Otherspace

From Lexicanum

Beyond realspace, 

past the time-bending corridors of hyperspace, 

another galaxy waits to be disovered. 

When a problem develops with the hyperdrive of an Alliance prisoner transport, 

members of both the Rebellion and the Empire are deposited into  a strange, 

unexplored dimension between the hyperlanes and realspace.

Episode One - The TIE Armada

The crew of the Blue Dolphin got more than they bargained for when they emerged from hyperspace en route to their latest assignment - to rendezvous and escort an Alliance prison ship - the Celestial. They entered into realspace right in the middle of a veritable fleet of TIE fighters – one of which collided with them, before spinning off into space. The TIEs were accompanying a Star Destroyer, the Relentless. Faced with such overwhelming odds and rather than being destroyed or taken into custody, Ogella rapidly punched-in a hyperjump hastily astrogated by Gant.

As the jump-drive kicked-in they quickly realised something was wrong, as the drive made an unfamiliar grinding, popping noise as reality shifted.

 
When the ship finally emerged from the strangest light jump any of them had ever experienced, it was even more obvious that something was not quite right. The space beyond the ship was a storm-grey patter of nothingness, the ashy expanse broken occasionally by swirls of coloured gasses. The most alien sight of all was the starts. Not millions of pinpoints of dazzling light, but billions of holes of shining dark that peppered the storm-grey space. This was not the familiarity of realspace – this was somewhere other!
 
While Joe began running diagnostics on the engines, and Old Ned tried to raise someone – anyone – on the comms, Slim began running sensor sweeps of the area. The comms were silent – not even the normal ghostly static of background radiation, the sensor sweeps were pretty inconclusive as some kind of charged particles were swamping the receptors, however Slim was pretty sure that something  was about 120 sub-light units off the ships forward arc. When Joe reported back that the hyperdrive was so much junk, they decided thy had little choice but to head for whatever was out there, and Ogella punched in a course.
 
As they neared, the sensors cleared sufficiently for Slim to get a better reading on the object – it was the Celestial! Cheered by the fact they might be able to secure help – or even some spare parts they headed closer. Comms were still dead and the Alliance ship looked dead in space and was on a tumbling vector away from them. Carefully  Ogella managed to match velocities and they were able to dock with he ships' cargo bay.
 
Leaving POL-E to look after the Dolphin, the crew assembled in the cargo bay and vegan to explore the Celestial. The cargo bay was lit by the dim red-glow of emergency lighting, what power was left in the ship was coming from backup batteries. Slim and Ned discovered that most of the escape pods had been launched, although one of them was secured to the deck with some kind of weird webbing. Gant discovered a badly damaged droid which, with some tinkering,  Joe managed to get working long enough to retrieve it’s last instruction-set – “Find computer access port.Plug in. Relay signal to power cells to fire simultaneously”. When asked by Gant what this would do – Joe observed it would at best reduce the engines to slag, at worst blow the whole damn ship into atoms!

Ogella meanwhile had headed for the stern exit, noting it had been modified as a security door, and managed to get it open, beyond were a number of storage areas that had been modified a cells. In one of the cells Gant found an imperial service cap with the rank-badges of a commander. Beyond the cells was the ships stores, which appeared to be more or less intact. The forward access from the cargo bay similarly led to a set of cells, one of the cells was badly damaged where something had evidently tried to break through the bulkhead with some kind of claws or tools. Once of the cell’s air was redolent with a heady unique perfume, which Slim recognised from their recent adventure on Tatooine, as belonging to Zardra, whom they had last seen being carted away by medics, badly wounded and near death after the battle at the Tusken fort,
 
Beyond the cells was an area that had obviously been used by the Rebel guards. They found four bodies, their weapons removed, though there wee accommodations for six guards. Joe managed to coax one of the monitor screens into life long enough to get a roster of the prisoners: Grand Moff Ravik; Imperial District Commander  Bane Nothos; assassin Droid EL-434; Nanth’ri pirate leader Celis Mott and finally Bounty Hunter Zardra.

Episode Two: The Celestial

Gant led the way up the access ladder to the upper deck of the abandoned freighter. As he climbed warily into what looked like a high-grade military-spec sensor suite, the emergency lights dimmed noticeably and he fired up a glow-rod, as did Joe as he joined him. The air on this deck was even worse that the level below, but still just about breathable.

