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Beyond the Grave

Some may remember I started with Edge of Darkness and, though we liked some of it, we found it a bit too tough for our party, and questioned some of the 'plot railroading' in it. Anyway, so, I made up my own second adventure, again set in Sibellus. Titled 'Beyond the Grave', the adventure ran roughly as follows;

(As a test of our tweaked combat rules - and kinda because we didn't get a propper fight in the first session.) I started with an 'in media res' style gunfight between the (4) pcs and the four surviving Logician agents, who were trying to sneak aboard a land train at the Sibellus Docks; (Couldn't resist describing the great land trains to add a bit of backdrop)

The Chuggernauts of the Bewilderness

You'd heard of the Chuggernauts of the Bewilderness before of course, and of the scale of them, but it's not till you see something up close, in your experience, that you can really grasp how massive they really are. The Dracon is a fairly average sized Scintillan land train, but Throne standing next to it you are forcibly struck by how truly enormous it is. Stretching down the huge rock-crete wharf-station it's articulated body is six hundred feet long, with two pilot cars situated at the head and tail of the train standing some thirty five feet high to the roofs of their raised snout-like cabs. Behind them are two enginarium cars, and twelve passenger and cargo cars, all connected by flexible passageways.

Each individual forty foot long car is mounted on four huge low pressure tyres, which are twelve feet in diameter and twelve feet wide, with interlinked slabs of tungsten steel for treads, making the train easily capable of traversing most types of terrain. Huge hydrogen heated steam turbines mounted in the enginarium cars produce electricity for drive motors attached seperately to each of the train's sixty four wheels. Painted a deep glossy blue-black, the chuggernaut's moulded iron and adamant shell is set with three tiers of circular brass bound windows, lines of polished spikes run along it's towering roof rims, and regular vapor-flue chimney stacks jut like the horns of the mythical beast it so resembles and is named for. You're told two of the middle cars even double as an ornithropter launch and landing bay, and that the Dracon, carries a complement of twenty military grade 'thropters that scout ahead of the train on the watch for bewildered raiders, or white-stripe brushwhackers.

Like all her sister trains however, the Dracon is more than able
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to protect herself and those who travel aboard her; cannon emplacements and bristling auspex suites regularly stud the sides and roofs of the cars, and as it's ultimate deterent there is the Vaporis Anima. The Dragon's steam-breath. Piped jets running along the underside of the entirety of the train, mounted for close quarter defence in the awful event of enemies ever getting close enough to possibly board her. At the order 'vent vapor' invisible, superheated, spreading steam jets hiss out, covering the entire under train area, and the ground around the train for five meters or so, and capable of stripping human flesh straight off the bone in seconds.

Within however, things are not so fearsome, each car has three decks, with the lower being crew quarters and work areas, the middle consisting of rather cramped and low ceilined 'steerage' quarters, and the upper deck, predictably reserved for the rich and priveledged.

Crewed by well trained staff from the Sibellan Train Fleet Line, and guarded by a full company of sixty STFL Terrenes, (land train marines), each chuggernaut also possesses by law a shrine to the Omnissiah, and a complement of Tech Priests, from the Sect Logomotive, who tend to the enginariums and vaporia.

The shootout went pretty well, though our rules are certainly pretty nasty, there was an exchange of fire, with both sides using cover (love the cover rules btw), and after a few rounds three of the Logicians were down and dead or dying quickly, while the other had his gun jammed by the psyker pc and ran. The pc adept was unconscious after taking a hit in the arm from a stub automatic, and our spire-fly 'scum' chased the fleeing Logician through a Dockside caff-shop kitchens and with the last bullets in his mag opened up on him on full auto ... taking him down.

Close scene.

From there the pcs move forward a week or two, the wounded adept is patched up, and they are called out by Interrogator Sand an hour before dawn, to a tomb-hab in Sibellus's Megotaph Cluster (the noble graveyard district).

Flashing fake Arbites 'Special Unit' sigils the pc's turned up to find Magistratum bulls (or 'Green Meanies' as the rough Sibellus enforcers are known) surrounding the Crypt Spire, a crime had obviously happened here, and 'Proctor Mortarius' Sand was inside the tomb-hab in question.

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After some early investigating on the way up (including some psyniscience rolls that revealed the residue of evil warpcraft and recent psy use in the building) - the pc's enter the tomb-hab to find Sand standing over a crystal sarcophacus.

