Skulls Without Number - Session 5

17 May, 2025

My players completed the fifth session of Skulls Without Number!¹ Quite a bit more happened in this session than the last, and I'm continuing to find more things to take away.

Dramatis Personae

• Sebastion Echerole: Missionary and Chief Chirurgeon, member of the Ixaniad Creed cult of the Imperial Creed
• Alis Zephyr-Emil of House Rey’a’Nor: Spidery Navigator and fate-weaver
• Rassolvov van Law: Void-Master gunnery chief, decent pilot, former Navy man and former criminal
• Gallius Vax: Heretek techpriest and enginseer with a loose vox-broadcaster
• Lady-Captain Matilda Ysolde of House Montague-Kurtz: Rogue Trader and fearless leader

Fifth Session

Arriving in orbit of Dracost's Stronghold III, the ship scanned the planet for interesting features. Gallius Vax, working with the ship's Master of Etherics, oversaw the report. It was a strange planet. Its corrosive atmosphere was mostly covered in a single giant storm, centered on a point that didn't appear to move; something that would be expected on a gas giant, not the Underneath, it was a freezing, ice-covered, treacherous waste. Further scans noted a high mountain peak which created a windshield, a deep canyon that would protect an object from orbital scans, and something artificial at the eye of the storm. They also identified some small mineral deposits that could be mined.

The crew headed down to the planet, set up a temporary basecamp, but discovered that the atmosphere was too corrosive and the distances too great to investigate the center of the storm with their standard equipment. Even their void-sealed Rhino APC Gallius had lovingly cared for wouldn't get them there before it broke down. Gallius's surveying equipment did detect several large, artificial energy signatures equivalent to a plasma drive at the center of the storm. He also noted that the corrosive gasses in the atmosphere were not well-mixed with the other atmospheric particles; the corrosive aspects were artificial.

Pondering what to do next, Gallius recalled that the Rak'gol were identified in the inner system, somewhere in the Primary Biosphere or Inner Cauldron. The crew decided it would be best to stick to the outer reaches for now.¹ The ship departed Dracost's Stronghold III for the gas giant of Dracost's Stronghold IV, which a brief stop to scan Rassolvov's Belt for resources.² They scanned IV and along with a few other moons, they found a planetary moon with an atmosphere.

Dracost's Stronghold IVc was a cold, planet-sized moon with a somewhat corrosive atmosphere. Despite the distance from the star, it was warmed by its lord and own geological activity. As the crew observed the planet, they saw it was pockmarked with radioactive craters - telltale signs of Rak'gol bombardment. The ship's auspex identified a large structure on the planet - some sort of base.

As soon as the scan completed, the Cavalier was hailed from the planet. Gallius confirmed that the signal was safe, then unlinked his cranial jack and handed the mic over to Captain Matilde.

The voice on the other end was Amos Plombé, captain of a ship run aground on the planet and in need of rescue. After a good reaction roll and some coaxing, he disclosed that he was the captain of the Pillards of the Malédiction (a pirate crew operating the raider Malédiction) and they had been the ones chased by the Naval patrol into the system. He further explained that, when his crew had tried to use the moon to hide, they had been bombarded by the mysterious base on the planet. They crash-landed their raider inside of a hanger bay, and were now trapped with a broken ship and active defenses. They were in quite a sorry state, having used up most of their supplies.

Worse still, Amos claimed that the structure was haunted - stalked by possessed machines that would swarm them if they pressed into the base in large numbers. Thus, the pirates could not delve too far into the base.

After some consultation with the crew, Matilde shrewdly negotiated for an oath of fealty and vassalage in return for her crew coming down and freeing the pirates.³ The crew debated their options - they certainly couldn't get too close with their ship, or they would risk getting shot down. They would have to take the guncutter and run the gauntlet to get down to the Pillards, get inside, find a way to shut off or destroy the defenses, and then help the Pillards get back into the void.⁴

Tension suffused the guncutter as Rassolvov took the wheel and prepared for the run. He juked and wove the poor thing through the sky as missiles and lasers streaked past him. When a missile glanced the side and damaged the guncutter, he kicked it into overdrive, pulling out every spare trick he remembered from his Naval training and criminal exploits. Miraculously, he managed to evade the rest of the defensive fire, even as short-ranged plasma bolts started zipping past.

After a sharp landing and some residual nausea, the crew found themselves in the hanger, next to a shantytown that had sprung up around the groundbound raider. The officers of the Cavalier met with the Pillards of the Malédiction. Amos arrived first to exchange greetings and explain the situation on the ground. Gallius, Sebastion, and Rassolvov broke off to speak with other Pillards to see what information they could glean.

