Session Six — Now You Know¶

Played: 2026-04-03

The crew goes to Deimos and discovers they're not the first. They perform the first Merge. They witness twelve million years of history. And then everything goes sideways when they get home.

What Happened¶

Pre-Session: The Handouts¶

Over dinner, before play formally began, players discussed their various reports: Victoria got Clarus's preliminary report, Azure got Arif's incident report, Kai got Webb's engineering status, and Rin got Cristina's letter. The players started connecting dots immediately.

Victoria cross-referenced Clarus's data with Kai's suit recording of metabolic output during the crash. Her verdict, delivered before the session even started:

"You're fine, which is good but unusual, because you teleported."

James asked about legal precedents for compelled disclosure from personal agents — worried about Arif's data given everything Azure can do. The answer: unsettled at the highest courts, but lower courts have consistently ruled under the Right to Privacy. Metagame assurance: this game is not about compromising their agents.

Transit to Deimos: Piecing It Together¶

Splishy Splashy piloted the Annie Jump Cannon to Deimos while the crew processed in silence. Victoria, Azure, and Kai read their reports; Rin read Cristina's letter and drafted a response. Together, from three independent data streams — Clarus's metabolic analysis, Arif's reactor anomaly, and Webb's 0.2% fluctuation — they assembled the picture:

Kai had pulled energy from the Tycho Brahe's reactor to power his teleportation during the crash. He'd also pulled from the Sagan's reactor the night he sleepwalked, before burning his hands. Three data points, three sources, one conclusion.

Kai's response was characteristically understated. His conclusion: he needed to know what he was going to do with the energy before pulling it, or he would damage himself. Intention first, then power. An engineer's insight into a phenomenon nobody has ever documented.

Kai delegated the Tycho Brahe repairs to Marcus Webb, authorized him to request a shuttle from Phobos since the Sagan was "fresh out of shuttles." Then his written response to Webb about the 0.2% reactor anomaly: "Anomaly noted, you've reported it, I'll handle it." Not putting it in writing. Good operational instincts.

Rin rolled Circles to pull together legal and financial contacts for Cristina — everything needed to get Belt boots on Mars. Ob 6, rolled 6 with Artha. The Belt pipeline is open.

Deimos: The Stripped Station¶

Deimos is a dark, tiny, zero-gravity moonlet — regolith and craters, more large asteroid than moon. Rin ensured everyone was tethered together and declared Splishy the group anchor. She handed Victoria a knife. Kai stated his brain was weapon enough, and Azure agreed. "It would be foolish to assume we haven't kicked a hornet's nest."

They deliberately left the Annie Jump Cannon without a pilot onboard. This would bite them later.

A sensor echo similar to the Mars facility led them to a hidden entrance — forced open recently. Kai's archaeological examination dated the marks at 12-16 months ago. Overlapping with Mycroft's shipping gap. Two independent data points converging.

Inside: a space that could be mistaken for a natural cave, had they not known better. Thoroughly and professionally cleaned out. The crew found one spot where whoever chiseled artwork from the wall was rushed and couldn't smooth the marks before leaving. A small group — businesslike, careful, efficient. Not military. Corporate.

Victoria and Rin both felt Tiamat resonance, fainter than Mars. Splishy located areas on the walls where radioactive energy sources had once been installed, with conduit still running up to the surface. Rin asked Kai to collect a sample of the scraped rock — not just for composition, but to check against Leonidas's artifact. In full paranoid mode, she considered the possibility the artifact came from here, not Mars.

Kai used a combination of his archaeological training and his kinesis to reconstruct what had once been carved into the rock face. What he found was heartbreaking: Tiamat relief-carved artwork depicting Earth surrounded by proto-whales, Deimos with a symbol on it, and between Earth and Deimos, a Tiamat figure. The Deimos figure curved "banana-like" to point toward the Tiamat and Earth. A clue, a map, a love letter written in stone across millions of years.

Kai shared the reconstructed image through Azure's telepathic comms. Splishy's response was immediate and devastating:

"They knew about us. They cared about us. We didn't know why; we've been carrying pieces of this for longer than anyone knew. We didn't know what they were."