I should add, taking the nod from an offhand mention in the rulebook that mid and underhivers on Scintilla copy the habits of their noble betters and mummify dead relatives, I have made it part of Scintillan belief that the physical remains of a person is seen as a direct prayer link between the relatives of the deceased (who is now 'before the Throne') and the God-Emperor. So nobles mummify their dead, and house them in tomb-habs, and then visit them therein to pray to the Emperor.

Upon looking into the crystal coffin, at Sand's bidding, the team psyker tried a psyniscience and though successful she then failed a further test, when she was hit by a major warp stain, and blacked out, taking 6 SAN points lost!

"Hmm, well quite. So we have a mystery then?" Sand pulls his hands together behind his back and begins to pace back and forth across the other side of the chamber from you. "Our recently Warp cremated mummy there belonged to one Eedim Dalid," With a flourish Sand throws out his right hand toward a portrait of a thin faced man in a selpic blue frock coat, his expression rather mounful and lugubrious. "A low ranking member of an unexpetional branch of one of Hive Sibellus's Houses Minoris, who died of a heart attack in his sleep six years ago.

He was entombed here by his surviving relatives, according to his wishes so far as I know, shortly thereafter. I have briefly checked, and there seems to have been no suggestion of any unusual circumstances surrounding his death. So then, six years later, and the smoke alarms are triggered three hours before dawn today. The alarms ring for half an hour before the Crypt-Vigils down in the foyer appear to have noticed them. By the time they get up here, the tomb remains locked and sealed as normal. Yet when they use their emergency-surpass keycards they discover the mummified remains of Sire Dalid to be as we see them now; burned to cinders, cremated if you will, an awful end for the mortal shell of a native born Scintillan such as Eedim. As chance would have it, the Arbites happened to include one of their Division-P boys in the team sent to investigate, and as you have seen, even one of the less powerful Sanctioned Psykers assigned to the Arbites couldn't miss the traces here of Warpcraft. Certain alerts were immediately raised by the chief of the Arbites investigation team, as is proper with all cases possibly involving rogue psykers, and this case was passed quietly over to ourselves to deal with. A strange enough little mystery, you may imagine?
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However, there is more. This, my dear pupils, this is not the first 'spontaneous combustion' of a mummy in our dear capital's Megotaph Cluster in recent times. Oh no, far from it, Eedim Dalid's mummy is in fact but the fifth to have mysteriously 'combusted', as those doltish Magistratum crete-heads put it in their reports, in the past three weeks!

The Lords of the Funerary Council, and the Magisters Thanatalogi, initially put the earlier 'combustions' down to accidents, or perhaps the work of Redemptionist fanatics, and were apparently unified in their wish to keep word of the burnings quiet and hidden. They rightly feared a mass panic across the nobility, if it became known that the mummies of their late relatives in the Megotaph were possibly at risk of being burnt away to ashes by person or persons unknown.

You may still not know the ins and outs of Scintillan ways fully yet, but believe me, the locals regard cremation as only being a fit end for the bodies of heretics. Indeed they see it as just that a heretic not only suffers the agony of being burnt alive, but in death will also have no prayer link or connection to their loved ones. Their souls cast out from the grace of the Eternal Processional and the light of the God-Emperor, their bodies cleansed by incineration. If a devout person's body is lost, though their soul will still go to the God-Emperor, they will have no link to those they left behind, which is seen as a great sadness to the departed, and a blemish on their otherwise blissful eternity in paradise."

Sand fixes you with his watery blue-grey eyes.

"So, ladies, gentlemen, what we seem to have here is a rogue psyker, breaking into Megotaph hab-tombs, probably by dominating the minds of the Crypt-Vigils, then incinerating the mummies of sundry deceased lesser nobles. If word of this gets out, there's the real chance of civil disorder and panic on a dangerous scale, with the noble houses flooding this district with their own private armies to protect their hab-tombs and mauseleum spires. That many trigger-happy mercenaries and rival house troops in one region of the city would be a sure recipe for feud, destruction and anarchy. Our master has been selected to resolve this matter promptly and discreetly. This is a black op. For the duration you will use your Arbites 'Special Unit' cognomens and sigils. Officially, and as far as you will allow anyone else to know, Dalid's body was destroyed in a fire caused during a breakin by a skilled spire-fly burglar, who you are in the process of tracking down and bringing to justice. This same story is also the official line on the previous four 'cremations'.

I would like to oversee this operation personally, however another more pressing matter demands my full attention and presence in Tarsus, and I am due to leave for there in two hours time. I'm trusting you to deal with this quickly and quietly. Don't let me down."

