Seeds of Wrath: session recap.
First of all, for all those who helped me with the seed, I guess me and my players can all thank you for a good RPG session :).
So ... here is a quick description of the setting.
The action takes place in a remote Bajoran colony in the Korollan system. It is a colony that predates the Cardassian occupation, but was left relatively unharmed since the planet has absolutely nothing the Cardassian would have been willing to exploit. It consists of mainly ragged mountains, with only few agrar lands not even suitable for intensive farming, and nothing to mine.
The only thing of interest on this lonely planet is an extremely ancient monastery, the Mardankar monastery. It hosts a few contemplative monks ... again, nothing special apart from the archeological and architectural standpoint.
Actually, what few people knew is that the place has been the repository of one of the least understood Orbs: The Orb of Movement. As far as Bajoran archives go back, the monastery has always been there, and so has the orb. However, the existence of the orb has always been a very well kept secret, and only a few from the Vedeks Assembly happened to know about it ... until now (I'll come back to this). The problem is: the orb had been stolen. By whom? Nobody knows. The only thing that the monastery's highest ranking monks know is that it happened in the early days of the Cardassian occupation, and that the theft has been kept even more secret than the existence of the Orb:
Only 3 or 4 monks in the monastery were aware of this. This hasn't been that difficult since access to the Orb had always been very restricted.
What the Orb does, you might ask? Again, this is very vague. One of the reason for this is that nobody has been able to study it since more than 50 years. Another one is that visions given by this orb have always been extremely difficult to interpret. It is in any case ironic that the Orb of Movement has (supposedly) never been moved from it's sacred room in the monastery, for as far as the Bajoran memory goes (and it goes a long way back).
So, where is this Orb now? Well, it turned up a few years ago on an unimportant Cardassian universitary planet, in a rather dusty museum. A Cardassian university professor specialized in social science and specifically Cardassian history happened to notice it, and kept it in the back of her head in case she needed it (well, had she been working in a more productive field, with "real" science, she probably wouldn't have been in that 3rd grade university on that boring planet far from Cardassia).
This is what history relates. The Dominion War came by, and Cardassia was separated among the victors, and the Cardassian professor as well as the Orb found themselves in the part known as the "Romulan Protectorate". Already considered "unreliable" in the eyes of the Cardassian governement, the professeor knew that she wouldn't be very appreciated by the Romulan Tal Shiar (social sciences always stir up troubles, well known fact that ;) ). Posing as a (not very skilled) farmer, she hid on a nearby planet, Agor Prime. Everything went well at first, the Romulans being busy with the systems nearer to the empire, but they progressively began to shift more of their attention toward the more distant systems ... and life became much harsher in those colonies. Taxes were extremely high, with no liberty whatsoever, and deviants of any sort were hunted down. It was one thing to be a Cardassian in the Cardassian Union. You had to be careful at what you said, but you were still the right kind of citizen.
Not so in the Romulan Empire, were you were considered third class citizens (or even worse), and where even the pride of being Cardassian was taken from you. A few of the more determined decided to flee the protectorate, pass the DMZ, and seek asylum in the now Cardassian Confederation (the Federation sponsored part). This wasn't easy. They had to find a transport, make it last long enough to last till the other side of the DMZ ... and find a way to deal with the Bajorans. Indeed, the nearest systems outside the DMZ were Bajorans, and somehow the escapees figured out they might not be welcome there. This is when the professor remembered the Orb. They managed to steal it, and escape from the Romulans by sabotaging the few shuttles that could have chased them.
They had escaped.
Actually, they had had a fair bit of help. First, there was a Cardassain spy among them. He wad been sent a few months ago through the DMZ, looking for informations that'd help him locate a deep cover Obsidian Order operative that the Cardassian Confederation Intelligence feared could be very damageable for their relations with the Federation. I'll come back to the O.O. spy later.
