Spacemon, Vol. 1 – Chapter 13: The Void

Welcome to another exciting installment of Spacemon, the tale of a Pokemon TRPG campaign! It is a sci-fi space epic played using the Pokemon Tabletop United (PTU) system and GMed by fellow TAY author DragonStorm247. You can get caught up on the entire Spacemon saga here!

The GCS Dunsparce floated adrift in warp space. The swirling shades of pink and violet flowed past the ship’s viewports, serving as a constant reminder to the crew that they were lost in space. They had sent out an SOS signal, but there was no guarantee anyone would pick it up.

For now, all they could do was drift and hope for the best. Unlike on the way to Earth, however, the Dunsparce was not in deep warp space, so the crew wasn’t experiencing the same feeling of terror. Though, without a destination or a way home, uneasiness still permeated throughout the ship.

Dmitri stared through one of the starboard viewports, out into warp space. He got the feeling that something out in the swirling energy was aware of their presence. He could faintly see shapes moving around in the darkness.

“I see stuff floating in warp space!” he shouted to the rest of the crew. No one really paid him much notice.

Dmitri headed to the cockpit and fired up the sensors, hoping to get a good read on whatever was out there. The scans determined that a pair of Inkays were floating around by the ship. With this information, Dmitri manned the gun controls and attempted to shoot at the Inkays. However, the two Pokemon dodged out of the way. They soon began circling around the ship, now quite interested.

“Dmitri, what are you doing?!” Shane shouted at Dmitri as he entered the room.

“Trying to get those Inkays’ attention,” Dmitri explained.

“There are way better ways to do that,” Shane pointed out.

“But it worked, didn’t it?” Dmitri shot back.

“What have you gotten us into?” Shane asked with a sigh. As Dmitri walked off, he locked the weapons down, then followed.

Dmitri waved at the Inkays from the viewport, attracting the attention of one of the Revolving Pokemon. The warp squid floated up to the viewport, bobbing up and down as it did so. It turned upside down and watched Dmitri intently. Dmitri made his way to the airlock and opened it up. The Inkay curiously floated inside to investigate. Dmitri then sealed the exterior airlock behind the Pokemon and opened the interior one.

Dmitri held out a candy bar and the Inkay floated over. The Pokemon contently began eating the candy bar. After a while, Dmitri held out a Pokeball and the Inkay pressed a tentacle against the button, capturing itself.

“See, that wasn’t so bad,” Dmitri said to Shane.

“I guess not,” Shane agreed.

“Want me to see if I can get the other one too?” Dmitri then asked him.

“Sure.”

Dmitri released his newly caught Inkay. “Cthulhu, I need you to get your friend,” he instructed the Pokemon, thinking up a name on the spot. The Pokemon floated back into the airlock and, eventually, back out into space. The Inkay returned a short while later with the other one in tow.

They repeated the same process of capturing the second Inkay that Dmitri used on the first one. Dmitri and Cthulhu kept the Inkay entertained while Shane prepared a Timer Ball. Once it reached maximum power, Shane pressed the ball against the Inkay and captured it with ease.

The hours slowly ticked away as the Dunsparce drifted through warp space. With each passing moment, the unsettled feelings of the crew grew. H attempted to work on his experiments to stave off the feelings, but, eventually, he could no longer keep focused. He stepped out of the lab to see Dmitri dancing around, praying to the Warp, clearly beginning to succumb to warp madness.

“O vast and mighty Warp, please bequeath unto us the path to salvation!” Dmitri shouted.

Upon seeing this, H let out a large scream. In his delusional state, he interpreted Dmitri’s growing madness as a sign that he was the Messiah. H ran at the Romanov man and attempted to knock him out with a punch to the face.

“You are the Messiah!” H declared. “You must be augmented! Purified!”

“What the hell is going on out here!?” Morgan shouted at her crewmates as she stepped into the corridor, drawn by the sounds of shouting. Both Shane and Arlon were close behind. The trio saw their crewmates running around in circles.

“Mighty Warp!” Dmitri shouted. “Mighty Warp! Mighty Warp!”

“You are the Messiah! You must be purified!” H shouted as he chased Dmitri around.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Arlon grumbled. He stepped between his two crazed crewmates and grabbed H to prevent him from hurting Dmitri. “Cut it out, mate.”

“But he must be purified!”

“Oh, just shut up already!”