"Now ... Questions?"

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Handed a data-slate containing the names and personal details of the 5 illegally warp-cremated mummies, and their surviving relatives, Sand leaves the pcs to it.

Eedim Dalid

Died, aged 69, 6 years ago in his sleep from a heart attack.

Schooled at the Scintillan University, Academia Nobilis, being a younger son of a not particularly wealthy branch of a low ranking House Minoris, he went into business as first financial overseer of the family mine on Sepheris Secundus, and from there became involved in several investments that all went bad. He joined the Navy thereafter, serving a ten year stint as a clerk mediochre in the Naval Departmento Informium (Accounts Subdivision) at the Fleet Base on Malfi. From there he served as a ship's purser (Captain's chief treasurer) on two independent rogue trader vessles, before finally settling down back in the family home on Scintilla in 794.M41.

Dalid was survived by two sisters, he was unmarried, and had no recognised descendents. His sisters, Lucretzia and Kassia, live in the family mansion; Dalidhuss, Arfennis Borough, North Slopes, Steep Tier Twenty, Foundation Mountain.

Lucius Havem

Died, aged 57, 8 years ago in a road accident, he was known to be a borderline alchoholic and was thought to have been drunk at the time.

Son of the Havem's of Cobad Heights, an abattoir-dynasty who make their money from owing several of Sibellus's midhive vast abattoir estates, where blind grox are raised and ultimately slaughtered all beneath the city crust in enormous, reeking, 'pro-renderies'. Never excelling at his studies, he ran away from home after killing a love rival in a duel, joining the Imperial Navy, and serving aboard three separate battleships, as a junior helmsman, before making Master at Helm aboard the Hiburnis Fortis, flagship of the Hazeroth subsector. Drummed out of the service three years later, for being drunk at the helm, Havem seems to have served upon several rogue trader vessles, before rejoining the Navy and serving a final four year tour as a junior helmsman, before retiring in 798.M41, and returning to Sibellus. His final years were spent in a depressed round of binge drinking and wild living.

A notorious womaniser Havem definitely left behind many illegitament offspring. He never married, but was survived by his mother and father, Mamzel and Grandseur Zefinella and Matthew Havem. The Havem Great House, is a towering hab-spire at the heart of the
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Cobad Heights Spire Cluster.

Forban Corribdian

Killed, four years ago, at the age of 82, in a formal bloodsquare duel with Jukass Dameller, a nobleman who Forban believed was sleeping with his wife.

Oldest of four sons to the Corribdian family, a minor noble house that traditionally serve as officers in Scintillan Imperial Guard regiments. Forban excelled in the martial arts, but failed every officers exam he ever sat, to the rage of his formidable father General Eudread Corribdian, a famous veteran of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. Preferring straight up combat, to tactics and strategy, Forban ignored the damning complaints of his father and joined up as grunt soldier in the early days of the Margin Crusade. He was at this time disowned and apparently never saw any of his family again. After serving with distinction for a decade or so beyond the Margin, Forban returned to Scintilla and Sibellus still a private soldier, though a very experienced one. After killing several noblemen in duels he married Damzel Hortence Krane, a noted beauty and daughter of the House of Krane, a line of minor Scintillan shipping magnates. His connection to the House of Krane won him the position of Ship's Provost on one of the Krane sprint traders, a position he went on to hold on and off on several other Krane vessles right up until his death in 811.

Forban's wife Hortence Corribdian-Krane lives, with their two children, at Gull's Roost House, Jillman's Point, Grank Borough, the Black Steps.

Barabus Krane

Murdered by his wife Yeveen, twenty years ago, at the age of 67. Yeveen poisoned her husband, and was caught by an Arbites investigation that ended in her conviction and execution.

Krane was a mercurial and possibly borderline criminal figure. The son of the Scintillan House of Krane, a wealthy but relatively low-blooded shipping family, he attended Scintilla's Academia Nobilis, though he was soon expelled for suspected theft of exam papers from the Dean's personal cogitator banks, from there he went into a string of failed business enterprises ranging from joining the navy, from which he was promptly dishonourably discharged for being drunk at his station, to running a casino on a pleasure station in Malfian space. After several failed business ventures he served as second mate to Captain Irvid of the Neptune, a rather piratical rogue trader of some notoriety. Upon the death of Irvid Krane seems to have inherited both command and ownership of the vessle, and Captained the ship for some eight years, until his death in 795.M41.

