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

"I know!" you said. "We'll call it...the Not-Iloid."

Everyone looked at you.

"...heh...haha...ahhaha!" Laz'zel's laughter started off as a giggle, then started to echo off the hard metal walls as she clutched her belly, throwing her head back, kicking her feet. "Ahahahahah!"

"See, Lae'zel likes it," you said, grinning.

"We'll pass around a suggestion sheet and have a vote, how about that?" Wyll asked, smiling slightly.

SHadowheart sighed, rubbing her palms against her face. "I have a transponder to start hacking. No one try and look up anything on the internet while I'm doing it, you will just get a dial tone."

She started out as Lae'zel shook her head, then sighed. "Your name is terrible, teeth-ling."

You flipped her off.

She flipped you off right back. But, you know. In a friendly way.

There were plenty of rooms on the ship - it was meant to carry a platoon of captroopers anywhere they needed to be for boarding actions, or to support a whole frigate crew for a long patrol. Lae'zel picked her room by directing Gale into marking it with some magical cantrip or another, emblazoning a Githyanki symbol on it. You found Raphael in the corridor junction on the second level of the crew deck, glowering at the chambers, his arms crossed over his chest. The corridor was so narrow that you'd have to squeeze to get past him, and his tail was lashing so much it was probably a trip hazard.

"Uh, need anything, Raphy?" you asked.

"This...ship..." he said, slowly. "Is small."

"Small?" you asked, then opened one of the rooms. Four bunks, and a terminal, with about 40cm between the beds, and with lockers tucked into the floor and ceiling below and above the beds. The upper bunks had nearly enough room to sit all the way up, if you were a halfling. There were knobs for controlling airflow, and little reading lights that could be turned on without waking up the others, thanks to the screens you could pull across the bunk for privacy. You turned to him. "Small, fuck, man, this is better than my apartment back on Lalaune! This shit's amazing."

Raphael looked at you, his lips parting. He put two fingers to his lips, tapping them. "I...dwelt...within the House of Hope. This? This is smaller than my broom closet."

"Why do you need so many brooms, man?" you asked, peering into the room.

"The...that's beside the point!" Raphael snapped.

"Listen, pick a room," you said. "I've got one of the officer's cabins. Though, uh, heh, don't get used to staying in the room, we need techs in the wandjock room to make sure the alignment on the Zevar drive doesn't get all fucked."

He blinked at you.

"I'll show you man, don't worry, soon, you won't even be able to fuckin' tell how tiny this ship is!" You said, beaming at him. "Work keeps the mind focused on the inside of the can, not the outside. Cause, like, right now, we're jetting through space so empty that we might not even hit atoms for a few hours, ya know?" You patted his shoulder. "Come on!"

You came onto the bridge with a double cup of coffee and saw that Wyll was strapped into his chair, frowning as he kept his eyes on the exterior camera.

"Do I have to do this?" Astarion's voice came over the line.

"Sorry, Ancunín," Wyll said, into the com. "You and Shadowheart both tried fixing the sample, you were faster."

"Ugh."

"What's wrong?" you asked.

"The thruster on one of the starboard maneuvering panels is unable to complete its rotation and we need to do an EVA to fix it," Wyll said, taking the coffee. "We're cutting thrust in a few minutes." He lazily reached up and flicked a yellow and black banded toggle. The three trilled pattern of the microgravity alert filled the ship. "Thanks, by the way."

"Hey, they launch these things with coffee, I'm gonna drink the coffee," you said, nodding. "...so, what do you think?"

"Of the coffee?" Wyll asked, grinning slightly. "It's terrible coffee."

"No, of the ship!" you said, nodding eagerly. "What do you think?"

"She burns three times harder and hotter than any ship I've ever run, and maneuvers like a pinnace," he said, grinning slightly at you. "It also carries enough nuclear weapons to end a small world. So, I'd say...terrified and humbled?"

"It's hella sweet," you said, smiling at him.

The gravity cut off as the engine whirred down and the entire ship seemed to go still. It wasn't. It was still going faster than anything had ever gone on Old Laturr. You watched as Astarion came out of the airlock - the cameras locked onto him. He remained harnessed at three points every step of the way, swapping out a component and then hurrying back inside. Wyll used a gimbled trackball and the thruster swiveled around and around. He smiled. "Very nice. Are you in, Ancunín?"

"I am," Astarion said. "That was awful."

"We'll get to do it more!" You called into the line. "Lots and lots more."

"Oh joy."

