Mutated Space Empires - Quest For The Counter Earth - Into The Noir - Actual Play

It was of no use to demonstrate to such opponents that the Vermont myths differed but little in essence from those universal legends of natural personification which filled the ancient world with fauns and dryads and satyrs, suggested the kallikanzarai of modern Greece, and gave to wild Wales and Ireland their dark hints of strange, small, and terrible hidden races of troglodytes and burrowers. No use, either, to point out the even more startlingly similar belief of the Nepalese hill tribes in the dreaded Mi-Go or "Abominable Snow-Men" who lurk hideously amidst the ice and rock pinnacles of the Himalayan summits. When I brought up this evidence, my opponents turned it against me by claiming that it must imply some actual historicity for the ancient tales; that it must argue the real existence of some queer elder earth-race, driven to hiding after the advent and dominance of mankind, which might very conceivably have survived in reduced numbers to relatively recent times—or even to the present.

— H. P. Lovecraft, The Whisperer in Darkness^[

                                                                 Into The Noir 
Tonight was the second game into Mutated Space Empires & I just got home.We've got lots of ground to cover here.
The PC's were up to their necks in it tonight in a future version of New York that appeared in someone's worst nightmare. They were up to their ankles in garbage literally in this future! Here the halls of power don't reflect on the little people & make no mistake they may be space jockeys but the PC's are still little people. They had dropped the ship back at the hangers back in Jersey & headed into the city to start getting to the bottom of some of the leads from the one shot last time. You can read about the Million person dungeon that stretches across what used the be the United States right Here . Some of the set up for Mutated Empires can be found Here  As well as the PCs right Here
  The players learned that their PCs are working with 200 plus year old designs & its actually hand me down technology from existing alien races. 

Madness rides the star-wind... claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses... dripping death astride a bacchanale of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial...

• "The Hound" Written September 1922, published February 1924 in Weird Tales, 3, No. 2, 50–52, 78

 

Mankind is still stumbling around in the darkness of intergalactic affairs & only now starting to find his way.
Events 

Things started off with a bang tonight literally as one of the major NPC patrons of the group bought it! 

1.   Captain Orloc Bordon - Retired Deep Space Captain & owner of the Innes Exchange Company. Runs the Evil Lady an ion drive hyper space cargo carrier to the Outer Rim colonies.The Captian is a deep one hybrid of the sea blood variety.  Dead torn to ribbons right before the characters eyes & the only clue a sticky spidery silk like material found around the body. 
2. Doctor Fast Bender - Cyber technician & xeno studies expert. Hung from a light fixture with his own intestines.. Again the spider silk material 
3. Olivia Hererul'echil - Chinese deep space salvage expert -Flayed alive by giant spiders. PCs find body & spider within her lower level workshop.. The PCs kill the spiders.
   The PCs are able to track down a Bone man assassin team cult with a strange spider like theme to them.  The cult works with mutated Ettercaps! Selling their services to the highest bidders. 
4. The PCs find an address & the players confront a very interesting reality within the game. 

   

   Rolling Clouds Above is the city of tomorrow today. A little slice of  heaven here on Earth above the noise & pollution we offer everything you want without ever having to leave home. Includes artificial gravity &  full senso environments for our guests from outside the solar systems. Check out our ether commercials today!
   High above the city are micro acologies for the 1% of the city. Here is where the true halls of power are. These massively pyloned building /cities tower above certain points of the skyline. 

   The PCs were expecting trouble went armed & were simply let in the front door!
    
5.  They come face to face with  Olivia Hererul'echil alive, well,  & totally unharmed. After mind scan by the PC's wizard they learn that she is the sister/clone of the original! There has been some mental degradation from the process & her memories are sketchy at best. She still remains the deep space salvage expert that the PCs worked with in the past but there are gaps. Olivia is not even sure if she's the clone or the original. She knows that she was working with the Evolved. The Evolved are the last known human descendants of the High Evolutionary. Followers from the 80s Evolutionary Wars. She has been using some of the radio telescopes in deep orbit that Empire University has access to trying to locate vital planetary bodies where the Evolutionary was last reported, Nothing has come of it. She was working with the
    League of Industrialized Nations who  controls space but there are other entities controlling them. She's willing to share her knowledge with the PC's as long as they find her killers.
   Directly outside of her apartment the PCs are attacked by a faction of the Knights of Wundagore
    
6. The knights & the PC's end in a stalemate. The PCs are an unknown quality to the knights whose weapons could easily finish them off. The Knights tell the PC's about the White Pulse in lower Manhattan. The White Pulse Data & Esoteric Emporium - This is a shop dealing in forbidden data, knowledge, & care a wide selection of real wood paper books from before the Atomic Wars. 
7. These knights have no idea where their creator the High Evolutionary is. They know that their leader Count Tagar left with him for a destination outside the solar system.The PCs left just as the Security Forces arrived a few shots were exchange but they left via the basement
   The PCs made it down the White Pulse & broke into the lower levels through Low Town. A section of the city that runs through the tunnels that run under America herself. The book shop was a front for a cult of Shub Niggurath.. This was who was employing the bone men assassins & their mutated Etter caps.
   The party came through the sewers & confronted the cult at its altar as it was about to summon the goddess herself. There were four devil goats in attendance. The Cult of the Healing Mother had been operating for several decades in this location..
   The party was confronted by a Deviant Priest Sorcerer from Lemuria 4th level. There were 2 PC deaths here!
   
8. The PCs grabbed some of the cults papers & left. They learned that an alien module that was in the cult's possession for decades was stolen by a squad of  Mi Go. The PCs have heard enough & want to leave Earth Asap.
   
9. The Mi Go have colony worlds in deep orbit around Pluto. The Mi Go Colony worlds have very limited contact with Earth. They have been manipulating the planet for eons but as far as the galactic community goes they are a race whose contact means insanity & death by its very nature. They maintain several hive colonies strung together with webbing & created from hollowed out asteroids. They have a client world where they entertain visitors through humanoid robotic bodies. The clients have come back unnerved & unharmed but with the distinct impression that it is they who have been studied & violated somehow. PC mi go are lesser versions of these monsters bred to interact with the galactic community. No one can guess at the secret Mi Go agenda.
   Now the PCs are in hyper sleep on their way aboard their Icarus salvage ship to speak with them. It will be 3 years before they reach them subjective game time 
10. What will they find when they wake?
    
    Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.
    • "Supernatural Horror in Literature" HP Lovecraft