Krane's wife is naturally long dead, his family had nothing to do with him on the whole, but he seems to have maintained links with his
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sister Hortence, whose husband served as the Neptune's Ship's Provost.

Anselm Rackham

Died a year ago aged 113, after contracting Skin Mange on Sepheris Secundus, while on layover at that planet. His body was shipped back to Scintilla by his mother.

Rackham seems to have dreamed of joining the Adeptus Mechanicus from a young age, he was however forced by family pressures into following his father into the Navy as a petty officer. After fifty years service with Battlefleet Calixis, Rackham left the Navy and signed on as a junior mechanic and enginseer aboard a rogue trader vessle. He was still serving on rogue trader ships, by then at the rank of Chief Enginseer, at the time of his death.

Rackham was widowed long before his death, his two sons also died before him, serving during the Margin Crusade, his mother however survives; the Lady Magith Rackham lives in reduced circumstances at; Standing Hab 12, Stack Redwall, Namen Borough, South Skirts.

Upon digging, and having one of the team set up shop in the Infiniplex, where he ran checks throughout the middle portion of the adventure on various points, the party soon put together that the five men had all served at the same time as comman level officers on the rogue trader the Neptune, under Barabus Krane, who was the Captain.

Quickly twigging there might be other officers of the Neptune from that time out there, the party found there were the following two;

Xander Madrigal - the Ship's Surgeon, who was still alive and living in retirement in a Steep Tier District of Foundation Mountain. And Edimandius Artrigid, the First Officer, who was dead and buried in the Megotaph, but was as yet still unburned or disturbed.

There was also a questionmark over the original Navigator of the Neptune, Tyvan Lomb, who seemed to have vanished during a voyage by the ship somewhere beyond the Malfian sub.

Realising time could well be an issue, the party split, with the
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psyker and techpriest heading for Madrigal's house, while the scum and the cleric started to question relatives under their guise as Arbites (beginning with the hideous Dalid sisters - raddled old crones still hunting for a husband ... quite to the horror of the scum character!

Upon arrival at Madrigal's house it was found, by questioning his wife, that he'd packed a travel bag and done a runner, as soon as he'd realised the mummies of his friends were being burned.

During these early investigations the team began to twig that the men seemed to wear strange possibly xeno made amulets they'd brought back from the Malfian trip.

Linking up again the party moved on Krane's sister's house in the Black Steps District, overlooking the sea, where she confirmed her brother, who she really hadn't liked much, had been extremely attached to the amulet, and her late husband (a controlling bully it seemed reading between the lines) had been bullied into taking the amulet. It was at this point, the party started to get some hints that the amulets had some kind of power ... linked to immortality.

Taking stock, the party strongly suspected the missing navigator might be the key to the mysterious burnings, and could actually be at large in the city. Wondering how he might have tracked his old crewmates down ... the party very cleverly had their adept track a papertrail, leading to the seven names of the Neptune officers having been illegally hacked into by a low level clerk named Ishmael Bajer just before the burnings began three weeks ago. This Ishmael then failed to turn up for work thereafter.

Heading to Ishmael's hab in the south skirts, the team found him alive and well (they'd expected he might have been killed by the psyker who they thought had been controlling him to get the info), but rather he was drugged to the eyeballs with obscura and had a suitcase full of tens of thousands of Thrones in front of him.

Once seized and questioned the terrified clerk blabbed all he knew ... that he'd been recruited to get the info, by an 'old biddy flanked by two hooded servants'. This stumped the pcs a bit, as they found the description of the, clearly very rich, woman didn't match up to anyone they'd yet met (though they hadn't got round to questioning all the relatives yet). Upon probing more they found that the woman had a noble crest stitched into her clothes ... a crest that the pc's researched and found was the badge of the House of Oxmee. A noble family that had all but migrated off of Scintilla 15 years ago, save for the
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Marchioness Roxanna Oxmee, a stubborn old bird who'd refused to move.

Baffled a bit by how this woman might fit into things, and still having little clue as to why this long missing (21 years since his dissapearance) navigator Lomb might be back and burning his old crewmates, the pcs converged on the 12 storie spire were Oxmee lived. Unknowing that the navigator Lomb and his rogue psyker son were hiding within ...