Leaving the sensor suite as Ogella and Ned clambered up the made their way to the bridge. Joe managed to coax the bridge computer into life long enough to access the last log entry to find out what had happened to the ship. As they watched the holographic images, it became clear that the prisoners had somehow escaped, and seized control of the bridge using the comms to make contact with the Imperial Fleet.  They watched a desperate attempt by the rebel crew to recapture control, just as the ISD Relentless arrived on the scene, and the rebel captain hit the hyperdrive controls to escape. Gant checked the navcomp to see what co-ordinates they had tried to jump to and found nothing - in her desperation to avoid capture the rebel captain had jumped to nowhere!

Searching the captain’s cabin they managed to retrieve an encrypted datapad which Joe set about trying to crack. The others meanwhile began exploring the rest of the ship. Suddenly the final dregs of power drained from the Celestial’s emergency batteries and the artificial gravity cut and they found themselves in zero-gee in an erratically tumbling ship! Joe was launched against the bulkhead banging his head and stunning him, but the others managed to garb onto something to avoid hurting themselves.

While Old Ned maintained a watch on the bridge, he sensed a disturbance in the Force out there in the void; the others began heading down searching for any survivors, but there was no sign of the crew or the prisoners – not even any bodies. They did find evidence that certain bits of equipment had been removed and occasional evidence of the mysterious webs and curious scratch-marks on the deck plating. Eventually reaching the door to the engine room they found it had been locked down – presumably due to the prisoner escape. Joe managed to retrieve the access codes from the captain’s datapad, and they opened the door, finding the reason that it had been sealed was there had been a major fire in here, the air was still thick with acrid black smoke the metal walkways were twisted and blackened and a coupe, of bodies spun through the room in the darkness. Fortunately Joe had a breather-mask and made his way cautiously in. He was hoping to scavenge some spares from the hyperdrive, unfortunately when he got there the hyperdrive was so much slag.

Returning to the Dolphin they pondered their next move. There were escape pods missing to perhaps the crew and prisoners had managed to evacuate to safety. They decided to launch the last pod and follow it as it would be programmed to locate and head for the nearest planetary body. It took judicious application of Ned’s lightsabre to free the escape pod from the webbing that enmeshed it, but eventually they had it ready to go. No-one was willing to risk getting into the pod to initiate the launch sequence, so Joe managed to get the droid from the cargo bay working enough to carry out the launch. They went to their stations in the Dolphin, Gant offered to take the controls allowing Ogella, who was more skilled, to run the sensor sweeps to follow the pod.

Gant made a bit of a mess of uncoupling the two ships and Ned had to intervene with a hammer. With Ogella visibly wincing with every twitch of the thrusters Gant manoeuvres the ship jerkily into position. As the escape pod launched, Gant hit the thrusters – unused to flying this class of ship he misjudged the amount of power needed, and the Dolphin shot off into the void. Ogella meanwhile, after glaring furiously at Gant for mistreating her pride and joy, desperately tried to maintain a sensor lock   on the pod as it headed deeper into the nebula.

Episode Three – The Desolate

Scene One – The Great Hall

As they dived deeper into the mysterious nebula, they suddenly found themselves in ships graveyards where silent hulks twisted and spun in space around them. Gant cautiously manoeuvred the Dolphin through the wrecks while Ogella fought to maintain a sensor fix on the escape pod they were following. Despite a couple of bumps and scrapes Gant managed to follow until the pod disappeared inside what looked like a large asteroid. The cave into which the pod vanished looked big enough , so Gant manoeuvred the Dolphin to follow.

As they entered the cave the ship passed though some kind of membrane across the entrance. Beyond they could see what looked like a landing pad on which several escape pods rested. Gant brought the ship down to land as Ogella informed him there was a breathable atmosphere. They disembarked from the Dolphin and proceeded cautiously over to the escape pods, as they did Gant noticed what looked like an exit on the far side of the platform. The pods were empty except for one that contained a small cat-like creature, that looked somehow wrong. Ned informed them that the creature was not alive; despite the fact it was walking around, and in fact was a void in the Force.