Rassolvov found two old ne'er-do-wells he used to run with in another life: the tough but laconic Ignatio Forte and the small, squat, loudmouthed Kanexath la Fer. They explained they had their bumps and troubles since they had last seen Rassolvov, but when their home planet of Dalthus was squeezed for more tithes, they made like many of their countrymen and joined the Pillards to help their people. After raiding other systems and bringing the loot back to their families, they were eventually chased by the Navy all the way to the Koronus Expanse, and then chased out of Footfall, ultimately arriving here, in a broken ship, trapped in a haunted place. They cautioned Rassolvov that big groups drew the attention of the haunted machines, and described the three types they had encountered.

Sebastion went to meet with the members of the Ministorum that were allegedly aboard the ship. Amos claimed that they were God-Emperor fearing Imperial subjects, to true reavers, and had only turned to piracy out of desperation; Sebastion wanted to see for himself. He found two nuns of the Keeleyian cult, Kitty O'Connell and Belle la Fille; although they were not of Sebastion's own Ixaniad Creed cult, they were not hostile and he was received warmly. The nuns explained that they maintained the small shrine and attended to the spiritual needs of the crew. As far as Sebastion could evaluate, they were genuine. Sebastion offered his skills as a chirurgeon. The nuns were thankful, but indicated that most of the wounded and sick had died already, or died quickly, as they were quite out of medical supplies. They did warn him about radiation sickness from the base (though not understanding radiation, did not say it in those terms.)

Gallius went deep into the bowels of the Malédiction to meet with the excitable and nerdy tech-priestess Alpha-12. She explained that they were barely holding things together, but that there was a large power source detected somewhere within the base, and that parts to fully repair the Malédiction could likely be found somewhere within. Gallius inquired as to whether she believed that the base could be host to an Abominable Intelligence. Alpha-12 brushed off the idea, noting that according to scriptures, an Abominable Intelligence would be acting very differently. When Gallius gently suggested the scriptures might be incorrect, Alpha-12 reacted poorly, openly wondering if Gallius was a heretek. Gallius backtracked quickly, realizing that Alpha-12 had dismissed that notion not out of intellectual incuriousity, but to deny the idea that she had been living inside an Abominable Intelligence's body and was, perhaps irrevocably, tainted. She did admit she did not have a better explanation for the "haunted" machines.

The session ended with the party prepared to enter the Fortress of Silent Despair.

Takeaways

• My players are starting to build a fleet. I'm so proud.
• Spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets. The character-keeper in Google Sheets has grown massive, with almost 7 sheets unrelated to the character sheets, each tracking the players' voidship, their house profit and reputation, and all sorts of things. It has been a godsend for organization. I don't think there is any way to organize a game at the domain level without spreadsheets, and as I mentioned last time, I intend Skulls to be a domain game. Yet sometimes I do worry that it might become too much, and the need to reference these spreadsheets pulls players out of the experience. One thing I think the current spreadsheets have going for them is that most of them are fairly static. Players might only need to reference them once in a session, if that. Also, I did my best to make the character keeper flavorful, putting skulls, Aquilas, and symbols of Imperial organizations all over. I added writing here and there to help make sheets feel less like spreadsheets and more like arcane documents from the setting:

• People love when I talk to myself; it's a fun trick. I'll have one player character interacting with two NPCs, and the two NPCs will have differences of opinions. While one is telling the player something, I'll have the other one interject, then have the first, respond, and let the two NPCs have a quick back-and-forth before turning their attention back to the PC. The challenge is in giving them distinct enough voices and speech patterns so that the players can follow the conversation, even as it's just me talking faster and faster. My players are always highly amused by this, and I actually think it's a cool way to communicate information without having to do a lot of awkward oversharing or Q&A with the players.
• I need to figure out a standardized way to communicate stellar object descriptions, positions, and other information. When I was trying to report the planets of the Dracost's Stronghold system and their features, several players tried to take notes at once, leading to mass confusion. We eventually cleared it up,⁵ but in the moment it was frustrating. I think having them take their own notes is very important, so I wouldn't just dump my own notes on them. On the other hand, it did feel like the players were just doing dictation for me for a good fifteen minutes. I might just need to modify my notes to have "player info" tables or text chunks that I can copy-paste into the chat.⁶
• Endeavors. Trying to use the thing from original RT, we'll see how it goes. Told by Mangoes, player of Rassolvov, that in his experience few people running RT ever got it working. I'm not going strictly by the book, but more my own intuition and vibes.
• I decreased the amount of realspace time things like Warp travel or interplanetary travel took from their default Rogue Trader timescales. I'm glad I did, because the date in game is now April 7 M41.821, nearly three months after they first set out. If I had gone with some of the durations that show up in standard Rogue Trader, it would be brutal - situations could have evolved and resolved in the time it takes to travel one short hop. One bad Warp jump might mean years lost. On the other hand, this is the first RPG campaign where I've felt like things have taken a reasonable amount of in-game time. I do like the passage of time, but I think I've tweaked it enough to where it's not going to throw off my game and render the players incapable of reacting to situations.
• I didn't realize it until after the fact, but the Pillards and the Fortress are basically a town and a dungeon. Wasn't my intention, but neat it worked out that way.

#rogue-trader #rpg #session-report #skulls-without-number