The plot

++ Barabus Krane, a wild living, relatively low ranking and moderately disreputable junior member of the Krane noble family of Sibellus, one of the Scintillan Houses Minoris, had tried many careers and money making ventures before he acquired the sprint trader, the Neptune, and became a Rogue Trader. Amongst other things, Barnabus had previously tried his hand at service in the Imperial Navy, and despite having been dishonourably discharged due to being repeatedly drunk on duty, he felt he had a talent for ship command.

So it was Krane set out on what he expected to be a life of easy loot and bawdy adventure. His officers were mainly old cronies from similar backgrounds to his own, being minor nobles, second sons, or familial black sheep, who wanted to make quick money, without too much risk or work.

It was in the year 792.M41, during an early run into the Malfian subsector, that Krane seems to have come across rumours that led him to take an unusually brave step; that of heading out of the Sector and into the Stellar Incognita of Vermin Space. A wild and largely lawless trans-Imperial region, thought to be the hideout of all manner of pirates, renegades, xenos, and who knows what else. Returning after a year or so, Krane made his way back to Scintilla, and a muted welcome from his family. If they noted any change in him, perhaps a more serious and driven moodiness, they did not pay it much note, never having much cared for him in the first place, and it was likely no one much cared when his much put upon wife murdered him, and was then executed herself. Krane however, had achieved something of quite some note out in Vermin Space, he had found and successfully traded with the near legendary Hexian Out-Caste. Said perhaps to be the descendants of rogue psykers who long ago fled the reach of the Inquisition into the unhallowed expanses Spinward of the Malfian sub, or perhaps the result of a lost pre-Imperial colony that never knew the safeguards and controls that come with the protective embrace of the Imperium, the so-called 'Hexian Out-caste' have long been a dark rumour in Calixis space, a horror story told in whispers by grizzled old voidfarers. The Out-Caste are said to be wyrdling rogue psykers to a man, a whole tribe of several hundred inbred mutant freaks, grossly twisted in
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body and mind, that lair on a corrupted hell-world known as Hex, somewhere Spinward of Calixis Sector deep in the clouded black heart of Vermin Space. For the most part these hideous psyker freaks seem content to squat on their pestilential rock, where they are said to give unholy succour to all manner of xenos filth and obscene warp entities, and to gleefully torture those few unfortunate humans that ever have the misfortune to chance upon the place. However, it is also said they also hire themselves out to any Chaotic or heretical sects that are prepared to deal with them, and have the ability to find them. Perhaps through one of these errant Out-Caste psykers an unholy deal was offered to Krane. The Out-Caste wanted a Navigator, they wanted to be free to leave their hell-world whenever they chose, they wanted to actually breed Navigators of their own, who would be loyal to the Caste. In return they would give Krane, and his closest cohorts, his command level officers, immortality... gifting each of the officers a Hexian spirit cradle - (Worn as an amulet or bracelette these exotic looking brass and gold patterned xenotech artefacts are of unknown origin, possibly found by or given to the Outcaste on Hex. When a person wearing one dies their soul is somehow sucked into the spiritcradle, in a manner possibly akin or linked to Eldar spiritgems, and the Outcaste believe that the soul is then able to achieve immortality and live out a dream eternity of bliss.

Cradled spirits do not appear to be able to communicate with the living -except possibly with extremely powerful psykers- and only one spirit can inhabit a 'cradle'.)

Now, however, twenty one years later, this deal has come back to Scintilla, in the persons of Tyvan Lomb, and his Out-Caste rogue psyker son Glabred of Hex.

++ Tyvan Lomb was once an ambitious young member of the House of Lomb, a mid-ranking Navigator House of the Segmentum Capital of Cypra Mundi. Always dreaming of rising the long ladder of promotion until he one day might eventually become first an Heir Apparent, and then later maybe even Lord of the Lomb.

Feeling hemmed in by the rigid and deliberately slow progression his family wished him to follow, serving in a succession of formally chosen Imperial positions, Tyvan jumped at the offer of to become the Navigator aboard the independent starship Neptune, when offered the role by the Rogue Trader Barabus Krane, especially when Krane regaled the greedy young Navigator with tales of a very rich score being planned in 'a short while', which Tyvan would 'receive a large part of the shares and profit of'.

Naturally, a year or so later, when he came round after passing out while the ship was in orbit above the illfamed world of Hex, far out into the Halo Stars, to find he'd been drugged and sold to the dreaded Outcaste of that planet, and marooned there with them, he was hopelessly enraged. He fought of course, but there was nothing he could do against so many powerful rogue psykers, and as he lived amongst
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them, facing daily torture and punishing rapes by the females eager to try to become gravid with a child perhaps carrying the elusive Navigator gene, the weeks turned into months, the months into years.

