A series played using Cryomnesis. This post is published under the CC-BY-SA-4.0 licence.
Lamentation Davenport's Prelude
Sirens wail aboard the Technocratic Union vessel Imperator as onboard intelligences attempt to wake the crew. Lights flicker into life in the sleep pods and Lamentation Davenport gasps awake.
Calibration: Primal Fear
Shadow: The Emperor
Lamentation's primal fear is two-fold; first she has a need to belong to something greater than herself, but she also fears having her sense of self subsumed by the expectation of mindless obedience.
Act 1: Pentacles, The Mission
Scene 1: 10 of Pentacles & 18. The Moon
She wrenches the breathing tube from her throat in one motion and tears the sensors from her skin as the pale blue liquid swiftly drains from the tube she was suspended in. Her fingers, still slick with the fluid, grip the emergency door release lever and she pulls it hard. A hiss signals the breach of the seal, a swift kick sends the door arcing upward on its hinges. Lamentation hauls herself from the sleep pod, gripping the edge to steady herself as the cabin around her lurches and sways. The wail of the alarms around her is near deafening but beyond it she can her the sounds of the ship in distress. She curses under her breath, the ship wasn't meant for voyages this far into deep space so its systems were operating under intense strain. The first three ships sent had all been lost to system failures of one kind or another. The Praefectus in partcular came to mind, their localised reality fields had failed, all crew were lost to nameless, shapeless things that swam here. Lamentation chides herself for inviting such superstitions aboard, she reaches for her visor and asssesses the immediate priorties. On the heads-up display the ship's agent informs her that the medical systems and the primary mission module are both in neeed of repairs. She grabs the toolkit from the locker above her pod and gets to work on the medical unit.
Scene 2: Knight of Pentacles & 13. Death
Seeing the caduceus symbol triggers a flash of memory, she remembers sitting at the bedside of Professor Cook as he lay in hospice. He'd been the one to spot her potential as she was in the process of being expelled from MIT, he'd offered her a chance to attend "an advanced technical college for unconventional thinkers," he'd been there when she graduated with honours. In a way, losing him felt like the severance of the last tie holding her back on Earth. Set adrift she had volunteered for the mission out of a need to outrun her feelings, the prestige of establishing the first stable deep space station was mere set dressing. She feels the emotions building up and delivers a sharp blow to the medical unit's core processor. It hums and sputters back into operation, the lights are wavering but she knows that further such repairs will only damage the unit. She methodically reseals the unit casing, counting each turn of each screw until her eyes stop burning.
Scene 3: King of Pentacles & 0. The Fool
She hauls herself across the cabin to the mission module, the black box that silently absorbed the knowledge of everything that happened on the ship and in its immediate surroundings. She examines the quantum relay to confirm that it is still pairing with the mainframe back on Earth. It's damaged so it's unclear if the data will be preserved even if the ship is lost. Lamentation curses once more, she has to get it back online or else the expedition will have been for nothing. She thinks that this is emblematic of what the Union has become, so centralised that anything outside of central command is considered expendable. She looks back on the naive young recruit she used to be and grimaces. Things were simpler back then, she followed orders and was given the autonomy to pursue her own research. Now she felt the tightening of the leash with each passing day and her immediate goal was the preservation of the ship's data over the ship's crew.
Scene 4: 9 of Pentacles & 5. The Hierophant
Lamentation examines the delicate circuitry of the module, the magnification of her visor automatically increasing to afford her a more detailed view. She recalls the training drilled into her in preparation for the mission, this is the most valuable system on the ship and every crewmember knows it as well as their own minds, perhaps better. She realises that the broadcast transmitter is fried and there isn't enough time to install a new one, but the onboard record is intact so that is some small mercy. As she considers her options she thinks about her current situation, so far from the Union and utterly isolated from them. Perhaps this is what she wanted, the distance to assess her perspective and take stock. She realises that the emergency phase shift will still work, if the ship is destroyed the black box will dematerialise and survive as a subspace beacon. If the ship cannot be saved, it will be some time before the Union regains knowledge of what is happening here.
Repair Progress
First Aid Module: Partially Repaired.
Primary Mission Module: Partially Repaired.