THE KETHERIC-HIVE AFFAIR (Balder's Gate 3 in Space! Quest)

You rubbed your palm along your face, then...an idea hit you.

"Have you ever heard of bear baiting?" you asked.

"No," Wyll said.

"No," Shadowheart said.

"No," Lae'zel said, frowning.

"Yes," Astarion said. "Bears are extinct, though."

"No, there are tons of bears," you said. "You know, big gay guys?"

Astarion sighed and put his hands over his face, rubbing his palm slowly up and down.

You grinned, leaned forward, and started to explain your plans.

You weren't sure if the Redcaps were following you as you drove the buggy from the internal garages to the external airlock. Getting out of Nuke was going to take a hell of a lot longer than getting into it - but at least you could be entertained by the somewhat flabberghasted look on Raphael as he sat in the back, peering around at everything, while Gale excitedly sat beside him. "I see that you know something of the magician's art as well, Mr. Raphael, so, I know that I too have spotted the same thing that very now astounds you!" Gale held up his hands. "It's true! This entire conveyance works without tapping into the Weave at all - save for a few minor irregularities in the manufacturing process, I believe leftovers from the use of prestidigitation and mage hand during the construction process, which I was reading about-"

Raphael bonked his head against his headrest.

You grinned at the customs agent who was standing at the booth out of Nuke. She was a cute little orc, whose long ears were drooping with boredom. "All right, just running your credit lines," she said, then frowned. "Looks like you guys went on quite a shopping spree?"

"Just the essentials," you said, grinning at her.

"All right, well, your accounts in the red," she said, looking at you. "You owe, uh..." She clicked a few buttons and a dot matrix printer whirred and clattered. She tore the strip free, then put it into the slot, which offered it to your buggy's port hatch - built for this kind of exchange. You worked the airlock, popped the inner side, picked up the receipt.

Your eyes bugged.

"What the fuck did we spend six hundred dollars on!?" you asked. "...the drinks at Auntie Ethels?"

"Oh that place is murderous," the orc said, sympathetically. "But your account, uh..."

"Shit," you whispered, doing conversion in your head. You actually could offload that onto future Karlach's head, you know...

"Just pay the woman!" Lae'zel snapped.

"Right, right," you said, then paid, smiled at the orcess, and then drove out of the airlock and onto the highway.

In the rear view mirror, there were countless other buggies.

Which one of them had Auntie Ethel's goons?

You hoped at least one of them!

You drove across the rust red sands of Mardok, the buggy's wheels bouncing periodically over dirt and rocks. In the back, Raphael had gone to sleep. Astarion and Wyll were playing a game with some cards - you weren't sure which kind of poker it was, but they were pretty into it. Shadowheart was focusing on her internal Medtech bullshit. Lae'zel was sharpening her sword. And Gale had taken a seat up next to you and was fucking with the radio.

"Just, I wanna listen to the radio, man," you said.

"There are news stations," Gale said. "You have not been out of the loop for six centuries, I want to hear what is going on throughout the solar system."

"Just the same old bullshit," you said as he dialed in on a Stateside public news station that was being re-broadcast on Mardok - and you had no idea if that was even legal. The voice of the Kith sounding man over the radio was dry as vacuum, droning out of the speakers as you groaned and slouched in your chair.

"-the Entmoot put their vote forward, counterbalancing the overwhelming majority of the Conservative Democratic party's vote on the bill for the appropriation of a defense platform to be located at the Mardok Tashas. Nicknamed Star Wars this bill would have appropriated approximately two billion dollars for the construction of high powered energy weapons to target and intercept interplanetary ballistic missiles fired in the event of a solar system wide general war. However, the Entmoot and the Progressive Republics have both spoken out against the bill, citing the treaty of Mardok as-"

"Come onnnn, they've been fighting over that shit for years," you said, looking at Gale desperately. He was looking fascinated.

"Star Wars," he said, slowly. "I've heard that name before."

"Yeah, it's a movie," you said. "There's this galactic empire and there's this human kid living on a desert planet and, he like, runs off and becomes a knight in space, and he flies a space fighter and blows up this big evil spaceship called the Death Star, it's a great movie."

"...wait, a desert planet?" Gale asked. "Is it based on some world you've discovered?"

"Nah," you said. "It's fiction, like, made up. Anyway, the sequel came out."

"Oh, they make sequels to films?" Gale asked. "Seems a bit impertinent."

"Yeah, it fucking sucked," you said, shaking your head. "They just made up new shit about how the space knights get, like, I dunno, bullshit magic like mage hand, and like, the pacing's fucking whack. Like, the dude goes to train on a jungle planet with this little goblin fucker, and like, they don't even hire a goblin to play him."

"Oh," Gale said. "Who played him?"

"A fucking puppet!" you said.

Shadowheart lifted her head, and in the most aggrieved tone you've ever heard her say, she said: "You don't like Yoda?"

"He talks like Miss Piggy!" you said.

"Yeah, that's why he's great, you're not supposed to think that he's a Jedi master!" Shadowheart said.

"And then they have this scene where these bombers drop bombs in microgravity. I've fought on asteroids like that, and they don't fucking..."

You were just barely in sight of the parked rockets - and saw both of them were still there. They hadn't launched while you were away. You pulled the buggy over behind a slight rise, then parked.

"Okay," you said. You still had no sign of the redcaps. But you wanted them to run right into the Adventurers, so that meant you had to go to the Adventurers. So...

---
How do you play this? Don't forget the vote up there too.

[ ] Approach on foot (sneaky)
[ ] Approach on foot (openly)
[ ] Drive the buggy up (openly)
[ ] Write In