Kai's rage at the wanton destruction was "boiling rage like a wolf's snarl."

The First Merge¶

Azure entered his Deep Mind to preserve the beautiful artwork in perfect memory. He found it successfully — and then one of his inky obsidian angels descended to tell him he had missed something important during the linked reading in the Mars facility.

Azure decided to try something. Not backup telepathic comms — something deeper. A full Merge, connecting their minds to amplify Victoria's psychometry enough to reach through millions of years of history in a stripped, barren room.

Victoria's response to the proposal: "I have declared today the day to do stupid things without proper medical oversight, so yes, let's go ahead."

Azure invited each of them through a door from their own Deep Mind into his — starting with Victoria. His Deep Mind: a literal memory palace on Luna, with Earth hanging so close it dominates the sky, a waterfall pouring from Earth to form a sea on Luna's surface. Fourteen obsidian angels — the fourteen people who died in his Talent explosion, now integrated parts of his deep psyche.

Each PC found themselves in their own Deep Mind. A door opened for each into Azure's mind. Except Splishy, who just swam down the waterfall. Because of course he did.

James described beams of light forming from each friend's "third eye," each a color they strongly identified with. Azure wove the colors into a braid extending from his heart to Victoria's — passing the focus.

The Merge mechanics (improvised at the table): Azure rolled Telepathy. Five participants, but Resonance from having been in all their Deep Minds reduced the obstacle to 1, plus 2 for first attempt. He rolled approximately 15 successes. Every participant added their Talent pool to the Merge, plus skill dice up to extra successes. Gestalt dice added to the pool. Every participant took Exhaustion; Azure took additional Exhaustion for each participant; Victoria as focus took an Exhaustion.

Victoria, feeling godlike in power and scope, rolled 25 successes on Psychometry. The entire emotional history of Deimos lay before them. She could feel the four scientists on Mars. She could probably have reached further. Instead, she chose to look Deeper.

The Vision: Twelve Million Years¶

The recent past (~13 months ago): Four individuals in high-quality professional gear, the ARC (Aether Resource Collective) logo on each bicep. The person in charge: stern, in full control. The team: efficient, experienced. They had done this before. Everything was removed — observation stations, satellite controls, power sources, monitors. Everything. Even the small Tiamat skeleton on its pallet was taken. Artwork covering every wall and ceiling was removed with chisels and smoothed over. Mounting spaces on floor, wall, and ceiling also smoothed. Then the leader touched their earpiece, heard something on comms, and gestured to leave quickly. Only that final rush left one spot on the wall rough enough to know a carving once held that place.

The crew — entirely enraged — took particular note of Rin's knowledge of ARC and collectively vowed to destroy them as utterly and thoroughly as they had destroyed this place.

The Demon (~11.5 million years ago): A vast, intense malignancy swept momentarily over the moonlet. Something scanning. Cold, methodical, alien. Searching.

The last Tiamat (~12 million years ago): Determination. Protectiveness. Peace. The Tiamat entered through the door, removed their spacesuit, and ejected it out the airlock. No going back. They went to the satellite control stations and methodically shut down each of the four Earth-observation satellites, sending each into a trajectory to crash into the oceans. Splishy and Victoria both shared images of the remaining satellite where it sits today — embedded in the ocean floor, so old that even the whales do not know its origin. It is a part of the Deep Dream.

The Tiamat then went through the entire station, turning everything off and wiping it clean. They lay down on the pallet, pulled out a locket, opened it, gazed at it, and waited for sleep to take them.

By this point, Rin was bawling. Victoria beamed reassurance to the ancient scientist, in hopes they would know they weren't truly dying alone.

The deep past (12 million years and further): Rolling back past a six-month gap, the crew witnessed a thousand years of constant use — observers coming and going, singing while they worked, sharing curiosity and protectiveness as they watched all of Earth, most especially the whales. Tiamat mining the station into existence with nearly reverent care for each rock they moved — a feeling that deeply affected Rin.