Leaving the platform they headed though the exit Gant had spotted passing through another membrane. They passed though a short passage and found the interior of the asteroid had been hollowed out. A walkway led across the void to a series of massive platforms suspended around what looked like some kind of glowing core. As they made their way across the walkway they could see a strange red mist roiling below them.

The walkway led them to a large hall, bounded by 3m high stone walls. There was what looked like a star-map was engraved on the floor, though none of them could recognise any of the systems depicted.  The exit from this hall was blocked by more of the strange webbing they had found on the Celestial but Ned’s lightsabre soon cleared the way. The area beyond was dominated by strange pods and tendrils of vegetation growing around the glowing central core. They made their way through the alien vegetation, finding the dying captain of the Celestial who warned them about “the shadows” before expiring.

Their way forward from this are was blocked by a huge rent in the floor of the platform through which they could see the red mist below., they started to make their way round to find a way past when suddenly they came under blaster fire from some nearby rocks. Ogella and Joe dived for cower, but Gant quick-drew his blaster and fired back, while old Ned sprinted forward his lightsabrePlatform One in hand. After a brief combat their assailants lay dead. Three of them appeared to be crewmen from the Celestial while one was the pirate leader Celis Mott.

Scene Two - The Red Mist  

After making their way around the huge rent in the floor of this level, the y found themselves in a re where huge pillars reaching from the floor of the level to the celling was covered in hexagonal pods affixed to them. Searching the pods revealed a collection of various stuff, judging by its varied and differing points of origin,  Gant surmised was scavenged from the ship's graveyard that orbited the aliens spacecraft. Amidst all the junk, Joe did manage to find a hypercoil –one of the five components they needed to fix the Dolphin’s hyperdrive.
 
Moving on from this storage area Gant spotted a tube-like column rising into the ceiling that he guessed was the access to the level above. The area surrounding this column was suffused by the red mist they had noted earlier that swelled up form the lower regions of the asteroid. As they moved though the red mist each of the rebels was afflicted by a series of hallucination – Ned being particularly badly affected and having to be rescued by Ogella an Joe. But eventually they pulled themselves together enough to make it to the tube.
 
Eventually they began a long and tortuous ascent of the tube – which revealed itself to be a crawltube – though one for fashioned for the human form and Gant and Ned in particular found it difficult to ascend each of them falling many times before successfully reaching the next level.
 
On arrival on this level they found themselves in an area where domes – each the size of a small hill - dominated. Through the opaque surface of the domes they could  just see large shapes within, but decided against further investigation moving through this area to the next where a series of landing platforms contained a couple of alien-looking organic spacecraft. On instigating the alien craft, Joe managed to retrieve a power-core that appeared to have been scavenged from the Celestial and retrofitted to the alien craft.
 
The next area they searched contained six large alien forms , which appeared to be made of organic rock. One of the forms – some kind of huge  battle suit attacked them. The rebels eventually managed to severely damage the suit of armour, but whatever was in it managed to scuttle it’s way to safety in the darkness of the room.

Episode Four - Heart of Darkness

Scene One - Death of a Jedi

While Ned and Joe set about destroying the remaining alien battle-suits, Gant and Joe looked around fruitlessly for whatever had scuttled out of the first one. Eventually giving up , they began searching the rest of the level. In a nearby room they found more of the alien organic tech. There were heaps of coiled organic tubes surrounding what  looked like some kind of control column covered in what viewscreens. Many of the viewscreens were dark, but the active ones displayed an unsettling segmented view  as if through insectoid eyes. Across some of the viewscreens indecipherable glyphs scrolled endlessly, while others provided an insect-like view of the exterior of the asteroid.

There was one exit from this room and Ogella was first thorough, immediately sinking waist deep in some kind of green gunk. The chamber was immense stretching out to either side. It was completely filled with green gunk and translucent tubes rose out of the gunk carrying it elsewhere in the asteroid. A number of yellowish globules floated easily in the air above and she could see what looked like an exit across they way.

