Aslan Route 14: Fugitives

"No disassemble Number Five!" - Short Circuit

Jumpspace and Tech-World, 1105 Weeks 45-46

Arriving on Tech-World after an uneventful jump, the crew of the Macavity are assigned an android guide/minder, Sofia, who tells them there are some potential passengers who would like to meet them. Following her into the dank service corridors below the starport, they meet these passengers. They include a human politician or mid-level management type, an early-model butler android with a twitchy arm and a lucky shovel, an aslan interpreter who smells of dust-spice, and two vargr joygirls who immediately begin posing seductively and smiling at Rex.

In exchange for passage, they offer some valuables pilfered from the starport and the co-ordinates of Captain Envai's cavern, in the Exe system, which they have put together from clues overhead by the politician and the vargr hookers over the years. The party is utterly convinced this is all a con, but they're going to Exe anyway, so why not? Money is money, and maybe the base coordinates will be worth something.

It is as Dr Matauranga carries out his usual preflight physical examinations that he discovers the passengers are all androids. They explain that they are scheduled for recycling, and don't want to be recycled, so they are trying to flee Tech-World instead. Sofia asks to go with them, and produces convincing documentation saying Tech-World will let her go. This holds up under all the checks Mazun can make, so he decides honour is satisfied, and if the ruling Council wants to make something of it later, his cover is solid.

Jumpspace, 1105 Week 47

Locking the androids in the passenger section, the crew draw sidearms from the ship's locker and keep an anxious, paranoid watch all week. Dr Matauranga researches Captain Envai, and learns that he was killed some 200 years ago by a convoy escort, but was rumoured to have found - and looted - an old Sindalian installation. So the androids' story is credible.

The android leader asks for a meeting to negotiate who gets what split of whatever they find in the base, which is difficult as nobody actually knows what's in there. However, suitable wording is eventually agreed.

Exe, 1105 Week 48

Refuelling and trading as usual, the Macavity crew notes that the starport officials on Exe are as corrupt a body of sentients as one could wish to meet, and offer them a small donation to their beer fund to ensure the Macavity is not tracked as it leaves the station.

Much to the crew's surprise, the androids are correct; there is an abandoned pirate hideout on an unnamed moon in the outer system. Vila demonstrates an unexpected facility with opening vacuum-welded airlock doors, and manages to start up a field generator to power the base. An inventory of what was left behind reveals several containers of raw materials, useful for repairing the base, and a container of precious metal ingots, stolen from various governments around the region.

Once Vila has finished drooling over the gold and platinum, conversation turns to what to do with the base. Mazun, Vila and Rex can see its utility as a pirate base, and Dr Matauranga covets it as a location for a secret laboratory. However, they decide they are sufficiently invested in the monastery on Sink and Clan Iuwoi that they have no use for the site. The androids say they'll take it for use as a refuge; they will use their share of the loot to pay the Macavity to bring them supplies and 'rescued' androids from Tech-World.

"Fair enough," says Mazun, "But those androids will need exit visas, I can't afford to be banned from Tech-World."

Meanwhile, the androids place an order for repair robots, which are a common enough legal export from Tech-World, to be delivered after the Macavity's next run.

Loading up an appropriate quantity of precious metals, which at least three of the crew know how to fence, the Macavity cautiously picks its way out of the crevasse hiding the old pirate base, and jumps for Cordan.

GM Notes

I started prep for this session by working through the Solo tables, but nothing sang to me. Then I had a look at the various One-Sheets I have from Pinnacle Entertainment and Triple Ace Games; the Last Parsec adventure Unexpected Colony caught my eye; the adventure as presented doesn't fit the current context, but suppose the androids were trying to get off Tech-World? Effectively, we then have a prequel to the adventure as written, and so long as the droids get what they want, they have no reason to initiate hostilities. They also provide a way to inject the next scenario into the storyline; Captain Envai's Cavern is one of the side-quests from the Drinaxian Companion, and could be in almost any system, but Exe serves my purposes nicely.

On meeting the androids, Mazun's player said: "Uh-oh. They look like a bunch of player characters." That set the tone for an evening of unbridled paranoia.

Rex rolled a critical failure on Notice when inspecting the vargr pleasure droids, and thus failed to notice what they actually are; more of that later, perhaps. Paranoia led them to install multiple software and mechanical locks on the entrances to the passenger quarters, but Vila rolled a critical failure to install the mechanical locks, so the androids could have walked out any time. They did consider it, but none of them can operate the ship, and it was already taking them where they wanted to go, so...

The Macavity uses the Hugin deck plans from Moon Toad, and the players spent some time poring over them and deciding who was locked in where at each point during the flight. These are my go-to plans for a small trading vessel; I like the clutter in the cargo bay, the well thought-out design, and the fact that everything fits on one deck.