Rolling time forward to find when the Tiamat learned about the Demons: three months before the gap, unified resolve. They will stop this Thing. Then awareness shifted to knowledge that no, they can't.

The crew compared the Tiamat to humanity. The Tiamat were naturally empathic with a few precognitives — and no other Talents. A far less aggressive species. Humanity, with its diverse Talents, its bloody militant history, and the preparation time the Tiamat gifted them, may have a better chance.

Coming Apart¶

They fumbled separating back into individual selves. Victoria woke screaming with the effort of shrinking back into her own mortal body — plus the trauma of witnessing a species exterminated. Kai and Splishy had sufficient fortitude. Victoria and Azure were exhausted, having each lost blood — Victoria more than Azure. Victoria had to spend Artha to survive her burnout check. Rin was exactly as tired as she could possibly be before damage.

The Merge changed them. Rin can now reach anyone in the group at greater distances. They all know each other more deeply than anyone else they know, including closest family and friends.

They had been unconscious for eight hours.

Back to the Sagan¶

As soon as they exited the cave, comms went bananas. Splishy gave a lame excuse while Rin towed Victoria back, strapped her in, and fed her water and glucose. Then Azure. Kai was fine and checked on Splishy. Through all of this, the massive shape of the Carl Sagan was visible, as close to Deimos as it could get, with a colorful shuttle — Elias Vance's — docked in the Tycho Brahe's usual spot.

Azure's first question: "Both pilots are here. Who's flying the ship?"

Iyer. Who promptly asked if either pilot was in shape to take over, because she didn't want to have her hands on the tiller of "this behemoth" ever again. Splishy headed to the cockpit.

They also received a highly encrypted message: Vance was aboard. Iyer had been spoofing communications with them for the past six hours. They'd been out of contact for eight hours. She was pissed.

The Debrief¶

They beat Iyer to the ready room. Kyle Chen came in first, announcing they'd kicked an anthill and he'd spent nine hours running Director Yaw around and "we owe him." He planted a listening device and a "message in a bottle" for Rin to find. The message: "Just staying in practice." She kept it.

Iyer entered. Chen left. The debrief:

Yaw was on his way to the Mars surface, if not already there — following the trail Chen had laid for him. A trail that went in all sorts of interesting and potentially archaeologically interesting directions, but never in the one the crew went.
Mycroft Holmes had received Iyer's full report and would respond within 40 hours.
Mycroft had also sent Azure a personal message: he had Azure's "full attention and support."
Vance had invited himself onto the Sagan, offering a spare shuttle since both of theirs were occupied.
Azure gave the full debrief via telepathy. They reported ARC's actions at Deimos. They discussed the Merge.
Iyer's response to all of this: can y'all PLEASE STOP, FFS?

Iyer confided that Leonidas had been acting "unlike himself" for the past day. A dark mood, definitely not himself, but hard to quantify. She asked them to check on him.

Azure speculated: unknown telepath exerting influence. Victoria ordered herself and Azure to remain aboard for medical treatment. Kai and Rin agreed to return to Phobos to check on Leonidas — hitching a ride with Vance in his very colorful shuttle.

But first, at Rin's insistence: sleep. Despite the urgency. Kai agreed, knowing she was wiser on this and they'd do better rested. But he worried about his teacher.

The Ride with Vance¶

Vance welcomed them, indicated he was happy to help, and hoped they'd start believing in his trustworthiness. He knew Iyer had been spoofing comms and was disappointed they wouldn't share the truth, but unsurprised. When he asked for a story, Rin said, "Sure, what kind of story do you want?" — acknowledging the elephant without discussing it.

Rin met Caspar, Vance's android pilot. She found him creepy but stayed polite. Caspar can pilot in space but not in atmosphere. Rin noted Vance's minimal zero-g training as a safety hazard — mental note to work on that.

Everyone slept.

The Ransacked Lab¶

Next morning. Kai and Rin went to Leonidas's lab. Rin had her empathy up ahead of time, reading him unobserved: emotionally "muted" and "stressed at a remove." She used her security keycard to enter unannounced.

