The Highwaymen Episode # 4 - Home Again, Home Again

The Stars Without Numbers game was one player short last night. The characters went back to Archlight Station & got paid for their salvage. There was lots of intrigue & metallic spiders as well. 

While a couple members of the party saw to the routine maintenance of the ship in dry dock. The rest of the party went to wet their whistles at  the local watering hole.
Encounter #1 was a strange small Old Earth Asian man holotaping their ship. He made no attempt to communicate with the other PCs. Meanwhile the other PCs were engaged in conversation with a strange gret off shoot race straight out of a Basil Wolverton comic. The C'ree'ruro are a humanoid hive mind genetically engineered from from certain fungal life forms & Grey geneforms. They were cheerily talking to the other PCs seeing if they had seen  a missing mining ship.If they had run across any trace in the depth of space near Talon gate. 

Suddenly two other oriental men dressed in Japanese garb get up from the bar, snap a series of pictures of the PCs & then leave just like that. They give chase. Que Indiana Jones style chase. 

Meanwhile by the ship the other PCs are trying to communicate with the other man. Doesn't happen at all. One off the PCs snaps off a shot at the man attempting to hit the holo rig he's wearing. He' succeeds blows it apart. The  man goes down as well as green goo spurts out of his head where the holorig was! He screams in a mechanical synthetic rage of emotion! The others collapse in heaps at the same time. 

The PCs find all of these mechanical beings are dead & a strange toxic organic substance exits the wounds of the creatures.A clean up crew arrives & one of the vacuum bots goes about its business explodes in a shower of sparks as the substance eats away at it. Another man exits the scene & the PCs give chase. He disappears into a waiting elevator.
The PC's learn about the world behind the world of Archlight as Molly (The daughter of the station commander) shows them a special control panel. This takes them into the labyrinth world of the maintenance tubes of the station.
Several well muscled maintenance people greet Molly by name.
 Ms. Lucille's Place: Bed & Brothel

Behind a pile of toxic waste barrels, steel pipes, & space wreckage is a real Victorian home from ancient Earth. This house of ill repute has been the salvation of many a spacer. the house is real Earth wood transported at great expense.
The house boasts a full 4 star kitchen, smoke shop, & dance floor as well as the usual girls & escorts. There is a client list of over 500 spacers. All girls(as well as males) are of  the many varieties, types, age ranges etc. this includes shape shifts & "Andies" There are 4 healers on staff as well at great expense.
Ms. Lucille is an information broker of the first stripe. She is an Old Earth mutant reputed to be well over 300 plus years old. She is an psychic of 8th level & boasts several psychic abilities.
Each of her girls is an expert of at least the 2nd level or a "lady of the evening "of the Arduin variety.
Rumors About Ms.Lucille's Place 1d10 

1. The brothel is a front for the psychic railroad & has bee moving psychics through the Talon system since before the Stroke 
2. Ms. Lucille is a Sisterhood reject & part of an ancient sect that believes that mutant genes are part of the salvation of mankind & must be reintroduced into the gene pool again. 
3. This brothel is nothing more then it appears 
4. The place is a front for organized crime & several big hauls have been made by space pirates acting on information from the "girls" 
5. There is a silent partner who keeps the place running between deep space cargo hauls that come into port. 
6. Ms. Lucille isn't what she appears & there have been others who keep up the charade of the character of the madam of the house. 
7. The girls are actually very skilled thieves & assassins, this is nothing more then a guild out in the open. 
8. The place is den of for an advanced alien invasion of the sector & the "girls" are shape shifting horrors from beyond. 
9. The House itself is alive & the girls are nothing more then telepathic projects that the house feeds off from. Everyone gets what they want.. for now. 
10. The house is a door way to hell & heaven. You decide which 

Ms. Lucille tries to hire the characters for a job. The PCs are reluctant & decide to talk among themselves after a 4 star meal in the restaurant.
SPIDER ATTACK  




The characters ship has been in dry dock when sudden hundreds of robotic spiders begin to attack the PCs back at the ship. They're relentless & begin tearing chunks out of the ship.
Even as the others are dining in peace.
The sound of weapons fire dry the station's security forces even a spider kills of three of the men!
The PC's bring out an EMP pulse generator & within moments a wave of 11 spiders is finished but is that the end?
No more of the things crawl through duck work, vents, station overhead lamps, etc. They're all over the place. Blaster bolts everyplace. They hit 2 of the PCs & everything seems to go to hell.
Then the Emp is triggered again & they fall from every opening.
The other PCs return from dinner, dining, & dancing to find their hanger in tatters!
The PCs begin to compare notes to try & figure out what's going on!
Finish