“Let’s try this,” Shane said as he released his newly captured Inkay. “D.E.R.P., wipe his mind!” The Inkay fired a focused beam of hypnotic energy at H, knocking him out and erasing his memory of the past few minutes. Shane then turned his attention to Dmitri.  “Do you mind stopping?” he asked. “I think H is losing it.”

“Alright,” Dmitri agreed, seeming a bit more coherent now.

Arlon brough the unconscious H to his room while Shane headed into the lab and Morgan returned to the cockpit. Once he dropped H off in his bed, Arlon joined Morgan at the front of the ship. He plopped himself down in the pilot’s seat and began fiddling around with the various switches on the console while Morgan stared out the viewport, observing as a strange warp effect began to appear in front of the ship.

Back in the lab, Shane began scrawling a call for help on a piece of paper using his Inkay’s ink. Recalling the warp being that Gilgamesh had mentioned, he wondered if he could contact it somehow. Once he completed his message, Shane released it out the airlock and watched it burn up in purple flames.

Time continued to tick away aboard the Dunsparce. The minutes became hours, the hours became days. With every passing moment, the crew drifted closer to warp madness.

In the lab, both H and Shane had been steadily sinking down into madness. Shane stared down at the Inkay ink splattered across the table in the lab. He saw glowing energy rising out of one of the puddles. Shane stuck his hand in and watched it rise up out of another.

On the other side of the room, H looked up from his work to see Shane slapping his hand against the table, splattering ink everywhere. “You fool!” he shouted. “That only works with lava!”

H then looked back down at his Numel and continued running experiments with the Pokemon’s lava. He turned his head and looked down through the floor at space, now visible through the gaping hole the lava has melted through the floor. “What have I done!?”

Shane glanced over at H, who was now cautiously walking around a wide swath of empty floor. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

“There’s a giant hole! Don’t you see the giant hole!?” H shouted, tearing his eyes off the hole in the floor.

“There’s nothing there!” Shane shouted at him.

H looked back to see the hole was no longer there. “Hmm. That’s odd … I could have sworn … No matter! There is work to be done!” H stormed out of the room and returned a short while later with the string-covered heat suit. Shane looked on as H began to fill the suit with lava, which miraculously held it in.

“You shall be the greatest Pokemon of all!” H declared, holding up the heat suit. “You shall be Heaty and you shall be mine!” The crazed scientist pulled out a Pokeball and threw it at the heat suit. He and Shane watched as it was pulled into the ball. “Wonderful!”

Morgan walked through the main starboard corridor of the Dunsparce. As she passed by Dmitri’s room, she saw him painting on the walls, drawing strange glyphs with his Inkay’s ink. The glyphs triggered another vision; Morgan saw ancient ruins located somewhere in Sinai space. She didn’t quite know why, but she knew that they were important.

“Dmitri, what are you doing?” she asked after a few minutes. Dmitri said nothing and continued to stare at the ink glyphs on the walls. Morgan walked over and slapped him across the face. “Pay attention!” she shouted.

“Huh, uh, what?” Dmitri asked, snapping back to reality.

“What are you doing?” Morgan asked. “What is this?” She pointed at the writings on the wall.

“It’s a recreation of a wall writings in ancient ruins in Sinai space,” Dmitri explained. “I … don’t know why I know that.”

“What does it say?” Morgan asked.

 “It says Giratina.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know …”  Dmitri trailed off, once again returning to blankly staring at the wall. Morgan watched him for several more minutes, pondering the meaning of the glyphs.

“Giratina!” Dmitri suddenly screamed, snapping Morgan back to attention. Dmitri ran out of the room in the direction of the cockpit. Concerned about what he might do, Morgan quickly chased after him.

One by one, each member of the crew entered the cockpit, as if somehow drawn there. A shadow began to form in front of the ship, materializing out of the strange warp effect Morgan had noticed a few days earlier. The shadow slowly drifted closer and seemed as if it was part of the viewport. Dmitri fired a beam of hypnotic energy at it, but it bounces back and hits him dead on, knocking him to the floor.

The ship began to shake violently and it felt as if it was being pulled into warp space, despite the fact that it was already in warp space. The glowing purple and pink energies of warp space began to fade, leaving only a dark void, which seemed to stare into the crew’s very souls.

A glowing pair of red eyes emerged from the void, seemingly locking eyes with everyone at once. H screamed in panic and began mashing the fire button on the weapons console, but nothing happened since Shane had locked the weapons down after Dmitri had fired them at the Inkays. Shane also panicked and glitched himself away to the cargo hold.

