Traveller Campaign Update: Energy Being Edition

The PCs started this adventure finding themselves in an entirely different universe.  Which they promptly got stuck in.  They found it contained a number of what appeared to be experimental terraformed micro-societies.  And of course, the first actual intelligent creature they ran into was this:

Yup, a star-trek style energy being.  It wanted them to call him God (but then, why would God need a starship?).  The PCs immediately named him "Bob" instead; lucky for them this particular energy being liked the name; never mind that it wasn't actually one of those omnipotent energy-beings so much as a totally lame-ass energy being who actually couldn't do anything to them at all.

He did provide them with some very useful information: namely that the founder/greatest-leader of the Ancients is probably still alive, and in this alternate universe.  That he's named Grandfather Paradox, and that he's been hiding here ever since the Final War, when he was betrayed by the other members of his High Council, including "The Master".

(remember him? From our last entry?)

Thing is though, Bob seems to think Grandfather Paradox is just as big an asshole, and actually wants to try to convince them to help him kill Grandpa; through a convoluted plan involving the PCs breeding with the local augmented human population (who are enormously intelligent but have had all the ambition genetically modified out of them) to produce a race of super-warriors.  The PCs humor him, mostly to find out what they can about these humans.

They go visit them next, after a few random stops with the teleporter they're using, and find out that the humans here are pretty much like Bob said, and they're pretty much obsessively "neutral":

("Tell my wife Hello")

They were starting to get somewhere with them, when they find out that by leaving the teleporter on they accidentally provided a back door to the humans' biggest enemy (who had wiped out the entire population at least once before, though Grandfather Paradox just re-made them from his clone banks): a tribe of ultra-intelligent hyper aggressive proto-Vargr:

(so on one side, the Neutrals; on the other side, these guys!)

The PCs try to get back to their ship, only to find out the teleporter won't take them back there.  The only way to get back to their Millenium Falcon would be to go through a place called the Death Zone, to a place called the Tower, where the AI that replaced Bob acts as Grandfather Paradox's overseer.

(with a name like the Death Zone, you can't really expect it to be a pleasant sort of place)

For the moment, and at great personal risk to life and limb, the PCs managed to stop the ingress of the Proto-Vargr into the Neutrals' territory by blowing the shit out of the teleporter ziggurat in neutral territory. But there's still thousands of Vargr around; so now the half the PCs have to see if they can whip the Neutrals into fighting shape while the other half try to get through the Death Zone and hopefully to find some answers.


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