Golden Anvil

Whoops! Looks like I missed a posting. What can I say... it's been busy around here lately.

In Episode 2, the group made their way out to the comet where the loot was stashed. There was a little trouble along the way with the sensors, which wasn't noticed until they reached the comet. This forced a bit of a delay while repairs were made. The young man who hired them to retrieve the goods revealed that they could broadcast a certain signal that would cause a transmitter to send out a response allowing them to pinpoint its location. Unfortunately, he couldn't quite remember the numbers needed to send the correct signal.

Fortunately, Hanabi (the psychologist/doctor) was familiar with hypnotism techniques, and convinced the man to trust her enough to let her go digging for the exact numbers. This was done, and the information was recovered from his memory (along with some other tidbits about his background, just to verify his story (man, this is a suspicious bunch!)). That allowed them to find the stash, buried in a deep hole in the ice. With the help of some explosives and a little digging, they were able to recover a large lock box.

Once on-board, and after the young man managed to figure out the combination, he opened it up, revealing a bunch of artwork as promised (mostly rolled up paintings, but also a couple small pieces of statuary, and some jewelry), and some large stacks of cash... which unfortunately was in the form of pre-war currency from when the planet was independent. Oops!

Episode 3 was short, due to some time constraints. However, the group managed to split the artwork with the help of Josiah's particularly good eye for art (he's somewhat of a collector). They split everything up 50/50 as agreed by alternating picks. The young man focused heavily on stuff that he was particularly fond of from his childhood (even preferring one picture of a house over a picture of his mother!). With Josiah's help, it's likely that the crew made off with more valuable half. Josiah claimed his first pick as his own to keep, rather than sell, having recognized it as an original from a reasonably well known painter.

Hanabi thought one small statue of a baboon to be somewhat lighter than expect, and made use of her medical scanners to determine there was a hollow in the statue which contained some rolled up paper. She broke it open, and discovered that the papers bore writing in Arabic. She has not yet taken the opportunity to inform the rest of the crew.

We'll be taking a break for about 3 weeks due to vacation and scheduling conflicts, but we should be picking things up again after that.