“Giratina …” Morgan whispered, the name pounding in her head. In response, the eyes focused all their attention on her. “What do you want?” Morgan asked. “Can you help us?”

Nothing happened.

“Take us home,” Arlon said. The eyes shifted their attention to him, causing his stomach to churn.

“What is that?” H asked, falling down to the floor. The eyes appeared above him, looking right down at him.

Dmitri reached out and touched the eyes. He felt only nothingness. He stepped forward into the eyes but they vanished, leaving him standing there like an idiot.

In the cargo hold, Shane huddled in a corner. He felt slightly more aware now, realizing that the warp being Gilgamesh had mentioned must have found them. “Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” he said. The eyes appeared before him. He stared into the eyes and felt the void staring back at him. “Can we strike a deal?” he asked.

This seemed to elicit a response from the eyes as Shane suddenly found himself in complete darkness. He looked around to see his crewmates standing in a circle. A giant creature appeared in the center, its name burning in each of their minds: Giratina.

“Please, can you take us home?” Morgan begged the creature. “I would give anything … what do you want?”

“I offer you my servitude!” Dmitri declared to Giratina. “I can spread warp madness to all in your name!”

“I am not a Human, but a creation of Humans,” Shane said to Giratina. “My servitude may be more useful to you. With the power to warp through shadows, nothing will be safe.”

“What in the bloody hell are you two talking about?” Arlon asked.

“Gilgamesh spoke of this,” Shane replied, clearly still under the influence of the Warp.

Giratina looked at Dmitri, then at Shane, then at both of them, then back to Shane. Shane observed that it seemed to be choosing between two different toys. In the end, Giratina approached Shane.

“Well it will be fun either way,” Shane said as he reached out. As his hand made contact with Giratina, an intense, searing pain traveled up his arm. A light appeared on his hand and swirled up to his shoulder in a glowing pattern of black, red, blue, and purple.

Suddenly, the crew found themselves back aboard the Dunsparce, fully cognizant once again. H found the heat suit lying on the floor at his feet with a Pokeball taped to it.

Shane rushed back to the cockpit and took a seat in the co-pilot’s seat as power began to surge through him. He envisioned the vast network that was the Warp, determined to fly the ship back to civilization. He reached out and attempted to pull the ship along. Arlon stared at him in awe as the mark on his arm began to glow brilliantly.

The Dunsparce flew out of the Sector 25 warp gate at incredible speed, right into a small fleet of Federation ships! The ships move in, boxing the Dunsparce in. The large battleship heading the fleet hailed the Dunsparce and Arlon accepted the call. A stern-faced, middle-aged officer appeared on the screen.

“Attention GCS Dunsparce, this is Rear Admiral Douglas Haverson of the FNS Claymore,” the man declared. “You have entered the site of an active investigation.”

“We have business here,” Morgan told him.

“We must search your ship.”

The battleship transmitted docking instructions, then the admiral terminated the call. Arlon quickly flew the Dunsparce to the larger ship and docked as instructed.

“Quickly! You must hide!” H shouted at Shane. He dragged him to the lab and directed him to hide under a table. He then exited the room and set off a string shot grenade, something he had designed while the ship had been drifting through warp space. 

Arlon then headed to the airlock to greet the admiral and his men. On the way there, he noticed Dmitri’s wall writing but there was nothing he could do about it now. He shut the door, but he didn’t think it would prevent anyone from seeing the writing.

Arlon approached the airlock and opened it up. The admiral stepped aboard, followed by several Federation marines. “How can I help you fine gentlemen?” Arlon asked.

“We have to search your ship and ask you a few questions,” Rear Admiral Haverson explained.

“Sure thing, mate,” Arlon told him. The admiral nodded at the marines and they fanned out to search the ship. The admiral headed toward the warp drive and motioned for Arlon to follow.

Once at the drive, the admiral brought up the jump log and began scanning through it. “What was your business here a few days ago?” he asked Arlon, quickly glancing up at him.

“We make deliveries between here and Sector 17.” Morgan answered as she walked into the room.

“Hmm. Yes. This seems to check out with your jump data,” the admiral said. He then looked back down and continued scrolling. “Hmm … That’s odd.” He looked up once again. “After the battle you were reported to have left the sector. Where did you go?”

