"Peace is good, neighbour. Personally, I'm all in favour of peace." The Black Knight glances at the Pandora. "In furtherance of the cause of peace, would you perhaps be willing to answer a few questions? Maybe over lunch?" He gestures up at the airlock. "Your friend up there's welcome to join us, too, if you like."

"He's holding the gate for now. Guard duty. Make sure no one leaves the ship that's not supposed to. Boring stuff but it has to be done you know?" Felix says, shrugging his shoulders. He uses his Blathering stunt in an attempt to fast talk the Knight and distract him from the issue. "As I said, we weren't expecting anyone to be here. By all stories told we didn't expect to find life, much less civilized nations such as yourself."

Felix folds his arms and nods knowingly, as if he has spoken some sage truth.

"Truth be told? My people are dying. We've been on a long, long journey and our food reserves are running low. If maybe we could arrange some food to be sent to my colleagues aboard the ship, I'd gladly submit myself to being your... Diplomat? Ambassador? Prisoner? Whatever you might like. I promise you I'll explain as much as I can while in your custody. I'm quite probably just as confused as you are concerning current events."

Felix smiles what he hopes is a winning smile and hopes for the best.

(OOC: Here's to hoping I didn't say anything that offended them and my rapport skill is high enough to avoid any sort of problems. I'm putting my best foot forward, here. Rolling Rapport.)

Rapport: +3 Coldsleep sickness: -2 Roll: +2 Total: +3

There's a general air of knights relaxing slightly and looking less ready to pull out their weapons. Only the pale lady in the white dress still looks tense, but she's not actually carrying any weapons.

"If you need food enough to feed a lot of people, neighbour, you'll want to talk to a merchant, not a knight. And they'll want paying. Lunch is all my supplies will stretch to, but I tell you what, I'll leave you enough for a good meal for your dutiful friend up there, too."

He gestures at the group behind him, who start dismounting, tying their horses to trees, and unpacking some food - bread, cheese, and the (pre-cooked) haunch of some kind of animal seem to form the major part of the meal. Aside from a number of sharp knives used to cut the meat, cutlery seems absent - and the knights, by and large, leave their weapons with their horses (the big guy in chain mail still has his axe slung over his back, but he gives the impression that it's there from force of habit only, not because he believes he'll need it).

Felix is quickly offered a cut of meat, a lump of bread and another of cheese, a half-full wineskin, and (once they notice he isn't carrying one) a dagger to cut the food with.

"If you don't mind, perhaps I might bring some food up to him?" Felix asks. "He's a good friend of mine and I don't want him to endure hunger any longer than he has to. I'll come right back down as soon as I've made the delivery."

"Go ahead, neighbour," says the Black Knight, cautiously. He keeps an eye on Felix when he goes - not overtly hostile, but cautious and curious.

"Thank you."

Felix grabs half of the portion of food they gave him, trying to find some way to secure it. Perhaps asking for a sack to tie it up in. Once he has secured the food, he begins the climb back up the ladder.

"Good news is they seem friendly," Felix says as he reaches the top of the ladder. He stops to catch his breath and sets the food down. "Bad news is they're wildly suspicious as near as I can tell. I don't think we have trouble, though. I have some knowledge of the systems at work, so I'm gonna go and try to wake some people up. You go down in my stead and tell them I'm too tired to make the climb down because of hunger."

As he says it, his stomach rumbles severely and he wobbles on the spot. "It's not exactly far from the truth, anyway... Go down and talk to them, I'll see what things I can manage from here."

Felix moves to extricate himself from the suit. He'll need the dexterity if he's going to do his work. If Nathan doesn't offer a response he'll go search the ship for some way to locate people that'll be useful.

"Good idea. I have no clue how I would thaw someone out."

Nate shrugs out of his suit as well, prefering the greater mobility to any potential padding it may provide.

After doing his best to not fall down the ladder, Nate waves and somewhat awkwardly introduces himself.

"Um. Hi. I'm Nathan, Nate for short. Felix isn't feeling very well, so he's going to keep an eye on things up top. It's nice to meet all of you!"

"Greetings, Nathan," says the Black Knight. "I am Sir Sparhawk, of the Pandion order. Do you mind answering a few questions about -" he gestures towards the Pandora, looming over them - "exactly what this is, how you raised it overnight, and whether we can expect any more of them?"

--------------

In the ship, it's dead easy for Felix to find people. There are thousands of easily accessible cryocapsules. Figuring out who's in them is another matter entirely - the capsules themselves are only labelled with a serial number of some sort. There may be a list somewhere that matches serial number to name or qualification, but it's not anywhere obvious - it may only be on the computer.

There is a little window on each cryocapsule, so Felix can at least choose the gender of anyone he wakes up, or perhaps pick them on the basis of their hair colour. Beyond that, his choices would be pretty much random.

He's almost certain to do a lot better if he has something to eat first, so that his hunger is no longer a distraction.

Felix wearily blinks at the capsules, the rumbling in his stomach distracting him. If he makes a mistake at this juncture it could mean someone's life. He bites the bullet and spends a few minutes gobbling down the food he brought with him. If it's poisoned then it's poisoned, but he'll be damned if he'll let even an the most minute of distractions cost someone their life unnecessarily. Regardless of his thoughts or reasoning, his stomach greedily welcomes what he's capable of stuffing into it.