The others joined her, and they began trudging through the slimy gunk towards the exit. The “globs” at first didn’t react to their presence, but when they neared a group of them, they suddenly extruded tentacles and attacked. Before they could react, Ned took a fearsome blow> The old Jedi, unprepared for the assault, collapsed into the gunk – killed instantly. Ogella and Joe, were also hit hard, but Gant – carrying the vibro-cutlass he’s retrieved from Celis Mott – struck back. As Ogella and Joe hauled themselves back up from the gunk, they drew blasters and fought a fighting retreat back to the entrance, but their final horrific sight was of Old Ned’s body being lifted out of the gunk and absorbed into the body of the glob that had struck him down. Shocked by the death of their comrade, they decided to rest in the console room, Gant first-aiding the other two who were badly injured. They decided to camp out here until everyone was fully recovered, and settled down.

Several hours later their rest was disturbed when a Wookiee burst into the room. Although nobody spoke Wookiee, Joe was able to decipher enough to work out that he was one of the crew from the Celestial who had escaped the madness that had claimed his crewmates in the Red Mist below. They invited him to join forces, to which the Wookiee, whose name appeared to be Hodreth as far as they could work out, agreed!

Once everyone was healed they determined to try and cross the nutrient chamber again. This time they took no chances and went in blasting!

They managed to clear a path to the far exit and one by one pushed through the membrane on the far side – finding themselves in what looked like a corridor

Scene Two – Webs of Darkness

Ogella led the team up the corridor, heading in through first membrane covered access she came to. Within, the room was lit by the yellow power-core which passed through it. As the others crowed in next to her she noticed the room was also full of slim organic pods clustered about. Moving closer to examine them she noticed a fine web of filaments criss-crossing the ceiling and connecting    to the power core. Suddenly the pod she was examining exploded – disgorging gout of energy that was captured by the filaments and distributed to the power core. Most of the rebels managed to avoid the effects of the explosion of energy, but Joe took the full brunt and was knocked unconscious. Deciding this room was somewhat dangerous Hodreth picked up the unconscious engineer and they left.

While Ogella began checking out Joe, Hodreth and Gant entered the next room. It was dark and shrouded in a tangled mass of webs. As they stood there peering into the gloom, a commanding voice called out to them requesting they surrender in the name of the Empire. Gant and Hodreth did not respond as suddenly four of the spider-like alien dropped from the webs and attacked. Gant was taken by surprise and fell beneath a flurry of flashing claws, his battered Stetson flying off into the morass of webbing. The aliens had a harder time with Hodreth who managed to fight them off as two of them dragged Gant’s body deeper into the webs. Ignoring the attacking aliens and howling loudly, the Wookiee began forcing his way through the webs to retrieve his fallen comrade.

Ogella, hearing the sounds of conflict, dashed to help, as Joe groggily began to recover consciousness. Joining the battle Ogella began blasting away at the spiders and Hodreth dispatched first one then the other of the ones that had grabbed Gant. He picked up Gant’s unconscious body and began making his way back through the webs, just as the owner of the commanding voice - Bane Nothos – emerged from the webs blasting away at Ogella. Hodreth dropped Gant unceremoniously to the ground and returned fire with his bowcaster, instantly dropping the imperial officer. As Nothos crumpled to the ground, an object fell from his lifeless hand and rolled across the floor. Recognising a thermal detonator, Ogella called a warning and fled the room. Hodreth hurriedly grabbed Gant’s recumbent form and followed - the explosion hot on his heels. 

They rejoined a groggy Joe in the corridor who began administering first aid to Gant. Once he was sufficiently healed, he realised to his horror that he had lost his hat! Hodreth sensing his comrade’s distress immediately returned to the room an began searching through the webs, but was unable to find the missing headgear. Though still wounded, a distraught Gant joined him in the search to no avail! Fortunately Gant realised that e still had the Imperial kepi in his pocket they had retrieved from the Celestial. Though it didn’t go quite as well with his long duster-coat as the black Stetson, it would have to do! Now Gant was correctly (more-or-less) attired, they moved on, past another crawl-way leading upwards,  to the final area on this level. The room was guarded by another spider-alien - this time in battle armour! After a brief battle the Rebels were triumphant and began exploring the room which contained a series of holo-displays. The displays told the history of the alien race (the Charon) as they spread a swathe of destruction and annihilation through their home galaxy .

Episode Five The Great Contest

Scene One - The New Engine

Gant led the party up the connecting tube to the next platform on the Desolate, this time navigating the route with ease compared to his previous effort. They found themselves in a room where thousands of pods stood attached to partition walls. A closer examination of the pods revealed to their horror that each seemed to contain a body. Their horror increased when at the far end of the room, a tendril descended from the ceiling, picked up a pod and dropped it into the power core!