They found Leonidas pacing, tearing at his hair. The room was cleaner than Kai had ever seen any of Leonidas's offices or labs — no scattered projects, tablets, papers. No artifact in sight. Everything was gone. Leonidas whipped around in surprise, and Rin felt him "settle his feelings back into place" like a kid caught with a hand in a cookie jar.

The Merge paid off immediately. Rin flashed Kai a Mispahk family sign — prevaricate. Kai understood it perfectly, a sign he couldn't have read yesterday. He explained he wanted to talk about something personal, with Rin there as his friend because he was nervous.

Leonidas responded in a faux-normal tone while awkwardly concealing a medium tablet — first behind his back, then down the side of his desk. Rin saw it. She messaged Kai: "Tell me where." Kai sent back a picture of the desk and the tablet's location.

Leonidas brightly suggested a walk. The artifact was "sadly a fake," but at least he could be helpful to Noor on the colony project. Kai agreed, using a Specter community expression that meant: "Yes, this is Trouble."

They left the lab. While Kai chatted with Leonidas, Rin murmured supportive friend sounds and ran five simultaneous operations:

Encrypted to Kamaka Hygiea: pad location, "get this ASAP." (Reply: ack.)
To Iyer: suspicions confirmed, Kai and Rin are dealing with it.
From Kamaka: "Got it."
To Chen: "Find Noor. Now."
To Kamaka: "I want eyes on Noor." All-security alert to find Noor immediately.

The conversation wound down. Leonidas headed back to his lab.

The Zerker¶

Kai and Rin walked toward Security slowly enough not to arouse suspicion — then fast, when Kamaka's message arrived: "Get here. NOW. Faster!!!"

In the security office, Kamaka turned the tablet around. A disorienting, shifting static pattern. "It's a zerker activation sequence. He's a zerker."

Zerkers: a known Belt danger. People who, when exposed to a specific trigger pattern, lose their minds and become violent. Usually associated with pirate activities, blamed on corporate experimentation gone wrong. They are hunted down enthusiastically by everyone.

But Leonidas wasn't behaving like a zerker. Rin could sense him — intense anger, part muffled fear. Zerkers are usually 100% violent from activation. He seemed to be... resisting. But the risk was too high to wait.

They locked the tablet in security holding. Rin grabbed a tranquilizer from the armory. Kamaka and Kai both declared themselves the weapon. They were right.

Flying down the hallway, Kamaka deployed her crew and locked down the two lowest levels of Phobos Station — engineering and the reactor. Leonidas was already shifting directions, entering a lift tube going down. Rin activated Sweetie's protocols to notify appropriate personnel — which is how Victoria and Azure woke up aboard the Sagan to emergency alerts.

Kai asked Kamaka to use her power packs as an energy source. She said hell no. Rin passed her taser as a smaller option. They opened the tube shaft doors and dropped down to where the lift had stopped.

Power flickered and died. Kai grabbed for the wall conduit to contest Leonidas for the energy — and found nothing. No power at all in the conduit.

Rin asked Kai to open the top of the lift. Kamaka just crumpled it.

Rin jumped in expecting a fight. Instead: Leonidas on the floor, unconscious, covered in terrible burns. He'd tried to pull energy from the conduit — Gestalt without direct reactor access, without training, without understanding — and it destroyed him. Power without connection burns.

They zip-tied his hands and feet, hauled him to medical, and strapped him down.

Finding Noor¶

Meanwhile on the Sagan, Azure landed and headed for medical. Chen ran a different direction: "Someone on his cameras is where they shouldn't be."

Rin got Chen's message: "B3 storage locker F5. Grab vial of [stimulant] on the way." She ordered the medical staff to give it to her. They went.

Storage locker F5: Noor on the ground, passed out, Chen standing over him. Acrid fumes from the storage area — an inert-gas environment for long-term storage, non-breathable. Noor had been hiding there for a day, slowly poisoning himself with every breath.

