Session 6 · 2026-10-08
What Is the Universe, Brother?
The crew traded their histories over drinks, took on Zabetta Tarr's quiet third-faction errand alongside the jobs for H&R and the cartel, then descended into the Reclamation Center to find its droids gone strange.
// The Record
With a night's rest bought at the Slag Pit and H&R's fine still unpaid, the crew finally turned on each other — not with blades, but with questions. One by one they laid out why 
The Rock had them before it burned: 
Kael Vass's stolen relic and vanished crew, 
ND-E's vendetta against a synthetic called Saint Crow, 
Verum-Gaea's birthright taken by a faction back home, 
Vyakti Nau's smuggling charge that doesn't sit quite right, and 
Velveteen's blue, churning something that still pops behind his eyes. 
Mistarion produced the strangest thread of the night — a sketch in his own journal of the exact vessel Kael was sent to steal, with no memory of drawing it.
Before the night was done, 
Zabetta Tarr came to the table herself, 
Scraps trailing behind her. She laid out the board plainly: the bar brawl was never a test, the real audition is the jobs H&R and the Rustblood Cartel have already offered, and a third way exists if the crew is willing to work it. She wants the name of an H&R mole buried inside the Rustbloods — not exposed, just named — and handed over a list of five suspects as a head start.
The crew resolved to run both outside jobs at once and let the mole's name fall out between them, then took the night to rest before meeting Achike's people. In the morning they learned the Reclamation Center job would clear the fine and asked for two thousand credits instead — the fine plus five hundred to spare — which the guard took back to 
Achike with a raised eyebrow. Kael lifted a rank-one security key off that guard while Velveteen talked him through a breathing exercise, and the crew followed Riswynn, a dwarven engineer, down into the station's lower levels. There they found the intake room's droids sorting scrap in eerie, ignoring silence — the same works, Riswynn said, that swallowed a maintenance crew a week and a half after an Imperial inspector's visit, and sent a security team back up bloodied.
// Ways Of Seeing It
Trust, Kael decided, had to be earned with blood paid in kind — so he told them about the vault, the black relic, the crew that vanished, and the thing fused now into his spine. Saying it out loud didn't make it lighter. When Mistarion's book showed him the exact vessel he'd been sent to steal, something cold settled under the words he didn't say next. He asked for two thousand on the Reclamation job without blinking — the fine plus a margin — then lifted a guard's security key mid-distraction, tripping over the sleeping engineer on the way. Captain by default, captain by habit — he's starting to wonder if the title was a mistake.
Mistarion stayed quiet through most of the confessions, content to let the others bleed their histories onto the table — until the blue came up. Something in him rose toward the surface, unbidden, and his own journal answered before he did: a drawing of the exact container Kael had been sent to steal, one he has no memory of making. He showed it without hesitation, more curious than alarmed. Whatever thread runs between him, the relic, and whatever took his past, he's content to let it surface in its own time. He feels no rush to leave this place — there's too much still buried here.
Pressed for her history, Now gave the others the clean version — smuggling charges, phony military-grade weapons, a bodyguard job for someone important but nameless, caught and alone. She offered nothing more and nothing less, watching how each answer landed before deciding what came next. When the conversation turned to droids and sentience, her only contribution was four words, aimed at Velveteen: you are a meeb. The rest she let sit unspoken. She still wants quiet more than she wants truth, and the longer the others talk, the more that quiet costs her.
Verum gave them just enough — a birthright stolen, a faction back home that called his methods wrong, a family waiting on the other side of it. He kept the names, the details, and the shape of the betrayal to himself, same as always. When Zabetta Tarr sent a drink and a quiet offer their way, he was the one she'd been watching, and he didn't flinch from the attention. He still wants out of this system faster than anyone else at the table — but even he agreed the slow road through H&R is a road worth walking first.
ND-E told them everything, more or less — the awakening; the gnome mercenary named Onerous who found him and moved him into a smaller body nobody can explain; and Saint Crow, who sold Onerous out to the men he owed, killed him, and ran with the money. The drone at his shoulder carries the dead man's name. He laid out the truth about the M13s too: the backdoor nobody asked for, the corporations burying the body count, the millions of them walking around not knowing what they are. When the droids in the Reclamation Center came up, he didn't hesitate about what might need doing down there. Andy doesn't flatter himself that any of this makes him good company. He just doesn't lie about it.
Velveteen told his blue story to the whole table, not realizing until Kael and Mistarion's book caught up to him that the vial of blue he swallowed the day he was arrested and Kael's stolen relic might be the same shimmering something. The revelation barely slowed him down before he was back to spreading the vibe — this time cornering a station guard with a deep-breathing exercise about what the universe wants from him, long enough for Kael to lift his badge clean. He declared, unprompted, that everyone present is made of the same stardust. Nobody agreed with him. He didn't need them to.
// Threads Left Hanging
Five names, one mole
Zabetta Tarr wants the H&R operative buried inside the Rustblood Cartel named — not exposed — in exchange for her faction's help. The suspects: Dace Orin, Sister Kel, Vance Pitt Halloran, Mira Tolliver, and Joss Merrick.The droids went quiet, then violent
An Imperial inspector visited the Reclamation Center weeks ago; days later its droids stopped processing and started attacking. One maintenance crew never came back. A security detail barely did.
A drawing he doesn't remember making
Mistarion's journal holds a sketch of the exact container Kael Vass's relic was in — and Velveteen is fairly sure it once held the vial of blue he swallowed the day he was arrested. Mistarion has no memory of drawing it, or of where he saw the thing it depicts.H&R, the cartel, and the third hand
The crew is now running jobs for H&R and the Rustblood Cartel simultaneously while quietly working for
Zabetta Tarr's unnamed third faction — a balance Zabetta herself warned won't hold forever.