The party spent much of their haven turn investigating the vines they found out on the surface of mars. Apparently the vines spend 2-3 years maturing before producing fruit. They then abandon much of their own moisture into the fruit to entice creatures to eat it and spread seeds. After a season they attempt to revitalize themselves by reabsorbing the fruit, and spend another 2-3 years building energy to fruit again. It’s a taxing process and the vines typically only fruit 2-3 times before dying.
The party also made arrangements with the Hangman, and some of their own engineers to begin production on a fleet of remotely piloted drones to map the surface of mars. The first set of five will be completed in 2 months.
From here the party decided they wanted to go out and fight something. A cursory look around revealed 3 rumors of creatures to be dealt with:
-An ooze creature living in a particular part of the sewers beneath Comet Caller territory. Occasionally reaches out to grab someone from the surface.
-A red eyed robot that asks innane questions in the sewers near Varouj’s territory.
-A subman beast in Technotopia which the residents believe to be a further devolution of the human species. A thing fallen even further away from engineering grace than they believe most humans to be.
The party decided the robot sounded most interesting, and so went after that. They headed to the flood gate in the sewers where it had been reported, and encountered what seemed to be a cross between a mechanized loading robot and a child’s 2-XL toy. If its early childhood trivia questions were answered correctly it would reward with a joke, but if not it would pack the answerer into a rubbish bin. The party mostly neutralized it by setting up the digital assistant on one of their phones to answer its questions. While it was distracted they began tinkering with it, which worked for awhile until they gummed up its mechanisms enough to make it angry. It began chasing Jinny Beau, who decided just to run out of the Sewers and take the thing home.
The nearest sewer exit was a freight elevator, which wasn’t ideal, so Jinny opted to head for a ramp out of the sewers about a mile away. On the way she managed to pester a spectral creature enough that both she and Karya had to make saving throws versus Death. Fortunately they passed their saves, and Jeb made a portal to help them escape.
The band made it home with their robot, and gave it over to some of their engineering staff to see if it could be reprogrammed into something useful.
Thus ended January 2521