“Sector 17,”  Morgan told him. “Those pirates messed with the gate so it might not be recorded.”

“There is no record of you having jumped from Sector 17,” the admiral pointed out.

“Okay, full disclosure, mate,” Arlon spoke up, deciding it was best to come clean, at least somewhat. “The gate launched us into deep warp space without a destination. We’ve been lost in warp space for days and by some miracle it spit us out here again.”

“Why didn’t you mention this sooner?”

“Well we thought you wouldn’t believe us,” Arlon lied. Of course the real reason was that he knew that the Federation would jump at the chance to take credit for their discoveries if they didn’t keep them secret.

“Very well,” the admiral told him. “We will continue our inspection of this ship.” He walked out of the engine room, Arlon and Morgan following behind him. He made his way to the personal quarters where he found Dmitri’s wall writing.

“What in the hell is this?” the admiral asked. “This looks like the product of warp madness, except …”

“Except what, mate?” Arlon asked.

“Nothing,” the admiral said. “Take pictures of it,” he ordered his men. “I want this whole place documented.”

“What?” Arlon asked. “Why?”

“This is an ongoing investigation. We cannot discount any of this as being connected.”

“Whatever you say, mate,” Arlon grumbled. 

Haverson checked the rest of the rooms, but he found nothing of interest and moved on to the lab. “You probably don’t want to go in there, mate,” Arlon warned the admiral as he reached for the console to open the door.

“We need to search the entire ship.”

“Take a look for yourself,” Arlon responded, opening the door to reveal the sticky mess H unleashed in the lab to hide Shane.

“Care to explain?” the admiral asked.

“You’ll probably want to talk to our scientist,” Arlon told him.

As if on cue, H walked up behind them. “Well you see, I was experimenting with string shot and my tests failed spectacularly,” he explained.

“We need you to get this cleaned up right away,” the admiral told him, sounding quite annoyed.

“I’m afraid that all this string shot might be a bit toxic,” H lied.

“Very well,” the admiral told him. “We will call in a hazmat team to deal with this.”

He and his men stepped away from the door to call in the hazmat team, granting Shane the time to gather all the sensitive materials in the lab and teleport them along with himself to the smuggling compartment in the cargo hold using the new abilities Giratina had granted him.

Several hours later, the hazmat team showed up and got the lab cleaned up. The soldiers then searched the room and found nothing of note as Shane had brought it all to the smuggling compartment in the cargo hold.

Satisfied, Haverson moved on to the cargo hold. “We need you to declare all your cargo,” he announced as he stepped into the room.

“Just some empty crates at the moment,” Arlon told him.

The admiral motioned to the crates and his men began searching through them. They moved through the empty crates at a surprisingly quick pace, moving them aside and slowly getting closer to the hidden smuggling compartment.

“Look at this!” H suddenly shouted in an attempt to buy Shane time to teleport away once again. He popped a pogo-stick augmentation that he had installed in his delusional state while lost in warp space out of his stomach and began bouncing around on it.

The two soldiers searching the crates stopped to look at him, then looked at each other with confused expressions on their faces.

“Warp madness?” one asked.

“Warp madness,” the other agreed.

Seizing the opportunity H provided, Arlon snuck out of the cargo hold and set off an alarm. Unfortunately, the admiral noticed him walking back into the room. “What did you do?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Arlon replied.

“Search him,” the admiral ordered his men.

The two Federation soldiers searching the crates moved in and began patting Arlon down. They didn’t find anything of interest on him other than his pistols. “You’d be crazy not to have a gun in the Outer Rim,” Arlon said, shrugging off their concerned expressions.

Before anyone could say anything else, H set off another string shot grenade, covering a large area of the cargo hold in sticky string. The Federation soldiers reflexively reached for their guns and pointed them at H.

“Sorry,” H said. “A failed experiment, as I said. I keep them on me so I can keep an eye on them.”

“Make sure it doesn’t happen again or it will be on your head,” the Haverson warned him sternly.

Fortunately for H, he didn’t need to set off another as his little “accident” provided Shane a chance to teleport back to the lab. The marines cut themselves and the admiral down, then resumed their search of the room, discovering the now empty smuggling compartment.

“What’s this?” the admiral asked, raising an eyebrow at Arlon.

“It came with the ship, mate,” Arlon told him. “We don’t use it, of course,” he lied. “We got the ship on a discount. Beggars can’t be choosers, you know?”