After so long living upon the hell world of Hex, amongst the hateful Outcaste, the darkly saturnine and handsome youth that Tyvan had once been, had become a wizened, pitiful, scarred, ravaged and mutated creature that was only kept alive by one thing; his desire for revenge. Revenge upon those who had tricked him, lied to him, and brought him to Hex to be thrust unknowing into a lifetime of slavery, pain, and torment. By the year 813.M41, after twenty one years on Hex, with the aid of Glabred the eldest of the twisted children that he'd forcibly been made to sire upon mutant Outcaste bitches, in an epic and deadly dangerous venture, Tyvan finally managed to escape from his imprisonment and travelled back into Calixis Sector stowed away, along with his son, in the hold of a pirato renegade galleon. Since then Tyvan and Glabred have been working to avenge themselves upon the officers of the Neptune's command crew, whilst along the way seizing the xenotech spiritcradles that Krane and his cohorts received from the Outcaste in exchange for bringing them Tyvan. Though some of the officers are now dead, Tyvan knows that being Scintillans to a man they believe in the sanctity of their mummified corpses, as a link between their families and their spirits, so Tyvan has deliberately broken into the tomb-habs of the dead, incinerated the bodies and taken back the spiritcradles, so their disembodied souls can later be cast bodiless by Tyvan into the swirling horrors of the Warp. Tyvan is insane. He knows he is, and yearns for peace and an end to the perpetual pain he lives with at all times. However he will not end his own life until his great vengeance is complete, and all those who condemned him are 'seared by the savagery of Warpfire'. Tyvan cares nothing for anything but this goal, and he will thoughtlessly kill or drive insane anyone who gets in the way of this mission.

How it went

So, the party went in to question Marchioness Oxmee, and promptly realised with a start the old girl was being controlled ... the psyker was here.

A fight broke out, and the pc's were horrified to realise there were two psykers, rather than the one they'd been expecting to show up at some point.

After the party psyker failed a fear check at the sight of the
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deformed navigator floating down the stairs toward them. Luckily she simply took some san loss and minuses rather than anything worse.

Tyvan's Out-Caste son was gunned down in a spray of full auto fire before he could act, Tyvan hit the party psyker with a firebolt, singeing her a bit, then was cut down by combined party fire himself.

Leaving the party still at a loss as to what it had all been about ... the old woman had merely been a useful tool and provided a lair for the navigator and his son.

Realising they badly needed to question the last man alive who would know the truth, the missing Xander Madrigal, they had the Arbites put out a newsreport that stated a pair of mutant burglars responsible for the burnings in the Megotaph had been gunned down, and several amulets taken from the hab-tombs were recovered.

The pc's then staked out Madrigal's house and waited for him to come home. Which he did in a couple of nights time ... to be swooped on by the pc's and thoroughly questioned, giving the pc's the truth of the situation.

So, it was a good fun adventure this time, which worked out pretty well. Combat is deadly, thanks to our house rules, and one pc came close to having to burn a fate point, but just scraped by without having to do so. Another, the party psyker accumulated 7 SAN points, and was badly wounded too.

I dished out roughly 250 xp points per pc.

The next adventure may follow the suggestion of one of the players that, as they'd learned during the course of play the Nepture had been scuttled a few years ago, and now was spinning in the junkyard rings of Scintilla's 'Breakers Moon' Sothos (a throw away comment I made up off the cuff), perhaps an expedition should be made to go up to the old rogue trader ship and get the navigation cogitators ... in order that the location of Hex might be learnt.
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... An expedition up to a scuttled starship, spinning slowly in a huge spiralling ring of space debris, and perhaps holding more of Barabus Krane's dark secrets ... might be fun.

I've started writing the next adventure 'Ghost Ship', which involves the pc's researching Barabus Krane somemore, then first locating where Krane's old ship the Neptune is exactly in the 'wreckage reefs' above Sothos, (possibly having some interesting encounters along the way), then boarding the ship and learning some of the rogue traders secrets which will lead to the next part (which will take the pc's back down to 'the Limpets' (the ferry shanty town between Sibellus and the Lucid Palace mentioned in passing in the rulebook).

I won't add to much here now, (as don't want any sneaky players getting clues) ... but Krane's past, which I've expanded upon quite a bit, is going to form a low level(ish) link into a far larger plot ... involving an arch-heretic known to be a 'Dravelline Apostle' ...

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