Dawn of Flame Gameplay

Opening a door at random, most of the group proceeds into what seems like a bath house, lit by decorative trees with leaves of very real flame. As Dr. Boros holds back to finish packing up his gear, the rest of the group investigates the new room, Zaxsha even testing the water in one of the tubs. No sooner do they start though, than the door slides shut and the once fun seeming leaves become flamethrowers, and the water goes from room temperature to boiling in an instant. Blasted by the heat, and a couple flamethrowers for good measure, Cate immediately goes for the door, somewhat surprised to find it unlocked. As the group quickly makes their ways back out, Cate notes a setting on the panel to vent the mage-circuits powering the flames, which would potentially render the room safe for the less-fire-inclined.

Helena renders the issue of the bath house of fire moot before Cate can actually pose it to the group, walking up and overriding the malfunctioning settings entirely. The Crew takes a brief moment to catch their breath from the oven they just walked out of, crossing the pleasure room into the ship's kitchen, where they are met with giggling that, as soon as the crew turns their backs to begin searching the room, reveals itself to be a gang of tiny fire elementals, yelling a single word over and over in Ignan and moving threateningly towards the crew

Cate warps reality around the elementals, creating a small field of cold while Helena shoots one in the foot. Misha, perfectly positioned for once, instead revs his subzero hail cannon, and begins spraying icicles from its front into the crowd of tiny elementals. The freezing bullets pierce the elemental creatures easily, tearing them to shreds and dousing their flames. By the time the gun stops revving, completely out of juice, they're all gone.

Continuing through the ship, the group eventually enters the bridge. It extends like a curved, multi-tiered balcony, its outer walls and ceiling formed of clear composite with holographic overlays that crowd the dark of space with instrument readouts and blinking damage reports. Workstations line the balcony’s curved outer edge and the raised platform near the door, some of them clearly damaged by electrical fire. Ash and debris form a small pile in front of the central pilot’s station.

Getting a hunch about the ashes, Zaxsha goes over and inspects them. Sure enough... "Someone died here. This is all that's left of them..."

As Zaxsha touches a flashing button on the captain's controls, a hologram sputters into existence in the middle of the room, showing a copper-skinned humanoid man with short, dark horns and slightly luminous flame-red hair that turns blond toward the roots. He’s in his mid-thirties, perhaps, with a collar of black metal around his neck. Several wounds bleed through his similarly dark armor. He wavers on his feet, as if woozy, and the recording dissolves into scattered motes of light before cohering again.

“My name is Tash,” he begins. “I was on Noma. I...” The message dissolves, forming again as he says, "...seize the Burning Mother. I was among them, but...” The recording stutters and jerks forward. “Khaim can’t be...”
Suddenly, the man stumbles as if struck. He opens his mouth to continue, but the collar around his neck flares with a red light. He looks down toward it. Then he gazes straight ahead, eyes tired, resigned. "Forgive...” he whispers as a cloud of silver erupts from the collar and flows across his body. It consumes everything it
touches, starting with his head, reducing him to dust.

The hologram fades.

"Right," Cate says, eyeing the iron collar the group found in the ashes (alongside a fine suit of armor), "No one put that collar on."

Cate and Helena's examination of the collar turns up a final conclusion about it's uses, and a confirmation that it's now just an ornate iron collar. Leaving the bridge, they arrive in a science and engineering lab, containing a tank of ooze that to Boros's examination, appears to be completely inert. While they turn to the nearby computers to try to discover it's use (finding the computers wiped clean in the process), the ooze silently sneaks from the container and gets a pseudopod around Voca, quickly beginning to disassemble and absorb the android's body.

With two quick shots, Zaxsha and Cate destroy the ooze before it can do too much damage to Voca.

Exiting the laboratory, the crew moves into an adjacent armory, met with lockers who's locks prove beyond the crew's skill to pick open, and the sounds of searching coming from a room to the northwest. Cycling the airlock functioning as the door open, they see a stateroom appointed in blackened metal and shimmering crimson banners, with a huge one-way viewing window taking up half of the room’s curved exterior wall and rising to form a clear dome above, much like the captain's bedroom. A black desk and cabinets compliment a wrought iron bed frame. The carpet on the floor is black with a crimson sun pattern.

