shaped exhaust pipes. It hovers an inch off of the ground when it's powered, humming with a faint blue glow.
Star Master Jeff: Inside you have supple crimson leather seats. A dashboard is filled with sleek digital displays, and if you turn it on the displays, flicker uncertainly for a bit, but then roar to full life.
Thorne: Oh, she still runs. Man, these things went for a fortune, even when they were new. Not only are they extremely finely crafted, but people would pay an extra premium just for how rare and fancy they were.[00:21:00]
Star Master Jeff: It is in perfect condition. It just hasn't been run in a while. So it has a plutonium power source for its main like electrical energy, but it's actually a propulsions that work off of plasma cells. So currently you have. The one that's currently slotted into the fuel injector is half spent, but there is one additional fully loaded one in the trunk.
Star Master Jeff: You also find a folded leather jacket in the driver's seat. Oh man. Several expired rations in the trunk. A locked metal case in the trunk inside of this storage unit to the car is a workbench with different auto body tools. And also a
Robert: note. So first, for the leather jacket, I challenge anyone to Loki Palm for that leather jacket
Thorne: drawing my friend.
Thorne: What's that note? Say?
Haleyy: Yeah. What's the note say?
Star Master Jeff: It's a list of things that are like automotive parts and like tasks that Michael obviously wanted to perform on the car, including like fixing the cracked seats, changing out the [00:22:00] plutonium power core because he said that it was getting unstable. Oh no. Oh great.
Star Master Jeff: Love it. On the flip side, it has a bunch of names and prices for buyers of the car. And then on the bottom half of that side, which is the most recent note, it says, if you find this, don't ever sell her. Treat her well.
Haleyy: Oh, Michael, you're a real one. Okay,
Thorne: that may be one dying wish that I can't keep this thing's a Butte, but look at those numbers on the paper.
Thorne: That's how much people were paying for this thing, even when you could still get 'em. It's a fine piece of machinery though, my friend.
Robert: Now can you fix her up? Because I mean, he, he has a whole list of stuff he wants to fix up here.
Felix: No, this is all pretty basic stuff. I think we can manage it. Yeah. I mean, we don't have all the, the pieces I need to replace, like, you know, the plutonium cord.
Felix: That's not gonna be a, a quick fix, but we can get the stuff and get it working. I mean, it, it works fine. Now it's just more like average maintenance stuff.
Robert: Now are you gonna want a seller though?
Felix: Well, you know, Robert, we [00:23:00] can talk about that later, but right now it's focused on the fact that we can use this car to make good time to get to Black Harbor.
Robert: All I heard was we're gonna have some good times. Those sta that speaker working, you know, we're gonna blast it out, going down the street.
Felix: Alright, let's not attract towards attention there, but, uh, but yeah, we'll have a good time.
Robert: Yes, sir. So, who's wearing the leather jacket again?
Thorne: The winner of this Loki Pond Dual.
Thorne: Hey Vince, gents. Gents, I don't think we have time for this. Well, little do you know Felix, that an average Loon dual only takes about eight minutes, so I think we'll be fine.
Star Master Jeff: So much your chagrin, that seems like they're settling down to play a loon game for the leather jacket.
Felix: Well, while they're Loup couponing, I would like to work with Haley to unlock this metal case.
Haleyy: What kind of lock is on it?
Star Master Jeff: It's a lockbox that has like a built in keyhole box. Oh darn.
Robert: Would the House key possibly work for this?
Star Master Jeff: Robert, go back to your game. Sorry. Sorry. Okay, so let's do the Lokipon game. Obviously we don't have a real game of that. It's gonna come down to skill, [00:24:00] and I think we should do best two outta three.
Star Master Jeff: That is how the standard tournament rules work. Oh yeah. Sorry. My bad. So I think that this is gonna be a game of chance and intuition, so I wanna do trade wisdom. And it's gonna be lowest wins. Wait. Lowest or high? High. Highest wins. Sorry. Whatcha doing to me, man? This is
Thorne: not rfs. All right, I'll go first.
Thorne: Robert, shuffle up. Let's see. Oh, you're in trouble now.
Robert: Hey, what? I didn't even cut your deck yet. I need a full pile shuffle real quick. 'cause I gotta make sure my materia is well dispersed into my deck
Star Master Jeff: Materia
Thorne: Shuffle it all you want. You're not gonna get my traps.
Robert: We'll see about that.
Thorne: Oh, it looks like I got the danger Pawn on my first turn.
Thorne: There's no way you're getting away from that.
Robert: No,
Robert: you gotta gotta cut me up first. Gotta cut me up.
Thorne: All right, but you're in trouble now.
Robert: Okay. Okay. Okay. I got, no [00:25:00] Materia in, this hand. I'm gonna, need to pile shuffle again. I, I don't know what's happening. Gimme a second
Robert: here.
