Mirra Tan
Acting engineer of the Covenant's Promise cryo-deck, twenty-six years old and thirty-one years dead.
Mirra Tan was twenty-six and the acting engineer of the cryo-deck when the Covenant's Promise went through a Fold-bleed that was on no chart. She has been dead for thirty-one years.
The thing on the cryo-deck is not her. It is an Echo-Shade: Captain Halla Voss's last eleven seconds of conscious experience, replayed and distorted across three decades in the dark, anchored to the lit coffin and to the woman inside it. It possesses the most recently dead body in the bay, and the body it has is Mirra's.
It speaks with Mirra's voice. It remembers what Mirra remembered. Asked a question about the ship, the deck or the night of the bleed, it answers, and the answers are accurate, because the memories are.
It will not parley. There is nobody in it to bargain with. It is a fragment of a person played back by the Fold, and every ping of the cryo-coffin makes it slightly more aware of the room it is in.
The cruelty of it is structural: the more the party learn from it, the more awake it becomes, and everything it knows it knows in a dead woman's voice.
Rules Reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Abilities / Cha | 15 |
| Abilities / Con | 14 |
| Abilities / Dex | 16 |
| Abilities / Int | 12 |
| Abilities / Str | 13 |
| Abilities / Wis | 8 |
| Armor Class | 15 |
| Base Attack Bonus | 4 |
| Creature Type | Aberration |
| Flat Ac | 12 |
| Hd Count | 4 |
| Hd Sides | 8 |
| Hit Dice | 4d8+8 |
| Hit Points | 26 |
| Hp Bonus | 8 |
| Initiative | 3 |
| Languages | Core Standard, in Mirra Tan's voice and her habits of speech |
| Size | M |
| Skills / Deception | 5 |
| Skills / Engineering | 6 |
| Skills / Notice | 8 |
| Skills / Sense Motive | 2 |
| Speed | 30 |
| Threat Rating | 4 |
| Touch Ac | 15 |
| Xp | 1200 |
| Dialogue Path | game/dialogue/npc-mirra-tan.yaml |
Notes
Senses: Sees the deck as it was on the night of the bleed rather than as it is; aware of the cryo-coffin at any range aboard; passive Perception 16
Attacks
Cold hands
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
bonus | 6 |
category | melee |
damage | 1d8 |
name | Cold hands |
notes | The body is thirty-one years dead and moves as though it were not. Contact carries the chill of the bay. |
Special Abilities
Will Not Parley, Will Answer
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
actionCost | passive |
name | Will Not Parley, Will Answer |
description: The Echo-Shade cannot be bargained with, threatened or persuaded: there is no one in it to agree. It does answer questions about the ship, the deck and the night of the bleed accurately, because Mirra's memories are intact inside it. Player-visible: every social approach fails and every factual question succeeds, which is worse.
Woken By The Ping
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
actionCost | passive |
name | Woken By The Ping |
description: The cryo-coffin pings every forty minutes and the Shade becomes slightly more aware with each one, moving from dormant, through stirring and hunting, to being the room itself. Time spent talking to it is time it spends waking. Player-visible: the lights fail a little more each time it speaks.
Anchored To The Captain
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
actionCost | passive |
name | Anchored To The Captain |
description: The Shade is Halla Voss's final eleven seconds and is anchored to her and to her coffin. It speaks of the captain as though she were present, because to it she is. Player-visible: it will ask where the captain is, and it will not accept that thirty-one years have passed.