Conquering the verse, one parsec at a time.

Aftermath: Bitter Medicine

Helix Dominion Consolidated, keen to keep the crew useful, provided medical aid for the wounded. Scrapper recovered quickly, his burned fur and pride healing faster than expected. Cara’s injuries were more serious. She survived, but Helix treatment left her on light duties for a short time while her condition stabilised.

With no immediate job forcing their hand, the crew divided their efforts.

Kevin, the newest member of The Redacted, a winged alien lizard whose talents were still being tested, headed out with Jane to keep the crew’s rivals off their trail. Their work was quiet and dangerous: false sightings, misleading rumours, broken leads, and just enough movement in the shadows to keep enemies guessing.

The rest of the crew turned to repairs, supplies, contacts, ship debt, and the growing question of how much longer they could afford to remain on Veyr’s Fall.

During this lull, the crew met with Marek Sable, a tired private investigator with one last worthwhile lead. Sable told them about a missing Aster Vale Prospectives resettlement package: several large containers of colony-starting equipment that had vanished after leaving Veyr’s Fall.

Aster Vale was trying to downplay the loss. Public confidence in its relocation programme was too valuable to risk. If people learned that an entire off-world settlement package had disappeared in transit, the dream of escape might collapse overnight.

To most people, it sounded like cargo fraud.

To The Redacted, it sounded like something much bigger.

The missing package included prefab colony modules, medical supplies, frozen embryos, food supplements, rapid-growth facilities, and memory and intelligence banks.

It was not just freight.

It was a future packed into containers.

Marek Sable put it plainly:

“You could work gutter contracts on Veyr’s Fall for years and never buy what is sitting in those containers. Aster Vale lost more than cargo. They lost a way out.”

At the same time, new job offers began to appear.

Helix, apparently satisfied with the crew’s usefulness, offered further employment. Adam was not pleased. Helix had helped treat Cara and Scrapper, but that did not make them trustworthy. If anything, Adam suspected the aid was just another chain disguised as generosity.

Aster Vale also made contact, offering work of its own. Unlike Helix, Aster Vale’s dream was built around leaving Veyr’s Fall behind and helping others do the same. That did not make them innocent, but it did make them different.

The crew now stood at a crossroads.

They could continue working for Helix, taking profitable jobs from a corporation Adam already distrusts.

They could turn toward Aster Vale and help with its dream of getting people with enough money off-world.

Or they could follow Marek Sable’s lead, locate the missing colony package themselves, and use it to escape Veyr’s Fall free from Helix, Aster Vale, and every other corporation trying to own their future.

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The Mercy Audit

(Urgent)

Helix Dominion Consolidated contacts the Redacted, offering continued employment.

Helix does not want noisy criminals, wanted fugitives, or crews already under CivicSec scrutiny. This job requires a crew that can move through checkpoints, industrial zones, and transit control points without attracting attention.

Helix makes that clear.

Helix once ran a support programme called Mercy Continuance for wounded military veterans.

It provided prosthetics, organ stabilisers, trauma medication, anti-radiation treatment, pain suppression implants, and immune therapy to those injured in service.

The programme was less than successful.

Many veterans are now dying slowly from organ collapse, neurological damage, aggressive cancers, immune disorders, memory fragmentation, and implant rejection.

A group of surviving veterans who have named themselves The Ashen Company has seized an abandoned transit maintenance depot below an elevated freight line. From there, they have patched into old city infrastructure and are threatening to broadcast stolen Helix files through the transit announcement grid.

It is unconfirmed whether they have the ability to carry out that threat, but Helix does not want to take the risk.

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The Jungle Leverage

(Urgent)

Aster Vale Prospectives contacts The Redacted with a quiet and carefully worded offer.

One of their agents has been working undercover inside Verity Public Communications, investigating deleted media records, transport irregularities, and signs of interference with Aster Vale relocation operations.

Aster Vale claims the matter may involve missing corporate property, but they do not confirm details.

Their briefing is controlled and incomplete:

“The agent was investigating Verity interference in our relocation operations. His findings may relate to missing corporate assets. At this stage, we are not prepared to disclose more. Retrieve the agent. Retrieve his recording. Avoid public exposure.”