Thorne: Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Star Master Jeff: Do you check his hand Thorn?
Thorne: Yeah. Yeah. Let me see that. Okay. Yeah, no,
Thorne: that looks
Thorne: valid. Go
Thorne: ahead.
Robert: Okay. Okay. Okay. And cut One more time please.
Thorne: Yeah.
Star Master Jeff: And a third cut.
Robert: There we go. Okay. And now we're in her. Yep. Um, okay. I'll keep, that's a keep, that's a keep for me.
Thorne: All
Thorne: right.
Robert: Well, you sure you don't wanna mulligan, you don't look very confident.
Thorne: No.
Thorne: It's, to you, this danger pawn is you gotta do something about it. It's on you.
Robert: Yeah. I mean,
Star Master Jeff: you're
Star Master Jeff: about to capture that danger pond, so, careful. Yeah.
Robert: Well, I'm gonna, uh, cast, hold on. I think I, um, so I'm gonna go, um, uh, uh. Materia Yep. Um, and then I'm gonna use my, uh, four of bees, to, dodge up out that way.
Thorne: Oh, good move, but amateur at best because your bees are no match For my Loki honey, I slather you with it. [00:26:00] And now they're gonna be all over you.
Robert: Oh God. How did I not see that coming? I'm, gonna use my, uh, it's behind you card.
Star Master Jeff: I like how the honey is like a counter spell. Okay. Yeah, I think that's enough.
Star Master Jeff: Why don't you guys go ahead and do your rolls and we'll see who Comes out on top
Robert: five
Thorne: and I rolled an 11.
Star Master Jeff: Okay, so it was really embarrassing for you, Robert.
Thorne: Looks like game one goes to me, Robert, you think you got a handle on the rules yet?
Robert: I mean, I have been playing Lokipon since I was a wee babe.
Thorne: It doesn't show.
Star Master Jeff: Weren't you just asking for someone to teach you
Robert: I don't like to talk about that.
Star Master Jeff: Robert's such a wild card.
Thorne: Yeah, so Robert's full of shit, so
Star Master Jeff: he's like, I've been playing forever. He loses. He's like, I'm brand new.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. Second game. Go ahead and roll again. Trade wisdom.
Robert: Oh wait. Best two [00:27:00] out of three. Is there any chance I can try to cheat here?
Robert: Yes. Go ahead and roll.
Star Master Jeff: Perform. Can I get dexterity on that from my sleigh of hand? Yeah, you do dexterity, perform, and thorn. You do notice wisdom. Okay. And whoever gets higher. I got a
Thorne: nine to notice your chicanery
Robert: and I got a six and you see me clearly trying to top deck three or four cards at a time.
Thorne: Robert, my friend, come on. This is just a game between vows. I don't think you need to resort to such underhanded tactics. I'm sure you've got the win on the next turn.
Robert: I'm just telling you I that leather jacket is like a fine piece, but you know what? You done caught me. Let's, let's play the straight game, um, on that
Thorne: viral A 12.
Star Master Jeff: It's not your day, Robert. You just got trounced. So while you guys are playing that. [00:28:00] Hailey and Felix, you kind of look around in the car and you actually find the key to the lockbox in the glove box next to a pair of supple leather driving gloves. Ooh, isn't it nice? So they won't hold up to combat if you try to hold a weapon with them and swing the weapon a bunch.
Star Master Jeff: They'll tear, but they're perfect for driving and feeling the road in your hover car. Ugh,
Haleyy: not for me.
Felix: No.
Haleyy: His hands were made for tension.
Felix: I prefer cold steel on my hands. Anyway, this guy's an idiot. He just left his key right in the car.
Haleyy: You know what? We all do dumb things sometimes. Let's go see what's in the box.
Star Master Jeff: You go and you open the box inside you find a Starr six handgun, which is a like a six shooter, essentially, as well as several other smaller supplies and survival tools. So what you find is the Stars or six handgun. It's kind of like a compact six shooter. It's not six shooter with gunpowder. It's still [00:29:00] uses an energy cell, but it can only, it only has enough energy for six shots.
Felix: So it doesn't have a cool little like spinny little chamber?
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, I would say it does, let's say it has six individual shots of energy cells and you can reload the energy cells like bullets. It also has an AI aiming system, which gives you a plus one to hit. Oh. So once you aim at someone, you click a button and it locks onto them, and then you get a plus one to hit that person basically until you turn it off.
Star Master Jeff: But it does not do that much damage. So the gun's grip is worn from use surprisingly enough. It's not loaded and there's a, a rack of 18 shots. Okay, so besides the gun, there's also a military survival manual included. It has no branding on it that makes you think it has anything to do with the guardians of the work.