“I believe you,” said Haverson. “But if we catch you using it, you will be dealt with. Your ship is clean. Stay out of trouble.”

Once the Federation soldiers had left the ship, Arlon set a course for the nearest location of one of Mr. Silver’s ships, coincidentally just on the other side of Sector 25. On the way, the crew made a brief stop on an ice world called Fluroth. There wasn’t much more than a small settlement and a few ice farms, but after their journey, the members of the Dunsparce’s crew needed a little break to stretch their legs and get some fresh air.

Arlon set the Dunsparce down in an unpopulated area and the crew set out into the cold to explore. After a bit of wandering around, the crew came across an area with many wild Pokemon. Engaging them in battle, Arlon captured a Sneasel, Dmitri captured a Glaceon and a Swinub, H captured a Snorunt, and Shane captured a Bergmite.

The crew explored the planet for a little while longer before returning to the Dunsparce due to the cold. They spent a bit of time warming up on the ship before Arlon took the ship back up into space and made the jump to their destination. As the Dunsparce approached Mr. Silver’s ship, the crew received docking instructions from the gigantic vessel. It appeared that Mr. Silver had been expecting them.

Notes: This was a long session! We went well over an hour later than we normally had before this point and got so much done. I think this was the most time I’ve spent on rewriting a session. It was just so hard for me to get through this for some reason. All the other chapters up to this point had been done weeks in advance, but I only just finished this one on Monday. But enough about that.

H’s player was late so we ended up starting without him. As a penalty, DragonStorm gave him some low focus rolls so when he showed up, H was very delusional which added to the comedy as the crew of the Dunsparce went insane with warp madness. I still can’t believe he tried to catch the heat suit. He statted it and everything before DragonStorm told him he didn’t actually catch it. He even rolled an 8 on the d100 to capture it!

We went for hours with just straight up RP, with only a couple wild Pokemon battles at the end. We even avoided fighting the Inkays in the beginning because Random-Roaming-Robot did like James in the anime and just befriended them. I can’t believe how many Pokemon he charmed to capture in this session. It’s ridiculous. I ended up cutting down the wild battles at the end in the rewrite but he also charmed a capture out of the Swinub as well.

But the main attraction this session was Giratina! Our first Legendary encounter. I wasn’t particularly interested in a brand, but everyone else was sort of vying for Giratina’s favor, especially The Other Guy and Random-Roaming-Robot, so narratively it was basically just Shane and Dmitri competing for a brand from Giratina. In the end Shane won out and was granted power by Giratina.

Update 9/20/21: This was a weird chapter to come back to. There were several really strange details in here that didn’t fully make sense anymore that needed some changes. The biggest hurdle for touching this chapter up, though, was that there was no consistent perspective anywhere and to change that would lose a lot of details that are specific to one character or another or would require extensive re-writing. I did the best I could where I could, but I had to leave a lot of it alone. I think it’s mostly okay and might even reflect the nonsensicalness of warp madness. The perspective actually becomes more chaotic the longer the crew is in warp space, which kind of makes sense.

Post-Chapter Challenge: This session was our first Legendary encounter in this campaign. Legendaries can be major plot devices in a Pokemon campaign, although sometimes they can be limited by the setting as well. DragonStorm sort of set up  this whole idea that Pokemon aren’t capable of the same free thought as Humans, that they cannot experience love and hate, etc. So in that respect, he was a bit limited in what he could do with Legendaries, but in the end it turned out quite nicely. In the game that I am currently GMing, it’s quite a different story. My game sort of has this whole pantheon of Legendary Pokemon gods that are very much like the gods of Greek Mythology. They interact with humans a lot and go around making lots of babies in the forms of new Pokemon and powerful humans.

So this week’s challenge will be to establish your own pantheon. Pick a few Legendaries, pick any setting your want, and then figure out what their places are in your pantheon and how these Legendaries interact with each other, the world, and, most importantly, a party of player characters. How do they fit into the setting? What are the rules that govern their actions? It’s all up to you.

That does it for this chapter. As always the Spacemon gang and I will be monitoring the comments to foster discussion and answer any questions. Feel free to give feedback and critiques of the writing so I can improve it for the future, or just leave a comment with what you think about what went down in this chapter or what you think might happen next! You can also revisit past chapters, check out the rest of the Spacemon saga, join the Spacemon Discord server, or like our Facebook page to stay updated on all things Spacemon! Click here for the next exciting installment of Spacemon!