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Back aboard the TSS Profondeur, the crew must prove their worth to Transstar by hunting suspected terrorists in the Crushed Trench. A perilous descent and a near-fatal pressure emergency lead them to a hidden community of clones, where familiar faces reveal unsettling truths about the price of a second life. As they uncover dwindling resources and a conspiracy to exploit stolen memories, the Travellers must decide whom to protect and whom to deceive. With explosives in hand and corporate scrutiny looming, they gamble on a cover story that could preserve both the settlement and their own freedom.
In Session 6 of Sparks of the Past, the crew starts with a prize that barely deserves the word: the newly raised shipboat, the Volante, dragged up from more than a century underwater and now technically breathable, mostly functional, and absolutely disgusting. After selling salvage to make it orbit-worthy, they catalogue its many quirks: damaged thrusters, unreliable startup power, a hacked ghost transponder, mismatched repairs, and a smell that may outlive them all.
Alan Mercer is alive, sort of. The crew learns that the man they were accused of murdering has returned through a pre-grown clone, and Mercer offers them access to his old evidence if they can get him safely off Jardin. With political violence spreading on the surface, the group turns to a forty-year-old wreck on the ocean floor, salvaging a smuggler ship packed with secrets, contraband, and some very useful surprises.
That fits the session well: the crew joins the Profunder, descends into Jardin’s deep ocean, explores the abandoned Hadal research site, finds survivors, and ends up at Undersea Base Aelion.
With the identity veils hours from failing, the crew has to choose between bad options: trust a criminal patron, reach out to SolSec, find new disguises, or disappear into corporate territory. They cash in their favor with Lucin to get Mercier’s evidence into Inspector Valois’s hands, only for Mercier’s locked pad to suddenly start broadcasting its location.
In this episode of Sparks of the Past, the crew wakes up in hiding after being framed for Minister Mercier’s assassination. With their disguises running out, Saichi needing a charge, and the authorities tightening control of the investigation, the group splits up across Nouvelle Sainte-Jeanne to gather supplies, scout the Hall des Futurs Choisis, and find new allies in the city’s underworld.
Episode 1: Bureaucratic Registration
What should have been a routine government appointment becomes a nightmare.
On the Solomani world of Jardin, a group of veterans, officials, and an autonomous AI answer a summons to the Hall of Chosen Futures for what appears to be little more than bureaucratic paperwork. As they wait among government workers and fellow citizens, chance reunions and small talk quickly give way to unease when a senior minister rushes past, gunfire erupts, and the impossible happens.
Suddenly trapped in the middle of a political assassination, the group must decide in an instant who to trust: the authorities they’ve served all their lives, or their own instincts. In a society built on loyalty, even the wrong decision made for the right reasons can change everything.
The spark has been lit. There is no going back.
From the publisher's feed
Sparks from the Past is an actual-play Traveller podcast set in the far future, where survival often comes at the expense of freedom.
The Solomani Confederation claims to be the last true guardian of Humanity. Loyalty is mandatory. Citizens are watched constantly, political reliability determines every opportunity, and questioning the state is enough to make someone disappear.
When a group of strangers are accused of crimes against the Confederation, they awaken together inside a government detention facility. Some are innocent. Some are guilty. All have already been judged. Faced with execution, labor camps, or political disappearance, escape becomes their only hope.
Their flight carries them far beyond the borders of the Confederation into the fractured politics of the Third Imperium, where forgotten wars, ancient technology, and long-buried conspiracies begin to surface. As the truth unfolds, they discover that their imprisonment was only the first spark in a story that reaches across the stars.
Sparks of the Past is a cinematic science fiction campaign about survival, exile, loyalty, and the search for freedom in a galaxy that is vast, indifferent, and dangerous.
Sometimes the past refuses to stay buried. Sometimes the smallest spark can change the course of history.