Star Master Jeff: It seems to be pre guardians, but it is specific to wolffia because it talks about the purple flower vegetation and uh, what to do during like a sun storm, which are wolffia like problems, [00:30:00]
Felix: all that stink gas methane. Yeah,
Star Master Jeff: all the stanky methane and what to do when the whole society collapses. And then there's a small tactical knife.
Star Master Jeff: Normal military grade, foldable, blackened steel blade, and that's everything that's in there. Who was this guy?
Thorne: Well, it was a good match, Robert, but I think the best man won, and I confidently put my new jacket on
Star Master Jeff: so you slip into the new jacket, which is extremely well worn. So this is not something you have to break in.
Star Master Jeff: It feels great.
Thorne: It's very comfortable.
Star Master Jeff: Rub it in. Why don't you stick your hands in the pockets and pull out an old weathered photo. Oh, what's this of Michael Claire and their son, Liam at the beach.
Thorne: Another family photo. I'm gonna get my hands on those gloves too. I got the full outfit going. I toss 'em over to Thorn.
Robert: You're not even gonna challenge him to a Loki P. I'm
Felix: not gonna wear some dead animal skin on my hands. What are you talking about?
Haleyy: It's a cold [00:31:00] steel kind of guy,
Felix: right? Hailey gets it. Yeah. If they were Rob robot gloves, he'd wear 'em. Oh, a hundred percent. Anybody here post me grabbing this fancy little pistol?
Felix: For the time being? I mean, I could usually help. I can get in a firefight.
Thorne: No objection from me. I say as I'm like checking out my cool jacket and gloves.
Robert: I up none here as I look sadly at getting trounced at Loki pong.
Star Master Jeff: Are you gonna start buying up your trade skill now just so you can start winning at Loki Pond?
Star Master Jeff: Oh, god
Robert: damn right. My, my new life's purpose is to beat Thorn at Loki P.
Felix: He's gonna spend all of his money on the rarest, most powerful cards.
Haleyy: I hope this isn't a WA Visa specific game. Hopefully we're not here for too much longer.
Star Master Jeff: Oh, no. Loki Pond is system wide.
Haleyy: Okay, good.
Star Master Jeff: Well on all civilized places that can afford cardboard.
Haleyy: These might be like some crazy old cards too.
Thorne: Yeah, it is oldish though. That's the thing. So let's
Star Master Jeff: see if we get this door [00:32:00]
Thorne: open.
Star Master Jeff: Huh? So the garage door or the storage door is the same as all the other ones except for it's not smashed in. So there's a keypad to open it up. On the outside. There would be a code on the inside.
Star Master Jeff: It's just open or shut. Right now it's shut. I'll push the open button. I will sit comfortably in the driver's seat. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. Nothing happens because there's no electrical.
Felix: Oh, damn. Well, let's see if I can jury rig one of my power cells in here.
Star Master Jeff: So go ahead and roll. Fix intelligence.
Felix: I, this thing I can do
Star Master Jeff: now with these power cells. Seven. Nice. Okay. Yeah. So pretty easy job for you. You jury rig up one of your power cells, it consumes it, but you're able to grind, open this storage door on like way less power. It's just very slow and you drain the battery. On the other side of that storage door is a poured concrete wall.
Felix: Oh, son of a bitch.
Haleyy: This is me.
Felix: You gonna, you're gonna break down this concrete wall, Hailey. Damn [00:33:00] girl.
Haleyy: Might as well try.
Felix: Yeah, I like that it's concrete. Not like some Star Wars name, like plastic Crete.
Haleyy: Plastic cret, I think sounds much softer and preferable.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, there's a stone water mixture. Yeah. So basically it's a poured concrete wall that's directly in front of what should be an exit out.
Star Master Jeff: So it's obviously something that was added after the fact. Haley, how do you wanna approach this?
Haleyy: I wanna see if this is something that's actually movable and if I can push it.
Star Master Jeff: Okay, so you go up and you test it and you push it. Yeah. And when you really strain, it wobbles slightly.
Haleyy: Sweet. Okay,
Star Master Jeff: Hailey? Yeah.
Star Master Jeff: Where's it weak? Y y'all mind if I help give a little push with you? I'm, I'm not helping. Felix is not helping. Is, uh, thorn helping? If by helping you mean revving the engine, but otherwise, no. Oh, you've already started the hover car. Okay, so thorn's in the back, just revving the engine impatiently. Good thing this thing doesn't have exhaust filling the garage with plutonium fumes,
Robert: we slowly suffocate [00:34:00] and all of us die.
Star Master Jeff: The smell means it what king. So Haley and Robert both roll exert strength please. A nine for
Robert: me, and that'll be an eight for me.
