Session Three — Potato Moon, Part 1¶
Played: 2026-02-20
The Sagan crew arrives at Phobos Station and walks into a political landscape nobody briefed them for. One day on the station. One day is enough.
What Happened¶
Prelude: Azure's Dream¶
The night before the shuttle down, Azure dreamed of chains. He was bound, straining against them, and the links were beginning to separate — metal fatiguing under sustained pressure. He could feel it was connected to the strain he'd been putting his mind through, but he couldn't name how. Something was close to breaking. Whether that was good or bad, the dream didn't say.
The Shuttle Down¶
The crew took the Tycho Brahe down to Phobos Station while the Sagan remained in parking orbit for maintenance. Kai and Tanaka had already begun tearing into the power systems, addressing the single points of failure Kai had identified during the voyage.
Phobos Station is new. Everything works but nothing has history yet — clean air, fresh construction, magnetic boot clicks on metal floors. Mars fills a quarter of the sky through every viewport: rust and ochre, the thin blue line of atmosphere at the limb, close enough to feel like you could fall into it.
As a pilot, Azure felt obligated to note that "whoever placed this moon chose an irresponsibly low parking orbit."
First Contact: Kamaka Hygiea¶
Station Commander Yenni was supposed to greet the Sagan crew personally. She sent her Chief Security Officer instead.
Kamaka Hygiea met them at the shuttle dock. Rin clocked her as dangerous from a distance — the assessment was accurate. Kamaka's prosthetics are impossible to miss: a titanium-ceramic arm with glowing fiber-optic tendons, an amber-lit capacitor far beyond standard issue, a retractable forearm blade. The leg is gunmetal ceramic over braided superalloy actuators. She is visibly, deliberately, built to fight.
The orientation was practical and no-nonsense: station protocols, restricted areas, emergency procedures, quarters assignment. On the subject of the political observers: "Be polite. Don't volunteer information. Come to me if they push."
She clocked Rin as Belter immediately. Didn't make a thing of it — just a nod, a shift in register. One spacer to another. Rin flashed a Belter hand sign — Support Hygiea. Kamaka returned it without hesitation.
The tour ended at the observation dome — the big reveal. Mars, below them. The mission, ahead of them.
Later, after the crew had settled in, Kamaka found Rin and invited her to join her for workout and sparring. A warning came with the invitation: "Just a warning, Yaw shows up pretty regularly. He's worth learning from, but he's also a prick."
Rin accepted gladly.
Dr. Yenni: The Appointment¶
Yenni met the crew on her schedule, in her office, when she'd had time to prepare. The PCs noticed the fancy coffee setup — a small luxury on a station where most things are purely functional.
She was finishing a call with engineering when they arrived. Waved them in, made introductions, and immediately asked who the Sagan's engineer was.
The problem: CO2 scrubbers on B4 running at 94% efficiency — fine for the current station population, but the Sagan crew had just added a dozen more people breathing the same air. New scrubber elements needed fabricating, but the station's primary printer on B3 was broken, and the scientists using the remaining printer capacity were refusing to pause their experiments for something as mundane as breathable air.
Kai asked for the scrubber pattern and sent it to Marcus aboard the Sagan — the duty engineer could handle fabrication while Kai worked on the printer itself. Azure headed back to the shuttle to retrieve parts. Problem met, problem being solved, all within the first hour. Yenni's cautious welcome shifted visibly toward relief.
She asked Victoria to join the station's medical staff while on-station, asked Rin for more details about the mission, and then apologized — she had ten minutes before a meeting with the Observers.
Kai noticed what Rin and Victoria didn't: Yenni is a Specter. Avian build, iridescent feathers, birdlike head-tilts. Two Specters, meeting far from Luna. He filed it away — professionalism first, but he'd find a more social moment to connect later.
Victoria and Rin went with her.
Kai worked on the printer alongside Kevin — one of the station's mechanics, a Scotsman with a gift for profanity and a deep respect for anyone who could actually diagnose the problem. The issue turned out to be a complex combination of firmware and software bugs triggered by a specific pattern: the CO2 scrubber fabrication sequence itself. Kevin was a skilled mechanic, but this was theory territory — "those damn manuals full of gobbledy-gook." Kai had both the Talent to sense what was wrong and the engineering knowledge to understand it. By the end, Kevin had a lot of respect for the Sagan's engineer.
The Observers¶
Clarus and Moon Bunny pulled public information on the walk over: Elias Vance, Mars Consortium. Director Absalom Yaw, UEF Department of Colonial Affairs — former admiral and outspoken critic of the Lunar Treaty.
They were late, according to Yaw. The meeting was nominally a status update — three responsibilities, three reports. Yenni on the station, Vance on logistics and supplies, Yaw on the colonial charter discussions. Routine. Ceremonial, even.
