So my in-laws (not to be mistaken with the out laws) have this fantastically awful tradition of singing a turkey song that I’m pretty sure they collectively made up. I have, in more recent years, seen others perform it on YouTube and yet it somehow misses the simultaneously comedic and melancholy way that they perform it. Without any further ado hear are the lyrics to the song:
There it is, right in front of you! It appears to be an empty ship floating derelict in space. It has a deep black color, large weapons ports on the sides, and a very utilitarian square shaped body.
Your engineer speaks up, “I can’t find any visible problems and a quick scan shows no one on board, yet it still has a functional life support system. The ship’s transponder ID is still transmitting.”
“So what’s her name?”
“According to the transponder, it’s officially named HAL Industries Two Thousand, and according to our own data the manufacturer, HAL, was doing research in artificial intelligence. The company appears to have shut down and disappeared a number of years ago.”
Something in space suddenly shifts and you see everything around you ripple. One of your crewmen stumbles slightly.
“What was that?”
Your comm officer responds, “An unknown anomaly has occurred and people all over the quadrant are reporting a vertigo sensation, and some ships have reported a sudden and unexplained coordinate change.”
All ships currently on a spawn point suddenly find themselves someplace completely different. Any player or NPC currently on a spawn point must roll a d20 and go to whatever number they rolled. If the number is not out yet, the player that drew this card must sift through any remaining tiles to find the appropriate spawn point and use any legal position for it to connect to the board. That NPC or player will spawn there. If a 20 is rolled, the player will go to the spawn point beside Nyr. The active player may choose to fly through a spawn point this turn, but doing so initiates a d20 roll.
After the active player’s turn this anomaly dissipates.
Clarification: If the Wormhole Event is already in play, this Encounter supersedes it for a single turn.
As your ship enters the Nebula, you notice an unexpected phenomenon. Numerous pink clouds with electrical arcs are heading right towards your ship. They are moving with tremendous speed and surround you from all directions and stop abruptly about 1 click out. Then, 1 cloud heads straight for your bow and passes right through your ship’s electrostatic barrier and hull. It enters the bridge and comes to a stop about 2 meters shy of you and your command console. You can see that the pink cloud roils in almost a rhythmic pattern as electricity arks through it in various places and a continuous discharge comes from it to the ground as if they were legs holding it off the ground. It begins making electrical buzzing sounds very slowly. Your comm officer flips on the universal translator and the speakers begin to buzz back. The computer and the gaseous cloud continue to buzz back and forth, very slowly at first but with increasing rapidity. After several minutes the translator pings that it has some of the rudimentary parts of the language figured out.
You offer up a quick introduction of you and your crew to this new entity and you can hear your universal translator simultaneously translating it.
After a momentary pause the entity starts buzzing and for some reason the universal translator seems to include an electrical static sound when interpreting.
“Greetings, ugly bags of water. My name is Zz-zz-zzhao and our people are the Nuh-bess Roessius. We live in this Nebula. We would like to propose a mutually beneficial cultural exchange. First, we would appreciate a transmission containing your literature and other types of media, and we will offer refueling when you pass through our nebula. Second, if you let me travel with you to a new Nebula, I will regularly top off your ship’s power till you get me there.”
Clarifications: In order to refuel your ship you must end a movement on the pink cloud token, but you do not need to end your turn on that space. It will fully recharge your ship at that point but re-arming markers and additional actions that use energy after that point will once again reduce your energy. Zz-zz-zzhao is very compressible and does not take up significant space on your ship. He is also willing to be a navigator joining your crew for shift rotations.
I told him kindergarten.
The visit from this detective made me wonder what I would call myself if I were to become a detective and I realized I would probably go with my middle initial of ‘E’. I would make everyone call me, “Mr. E.”
I recently tried my hand at writing a detective story:
11:45 – arrived at crime scene
11:45 – Examined body. Signs of struggle
11:45 – Found murder weapon in drain
Continue reading A detective showed up at my house and asked me where I was between 5 and 6.
Who could pass up a chance to see that classic ship, have a couple of drinks, and hang out with someone while they tell old stories and play some music! Clearly, this guy knows how to Rock!
—
You’ve made your way across your inter-ship docking tube and are starting to get a little anxious while waiting for the airlock to finish cycling when it stops and pops open. You’re not sure what you expected to see when you first entered, but this was not it. The floor and ceiling are both covered in green shag carpeting with deep piles, and dark wood everywhere from the wood paneling to the ceiling cross beams, to the arms of the furniture which happens to be carved in the shapes of animals. All over the walls are paintings on black velvet canvases. In the far corner you see a tiki bar being ‘manned’ by what looks like a robotic butler.
The robot speaks up, “Don’t worry, Elvis has NOT left the building, he simply needed to visit the powder room.”
As if on cue, you hear a toilet flush in the next room followed by the brief sound of running water. Out of the double ‘R’ steps your host for the evening.
“Hey Austin, offer our guests some refreshments and make everyone some peanut butter, banana, and bacon sandwiches.”
“As you wish, sir.”
“Austin is probably the best robotic butler and karate sparring partner in the galaxy.”
“Thank you sir.”
