Struggling with Players - An Actual Play Podcast
The Flowers of Algorab - Episode 25
Jul 14, 2026 · 2 hr 12 min · 12 segments
Cryptic comms and a wounded friendship The session opens with the explorers' comms chiming in unison — private, encrypted messages, one for each of them. Nilette's is the cruelest. It claims to come…
Cryptic comms and a wounded friendship The session opens with the explorers' comms chiming in unison — private, encrypted messages, one for each of them. Nilette's is the cruelest. It claims to come from Y'treppo, and it names her darkest secret: the banishment by her own family. It calls her a failure in the past, the present, and the future. She is shaken. Y'treppo was supposed to be her friend — so how does he know, and why the venom? She tells Ben, who steadies her. She wasn't cast out; she was *chosen* — a special envoy of the council, a valued and important member of the crew. The comfort lands, but the question doesn't go away: were these messages really sent by the people whose names are on them? Bribing the truth out of the archives The crew decides to hear out the Secret Keeper's mission — but not before doing their homework. Pripyat turns up with Garuka and an old drinking-and-gambling buddy from the archives: Faris, bitter and long past his better days. A little of Pripyat's "experiential" stash from the shuttle loosens his tongue. The secret beneath the planet's crust: caverns holding vast lakes of algae with reputed miraculous healing powers — and possibly stranger effects besides. But people have been going missing down there. The Gardener's Guild is pushing to build outposts to study the algae, and the Navigators want them gone. There have already been skirmishes. The Secret Keeper's offer The Secret Keeper wants exactly what they'd guessed: the Gardener's Guild driven off. He blames the Guild's guards for two vanished Navigator patrols and offers **3,000 rukh each** for the job. Pressed on other dangers, he warns of a blight in the caverns, and of the algae itself — don't consume it in quantity, don't fall into the lakes, and don't get too experimental with it. The explorers reluctantly agree. Privately, they've no real intention of picking a fight with any Gardeners unless forced — but the healing lakes have them curious, 3,000 rukh is nothing to sneeze at, and frankly all this ship travel has left their delving skills rusty. Into the caverns The descent goes sideways quickly. Bioluminescent cave life swarms toward their suit lights and crawls all over them, secreting a weak acid that would eat through their suits given time. They brush the creatures off, and Aman improvises — rigging night-vision goggles and shifting the suit lights into infrared to stop drawing the cave's attention. They reach a large grotto where a man-made passage has been drilled through the natural rock. Nilette spots the glint of coiler carbine barrels in the tunnel and shouts a warning. The crew calls out that they come in peace — and are shot at anyway. Garuka floods the area with light: three figures in badly maintained suits marked with Gardener's Guild symbols. Aman shouts what he thinks is a Guild code phrase. Nothing. They aren't people Combat is brutal. The carbines chew through the crew, and their attackers don't so much as flinch when hit. Then Ben cuts one clean in half — and it isn't a person at all. They're strange goo creatures wearing Guild suits. Nearly everything bounces off them; fire does not. Aman grabs a bundle of demolition charges, plunges them into one of the things, yells "**fire in the hole**," and the crew runs. The explosion shakes the whole cavern and damages the tunnel.
Cryptic comms and a wounded friendship The session opens with the explorers' comms chiming in unison — private, encrypted messages, one for each of them. Nilette's is the cruelest. It claims to come…