Chen used the stimulant. A hysterical Noor woke and practically dove onto Rin:

"He's gonna kill me!" "... How do you know that?" "Because he sent me a note. Look: 'I'm going to kill you.'"

Chen took the tablet to trace the sender. Kai walked Noor to medical.

Azure's Rescue¶

Azure arrived at medical. A staff member tried to stop him from accessing the patient.

"Listen, I know you are trying to do your job. But right now you have three roads ahead of you, and you get to choose one. Down one road, you deny me the access I need and the most powerful telekinetic known to man wakes up and destroys this station..."

He didn't need to finish. She understood. He went in.

Azure entered Leonidas's Deep Mind — mid-layer first. Antarctic mountains, appropriate for Leonidas. But the wooden cabin was wrong — damaged furnishings, unreadable books, almost no personality. A place torn apart from the inside.

When Leonidas appeared, he was meek, burned, cowed, ready to give up. Then the dominant alter-Leonidas arrived — cruel, derisive, certain of victory.

Azure helped real-Leonidas find his ground. "In this place, nobody has power except you." The alter attacked. Leonidas, taking Azure's words to heart, stood up to his doppelganger and crushed him.

Azure figured it out: not a true zerker. A telepath or empath had constructed an entire personality and placed it inside Leonidas to be activated later. Telepathic deep cover — something far more sophisticated and horrifying than the brainwashing zerkers were known for.

What followed was grief. The alter had destroyed everything — the artifact put in the garbage disposal, all notes and files wiped, his assistant gutted. Leonidas's life work, gone. He was ready to give up.

Azure said: "No, it wasn't destroyed. We found it. You were right. It was there. Look."

He showed Leonidas the memories from the Tiamat station on Mars. Leonidas broke down into tears. They saved the memories as an ice crystal in his Deep Mind — something that could survive even this.

Then Leonidas remembered: the alter had access to everything. His command codes, his authorizations, everything.

Azure left the Deep Mind immediately to warn Iyer.

The Sagan¶

Too late. The alter had used Leonidas's command codes to set the Sagan on a collision course with Mars and lock everyone out of the navigation systems.

Iyer's emergency comm reached the entire crew — including Rin and Chen, who had just stepped outside the Phobos airlock to discuss what Chen knew. Frustrated but urgent, Chen turned back. Rin grabbed his arm: "Talk quickly."

Chen's intelligence: rumor of revived zerker research. The old zerkers were pirate tools on the Belt — standard brainwashing, indiscriminate violence, hunted down by everyone. The new method used telepathy to completely break the brain and insert a new personality. Not berserkers — deep cover agents. Controllable, targeted, purposeful.

Rin connected the dots: "That's why he didn't just start painting the walls with blood. But there was more than that, too. He was resisting it. And he knew, somehow, because that's why he hired me."

Chen didn't know who was behind it. Corporate espionage or some unknown UEF branch. Research for deep cover agents.

They went back inside and worked via the shuttle computer to break the navigation lock. Azure was preparing for a long-distance telepathic call — presumably to Mycroft. Kai was preparing for what Rin's notes describe as "Crazy Kinetic Shenanigans." Chen succeeded with Rin's help — though he won't admit she helped.

The Sagan was saved.

The Aftermath¶

Over the next few days, Azure pieced together how it was done: telepathy combined with empathy, applied over a period of time alongside brainwashing. The work was done long before the crew left Luna. Possibly even before they were hired — which Rin says makes sense, given her oddly specific interview with Leonidas and his warning: "Trust nobody. Not even me."

The motive: cause a high-profile Talent to appear to go rogue. The most powerful known telekinetic, sabotaging humanity's most important colonization mission. The kind of incident that would ignite Talent panic across the solar system.

The tablet activation signal was routed through local traffic and couldn't be sourced.

Azure's observation: "There are at least six civil war starting sparks in our last 48 hours..."

Rin: "... Aww, only six?"

Kai: "... Why does that make me wonder about the Belt in general?"

Later, Rin messaged Azure: "Seven."