Standing at the desk is a woman of dwarflike stature but for brass skin a head wreathed in flame, attempting to force a drawer open, though at the sound of the airlock opening, her head snaps up and she yells furiously in Ignan, moving to attack the party.

Helena (who understands Ignan) steps forward and tries to reason with the woman, who is cursing and fuming about <that traitor Tash>

<Please stand down> says Helena. <We don't want to hurt you. Tash is dead, killed by... small machines>

<You think I don't know that?! But thanks to that treasonous filth, you rats have seen this ship!>

<Well, it was either that or death by space whale...>

<Would that it had finished the job! But I guess it's your fault it didn't, hmm?>

At this point Helena can tell that this won't end without a fight. She also notices that the woman is wearing a collar like the one that killed Tash. Perhaps they could use it against her... but not just yet...

Helena signals to Misha, and the bear attacks. The fiery woman roars and charges with her maul, knocking out Zaxsha. The group fires a barrage of energy (and grease) but their attempts to stop her just aren't quite fast enough, and she outright kills Helena before being knocked out by Misha.

Voca stares blankly at the fallen foe before she lowers her gun and simply shakily asks, ”should we take her prisoner? I, uh... I have handcuffs, I can bind her. But... is that even something I should do?”

Cate looks between the unconscious foe and Helena's corpse. "I... We have to. The heat of combat is one thing, but... executing a helpless prisoner just feels... wrong. We should take her back to the satellite, see her properly interrogated and tried there."

”Morality and law is one thing,” Dr. Boros says in far too impersonal a manner given the situation. ”This thing has potentially valuable information about the purpose of this ship and why exactly it’s here.”

Misha stares at the azer a moment, then at Helena, and back at the azer. "... she was good engineer. Seemed like kind person." he says quietly. "She did not deserve this. I say we kill bitch."

”If we don’t take her prisoner, we’ll never know why this happened. I don’t think I could live with myself if we just... let things go. I want to know why she had to die,” Voca responds, before kneeling down and snapping binders about her arms. ”C’mon. We should take them back to our ship,” she says. ”One for a burial and one for an interrogation.”

The crew carries the unconcious Azer and their fallen ally back to the Photon Runner, and tows the Breath of Embers behind them back to Far Portal Station. A group of researchers awaits them at the landing platform and erupts into excitement and cheering at the return of the mysterious ship; Stationmaster Jori standing by to greet the crew when they disembark

”We need a holding cell and a mortician,” Voca announces.

Jori stares at Voca blankly for a moment, "I... I'm sorry? What happened in there?"

Voca sighs, and begins to explain. ”Helena, the dromada, was killed in combat with this lady, who needs to be interrogated for a few reasons, not the least of which is Helena. Honestly, it took a lot for me to not execute her there, but I have to know why this happened.” Voca levels her gaze towards the station master and adds, ”We can go over the rest in more detail later, but I think our prisoner only has so long left in stasis before she might just drop past critical condition into well and truly dead, and I don’t want her to be awake until she’s locked away.”

Shock flickers across Jori's face, "Oh, I didn't think anything would... Um, I'm very sorry for your loss, but, there's simply nowhere we can safely hold a dangerous prisoner; this station was set up as a research outpost and nothing more. Perhaps a doctor could hold her stable without waking her up, but she would sooner or later wake up on her own if you did so. Are any others among your party hurt? While we can't hold prisoners, we can provide high quality medical aid, or even magical healing if necessary."

"I suppose we can try it, if you insist" Jori leads the crew to the station's medical lab, and provides a table for the Azer to be bound to, evacuating her personnel from the room and leaving you all alone with her immediately after.

As luck would have it, the Azer stirs mere moments later, glaring at you all with hate filled eyes and struggling against the binds, though they hold her for the moment.

Zaxsha stands over the azer, brandishing her knife. "If you speak Common, answer our questions. Or you'll die very painfully."

"Drown in magma, spider-freak" she spits

Voca rolls her eyes. ”Hating us doesn’t get you off that table,” she points out, idly fiddling with her weapon holster. ”I’ll confess curiosity, how do you anticipate this going? You’ll call us some harsh names, maybe gloat that you killed someone a bit, but for what? It will change nothing, your ship is in our control, you’re dead to rights... some cooperation might see a few dividends.”