Rin's hackles went up immediately. Yenni giving status updates about her own station to outside observers didn't sit right. Yaw positioning himself as the gateway for colony charter discussions sat even worse — with both Rin and Victoria.
Rin attempted an empathic read almost immediately.
Vance was wide open — Ob 1, no resistance at all. Excited, a bit annoyed (directed at Yaw), and intrigued by the newcomers. Exactly what he appeared to be.
Yaw blocked her. Actively. Ob 4.
Yenni's update was blunt: she was in the middle of a problem becoming a crisis, and Yaw had demanded they keep a largely ceremonial meeting anyway. Vance was visibly eager to let her go. Yaw was too — once his point about his authority had been made, along with a pointed comment about "well, if the station is having another crisis..."
The power dynamic was clear. Yaw wasn't obstructing — he was demonstrating. And then letting go, because the demonstration was the point.
Parallel Threads¶
The crew split up. While Kai worked on the printer and Azure retrieved parts from the shuttle, Victoria and Rin pursued their own threads.
Azure and Splishy-Splashy: En route to the Sagan, Azure and Splishy fell into conversation about cetacean precognition. Splishy shared — with some skepticism — about the whale "Seers": not true precogs, but receivers of what the whales call a "song from the Deep Dream." It doesn't predict. It "shows the shape of the flows."
Azure, without revealing Tanaka's identity, described the precognitive vision he'd witnessed and offered to share the memory telepathically.
When Splishy received it, something happened. Azure rolled telepathy at Ob 4 and detected a sudden, overwhelming wave of attention — not from Splishy alone, but channeled through him. The whales were listening. They had always been listening through Splishy. And whatever Azure shared, it got their attention.
Splishy, shaken, revealed the whale mind merge — the deep telepathic network connecting cetacean consciousness. The whales hadn't explained why they wanted him on this mission. They just said go.
Rin's Moves: Rin contacted Captain Iyer, sending over the full documentation she'd gathered: proposed colonial charter materials, observer agreements, and notes on Yenni's situation as a scientist forced into administration. She asked for help interpreting the legal framework and for advice on how to strengthen Yenni's position.
Then she sent a coded message — one-time pad — to her sister Christina on Ceres. But the letter she actually sent wasn't what she and Victoria had discussed. She didn't ask for investors. She asked for something bigger.
"Any fam/clan got a Marker and wanna set it? I get it In — before anything else is Set. Make it so nobody can touch it!"
Rin wasn't looking for alternative funding. She was asking the Belt to stake a claim on Mars.
Rin was introducing a new player to a game that already had too many.
Victoria and Rin — Private Correspondence: While the GM ran scenes for Azure and Kai, Victoria and Rin conducted an extensive written exchange — passing notes back and forth in real time, invisible to the other players and the GM.
Rin opened with a rapid-fire threat assessment: Yaw is Talented and blocked her. Vance is here for ground-level corporate contracts. Why is an atmospheric scientist running the station instead of a real administrator? Both observers are extractive — Yaw demanding information and giving nothing in return, using Luna's funding limitations as leverage to force shared governance.
Her conclusion: minimize contact. Figure out the minimum required to share with "these jerks" and delegate someone other than Yenni to handle it — maybe Sara, Yenni's assistant. Find exploits in the charter and agreements.
Victoria brought the strategic perspective: Could Mycroft tell them whether Luna can fund Mars independently? Could the Mars Charter include a path to Mars independence? What does return on investment look like — trade, immigration, alien discovery?
The conversation turned to finding alternative funding. Small investors. Talent investors (an unexplored category — what would that even look like?). Victoria pushed back gently on Rin's anti-corporate absolutism: "Unfortunately funding has to come from somewhere. Universities can also be considered corporate."
They divided labor: Rin would find legal and financial resources, Victoria would get the charter documents and follow the money. One of them would approach Captain Iyer — but not both. "You or I should, but we should not both do it."
Rin's final assessment of Vance: "The sugar-free of Corps. But I'd be happier if we can not partake."
Dr. Onisegun: Medical Coordination¶
Victoria met Dr. Onisegun — Phobos Station's sole physician — and volunteered to join the station medical rota while the Sagan crew was on-station. The station's medical staff was thin: one doctor, two nurses, and a handful of certified first responders for a population that had just grown by a dozen.
Onisegun promised that when the mission headed to the surface, Victoria could take a nurse along for backup. Two doctors coordinating across a planet and a moon — frontier medicine with a safety net.
Dinner with Vance¶
Vance hosted dinner. Attendees: the PCs, Splishy, Kyle, and Noor. The conversation was socially focused — Vance's background, the Mars Consortium, and the mission.