—
You spend an unexpectedly unique evening with the King where he tells you how he spent most of the past century. He tells you that he originally fled the Drift System when he was visiting the prison colony on Loath. Loath had just placed a group of their most hardened criminals on a cryoship and launched them. Elvis was there for PR, and even back then his monarchy had no real authority but only had diplomatic and ceremonial responsibilities. He decided to play ‘Jailhouse Rock’ for the guards and prisoners when a riot broke out and his honor guard barely got him out alive and sent him to a planetary system located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. It took him a while to gather the necessary resources to come back. In the interceding years, planet Earth also made him an honorary king.
As the evening wraps up, he ends it with a gift giving you some black velvet paintings for you to decorate your ship with as well. (1 Fame Point)
Retrieve The King NPC card and have the ship start wending its way to Kemplar II.
You and your crew have work to do and hanging out with an old guy that clearly dyes his hair with shoe polish doesn’t seem like the best use of your time.
When you decline, the guitar playing geezer looks sad, but simply responds, “I understand, you’ve got to TCB baby.”
Retrieve The King NPC card and have the ship start wending its way to Kemplar II.
An old classic ship in cherry condition flying in from a distance with a brass colored undercarriage, large gun metal black barrels attached to beautifully curved wings, a red paint job that just makes the ship look fast and completely unnecessary fins that your grandpa would have loved. Then a hail comes in on an old frequency that you didn’t even realize was supported by your comm system. Without even thinking your comm officer accepts the hail. Appearing on your screen is a man with black hair and sideburns wearing sunglasses and a white jumpsuit covered in rhinestones. Most interesting is that he is holding a guitar.
“Thank you, thank you very much for accepting my hail. I would like to invite you over to swap stories about the past century and maybe you could enjoy a couple drinks at my wet bar while I strum out a couple of chords on my old ‘63 Gibson.”
No: Proceed to Story 38.
Yes: Proceed to Story 39.
Deep in one of the caves of TafJur, you and your crew are searching for relics from a culture that died with this now cold and barren planet. The caves you are in right now are no natural phenomenon. These caves were cut into the side of this mountain. You find a set of hidden doors while carefully inspecting one of the rooms. You manage to wench it open. While various things line the walls, your attention is drawn to the center of the room where a large metallic object is resting. Before you have a chance to think better of it, you brush some of the dust off of it. It starts thrumming and the room grows a little bit darker as if it is sucking in the light from around it. You call out to a couple of your crew members through your suits comm, “Jenkins, Z, I’ve found something, but I want to know what it is before I decide if we should bring it on board.”
“Aye, Capt’n,” they both respond in unison.
“I’m sending you my location data now.”
When the two additional crew members step in, even through their helmets, you can see that they know they’re going to be pulling an all-nighter on this one.
Early the next morning you hear a rap on your cabin door. You open the door and standing there is a tired but excited looking Z. Before you even ask, Z starts talking animatedly, “At first we couldn’t make heads or tales of this, but then I found that the interface was written in a scripted program language but even that didn’t solve all our problems because we didn’t have the foggiest clue about the written languages that this long dead culture used. Then I farted and Jenkins had an epiphany!”
“Wait, what?”, you interrupt.
“Oh,um I farted, broke wind, ahhhh…flatulence”
“OK, I just wanted to make sure I heard you right, go on.”
“So as I was saying, the mere idea of the odor of flatulence reminded Jenkins about how the Zhian communicate via both words and smell, so we pulled up a copy of the Zhian Prime official alphabet. A few of the characters matched. We started isolating all the characters and matching the ones we knew and started to try and assign values to the other symbols and let the Universal Translator take a crack at it. What we found was a really elegant programming language that linked to various other pieces of code and data structures…”
At this point you raise your hand to stop Z. “This is great work that you and Jenkins did, but what’s the bottom line?”
“Those ancient aliens created a super weapon! During the past hour Jenkins and I have taken to calling it the ‘Death Ray’. Much of its hardware and software are still beyond us but we think we could rig it up and fire it. Calling it a little dangerous is an understatement. What do you think we should do Capt’n?”
Clarifications: While the Death Ray can knock out a planetary shield, the Zhian have a double shield around Zhian Prime. Their inner shield would still be up. It is also noteworthy that this device does not harm the Space Kraken.
A small space lab suddenly appears adjacent to your ship. The transponder ID suddenly pings and it lists as ‘Merv’s Missiles or Arken’s Arsenal’. Please come over and dock with my lab.
Once onboard, the scientist explains, “I’m selling this so cheaply because I need more data from field testing, some funds for more supply, and… there is still a safety concern over whether or not the high levels of electromagnetic radiation that it emits can cause long term physiological problems.”
After completing the sale and installing the cloaking device, the space lab once again disappears.
When activated, the cloaking device lasts till the beginning of your next round. If you do leave it active at the end of your turn you will not be able to re-arm that marker and at the beginning of your turn you will need to take 1 unblockable damage. You can fly , shoot, explore, use shields, utilize various gadgets and scan while cloaked. However, there are limitations. You can not buy, sell, trade, dock with space stations, or utilize mission points while cloaked. While cloaked, you must write down very accurately your starting point, where all you have gone, and what your final stopping point is.