Netherlight - Session 3 - Elven Derelict & Difficult Landing

We finally got the group all together and got to do more Netherlight! I switched to 2400 and absolutely loved it - the players enjoyed it too.

Characters
- Cleanthor d'Abgoror: Star Barbarian, Ex-Imperial Navy, Wanted by Debt-Holders
- Captain Von Loman: Cursed Navigator, Ex-Arbinnian Trade Company, Driven by Ambition
- Salassar "Sara" Shreds: Imperial Sniper, Left the Empire and relatives behind to seek Adventure



What Happened
- On Luna XVII (a crescent-shaped space station complete with artificial sky, gravity and holo-gulls), Cleanthor recognized his old comrade in arms Sara and she joined the crew without much formalities. They took on a passenger (a xenoarcheologist called Kwan Alder, think blue-skinned lady Indiana Jones) who accompanied them during the adventure and provided good support and some flavour. They also took on a shipment of terraforming gear, ten years late, to be delivered to LFP0047 a.k.a. Demeter. This part was discussed OOC while we gathered our things and socialized to start things up.

- After crossing through a pink nebula full of electric storms (more flavour, didn't play through this) the party found Demeter and a massive iron coral with medua tentacles - a derelict elven ship with no transponder signal. They decided to go explore it first.

- The derelict crawl went fairly well - they found a weird bioroid creature that communicated through sign language and had it guide them to the command post. On their way they found out about strange orbs that seem to turn those that touch them into unresponsive husks. They found a 60yo man in kid's clothings gripping his sphere and muttering to himself next to a skeleton.

- There was some fight with a big toad-like monster at some point and examining of nasty slimy eggs. The monster was very dangerous ("on a disaster it'll eat whoever rolled lowest") but they all rolled well shooting pulse salves at its face, so it fell into a pit and got eaten by an even nastier thing they didn't bother waiting for. Later on there was another brush with death when fighting a giant worm in a strange pool, where one PC got knocked away and nearly got his arm torn off.

- At the command post were more of the husks, and the players decided to hold them up, with Cleanthor prying one of the spheres off of a creature. It went rabid and attacked - all the creatures's heads were blasted away as they started to shake and scream. The rabid one clawed at Cleanthor's face, nearly blinding him. Then the corpses burst into big arachnoid monsters (same as the one back in session 1) and the party ran away, saving the xenoarcheologist in the process. A quick chase later and they got back on the ship, with the Captain blasting away at a monster with the ship's turret.

- The next day they tried to land on Demeter but were caught off-guard by a massive snow storm. Then the Captain rolled a 1 and they were rammed by a sky beast and crashed down. The ship will need a few days of repairs before it can take off again. There's a mountain about 30 clicks away where the beacon for the delivery is still active, but otherwise the area looks deserted. They gathered grease from a giant animal bone, and the sniper killed a giant wolf, scattering its pack.

Some Thoughts
- Well, I love 2400. I ran it solitaire before and reviewed it quickly from there, finding it very good but a bit heavy on the rolling (we needed less rolls in a group compared to solitaire, turns out). I also imagined that the somewhat good odds of success would mess with the style of game I like to run (closer to survival horror than power fantasy). Turns out it's great because this way I can really go hard on consequences for DISASTERS and SETBACKS, and since I let the players know what these are beforehand, there's an automatic moment of clarifying intent and situation so we didn't have any misunderstandings. The players enjoyed it too, praising the atmosphere and interesting setting (Iron Coral is a great adventure by Chris McDowell, it's in the original Into the Odd softcover and I ran it for the seventh time tonight).