Session 0.5 - New Opportunities With Old Friends

Isaac arrives on Bane, taking Foxtail down into the thick and toxic atmosphere. The surface of the planet looks like the hide of an ancient dragon, organic and disturbingly fleshy. The settlment, Redemption, is under ground in one of the many subterranean cave networks of the planet, carved out of the planet itself.

The main settlement itself is massive, complex, and well-armed. It manufactures weapons for the Exodans and any Forgers who can pay. The shipyards in orbit and testing sites dotting the surface seem to suggest that business is good, which is always worrying to Isaac.

As he makes his approach he signals to security that he’s here on business. To see Curtis Winter. The turrets relax and the docking bay door in the surface slides open, the shimmering blue of the forcefield the only thing keeping everyone in there from choking to death.

Later, Isaac arrives at Curtis’ office, deep in the bowels of the labrynthine settlment/factory.

Curtis: Ah, Mr. Hammond. Glad to see you.
Isaac: Man this place weirds me out.

Isaac inspects the fleshy spots on the wall that aren’t covered by the structure of the office. Is it pulsating? Isaac looks away.

Isaac: Anyway, I got your Weave message. I’m not sure why you couldn’t have told me the job over Weave like you usually do and save me the trip.
Curtis: Well it’s always important for a lonely Forger to be in a room with another person from time to time, Isaac. We wouldn’t want you going, you know, weird.
[a beat]
Curtis: And also this job is slightly more sensitive than others I’ve hired you for in the past, necessitating a bit more security and secrecy.
Isaac: Look, Curtis, I’ve told you before, I’m not an arms dealer and I don’t want to get involved in your business.
Curtis: No, no, no. Nothing like that at all, I assure you.

Isaac regards Curtis warily for a moment.

Curtis: Please, please. Have a seat.

Isaac pulls up an uncomfortable, but thankfully non-fleshy, chair to Curtis’ desk.

Curtis: Ah, there we go. Isn’t that better?
[a beat]
Curtis: Are you with Silvana?

Isaac thinks for a moment. It sounds familiar, but he can’t quite place it.

Isaac: Well, sure. Who isn’t?
Curtis: Yes, quite. Especially these days. Well then I don’t need to tell you what the job is, do I?

Isaac weighs the pros and cons of keeping up this bluff.

Isaac: Wait, sorry, can you remind me about Silvana? I’m not sure I remember about it…
Curtis: Mr. Hammond, I’m surprised. I thought you would have been watching Silvana quite closely. They’re all over the parts of the Weave you purport to be familiar with. Maybe this isn’t the job for you after all. I need someone who keeps up on events going on outside of decaying old derelicts.

Curtis regards Isaac for a moment. Isaac wonders what Curtis meant by “parts of the Weave you’re familiar with.” Does this have to do with Precursors?

Curtis: Well I do have just a usual courier job I could use your help with instead. I’d feel bad to have you waste a trip.

If this has to do with Precursors, Isaac can’t lose this contract.

Isaac: Wait, I remember. Silvana is in this system right? And they are performing Precursor research. I haven’t heard any news cause I’ve been out of the system on a job and haven’t caught up on the weaveboards yet. If you give me a few minutes to check my relay…
Curtis: Relax, Mr. Hammond. I was only kidding. Though unfortunately, given the level of sensitivity of this mission I’ll need you to agree to it before I can tell you any more about it.

Isaac: You don’t need to tell me everything up front - stars know it wouldn’t be the first time - but you’ve gotta tell me a little bit more before I can agree to anything.

Curtis fills Isaac in on the basic situation. Silvana is a nearby research station orbiting a black hole. They largely engage in scientific research. Every so often, one of their breakthroughs has a practical application and they license out their technology to the highest bidder.

They have recently made just such a breakthrough. Several factions across the region have taken a keen interest in it, but Curtis isn’t interested in a bidding war. He needs that research now.

Isaac: Espionage? To be honest it’s a little outside my usual repertoire.
Curtis: I assure you, Mr. Hammond, most of the hard work has been done for you by my informants. Think of this as just another courier job. You pick up the research from my people on the inside and bring it back here. Couldn’t be simpler.

Isaac thinks this over. It’s not a lot to go on, and Curtis is almost certainly lying about the risk. Isaac still doesn’t have any confirmation that this regards the Precursors, but it sounds pretty likely.

Isaac: Alright, I’m in. But I’ll need double my usual fee.

Curtis: Mr. Hammond, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now, please, time is of the essence. I’ll inform my people to expect you and send all of the details to your ship via your relay.

Isaac pulls out a small chunk of metal from his jacket pocket. Curtis had seen this particular chunk of metal many times these past few years, but still can’t tell quite what color it is. Isaac always calls it “the color of the void.” But, truth be told, Isaac isn’t sure either.

Isaac: On this piece of my past and this hope for my future, I swear I will bring you this research so we can both learn more about who the Precursors were and what happened to them.

Curtis rises to his feet, smile beaming across his face. He silently adds “and make a shitload of money manufacturing black-iron-tipped missles.”

Isaac returns to Foxtail and, sure enough, he has a stack of documents sent right to his relay from Curtis detailing the mission.

Before he dives in on that, though, Isaac wants to catch up on the Weave chatter that’s apparently going on about this. He flips over to his public feed to catch up on everything he missed while he was out of the sector.

After a few hours of reading and watching, he is glad he agreed to this mission.

As Curtis had mentioned, Silvana is a research station on the outskirts of the sector. They are in orbit around a black hole, which provides them some degree of privacy to get on with their research. Apparently, much of their research centers on energy sources. Denser battery packs for pistols, punchier sublight drives for ships, endless power sources for deep space settlements, that sort of thing.

They fairly regularly hit upon some minor breakthrough that they sell to a manufacturer, then it makes its way into common use across the Forge.

About five years ago, they hired Mae Barlowe, a researcher already well-known in delver circles for her work on reverse-engineering Precursor technology. There was a lot of excitement on the Weave around her arrive, but then Silvana went quiet. Not even producing minor research.

Most folks wrote them off, assuming their golden age was over and they had run out of steam.

But last month, news leaked of research they’ve been doing around powering up Precursor tech with energy radiating out of their black hole. Word is, they can produce “batteries” of impossible energy density though a process they’ve developed.

Since then, the Weave has been abuzz about this speculating about how it works and potential implications all across the Forge: energy sources for deep-space settlements that last thousands of years, e-drives that don’t overheat, and - of course - devastating bombs in small packages.

There are lots of contracts being advertised on the underweave for the original research, any information about how it works, any prototypes. And some calling for the destruction of Silvana itself, claiming that such dense energy cubes will “damage the fabric of reality” and speculating that the Precursors themselves met a similar fate.

Now that he had a good idea what was actually going on, he cracked open Winter’s briefing to review while he set course for Silvana.