Rbz9: The Fruit

General Summary

As the crew rested up, Echo and Bennesh take another look through the ransacked camp. To their surprise, they find an upturned medical containment crate that, despite the damage it has sustained, still had something inside! -- It was a bizarre-looking red-and-orange spiked fruit with what looked like an eye set in its side. Echo's cybernetic archives had an entry about it. It was called Bleepblorg, the Forbidden Fruit, and was a rare, prized fruit that only spawns once a century. Why it was here, was a mystery. But Echo assured that in the right market, this would be worth quite a bit -- perhaps it was an elaborate money laundering scheme.

The crew speculate that the fruit may have been used to facilitate some dodgy accounting, perhaps involving Khosla Lab and The Legion. Despite the potentially valuable find, the crew were still low on supplies and now had to set off, following Jihun's directions in search of the Parasect's nest.

Some time later, they arrived at the entrance of a darkened chamber, where the giant creature had ambushed Jihun's caravan. Like the nest earlier, the chamber lacked the natural diffused ambient light and so stood out as a dark void against the surrounding. As the rover drove up through the threshold, the crew was shocked to find that the road dropped off sharply into a steep descent. The rover swerved and crashed down through a field of debris, nearly tipping over before coming to a stop surrounded by a dust cloud. The injured crew slowly emerge to find themselves at the bottom of a valley, seemingly sculpted out of the station, and covered by a similar coral-like organic surface like the nest. There were burnt out hulks of other vehicles as well -- Jihun's caravan. The group fan out to search the hulks for clues and supplies, but find nothing of value. They do note, however, that there were fruit husks similar to the strange fruit they found. Perhaps it was not merely a form of payment, but a lure...