Second, they had a surgically/genetically altered Tal Shiar agent among them. The Romulans were indeed very interested in the Orb, but had thus far been unable to discover anything about it. They thus decided to let the orb be brought back to the monastery, where the Tal Shiar operative would have a chance to find out more.
All this explains why a some farmers, a university professor, and a few other castaways managed to escape the Romulan Star Empire so easily.
All this partly explains too why their old transport ended ... or rather crashed on Korollan. Things would have gone better if it hadn't been tampered with by the Romulan spy, who wanted to make sure they would arrive on the monastery's planet (some other Cardassians wanted to try to go as far as the transport was willing to take them (which was not very far actually), and the Cardassian Spy was still trying to convince them). Of course, the crash-land didn't go that well: the Romulan Spy had sabotaged the warp core so that they had to eject it, but also the plasma reactor and the EPS conduits, planning to take one of the few escape pods with some of the refugees and getting rid of the brightest of them in the process. The escape pods were not functioning (well, the transport was holding on spit'n string to say the truth), so they all land as well as they could a few kilometers away from the monastery. Only half of the refugees survived, among which their leader (the professor), and both spies.
Why was the Cardassian operative trying to go the Korollan system too, will you ask me. Well, he had managed to find out that the O.O. deep cover agent he was tracking had been put in the monastery (the O.O. had heard of the orb, and of its disappearance, so they had put an operative there who would be in the best place to catch the orb should it be returned to the monastery). His orders were: the soonest we can remove this O.O. agent from where he is hidden, the better, so he was planning to act alone if he had the opportunity to get to the monastery.
Fortunately, as I said, the crash site was quite near indeed from the monastery, and the monks went to help, offering the refugees their hospitality. The monastery had a very long history of hospitality, and they were not going to forget it just because the refugees were Cardassians (besides, Korollan had comparatively suffered much less from the occupation than Bajor).
All set? Not quite yet. Remember the O.O. spy? He entered the monastery as a monk about 10 years ago, recommended by a well known Vedek who happened to conveniently die soon afterward. He then slowly climbed the hierarchy ladder, and is now the Venerable's second, in charge of most of the monastery's organization. Only, the meditation techniques used in this monastery had a rather strange effect of his mind, where, deep under his conditionning, were hidden the dark secrets of the O.O. ... and, unwillingly, similar to what Dukat did willingly, he became possessed by a Pah-Wraith. From there, the Pah Wraith slowly began to invade the monastery. At the time the refugees arrived, about one third of the monks (more precisely, seven of them) were possessed by the Pah-Wraiths. This is not very noticeable, as the Pah-Wraith's control is not very demanding. However, the Pah-Wraiths need to feed on the vital energy of their host to stay there, which means the hosts always seem somewhat tired, as if they were only sleeping 4 or 5 hours a night.
So ... where do the PCs come in? Well, the Romulan Star Empire is not happy. It has been very definite that the escapees are to be returned at once to them (well, as a matter of fact, when the escapees sabotaged the Romulan shuttles, they caused a lot more damages than expected). Of course, it knows that the Federation will not comply immediately, and counts on the delay for their spy to find out something, and are ready, if needed, to send a ship to Korollan to get the Orb back.
There is also an unexpected problem with the Bajoran opinion. When the Vedek assembly heard that Cardassian refugees had seeked asylum at the monastery, some of them feared for the Orb, and talked, maybe a bit too much about it. The rumour spread like a fire, and soon everyone on Bajor knew some so-called Cardassian refugees were trying to steal a long hidden orb from one of the most ancient Bajoran monastery. Ironic isn't it, when the Cardassians are the ones who actually brought the Orb back.
This is fortunate for them indeed, since the Monks owe them a big one, and since they could even leverage the Vedek assembly who would not be very happy if the whole truth was disclosed to the public opinion (how does that sound, losing an Orb that you didn't even admitt you had).
All this puts the Federation in an uneasy position, so it has decided to send the PCs team as mediators.
All right, so it wasn't quick at all after all ... the actual recap will be following soon.