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The Price of Ash 

(Quest)

Starting Lead

Source: Marek Sable, private investigator
Initial Location: Veyr’s Fall
Final Prize: A complete Aster Vale resettlement package

Opening Rumour

The crew hear the first details from Marek Sable, a tired private investigator with a talent for finding problems too dangerous for official channels.

He has been tracking several missing freight workers, forged route changes, and quietly deleted shipping records. At first, he thought it was a simple cargo theft.

Then he found the Aster Vale codes.

A major Aster Vale Prospectives resettlement package left Veyr’s Fall under sealed corporate clearance. It was supposed to be transferred through several off-world freight points before being delivered to a prepared launch corridor for a new colony venture.

It never arrived.

The cargo is already gone from Veyr’s Fall.

That means the crew cannot solve this by asking questions in back alleys or raiding a local depot. They need to leave the planet, follow the trail across several systems, and discover where the containers were taken.

Sable tells them:

“Aster Vale lost a future. Not a shipment. A future. They are pretending it is a delay because if people hear their way off Veyr’s Fall can vanish in transit, the whole relocation dream starts bleeding money.”

Aster Vale’s Position

Aster Vale is trying to downplay the loss.

Officially, there has been no theft, no crisis, and no risk to current or future relocation packages.

Their public statement is calm, polished, and false:

“A minor logistics irregularity has affected a limited number of support assets. Aster Vale Prospectives remains fully committed to safe, reliable, and dignified off-world resettlement.”

In reality, the missing containers are one of Aster Vale’s most valuable colony packages.

If the loss becomes public, clients may cancel, investors may panic, settlers may lose faith, and rival corporations may argue that Aster Vale is too young and unreliable to manage off-world relocation.

Aster Vale does not want a public rescue.

It wants the cargo found quietly.

The Missing Package

The resettlement package consists of several large containers designed to create the foundation of a new colony.

The package includes:

• Prefabricated habitat modules.
• Power and water systems.
• Atmospheric processors.
• Food supplements.
• Medical supplies.
• Frozen embryos.
• Education and technical archives.
• Cryogenic rapid-growth personnel facilities.
• Memory and intelligence upload banks.
• Novatek control systems.
• Civitas identity and social development frameworks.
• Helix biological support systems.

The most controversial part is the rapid-growth system.

These facilities allow specifically manufactured biological life forms to be transported in compact form, then grown rapidly to adulthood after arrival. During growth, memory banks upload language, technical skills, social knowledge, emotional development, and false personal histories.

When the grown subject wakes, they believe they have lived a normal life.

They do not know they were made.

Aster Vale calls this efficient settlement.

Helix calls it biological continuity.

Civitas calls it identity formation.

Novatek calls it memory integration.

The public would probably call it something else entirely.

The Conspiracy

The cargo was not lost by accident.

It was made to disappear after leaving Veyr’s Fall through a secret arrangement between Kordane Industrial Combine, Tarsk Meridian Transworks, and Verity Public Communications.

Kordane’s Motive

Kordane does not want people leaving Veyr’s Fall.

Every citizen who escapes is one less worker, debtor, contractor, miner, technician, or desperate labourer. Aster Vale’s relocation packages are dangerous because they make escape look possible.

Kordane wants the package stopped, dismantled, or hidden.

Tarsk Meridian’s Motive

Tarsk Meridian resents Aster Vale making money from transport and relocation.

Movement is supposed to belong to Tarsk: routes, fuel, freight permits, docking priority, transit contracts, tug fees, cargo insurance, and off-world migration corridors.

Aster Vale is building a private relocation pipeline.

Tarsk wants control of it.

Verity’s Motive

Verity wants the story.

It intends to reveal the loss when it can cause maximum damage, making Aster Vale look incompetent and Helix, Civitas, and Novatek look complacent.

Verity also wants the memory banks.

If it can edit the stored lives of future colonists, it can shape a population before that population even exists.

Quest Structure

This quest is split across several scenarios.

Each scenario takes the crew farther from Veyr’s Fall and closer to the missing colony package.

The crew earn credits after each mission through the normal post-battle rewards and any loot recovered.

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