Transmissions From the Lake

RPG system: Mothership
Participants: 1 GM, 2-5 players

By

Katja Lindblom

Description

In a faraway future when space travel has become a rather common phenomenon, groups of people surveilling the trafficked space in order to see to that the rules are followed have become just as common. You and your crew constitute one of those groups who patrol the interstellar backwaters between the red dwarf stars Lalande 21185 and Ross 128. This is an area in space that has been abandoned by all of the major organisations, corporations, and even traders and the only reason why you are here is to make sure that the planets of these two stars do not become sites of illegal businesses. As far as you are concerned, however, it is all a waste of time as years have passed since any craft even passed through any of the red dwarf systems and therefore you are all quite surprised when your communications officer suddenly picks up a signal from the planet known as Ross 128 b. It is a recorded message that according to the communications officer is transmitted over and over again from the planet. Unfortunately, almost all of the message is scrambled and no matter how he tries to clear up the sound, all that you hear is the ominous last part:
“If you hear this… should anyone ever hear this, never even come near Ross 128 b. We will try to survive for as long as we can and we will try to find out what is going on here but do not ever come here! Finally, I am at my senses again. This is Dr Isadora Ortega signing off, for the very last time.”
In spite of the warning and the unknown reason behind it, it does not take you more than a few seconds to decide that this is something that needs to be investigated further. You do not know what you will find on Ross 128 b and you are pretty sure that it will not be anything good but being completely bored out of your gourd you still all agree that at least finding the origins of the message is the only sensible thing to do.

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