Vance spoke about growing up in "the family compound" — old corporate money, the kind of wealth that comes with expectations. His takeover of the family business and how he runs it clearly isn't what the family had in mind. He laid out his personal philosophy: corporations don't have to be evil. They can be engines of good if the people running them choose to make them so. The Mars Consortium exists because he believes that.
Rin probed about what Vance was really looking for out here. He was open about it — genuine interest, genuine belief in what Mars could become.
One significant request: Vance asked if he could go to the surface at some point, once it was safe. Not as an observer or a corporate representative. He wanted to see it. The PCs agreed — but were deliberately vague about when that might happen.
After dinner, Kyle went off with Vance. He later indicated to Rin that he'd been "doing his job." The implication was clear, and Kyle did not elaborate.
"Clarus, delete the 'suspicious Kyle' column."
Evening: Catching Up and Scheming¶
The PCs gathered for a telepathic conference — Azure linking them for a conversation no one on the station could overhear. The discussion turned quickly to Yaw — the blocked empathic read, the possibility that he was using Talent to gain advantage in station politics. Azure, who had experienced what uncontrolled telepathic power could do, was particularly alarmed by the idea of a hidden telepath in a position of political authority.
They formulated a plan: get Yenni alone on a shuttle run under the pretense of wanting her scientific expertise, then check for signs of telepathic influence and ask permission to monitor her next meeting with Yaw. Azure would make the request.
Victoria and Rin also enlisted Iyer's help in understanding the legal framework governing the observer agreements — looking for ways to get Yenni into a stronger position through the system itself rather than around it.
Night Terrors¶
Azure: The dream returned. He was piloting the Annie Jump Cannon, but the safety harness was chains. He struggled against them, light breaking through his arms as the links separated — and then suddenly, minds. Voices pressing in from everywhere, all at once, a flood of consciousness from across the entire station pouring into him.
He woke gasping. Full awake from deep sleep. For one moment, he could hear every mind on Phobos Station. Then silence.
A drop of blood from his nostril. That had only happened once before: the day his Talent first awoke.
Victoria: The new dream came. The cold, the underground, the grief of survivors who felt their people die and then faced their own slow end in silence. But now, closer to Mars than she'd ever been, the dream had direction. A vector. A pull toward something specific on the surface below.
When she woke, she directed Clarus to search for images of Martian horizons. She would have something to compare against the maps when landing site planning began.
Kai: No dreams. Something worse: waking clarity. The weight of what being Talented actually means — beyond "I can move stuff with my mind, cool!" — was settling in. The responsibility, the risk, the way the world would look at him. He was visibly stressed, and his empath friends could feel it.
Victoria's prescription: "Take this, go to bed, and let all your empath friends sleep."
Notable Moments¶
- Azure's parking orbit joke brought the table to a full stop
- Rin flagging Kamaka as "dangerous" on sight — correct assessment, delivered instantly
- The crew solving Yenni's scrubber crisis within an hour of arrival — competence as diplomacy
- Yaw actively blocking Rin's empathic read — the first confirmation that he's Talented
- Yaw's power demonstration in the observer meeting — the point was the point
- Splishy revealing the whale mind merge after Azure shared Tanaka's vision
- The Belter hand sign — Support Hygiea — between Rin and Kamaka
- Vance asking to go to the surface — genuine, personal, not political
- Kyle's post-dinner activities and Rin's reaction
- The PCs independently organizing to protect Yenni from political pressure
- Azure's nosebleed — one callback, enormous implications
Other Notes¶
James named the Sagan's shuttles:
- Tycho Brahe — configured for personnel and scientific instruments
- Annie Jump Cannon — configured for cargo and logistics
Azure scheduled his first telepathic tutoring session with Kyle. Kyle confirmed "Book Club" would continue meeting — the cover for the PCs' telepathic conversations is now a shared joke between spy and subjects.
Azure, on Yaw: "He's the kind of asshole who wears dress blues to a civilian job."
Artha¶
| Character | Fate | Persona | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Azure | +4 | +1 from Rin for cracking up the table multiple times; +1 from Rin | |
| Kai | +4 | +1 from Rin for getting the subtext of the CO2 crisis (Rin's parents died due to atmospheric systems failure) | |
| Rin | +4 | +1 from Victoria for their back-and-forth scheming in notes | |
| Victoria | +4 | +1 from Azure for the sedative quote |
Quotes¶
"As a pilot I must say, whoever placed this moon chose an irresponsibly low parking orbit." — Azure
"Clarus, delete the 'suspicious Kyle' column." — Victoria
"He's the kind of asshole who wears dress blues to a civilian job." — Azure, on Director Yaw
"Take this, go to bed, and let all your empath friends sleep." — Victoria, handing Kai a sedative