Notable Moments¶

"The Book Club." Chen commed Iyer to give a report. "Captain? Who else is in the room?" Iyer: "Don't worry; it's just the Book Club." Chen: "Oh, OK." And continued. Aly's immediate response: "OMG — the plural of Talents is 'book club'!"

The Merge family signs. Aly's idea: "Since you've been Merged with me, Kai would notice the family sign that means 'something is off, start lying through your teeth.'" David rolled with it perfectly. The Merge's intimacy paying off tactically within hours of its first use.

Victoria's data hunger. Even after everything: "We have so many fascinating data sets in our biomonitors."

Grey on Merge initiation. When David asked if kinetics could initiate a Merge: "Telepaths or Empaths can initiate a Merge. Teleportation is enough for you kinetic bitches."

Azure's joke. "If you wanted a reason to start a Talent panic, all you had to do was come find me!"

Mechanics Notes¶

Merge (First Use)¶

Initiator: Must be telepath or empath (kinetics cannot lead a Merge)
Roll: Telepathy or Empathy
Obstacle: Based on number of participants, modified by Resonance
Resonance: Azure had been in all their Deep Minds → Ob reduced from 5 to 1
First attempt: +2 Ob for unfamiliarity
Extra successes: Add to the final pool; also allow each participant to contribute skill dice (up to the number of extra successes) if their Talent skill is being used by the focus
Gestalt: Adds to the pool
Exhaustion: Every participant gets one. Leader gets an additional one per participant. Focus gets one.
Result: Azure rolled ~15 successes. Victoria rolled 25 on Psychometry.

Zerker / Pseudo-Zerker¶

True zerkers: Belt phenomenon. Brainwashing triggers indiscriminate violence. Used by pirates. Hunted by everyone. Considered an existential threat to enclosed habitats.
Pseudo-zerkers (new): Telepathic personality implantation. Complete brain restructuring to insert a controllable personality. Not indiscriminately violent — capable of targeted, purposeful action. Deep cover agents, not berserkers.
Leonidas's case: Personality implanted before departure from Luna. Activated via tablet signal (local traffic, untraceable). The real Leonidas was resisting — an atypical presentation that suggests the technique is imperfect, or Leonidas's will is extraordinary.

Artha¶

(To be confirmed with Grey — awards for this session)

State at Session End¶

Leonidas: In medical, burns from failed Gestalt attempt, alter-personality destroyed by Azure's intervention. Life work destroyed by the alter. Has the Mars memories Azure gave him. Physically and psychologically damaged but free.
Noor: In medical, recovering from inert gas exposure and hysteria. Was a target of the alter, not a conspirator.
The Sagan: Course corrected, safe. Navigation lock broken by Chen and Rin.
Yaw: On the Mars surface following Chen's false trail. Due back eventually.
Vance: Aboard the Sagan. Shuttle and android pilot Caspar available.
Kyle Chen: Has intelligence about revived zerker research. Source and faction unknown — corporate or UEF.
Mycroft: Has received Iyer's full report. Response pending (within 40 hours of transmission). Azure has his "full attention and support."
The crew: Exhausted, traumatized, furious at ARC, deeply bonded through the Merge, and sitting on approximately seven civil-war-starting sparks.

Threads for Next Session¶

Yaw returns from Mars — found nothing (thanks to Chen), but will have questions about the crew's activities and continued absence from normal duties
Vance's position — he's been helpful, knows they're hiding something, and his patience is a strategy
Leonidas's recovery — physical and psychological, plus the question of what he remembers and what he's lost
Zerker conspiracy — who has access to unethical telepaths? Who planted the personality? The activation signal was local and untraceable.
ARC accountability — the crew has vowed to destroy them. Rin has personal history. How do they act on this while managing everything else?
Mycroft's full response — due within the session's timeline. Validation, direction, intelligence.
Chen's intelligence network — he knows about the revived zerker research. What else does Fleet Intelligence know?
The Belt — Cristina's pipeline is open. Kai's question: "Why does that make me wonder about the Belt in general?" The zerker research originated there.
Noor — a terrified man who nearly died. How does the crew handle him now?