Star Master Jeff: Okay, so the two of you really put your shoulder to it and it starts to wobble, and then you start. Like get the rhythm of it wobbling, and with one last huge heave, the wall falls away and hits onto the outside parking lot and shatters into hundreds of pieces
Felix: while they were knocking down the wall. I'm going to like collect all the tools that will fit in the trunk, and I put 'em in the trunk because it'll use fol later when we need to work on the car. If Felix tossed those into the boot, I scoop 'em all up and put 'em in the trunk.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. So are you guys like taking the car with you?
Star Master Jeff: A hundred percent, yeah. Okay. Then, so you load [00:35:00] up the tools in the boot of the car and you all pile in. It's a little bit of a tight fit because there's only two doors. It's a coop, but you have a thorn driving. You have Felix in the passenger seat, and Robert and Hailey squeeze into the back, and you move out onto the streets of Wolffia.
Star Master Jeff: You start driving north Us towards Black Harbor. How do you wanna do this?
Thorne: Fast and stylishly?
Felix: I was thinking slow and
Felix: stealthily. Those are opposite. Those are opposites.
Thorne: Hey Felix, if you wanted us to be stealthy, we are in the wrong vehicle.
Felix: I
Felix: mean, you're driving. So my thought was we use it just to get close to ground to the city pretty quickly, and then find a place to stow it and hoof it.
Thorne: At
Thorne: least let's drive it to the city limits of Black Harbor, but driving it actually through town. Maybe not a great plan. If we can peel off any guardians. Maybe a disguise isn't the worst idea
Haleyy: That's true.
Felix: Yeah. But we basically have [00:36:00] no idea what we're walking into here. Like we don't know what the cities, what the defenses are.
Felix: Like what? Like we have no intel. We don't even know if this Gabe Goats there. Per what Robert said though, that it got Felix thinking and I, I am gonna try to like using my data slab, I'm gonna try to like find the, the signal of the scapegoat. I got the identifier signal and see if I can locate it.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. I don't think you have like a antenna powerful enough to pick up that sort of thing.
Star Master Jeff: On your map, you do see that there is a radio tower nearby. So you could go and take that and rewire it and try to pick up communications from, from the scapegoat.
Felix: Yeah, I mean, uh, so I, I'll convey that to the team. So I was trying to figure out if I can get a walk on the scapegoat. You know, Robert, that's a great point.
Felix: I can't do it from here. If we get to that radio tower, I can maybe try to locate it just so we can be sure that it's in Black Harbor before we go barreling in.
Robert: Yeah, I'm down. Maybe we can throw a little tarp over this bad boy and at least it's a point where we can, uh, come [00:37:00] back to.
Thorne: Yeah, it's a good landmark.
Thorne: There wouldn't happen to be like a car cover or something in here.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, there's a cloth that was like draped over it when you guys first came in.
Thorne: Yes. We just hold onto that. We can use it to cover it back up.
Felix: So I give, I'll give Thorn. Does that sound good to everybody? Go to the radio tower? Yep. Yes sir.
Felix: I'll plug the directions into the GPS.
Star Master Jeff: It pops up on the GPS Thorn. You turn this smooth riding machine, the Aurora, slightly more westward than you would be going if you're going straight to Black Harbor. And make your way to the radio tower.
Star Master Jeff: So you pull up to the radio station, which is a two story building with a large radio antenna array on the top of it. Above the front door is a obnoxious yellow sign that says WK and 90 78. And attached to it just on the side of it is a small parking garage.
Thorne: I guess I'll try to pull into the garage so we can hide the car even further if possible.[00:38:00]
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. So you pull into the, the garage. There's a bunch of random cars in here that are just abandoned.
Thorne: Yeah. So just find a spot to park between a couple of abandoned cars, and then we could park it there and throw the cover on top.
Felix: All right. I'm gonna try to find a terminal to hook into.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah.
Star Master Jeff: So you go up to this like a squat concrete structure. It's two stories tall. The sign WK 90 78 is like peeling. Underneath it, but over the doorway in extremely faded spray paint. It says the voice of the waists. The lettering's sort of like barely visible at this point, but at one point it was probably very bright and obnoxious 'cause it's like a neon green.
Star Master Jeff: The door is unlocked but closed.
Felix: I ask Hailey. Hailey, do you mind take a point here.
Haleyy: I'm gonna push it open.
Star Master Jeff: Do you find yourself in a small lobby for a radio station? There's a bunch of like posters on the walls for different mu like music acts and concerts, [00:39:00] and there's a small receptionist desk. It looks like things were partly destroyed at one point, but then fixed.
Star Master Jeff: So you see that the receptionist desk has fixed like as best as a non carpenter can do with like spare pieces of wood that were probably just found around the area. And there's a single staircase leading upwards. And this seems to be the only room on this floor.
Felix: What I need is not down here. We gotta go upstairs.