Wyll flicked the alert and the trilling three tone sound of thrust alerts rang through the ship. As Wyll waited to give everyone a chance to prepare, he turned back to face you, his chair making no noise but a faint rasping buzz. He grinned.

"Think he'll jump ship at port?"

"...nah," you said.

"Want to bet?" Wyll asked, holding out his hand - and letting his coffee cup drop into his palm as the thrust kicked back on.

"No."

Shadowheart frowned as she looked along the bundle of wires and cables she had yanked into view, scowling as she did so. Hopefully not at you.

"I'm just saying, it's a common way of blowing off steam and passing time back in the CapFor!" you said, nodding and holding the flashlight a bit higher, shining it deeper into the guts of the ship's computers. She frowned as she peered left, then right, then muttered a quiet cantrip, pointing with her finger - blasting the dust and grit from the computer into a shimmering haze of vancian particles, which vanished immediately. She sighed and turned to face you.

"Pressurizing the cargo hold and using it to play full contact microgravity football?" she asked. "You might as well just stick our arms into vices and bring out hammers."

"It's not that bad," you said, shrugging.

"We have no pads," she said, frowning. "Body armor."

"We have a medical bay," you said, smiling.

Shadowheart gave you a look. "Or...we could just...watch a movie..." she said, slowly, evenly. "What's wrong with watching a movie?"

"Cram eight us into one room?" You asked, frowning.

"I can jerry rig a television into the mess," she said, grinning.

Hmm...but...full contact microgravity football meant getting your hands on Lae'zel. Which...was...very...very...very...very tempting.

---
So, "soul" scenes are social encounters aboard ship! Characters rolled at random are given an RP prompt (in this case, Karlach and SHadowheart, with the prompt being 'what to do for ship game night.' If roleplaying is good, you all lose stress token. If it is factious, you gain stress token! (Note, fracutious can be good - since that means even more XP once you nix the stress!

Thus, any kind of interaction is good, from a certain perspective. Suggest a game, or a movie! Or an orgy!

[ ] Write In

"We won't all fit in the mess, though," Shadowheart said.

Your eyes widened.

"I had an amazing idea," you whispered. "A middle ground! Between our ideas."

Shadowheart frowned.

Then, you explained your idea.

Slowly, her ear-tips lifted. THen her lips.

She nodded.

"That's...actually not a bad idea."


The midpoint of any flight through the solar system had a decision to make. Fortunately, it was made by habitat designers and astrogators, way before you actually reached that specific dot between two possible places. The question was: Flip or Dive. If you flipped, you turned around and then started to decelerate for the same amount of time you accelerated. It was a huge pain in the ass. Fortunately, most civilized places in the Solarium, including Centarus, had mass buoys. Which meant you could dive. A mass buoy was quite simple, it was basically a big ass tank of water, filled up by a DEWS system, parked a few hundred thousand kilometers from the habitat. This tank of water would produce enough mass (hence the name) that it could trigger a feather fall spell.

You didn't really know the magical theory behind it, but Gale spent a solid twenty minutes while you were checking the ammo caches of your PDC network rambling about it after he had read up the math. But basically, the gist of it was that feather fall could make anything slow down and land safely - this meant negating a ton of the nasty side effects of sudden deceleration like 'being turned into a fine red mist' and 'being smeared across the bulkhead.' However, it only did that if the spellweave registered that you were falling. And falling meant being relative to something else. Ergo, use it in space, when you're relatively near nothing? No falling, no stopping. But if you were near to, say, a big chunk of water contained in a big ass tank?

Instant deceleration.

"I just don't get why we need to have these complicated buoys," Gale had said, stroking his chin. "I mean, they're simple enough to build, but you have to do stationkeeping, then shuttle over from them, when you could instead just stop directly at the habitat."

"Gale, uh, imagine a ship. Aight. Now, you don't know if that ship is a ship, or if it's a big rock with a Zevar drive attached. Or you don't know if the FFU is actually ffffucking working." You had grinned at him, swinging the ammo bin's lid back down and latching with a meaty cha-chunk. "What happens if that ship doesn't stop and has been burning at 1G for three days fuckin' straight?"

"Uh..." Gale looked as if he was doing math.

"Big boom, arty, big boom."

"Can...I...I am a wizard, Karlach, can you please not call me artillery, it feels...dehumanizing," he had said.

"Oh. Sorry." you had smiled at him. "But, uh, heh, ar...er...wizards used to call us captroopers stuff too."

"Like what?" He smiled, thinly. "Tanks?"

You had smiled wider. "Walkin' coffins."

