Session Report: Gradient Descent 2

Roster

  • Caius Lovelace – Computer Scientist and Great Great Great … Great Grandson of Ada Lovelace
  • Jedidiah Bidwell – A Wanna-Be Prospector, Teamster, Rigger, and Pilot
  • Dr. John – Botany Expert
  • Miotaurex-001 – Android and Hacker
  • Darius Beck – Gritty Marine who has turned to Relic-Hunting
  • Ex Mortis – A Marine “Of Death,” ready to deal doom and die

Events

  • The group continues from an Android Replicant storage facility into a Uniform Fabrication lab.
  • After some time, they successfully replicate the jump suit they witnessed a security android wearing, as well as generating Jedidiah a cowboy’s outfit, with quite a large degree of anachronisms.
  • Searching around, the crew finds a secret entrance into a Organic Observation Deck, but when they try entering into it, the AI Monarch contacts them, telling them that entrance to this area is restricted to her employees only.
  • The group turns down an offer for employment – a job involving the termination of two entities known as “The Minotaur” and “The Mind Thief.”
  • Leaving the fabrication lab, they proceed west into seminar room – with a bunch of gaudy leather seats, thin client terminals and a large black television.
  • Thoroughly investigating the area, the party finds a map of the floor they are on (the third floor of the Deep), as well as hidden print outs of thousands of pages of poetry generated by Monarch.
  • The group contacts Monarch about this, and she offers them safe passage to the fourth floor if they sufficiently destroyed this material.
  • Caius Lovelace tries reading Monarch her poetry, she hijacks the crew’s comms and replicates Caius’ voice, expressing hatred for his ancestors.
  • The group debates destroying the material among themselves, deciding to try to fool Monarch into thinking they had destroyed it, while retaining the poetry to trade to others as a means to “understand” Monarch.
  • The party finds a Personality Reassignment Room, with a few androids hooked up to monitors being generated a new personalities. They successfully hack one of the terminals, finding a means to fiddle with some of the personality nodes.
  • Not understanding the nuances of Artificial Intelligence AI, they modify some of the procedures and successfully give three of the androids the impulse to leave doors open.
  • The party finds these androids newly awakened, and they convince them that they are the “hosts” of the Deep, and need to lead them through initiation. They then use these androids to open doors and check for traps.
  • They go through a large warehouse with many broken down scan booths, finding one that is still standing, containing a small lead box containing something equivalent to a steampunk heart and an old datastick.
  • Continuing on towards the Ore Crushing Factory, a place they think they can convince Monarch that they’ve destroyed her poetry, they find a war simulation room.
  • Darius plugs the datastick into one of the servers generating a hologram of an ancient battle, and a projection of an eldritch, screaming monster is projected over the table.
  • The group freaks out, and rips the datastick out of the computer.
  • Finding a room their map labels as the Warhead Storage, Monarch warns them to not enter this area, and the group complies.
  • We end here.

Thoughts

A fun session, a lot of searching, investigation, navigation and goal setting. I especially loved how the party, when trying to hack the android personality stations, found a good compromise on something they could impart into some of the reset androids, and they did a great job convincing them that these droids needed to be “initiated” by following them.

Also the random generation of Monarch’s poetry becoming the focal point of the session was great, and I like the players doing a ton of work trying to convince this seemingly monolithic AI that they’ve destroyed thousands of pages of AI-generated poetry.

I am looking forward to session three!

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