Star Master Jeff: Alright, let's go. So you head upstairs up here, there's a small kitchen, a bathroom, like sort of sitting waiting area. And in the sitting waiting area, there's a glass wall divider that looks into like a DJ booth. There is no power up here and there's no windows. So you have your flashlights on a ladder on the western wall that leads up to a hatch in the ceiling and presumably leads to the roof.
Felix: That's where we need to go.
Star Master Jeff: You make your way up the ladder, out the hatch and you're on the roof. There is a control board for this rusted out radio [00:40:00] tower. It's, it's almost as large as the station itself. So the station's two stories. This is like a story and a half tall of leaning rusted metal, just this monolith to a, a forgotten time where radio waves actually were able to be projected throughout wafi and bring music to people.
Star Master Jeff: The antenna is completely intact, but currently unpowered.
Felix: Why is there no power in this hell forsaken place? I'll give you one
Thorne: guess
Felix: The guardians,
Robert: I mean, y'all talking about no power. What about no water? I need a shower. So bad.
Felix: Covered. Forwarded you strip by now it's fine.
Star Master Jeff: Okay.
Felix: Yeah, I don't think
Thorne: that something like
Felix: this can be powered with an A type cell.
Felix: No, I don't think so either. God damn it. Yeah. We really need a generator for a job like this. Oh boy. I haven't seen one though. Well, sorry for the wild goose chase folks. Unless we wanna spend more time searching our generator, I think we might just wanna keep on heading in.
Robert: I mean, if we're up here and, um, I can [00:41:00] potentially look around, I can at least see if I see any lights, anything large enough that it might be, uh, sucking up that much power in the, in the vicinity.
Robert: It kind of just seems like the whole city's outta power. There ain't nothing. Anybody. I, I use my binoculars, my, uh, sorry. I'm sorry. I use my bionic eyes and, uh, did not find anything. Oh, no. I
Star Master Jeff: will say one thing actually on the horizon, several miles away you do see blurry points of light flickering in what is now quickly becoming dusk.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, that's Black Harbor. It's right on the coastline. Several miles to the east.
Thorne: So maybe we just need to get into Black Harbor and then try to trace the scapegoat from there.
Felix: I think that might be the best bet unless, I mean, let's just give this place a good once over, make sure they don't have a generator out back.
Felix: Communication is a vital thing, so it could be they have one set up just in case and it's just off right now.
Thorne: Knowing where the ship actually is gonna be super important. So yeah, let's,
Felix: that's when I go around the outside, like the perimeter of the building, scout it and just make sure [00:42:00] there's nothing, no generator that's like just not running or on right now.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. Yeah. Makes sense. So you head back down the ladder and you're in like the DJ booth area. Um, actually before you leave, I would like if Robert Ross could give me a notice, wisdom, please.
Robert: And that will be a An eight.
Star Master Jeff: An eight. Okay. So as you are leaving the like DJ area, you come down the ladder and you're going back down the stairs, your eyes are drawn to the DJ booth.
Star Master Jeff: You thought you just heard something come from in there?
Robert: Did y'all hear anything from that DJ booth over there? I feel like I need something, a somebody, a little more tech savvy to to check it out. My binoculars aren't giving me any detail.
Felix: Robert. We're inside and it's five feet away. Of course, they're not giving you any detail.
Star Master Jeff: All I see is blurry grays and blacks.
Thorne: Yeah. What do you mean you heard something? Yeah. Maybe someone more should go check it out. Thorn says, hiding behind a table.
Haleyy: Oh, alright.
Felix: I love that we say [00:43:00] gun savvy and Hailey just assumes we're talking about her like. Arms.
Haleyy: My guns. Yeah, my arms. I'm, I'm like, I'm proud of these things.
Haleyy: Yeah, it's a small location. Let me get up in their faces if, yeah. So yes, I am going to go investigate the DJ booth.
Star Master Jeff: Okay, you go and there's glass walls on two sides and one of the glass walls has a glass door built into it. And as you get closer, you see that there is a person in there hiding as best they can under the desk where like the microphone and everything is all set up.
Star Master Jeff: You see like a foot sticking out.
Haleyy: I walk back away from the room, say, guys there there's is somebody in there, but it looks like they're trying to hide from us.
Felix: I mean, we're not here to hurt anybody
Robert: or are we, Hailey, do you wanna give 'em a special type of persuasion with your guns?
Haleyy: Not until we have to.
Haleyy: There's a lot we don't know yet, so
Thorne: let me see if I can just have a peaceful conversation with this person. But I'd like the two of you to stay close to me. [00:44:00]
Haleyy: Yeah, yeah. I'll be right behind you, bud.
Thorne: All right. I, I head over to the DJ booth and I, I, from like around the corner, I'm like. Call out to the leg that it's hiding.
