We shifted to thinking about things in weeks rather than days, at least for this session. We might change things later. Things felt a little loose in the timeline in regards to the time taken for various tasks, which was not bad, but felt a little odd given the premise of technical things. More notes on expected time frame for those tasks might be useful: potentially can work on a few small things instead of one big one?

Quite a few troubles triggered this time, of which the most serious was an escalation of the Cold War, but at least in Unity Base we have not had any actual news. The escalation of this is going to be very interesting. Troubles in general are a nice part of the Freefallers ruleset so far, being something that brings in some chaos and uncertainty.

The technical part of things continues to be good fun: solving a problem by looking at what might be the cause. Solving these things is also the way to gain XP, which gains new skills or focuses the skills into specialities which gives a +1 to a narrow example of the skill’s use.

The way that we continue to solve technical problems fairly handily while things go to hell around us is a fun game loop. I am looking forward to seeing what goes wrong as these things and get worse despite our efforts.

The NPCs are also coming more into focus, which is a nice thing to have happen. Sammy has got names and speciality of all the permanent members of Unity Base (I assume that we might still get visitors from nearby bases) and this is going to be useful to have interactions and partners for specific tasks. Some sort of way to have the NPCs doing stuff in the background (or describing them) might still be worth looking into, especially for some of the science questions, where not many of the PCs are actually engaging with that aspect, being more support and maintenance staff.

Geologising

The Soviet geologists (Teresa Wagner (PC) and Rimantas Stankevičius) headed out to the impact crater with Jan Pettersson (PC), one of the NATO security officers in case they run into NATO troops or similar situations as the last session. The goal will be to drill some samples near the satellite crash site.

Jan gets a call regarding further divorce paperwork that needs to be done. This is all on the record. There is some minor discussion about this being unprofessional, along with Superman chat and geology talk.

At the crash site, can start setting up the drill rig. Some minor design challenges, but not too complicated. Some slow initial tests but there is something wrong with the extraction. Able to overcome this with brute force and get the samples needed.

Wagner gets a call from The Promotion Committee, routed through the base. This does not seem to be good news, the scenarios are suggesting someone else is the lead in each case: they seem to have already made up their minds that some else is getting the promotion. Jan does some prying, but Wagner is (obviously) not happy about being passed over for people she considers less competent than she would be. Appreciates Jan’s sympathising.

CO2 Scrubbers

Jean-Jacques intends to take a look at the CO2 scrubbing filter that caught fire from last time. The intent is to see if this is a systemic issue or just a freak accident. Chemical analysis of the stuff that seems to have caught fire shows trace amounts of a lithium compound - this probably comes from the LiOH that is part of the scrubber.

This LiOH might be coming from the intake filter or something. The filter will need to be taken apart to check if things can be installed incorrectly or otherwise. During this, Jean-Jacques starts to feel light-headed and insecure about all the screws being removed and so on. There is clearly something wrong here - Desjardin has a dissociative episode or something (this is his “Other Side” Trouble) while Agramonte helps with the disassembly. Agramonte does not mention it though.

Investigation shows that the fitting over the intake could ablate away, dropping fragments into the filter. Alternatively ablative elements in the air (such as dust and such) could do the same. Both could lead to lithium being passed through, creating a potential fire risk. Jean-Jacques writes up his findings and bounces it over to the maintenance engineers to decide whether to add complexity and ineffiecency by having additional prefilters or whether to have a higher maintenance burden by clearing out any gathered lithium and cleaning the separator more often - this is outside his wheelhouse.

MOBEV Repairs

Agramonte and Sanchez are repairing the MOBEV (MOBile ExcaVator) arm, which is in pieces: the last person failed to fix it. The head tried to eat some people - it needs repairs. Some of the joints in the arm are seized and not working correctly. Sanchez forces it a bit, but seems like something is inhibiting movement at specific points.

The bearing in the arm has been ground up by an off-balance load or something. Will need to be disassembled and put back together correctly or a new one will need to be machined. Sanchez decides to machine a new one, with a slightly thicker design that should work better.

Agramonte taking the head apart finds that a bunch of the pins have been damaged. They can be replaced with no major hassles.

The arm is repaired. Sanchez does not mention that the design has been changed with his newly machined part (because it is potentially patentable). Agramonte does some additional work to determine how the pins failed. Looks like it was operator error, trying to force the head into material that was too hard to handle.

Drama on the Base

Over lunch, suddenly everyone stops talking while Desjardin, Agramonte and Sanchez are writing up reports. Unnatural silence in the cafeteria, almost like mourning. The news broadcast is off, just a test card. East Germany, West Germany and the Soviets have had some “kinetic action”, but no one is saying any details. SOP is that groups do not engage in partisan politics, outside of keeping up with the news, but Reinhold Fritz, a West German physicist is clearly in a bad mental state because his family is in West Berlin. Chemerkin, one of the Soviet comms specialists is the one who broke the news, which is still unofficial.

Fritz still owes some theoretical physics to Desjardin, who uses it as a distraction, while making an offer to listen to anything that Fritz may want to say. Not overly helpful, and is not really willing to open up to Desjardin, despite the offer being there.

Chemerkin says that he got the news today, but that the event happened three days ago, but no one is saying anything useful. His sources at the various Soviet bases are equally in the dark about it all. The Americans on the base also seemed not to know anything. Both sides seem to be hiding something from the folks on the moon, which is maybe a good sign?