ARC I: THE MOORGLADE INCIDENT

The inaugural adventure of Team Skylark.

Written by ekesleight

General Summary

The adventures of the Empyreal Skylark began on Akiton, in the great and decaying city of Hivemarket. In particular they began in one of the many Ysoki Warren Cities -- Warren City Skutha -- that cling to the towers of Hivemarket like barnacles. There, a group of rootless adventurers, each with their own enigmatic pasts, answered an ad from a company called Delistatious Elite Productions.
The "company" consisted of a single enterprising Ysoki named Bruxton Osiris Fenhallowy-Delistatious III, or Brister Fen for short. Apparently struggling with some debt payments to a shadowy group of financiers, Fen had conceived a plan to launch a reality show featuring a group of "tomorrow's greatest Starfinders." It would follow their trials and tribulations, their lives and hopefully not their deaths, as they took on challenges worthy of that intrepid compact of explorers, aboard a small free trader ship called the Empyreal Skylark, co-owned by Fen, several cousins and perhaps some of the shadowy financiers themselves.
Their first adventure was on Akiton itself. A Starfinder ship called the S.S. Moorglade had gone down in mysterious circumstances -- quite possibly shot down -- over the planet's southern hemisphere. There was enough alarm over the incident that Hivemarket's space port had been shut down because of it. Akiton was a planet of scavengers and there was a race on to find and salvage the ship, to recover whatever valuable might be aboard her and to cash in a possible reward from the Stewards. Fen was determinied that the Skylarkers would win that race.
A group of strangers coalesced into a team for the first time as they braved what would prove to be no simple task. They walked into a disreputable cyber-den to try to recover the ship's coordinates from a contact of Fen's named Tetro, a cagey Ysoki who worked for someone he called the "Big Guy" and turned out to have a suspicious nature. The team had to fight off a group of cyberzombies to make their escape, leaving the building burning behind them and making implacable enemies of its true owners, the nativist Akitonian movement called the Kedaj Pride Front.
After that, the team raced out into the desert wastes, a step ahead of a veritable army of scavengers intent on the same goal.
They sheltered from a storm in a ruined village recently attacked by raiders and battled an elusive predator called a couerl, which tore the arms off their desert skimmer pilot (the sand-chantey loving plant-man G.G. Braso).
They found the wreck of the Moorglade and fought off a mysterious group of Eoxians who had beaten them to it -- generously sparing their leader, Nebra Thorn -- and there they rescued Starfinder Xana Moonbrook, a mysterious girl named Kayalina, and the disembodied soul of the Moorglade's captain housed in some kind of Eoxian soul trap.
Before long they found the Kedaj Pride Front bearing down on them as they raced back to Hivemarket. In a harrowing chase through the desert, they evaded a death worm and a group of intent pursuers. They did battle with Kedaji goons on the deck of their desert skimmer, goons with whom Nebra Thorn proved to be in league as she betrayed them, getting shot off the deck and into the red desert sands by Thresca for her troubles.
They also encountered daredevil elf Thysella Tethris, who'd been hired as a pilot by a group of androids back in Hivemarket who were mysteriously intent on protecting Flicker II. Most of Thys' employers were swatted out of the air by the death worm, but Thys made a last-second leap to safety with the team, whom she joined shortly afterwards.
Finally the team, returning triumphant to Hivemarket, made their first minor splash on the infosphere as a small but fascinated audience watched and commmented on their exploits. Who was the handsome human guy? Could that Vesk really play that saxophone, or was he faking it? Was that android's resemblance to pop star Glimmer I a coincidence? The team rested and collected themselves, Brelkith got a taste of Kayalina's strangeness at the celebration, and George got his first look at the Skylark. A bit of a "fixer-upper," Fen described her, she clearly looked like she'd come out of a junk-pile... but she had potential. It was love at first sight.
It was time to return Xana Moonbrook and Kayalina to the Starfinder Society on Absalom Station. The team collected a reward from the Stewards for clearing up the Moorglade Incident, and Hivemarket's political world roiled behind them as the wraithlike enforcers of the market city's neutrality swept in on the Kedaj Pride Front, which had been caught collaborating with off-worlders to upset the balance of power. For the first time, the Skylark climbed into the heavens and entered the Drift.


Characters Introduced in this Arc:
Team Skylark itself
Jomo "The Big Guy" Kallas and the Kedaj Pride Front
Burning Bright, a street gang working for Kallas but not enamored of him
Tetro, a "brother" of Brister Fen and proprietor of a dangerous cyber-parlour
Nebra Thorn, an Eoxian in search of something on the Moorglade
The Machines of Loving Grace, the android gang / militia that hired Thys to help them protect Flicker II
Xana Moonbrook, a Starfinder and the last survivor of the Moorglade's crew
Kayalina, a mysterious princess from a planet out in the Vast
G.G. Braso, alcoholic (sort of) humanoid plant and desert skimmer pilot


Mysteries Introduced in this Arc:
Who is Kayalina? Where is she from and what is her significance? What was on the Moorglade that the Eoxians and the Kedaj Pride Front were searching for?
Who are the Machines of Loving Grace and what is their fascination with Flicker II? Are they just Glimmer fans?
Can the team really trust Brister Fen?

Report Date

27 Dec 2018

Primary Location

Akiton