Thorne: Hey, there, anybody in here hiding under that table over there with their legs sticking out. The leg very slowly
Star Master Jeff: pulls into underneath the table. I guess not two hands come out from behind the desk. Uh, and the man speaks, but his voice is muffled from behind the glass. I don't have a gun.
Thorne: That's fine, that's fine.
Thorne: We are, uh, we're not here to hurt you. We're not. I look back at the group and then I, I look back at the person. We're not with the guardians.
Star Master Jeff: Oh, I'm gonna come out now, but the door's locked and the glass bulletproof, so don't try anything. Okay? Just come on out and let's just talk. He limps and favors one leg as he's like struggling to his feet.
Star Master Jeff: He's in his mid forties, has an extremely unkempt appearance. He has wild, disheveled hair that reaches down to his shoulders, [00:45:00] patchy beard. His skin is a sickly, greenish, like extremely tan, greenish mixture. And he has a slight hunch, like he's been hovering over like a keyboard or a data pad his entire life.
Star Master Jeff: Mm-hmm. So a typical DJ. He kind of resembles a frog. If you were to like, that's immediately, you're like, this guy kind of looks like a frog. He's dressed in a, a tattered orange jumpsuit and there are various tools strapped to his belt. You're not really sure what the tools are. They kind of look like improvised tools.
Star Master Jeff: He's twitching a bit and he says, okay, let's all stay calm as he clocks all of the guns and he sees that there are four people looking through the glass at him. What can I do for you? Don't get a lot of visitors here at the voice of the waist.
Thorne: So my gun is not drawn, and I put both my hands up as I like approach the class.
Thorne: We're not here to cause you any trouble. We are just in a bit of a predicament and we thought we could use this radio tower [00:46:00] to our advantage. Looks like it's not working and we were trying to get it running because you see, we're trying to find something. Any chance you know how this place works, you could help us find what we're looking for.
Thorne: We're not looking for any trouble. We just wanna find what's ours and get outta your hair. He
Star Master Jeff: sort of nods and then reaches down and presses a button on the desk in front of him activating a speaker so that he can talk with you through that. Well, yeah. I mean, I know how it works. It just doesn't work anymore.
Star Master Jeff: You know, I, I've been trying to fix it. I used to, okay, a long time ago, I think I was pretty much just a child. I made my way and I found here and I became the voice of the wastes, and the radio tower was working, and people had music still, even after the fall of waa. My God, those were good times. And for the past 15 years, I've just been trying to fix it, man.
Star Master Jeff: I've just been trying to fix it, and I've been inching closer and closer, and I just can't figure it out. I just can't figure it out, man. So yes, I'd love [00:47:00] to tell you that this radio tower works. I'd love to tell you that I still have all of my sanity left, but I'm pretty sure both of those things are broken and are never
Thorne: coming back.
Thorne: All right, calm down. Listen, my friend here, Felix, is, he's pretty good with this tech stuff too. Maybe you put your brains together, you can come up with something. Tell us what's your name.
Star Master Jeff: Well, you know, my name's Reginald Vance, but people call me Frog. I'm DJ Froggy WK 90 78. Voice of the Waists. That's me, DJ Froggy.
Star Master Jeff: I'm not actually very good at this technical stuff. I've just been doing it to try to fix this place. I may have picked up a couple
Thorne: things. All right, Rocky. Well, I'm Thorn. This is Haley's up, and Robert and I already mentioned Felix. Hey, we think we know that we just need to get some power. Is there a generator or anything around here?
Thorne: There's a
Star Master Jeff: generator in this building, but I can't get it to work. I'm too scared to work on it because I've seen those things explode before.
Thorne: We're used to a few explosions.
Star Master Jeff: Listen, what do you need it for? If you can get it working, you can use [00:48:00] it.
Thorne: We're just trying to get a reading on something that we lost.
Thorne: Life is meaningless, fair, but all the same. I think we're gonna still try to find our stuff.
Star Master Jeff: I'll do whatever I can. It doesn't look like you're gonna kill me. And honestly, even if you do at this point, if I'm not DJ and I ain't living,
Thorne: hey, if we get this thing running, you can DJ to your heart's content.
Thorne: Now listen, where's the generator? In the basement. You can get to the basement by going around the back of the building. All right, great. And I turn back to the rest of the group. All right, well we found a generator. Seems like it's outta fuel.
Felix: Yeah, I can go check it out. See what, uh, see what we're dealing with here.
Felix: I just wanna
Star Master Jeff: spin records, man. I just wanna make the music happen. So if you could turn this on and I can send a signal out, then maybe the people at Black
Felix: Harbor can get a little bit of joy in their life. Yeah, we can do that. Froggy first steps first though. Power, and then we can switch the uh, from receive to send.
Robert: And then step three, obviously drop the beats. And then by any chance, Mr. Froggy is step four. We get [00:49:00] paid.