Hodreth and Joe managed to force one of the pods open revealing, a comatose spacer - they were unable to rouse him however. They fired off a few pot shots at the tendril when next it appeared; forcing it to drop the pod it was carrying. The pod cracked open revealing the comatose form of a calamari – which Hodreth recognised as one of his former crewmates from the Celestial. Like the other spacer they had freed from the pod, they were unable to rouse him.

Eventually realising they were getting nowhere. They moved on finding in a nearby room what looked like an attempt to cobble together some kind of bizarre hyperdrive from a mixture of mechanical and organic components. They couldn’t make much sense of it, but Joe was able to scavenge some useful stuff he could use to repair the Dolphin’s own hyperdrive.

The area beyond was the most bizarre yet – several small platforms were suspended by webs over an open space – far below could be seen the floor of the second level. Though it was dark Gant could see just make out several shapes standing motionless on the platforms. Ogella was first to make a move cautiously crossing the webbing that bridged the gap to the first platform – which swayed alarmingly with her weight. Lighting a glow-rod Gant followed, making his way gingerly across, and falling down a couple of times. He left Ogella   and moved across to the second platform where he could see dim shapes waiting. As Gant arrived they lurched into action, firing at him and he dropped as if poleaxed. Ogella, Jo and Hodreth tried to return fire – but some kind of shields blocked their blaster fire.

Joe moved to Join Ogella while Hodreth decided to take an encircling route. The Wookiee‘s way was blocked by another construct that slung webs at him. Fortunately the wookie’s superior strength enabled him to tear through the webs and destroy the construct.  Behind the construct he found another webbed figure – freeing it he recognised one of the prisoners from the Celestial - the assassin droid. Battle was swiftly joined ending when Hodreth ripped the droid in two!

Ogella and a Joe meanwhile had disposed of the constructs that had attacked Gant and began administering first aid.

Scene Two - The Charon Awake

The Rebels continued their slow progress through the Hall of Contests, making their way cautiously from platform to platform and fending off occasional attacks from creatures that jumped out of the darkness at them. When they neared the far end of the Hall, they were confronted with the strangest beast yet – one that seemingly was possessed of the ability to teleport them away when they stepped on to the platforms!

After several frustrating attempts, Gant, Ogella and Joe managed to pass the Gatebeast without triggering it’s defence mechanism, but Hodreth seemed incapable of doing so, and the Wookiee was getting increasing frustrated as he was randomly teleported about the Hall. Eventually Gant made his way back to the platform on which the Gatebeast lay coiled and launched an attack as Hodreth stepped onto the platform attempting to distract the beast. Unfortunately the Gatebeast retaliated by teleporting both of them into the empty space between platforms and they began tumbling towards the floor 60 metres below!

Fortunately both Gant and Hodreth were able to grab hold of some of the webbing that criss-crossed the area and were able to climb their way back to where their comrades awaited.

Leaving the Hall, they  moved through to the next room – just in time to sees several Charon leaving by the far exit. The room was some kind of laboratory with various control panels and monitors that displayed views of the platforms in the Hall. Here were hundreds of organic and mechanical components scatted around, some weirdly melded together from which Joe was able to scavenge the components of a flux incapacitor.

The room beyond, was covered in webs and at the far side they could se a tube that led up to the level below. Gant pointed out hundreds of pods suspended in the webbing and as they watched the pods began cracking and Charon warriors began emerging from their cocoons. The Rebels, deciding that they would be hard-pressed to take on the emerging army, hot-footed it to the tube to the next level.

Episode Six – Into the Nest

Emerging on the topmost level of the Desolate the Rebels found themselves on what was obviously the command and control deck of the alien ship, when they discovered another of the computer cores, this one much larger than the one they had found on the lower deck. Ogella and Joe flirted for a while with trying to interface with the computer, but ultimately though better of it! Gant meanwhile discovered a curious obelisk in a nearby room, but thought it looked too ominous to examine closely, Ogella and Joe went for a closer look but quickly retreated when they found that it was sucking the very life-force from them. In the final room on this level the found what was obviously the alien ship’s bridge.