After eating his fill, he takes stock. Trying to remember the design of the ship, he makes a next best guess of who the most important personnel are and where they'd be located on the ship. He figures that the people who wake up first are the most important, and going from there he tries to find the location of the ship closest to the vital facilities that would be brought online first had everything gone according to plan. He takes a minute or so longer than he needs to think through this process, waiting to see if the food is giving him any ill effects before he attempts to bring his plan into action.

Engineering rolls to make a best guess as to the layout of vital functions in the ship and extrapolating possible capsules to open based on that guess. Science roll (or most relevant skill roll) to determine any possible side effects from contaminants in food before attempting to wake up crew members.

Well, Sir Sparhawk, that is the Pandora and she's a ship. Now I know she doesn't look much like a ship, but that's because she wasn't built to go over water, she was built to go between the stars. Which I know sounds crazy, and honestly, it is a little bit crazy, but, it is what it is."

Nathan takes a knee, getting into his narration.

"And we didn't raise her overnight. She took years and years to build, using all the knowledge and skill we could muster. The greatest achievement of many peoples, all working together to make something bigger, more important then themselves."

"As for if there will be any more? Well, honestly, I don't know, but I very much doubt it. The Pandora was the first of her kind, and there may have been more. I hope there were more. But the odds of another coming here are astronomical. there's just too much.... space out there."

"If that took you years to build, then you've certainly been very quiet about it, neighbour," says Sparhawk. "The villagers nearby had no idea it was there until they saw it this morning."

"Looks like it was dropped here, if you ask me." offers the big man with the axe. He makes a fist, and drops it into the palm of his other hand. "Ka-pow!"

"Don't be ridiculous," snorts the silver-armoured knight. "Thing's big enough to fit an entire village in it. I don't care how big you make the catapult, you'll never get this thing off the ground."

"You think that's any less likely than the idea that nobody noticed it being built for several years?" asks Sir Sparhawk. "Or that they somehow spent several years building it overnight?"

The silver-armoured knight looks uncertain.

The pale white lady asks Nathan something in another language, which Nathan neither recognises nor understands. Whatever it is, it sounds, from her tone, like a polite and respectful question.

--------------

Engineering: +5 Roll: -1 Total: +4

Given the hunger with which Felix awoke (it's still not entirely gone, but at least it's no longer severe enough to affect him negatively) he would guess that the first people to wake up would, primarily, want to be near some source of food. Looking at the map, he sees that one of the smaller mess halls is actually inside one of the cryosleep rooms; the capsules nearest to there are probably the ones who would expect to be woken up first.

Science: +3 Roll: +0 Total: +3

Felix doesn't feel at all poisoned by the food. The wineskin, however, appears to have contained actual wine, that is, fermented grape juice (or the juice of some analogous alien fruit) containing a certain percentage of alcohol; overindulging, especially on a seriously empty stomach, might have a few well-known temporary negative side-effects. Felix therefore limits the amount he drinks as much as he can. Most of the food tastes odd, but not unpleasant - it can likely be attributed to vastly different recipes being used. Or vastly different ingredients (do they actually have wheat here? What animal do they get the milk to make the cheese from? What sort of meat did Felix just eat?)

By the time he's done with his meal, Felix still has about a third of a wineskin worth of wine but nothing edible remains (not even crumbs). He's also still thirsty.

Felix ties the wineskin off to his belt and makes his way to the capsules he found on the map. He's thirsty and wants some more of the drink, but knowing that it's alcoholic he can't afford the distraction even mild inebriation would cause. On arrival, he begins examining the capsules. They were placed here for a reason, so he looks for any oddities that might set them apart from the others in the ship. Perhaps an alternative power source or a computer terminal with priority over the one on the bridge or, heck, even a manual override that will open them without any hassle.

Once he exhausts his examination of the capsules, he picks a still operative one at random (assuming there are no special indicators here that would affect his decision) and attempts to awaken its sleeping occupant.

Nathan watches the byplay between the warriors with a smile on his face. He'd missed that kind of comradre.

"Give us time, we'll show you how we got her here."

At the Pale Lady's quiry, Nate turns to her.

"I'm sorry, I didn't understand that."

None of the capsules have an alternate power source. There is a terminal - it's showing the same error message as the one on the bridge, and is exactly as responsive. It's also in the mess hall, not connected to any of the capsules. None of the capsules have easy manual overrides; Felix is going to have to force it open.

Before long, Felix narrows the "should have woken first" down to one of four capsules. One contains a particularly elderly, bald man. One contains a young man with the start of a beard. One contains a middle-aged woman, and one contains an attractive young lady. He can start out by attempting to wake any one of them.

--------------

Sir Sparhawk's eyes narrow slightly. "How much time," he asks, "until you can do it again? And would you be able to aim it next time?"

"If this thing were to land on a city," says the red-haired axe-man grimly, "that's pretty much the end of that city."

"You do not speak Styric, Ancient One?" asks the Pale Lady. She has an accent - not enough to make her hard to understand, but noticeably different to her travelling companions.

After a moment of contemplation, Felix moves to open the capsule with the middle aged woman as the safest bet for 'someone helpful and important'. Probably. Maybe. The elderly man is too fragile to awaken in such a rough manner and the two younger people probably don't have the life experience to be useful or possess any sort of authority.

Science role to open capsule with the middle aged woman. Add to it the aforementioned fate point expenditures if applicable.