Star Master Jeff: I don't have any money, but I can drop a beat. I'll prepare for that right now. You, sir,
Robert: are good people. Truly the voice of the wastes, and that is why everyone will know. DJ froggy.
Thorne: Put some gravity well on that playlist for me.
Thorne: Would you rap? Well, what's that? Oh, oh my. You don't know gravity. Well, my man, we'll talk later.
Star Master Jeff: You're naming bands to a place that has hasn't had outside contact in 20 years. Yeah, he's missing out on the contemporary
Thorne: classics. All right, let's get to work. I'll stay up here and keep an eye on froggy if it's all the same to y'all.
Felix: Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I don't think we're in too much danger of splitting up here.
Thorne: Felix, why don't you take Robert and head down to the generator.
Star Master Jeff: So Hailey, where do you wanna go?
Haleyy: Stick with froggy.
Star Master Jeff: Okay, so we got froggy and thorn up top, and Robert and Felix going down to the basement. So Robert and Felix, you go down the staircase out the front door around the [00:50:00] side of the building and you find that there's a big old rusted door here that had a lock on it, but the entire doorknob lock in mechanism has been completely bashed in.
Star Master Jeff: Instead, there's a. Well, we weathered bungee cord holding the knob to a nearby fence post,
Robert: cut the bungee cord and push the door open
Star Master Jeff: the door. Rusty opens up showing a set of concrete stairs leading down into a stale smelling basement.
Robert: Felix. Now how, how do you want to go about this? Do you want me to lead and you cover me?
Felix: Yeah, you, you lead for sure. I'll, I'll definitely cover you. Are
Robert: you sure you don't wanna lead?
Felix: No, I got your back. I'll hold the light.
Robert: You, you double show you. I could easily follow you down with my gun.
Felix: I'm, I'm holding the light over his shoulder and pushing rubber down the stairs
Star Master Jeff: and you make your way down to the basement, flashlights out to see what there is to see.
Star Master Jeff: It's a very small basement. The footprint of the building is actually pretty small. There's one room down here, there's a generator that runs off of fuel cells. [00:51:00] You can see that there are three large fuel cells directly next to it, and when you check the charge on them, they're all like degraded over time, but they're all at over 75% and there's no fuel cell in the generator currently, but the generator is.
Star Master Jeff: The shell, the generator is off and all the innards are exposed and a lot of things have been done to this generator. Probably froggy trying to get it to work.
Felix: Oh no.
Star Master Jeff: Near the generator are three panels, electrical panels. It looks like there's one for the radio tower. One for the first and second floor, and then one for the generator itself.
Star Master Jeff: There's also a bunch of shelving with a lot of various parts and expired food stuffs on it, strangely enough. And then there's a sewer grate leading downwards into a sewer assumably.
Felix: All right, well I'm gonna like sigh heavily, kneel down in front of the generator and assess the damage. I pull out, I pull out my toolkit and begin kind of like assessing what what it needs.
Star Master Jeff: Okay, so this is gonna take you an hour to figure out. [00:52:00] What it's gonna take to fix this thing, but just by glancing at it, you know, this is a multi-day effort.
Felix: Robert, this is gonna, this is gonna take me some time. Can you just hold this light here for me please?
Star Master Jeff: Yep. Robert. Here. Robert? Yep. Robert. Hold the light here.
Star Master Jeff: Robert, you're having flashbacks to your childhood right now? Yeah, me too. I have PTSD holding the flashlight for my dad. Felix, go ahead and roll me a fix. Intelligence. Actually, no, sorry. Fixed wisdom. Wisdom is about making judgments. That is a nine. You don't really want to have to work on this at night.
Star Master Jeff: You think if you spend all day tomorrow and all day, the next day that you can get it fixed and fully operational again with the parts you have currently on hand without having to get anything additional. Ethan powered, there's three energy cells. I
Felix: If he just hooked those in, it would've been fine, but I think he made this worse by him trying to fix it without hooking those energy cells in.
Star Master Jeff: It seems like something may have been broken and he tried to [00:53:00] fix it, but made it way worse. In your exploring, you can see there's like a huge mess in here. There's like 20, 30 different problems. Any one of them could have been the one small thing that a knowledgeable person could have fixed in like an hour.
Felix: All right, Robert, let's go talk to the team.
Star Master Jeff: Okay. The two of you make your way up to the second floor where you find that. Froggy has come out of the DJ booth and he is, has some rations that he's sharing with everyone present.
Thorne: So Shards of Glass was their third album, and that's the one that everybody likes.
Thorne: But honestly, if you go to the earlier stuff, it has like more of a lo-fi thing going on that I think actually makes it better.