Still. You had prepared in your offhisfts for the midpoint burn. And now? You were going to show it off. When you opened the airlock hatch and into the cargo hold, it was with a flourish. "Tada!" You smiled at the rest of the group. Karlach swung herself up into the cargo hold, then frowned as she found that the hold was pressurized, warm, and had a ladder you jerry rigged out of some of the cargo twine. It looped down to the roughly rectangular bottom of the hold - the armored skin of your ship basically turned her into one big slightly slanted cone, and in this part of the space between that cone of armor and space, there was an area to cram a few tons of cargo.

It wasn't exactly spacious by habitat standards, but compared to the tight corridors of the crew quarters?

Palatial.

"You set this up all alone?" Wyll asked as Lae'zel started to shimmy down the ladder. "Also, is this safe?"

"Mostly!" you said. "And, no, Shadowheart helped a fuckton. She got the projector out and hooked it to one of the VHS players we ripped from the mess hall wall. Also, she got the space heaters set up. Uh, and it's...we have breathers."

You pointed at a few breathers that you had stashed near the pile of pillows you'd created by quietly stealing them from every bed in the ship. It was a sad pile, all things considered, but it'd work. Once everyone was down the ladder, you kept the hatch open. You knew some paranoid people would have dogged it, but if there was a breach out here, you'd want to get back in faster than not, breathers or no. And the whole damn ship could lose air and you could just crack some using the reactor and the Zevar drive.

They didn't call them Decanter of Endless Water Systems for nothing!

You paused.

"DEWS...system, wait, shit, is the S in DEWS system just system?"

"Yes, that's why no one calls it a DEWS system but you," Shadowheart called up from the pillows.

You slid down and then hopped off the rope. "Aight, guys!" You turned, then faced the group, grinning. "So, ships like this? They're supposed to carry some tech manuals and some fuckass training tapes. But, like, everyone fuckin' ditches those the instant they can and replaces their mass with, ya know, something useful."

"Tech...manuals are useful," Wyll said, concerned.

"Okay, they ditch the fuckin' training tapes, though!" you said. "Which is why, I have the privilage, to present to you a choice of not one! not two! not three! But four, repeat, four genuine Video Home System magnetic tape and fuck all color and sound and wide goddamn screen to fucking boot director's fucking cuts of..." You whipped out the first one. "Superman! You will believe a kith can fly!"

"Kith can fly," Shadowheart said, frowning.

"Yeah, but not a...like, without wings and shit!" you said.

"Flight spells," Shadowheart said, frowning.

"And no magic, gods, have you never read a Superman comic?" you asked.

"No," Shadowheart said.

Right. Amnesia. Shit.

"I love superman," Wyll said. "Shame what happened to Christopher, though. I've met him several times after the accident, you know?"

"What is the next...Feeh Hayche Ess?" Lae'zel asked, narrowing her eyes and pinning her ears back against her head like a cat.

"Uh, right," you pulled out the next. "The spine tingling classic, Halloweeeeeeeeeeen! Carpenter's best."

"Is it scary?" Shadowheart asked.

"I doubt this muchly," Lae'zel snorted.

Dr. Halsin, who had been sitting quietly in the back, let out a deep rumbling chuckle. "I haven't seen that since theaters. The entire audiance was in hysterics by the end."

"It is a comedy then?" Lae'zel asked, narrowing her eyes. "A deceptive title."

"No, hysteric with fear," Dr. Halsin said.

Lae'zel snorted. "Tch!"

You flipped the next box out to hold up so everyone could admire the faded paint on it. "We got our dystopian classic, where even elves must die young...it's Logannnnnns' Run! Real fucking gnarly ass movie. Really 90s. But, like, in a really cool way." You grinned, nodding. "And, then, we have...some...fucking Republican movie I've never heard of called Susperia. But it's got chicks on the cover, so, like..." You held it up. "It's probably horror?" You read the back, slowly. "Psycho meets...the Exorcist, holy shit that sounds sick as shit actually..."

"We can't watch all of them," Shadowheart said.

"It's still almost a day from ceres, isn't it?" Wyll asked.

"Yes, but we have jobs," Shadowheart said, snorting. "Vote, time?"

Rapahel, who had been silent so far, groaned. "Why does everyone in this whole plane have to vote on everything!"

"You wanna skip on democracy, go to fucking Gallion," you said, scowling at him. "Let some Magister boss you around for their Republic."

"Doesn't a Republic involve voting?" Gale whispered to Lae'zel, who shrugged.

---
Vote! Vote! vote! Vote! YOU CAN ONLY WATCH ONE

[ ] Superman
[ ] Halloween
[ ] Logan's Run
[ ] Susperia