Entering the room, Charon warriors scuttled about in the webbing above them. Joe’s eagle-eye spotted an inertial compensator -  the final part he needed to repair the Dolphin’s hyperdrive in a pile of organic and mechanical junk tangled in webbing across the room, but as he moved towards Grand Moff Ravik stepped out of the shadows. Ravik appeared to have completely lost it, somehow assuming that the rebels had come to join him in securing the Charon as new troops fro the Emperor. As he spoke he was joined by one of the Charon – larger than the others who spoke, his word translated by the alien computer, encouraged the Rebels to join them, advising that their “disease vector”  would be welcomed to the Void and transformed into higher forms!

Realising that being transformed into higher forms was probably not a good thing – Ogella rejected the offer out of hand drawing her blaster. As she did so, six tendrils, each carrying a glowing sphere that fired plasma bolts, snaked out of the webbing above and attacked. The alien leader barked out something that was left un-translated by the computer to his warriors above. Hodreth, Ogella and Jo engaged the tendrils. Gant, ignoring the attacks on him, moved to try and get a bead on Ravik. As blaster bolts flashed all over the bridge, Ravik, in the finest tradition of the Imperial officer corps, scuttled off into the shadows seeking safety. It was to no avail as Gant followed, firing several times and dropping the Grand Moff.

Finding himself near the tangles mass of junk, he noticed several bodies tangled in the webbing and also several Charon vac suits. Suddenly, two Charon warriors dropped out of the webbing and confronted him! His colleagues, having destroyed or severely damaged the attacking tendrils, moved to support him, Hodreth making quick work of the warriors. Ogella and Joe began retrieving the inertial compensator from the junk-pile. Gant meanwhile had run across to check whether Ravik was still alive. Suddenly the alien leader spoke once more, sealing his battle-armour and issuing a command to the computer before leaving - “cleanse the infection!”

Somewhat unexpectedly the ceiling above them blew-off and air began rushing out of the room! Gant immediately picked up Ravik’s unconscious body and dashed for the exit. As the pressure dropped rapidly, the Rebels began frantically trying to rescue some of the unconscious captives, but quickly realised it was fruitless, began trying to force themselves into the Charon vac suits. Gasping from air that wasn’t there, Hodreth helped Ogella and Jo into the unfamiliar suits before passing out. Ogella and Jo then returned the compliment cramming the Wookiee’s unconscious form into one of the alien suits.

Across the room Gant crashed through the entrance membrane only to run into a fusillade of shots from the Charon warriors assembled outside. The Force was with him and somehow he managed to avoid getting hit as 15 separate plasma bolts seared towards him! Dropping Ravik, Gant took a deep breath and ducked back through the membrane. The bridge was completely exposed to vacuums now and he held his breath as he dashed desperately across and began to don one of the vac suits. Above him he could see Joe and Ogella climbing the webbing, dragging the unconscious Hodreth behind them in the low gravity.

Emerging onto the surface of the asteroid, the Rebels made their way across the exterior heading for the cave entrance where they had left the Blue Dolphin. As they traversed the surface, Charon warriors began emerging and taking pot shots at them, but the Rebels managed to reach the cave entrance without any further incident.

When they arrived however the found not only was the ship itself webbed, but four Charon warriors were guarding it. The guards were quickly dealt with but as they moved towards the ship, a further large squad of warriors charged towards them. Just as things were looking hopeless, the gun-turret on the Dolphin bust into life spewing fiery bolts into the charging mass. They could hear a woman’s voice, which they recognised as Zardra’s, urging them to hurry into the ship.

Once on board, Joe headed for the engine room and Ogella for the bridge. Gant dropped Hodreth off in his cabin and then relived Zarda in the turret. While Gant held off the Charon, Joe quickly began jury-rigging a repair to the hyperdrive. Ogella gunned the sub-light drive, tearing the Dolphin away from the webbing that held her. Crashing through the armoured Charon warriors that had followed them across the exterior, the Dolphin soared into the murky greyness of Otherspace.

A couple of Charon fighter launched after them, but Gant was able to hold them off long enough for Joe to complete his repairs. Just as more Charon fighters began launching; Ogella jumped the ship back to the relative safety of Realspace.