Star Master Jeff: Oh, that's, that's, that's a really interesting thing. I mean, honestly, it kind of sounds like lost in transmission a lot. It almost sounds like lost in transmission could have been influenced for them because they came first.
Thorne: Oh, maybe you have to, you have to gimme some of their records then I gotta give it a listen. Uh,
Felix: so listen, it's gonna take a couple of days. But I can get it back up and running. Like it'll run like new days. Yeah, [00:54:00] it's gonna take like all tomorrow and the next day,
Thorne: by the time we find the thing, they're gonna have already stripped it.
Felix: I don't know what to tell you. Thorny. It's a mess down there. It seems like, like some kind of rat got on there and just ripped everything up.
Star Master Jeff: Stripped what?
Felix: The generator. It's all torn up.
Star Master Jeff: But this guy said they were gonna have already stripped it. Who's they? And stripped what?
Felix: Don't worry about it kid.
Star Master Jeff: He is like in his mid forties.
Star Master Jeff: I don't know if I mentioned that. Yeah, you did
Robert: buddy. It ain't looking good. It's gonna take a couple of days. Thorn. I'll tell you. What are they gonna do? Reseal our ship. I think we got some time.
Thorne: I'm not worried about them stealing it again. I'm worried about them destroying it. Wait, you have a ship? Are you from off world?
Thorne: Well, well
Star Master Jeff: we could talk more about this later. No, if you have a ship, I have a, I have something I can ask you.
Thorne: All right. Well, let's say we did have a ship.
Star Master Jeff: Well, I know someone off world. Maybe you can bring something to them. Like what? I, I don't know. I haven't talked to them in a long time. I, I, maybe a message.
Star Master Jeff: Sure. We can bring a [00:55:00] message. Oh. Oh, this is very cool. Her name's Vera. She got off world with her family and he gets a wistful look. I'll write something. I'll write something right now, and he runs off to the DJ booth.
Thorne: What a weird guy. I, I hadn't told him that we had to ship.
Star Master Jeff: Yeah, that might have been my buy.
Star Master Jeff: So that is the end of our session. You'll be spending, it sounds like a couple nights here. Froggy sleeps in the DJ booth, but there's plenty of room for you here on the second floor, or in reception on the first floor. Or you could sleep on the roof under the stars, though it is raining most nights, but for now.
Star Master Jeff: You break bread and you make camp and you get ready for fixing generator tomorrow. And with that we'll go to our diaries.
Felix: Well, I gotta say I was more than a little disappointed in that recipe book. I was hoping for something that a bit more transactable, but the car was a nice surprise. Bill Thorn seemed to enjoy it a bit more [00:56:00] than I did. I love to see a beautiful piece of machinery like that, and it was weird. Guy, froggy, yeah, he messed up that machine downstairs.
Felix: But hey, you give us a warm meal that's not half bad and I am looking forward to getting my hands in some greasing machinery again. It's been too long and a little project is just what I need right now.
Haleyy: We're starting to see some more signs of home here on Afia. It's been pretty neat coming here. Just crazy industrial.
Haleyy: I mean like the whole planet is about methane for some reason. Managed to pick up a family recipe book. There's a bunch of pages that I'm hoping maybe get filled up to. Found a local radio station, just seeing lots of signs of what used to be here on Wafi, and it's a pretty shit situation here and I'm really happy about the recipe book.
Robert: Well, a little bit of a bag of chance here. Truly bid up. Fortune. We find this beautiful car. [00:57:00] Truly chance I might have gotten my ass handed to me in Loki Palm. Sometimes Fortune does not favor the bold, but we met DJ Froggy. That's my boy. I can tell. I can see something in him. He is gonna be the voice of the rebellion.
Robert: That is going to be the spark that lights the fire on wall Feso.
Thorne: An Aurora LX 90 sleek, elegant, a classic dual intake plutonium drive, plasma fed hover capabilities, goaling doors, pearlescent, finish. What a find. This is the kind of treasure that I'm talking about. DJ Froggy, voice of the waists. He seems nice enough, even if he isn't all there.
Thorne: I'm glad we have a way to track the scapegoat, but two whole days, I hope the thing's still there when we go to recover it. At least that'll gimme a little bit of time to teach Robert some basic Loki pond skills.
Star Master Jeff: [00:58:00] Well, everyone, that's the end of our adventure for tonight, but this has been another awesome episode of The Dark Star Adventure Cast.
Star Master Jeff: Tune in next time for episode seven when the crew of the scapegoat makes their way to Black Harbor to hopefully find their long lost ship. Thanks for listening, and as always. Keep following that signal.
Star Master Jeff: Hey, and just one more thing before you go, I'd like to give out a huge cosmic thank you to Brad, our first and founding patron on patreon.com. If you'd like to be included in this monthly shoutout, please check out our membership options on patreon.com/darkstar Venture cast.