Arion 1-04: Mr Osheen

“Those who ‘abjure’ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.” - George Orwell

Jewell, 1105 Week 5

Outbound from Jewell, Arion finds himself the only ship with the right orbital mechanics to render aid to a pinnace with drive failure. The rendezvous poses no problems beyond a few hours' delay, nor does a minor repair; this sort of diversion is one of the reasons Traffic Control schedules a full day for him to drift out to the 100 diameter jump limit, rather than the three hours or so it would take him at full throttle.

Jumpspace, 1105 Week 6

On the first night in jumpspace, Arion wakes from a nightmare that has him dripping with sweat, or so he thinks until he realises one of the water pipes to the stateroom's fresher has burst for some occult reason of its own. In his sleepy, befuddled state it takes him far too long to isolate the fault and close off the relevant flows, and by the time he's done that his stateroom is flooded. The cleanup operation takes him most of the next couple of days. Fortunately, other staterooms are available, so he doesn't have to sleep in the flooded one.

This, he reflects philosophically, is the problem with detached duty and constructive possession of a twenty-year-old scoutship; quite a lot of the internal systems hover perpetually on the ragged edge of breakdown. He makes a mental note to ensure the ship's medical cabinet has some Fast Drug in it before the next jump; the 60:1 metabolic slowing would make a week in jumpspace feel like just under three hours, reducing life support demand commensurately. Never know when you might need that kind of edge.

Mongo, 1105 Week 7

Arriving in the Mongo system, Arion finds himself hailed by a mining cutter which warns him: "Stand off, pirate! I've got a laser! I'll cut you to pieces before you get my cargo!"

"Umm, not a pirate," Arion explains. "Look, I'm in a standard approach pattern, no threat to you at all. And I'd have to be a pretty stupid pirate to try anything this close to a navy base."

"That's exactly what a pirate would say!" blusters the cutter. But it lets him pass, twisting to keep its laser pointed at him and locking him up with targeting lidar. He wonders what it found that has the pilot this wound up.

Arion's cargo for this run is three units of hazardous raw materials; it's not clear what the hazard is, exactly, but judging by the vermin he didn't know he had on board lying dead around the crate, the sooner it's off the ship, the better. He makes a profit, barely, but looking at his account balance it'll be gone by the end of the week. Probably on vermin disinfestation.

Returning from offloading his cargo, Arion finds an invitation in his commlink from Major Evelyn Sheng, Imperial Army, asking him to attend a celebratory dinner the next evening. Arion remembers Sheng from an assignment shortly before he mustered out, carrying her and an aide to a conference. They got on very well, as he recalls, so he is happy to accept; plus, free food, what's not to like.

The dinner turns out to be a farewell party for a number of Army officers mustering out on Mongo. Arion finds himself seated next to a bulky, grey-skinned almost-human who is monosyllabically polite, focusing his attention chiefly on the soup course. As the dinner winds down, Major Sheng gathers the pair of them up by eye and takes them aside into a small, quiet room.

"Arion," she says warmly. "Good to see you again," and this prompts an exchange of what-have-you-been-doing that lasts a good half hour, while the bulky humanoid acquires - and consumes - a prodigious quantity of leftover soup, seeming not to care that it is cold by now. Arion notes that he carefully strains out any lumps and sets them aside.

Eventually, Sheng gets down to business.

"Arion," she says, "I have a favour to ask you. Mr Osheen here has been my bodyguard for some years, and I owe him my life, more than once. But, his kind are not welcome in Imperial space, and I can't justify taking him on my next assignment. To be frank, no-one else wants him, I can't protect him any more, but I do owe him. So, as a personal favour to me: Can you sign him onto your crew?" Arion turns to Mr Osheen.

"How do you feel about that?" he asks.

"I am a soldier," Mr Osheen replies calmly, and with the plodding and slightly forced pronunciation of someone whose vocal apparatus is not suited to Anglic. "I go where I am sent."

"What would you do as part of my crew?"

"I am qualified on ship's lasers, but my chief role has been to kill Major Sheng's enemies and consume their bodily fluids. For nourishment," he says, helpfully. Arion begins to understand why Mr Osheen faces some prejudice in Imperial space. The greyskin continues. "I would transfer my allegiance to you, and serve you in the same way. Will there be opportunities to kill enemies and consume their bodily fluids in your service?"

Arion considers this before replying. "Not if I can help it," he says, though honesty forces him to continue. "But I'm afraid it is more likely than not, at some point."

Later, he is never able to explain satisfactorily why he agrees, even to himself. It just feels like the right thing to do, and Arion is a man who trusts his gut.

"Okay, Major," he says. "But someday I might need to ask you for a favour in return. Welcome aboard, Mr Osheen." Sheng and Osheen exchange a final salute, then both shake hands with Arion, and the deal is closed.

GM Notes

Episode 4, so Bennies refresh. I think we'll say that Wealth dice refresh every 4 posts too. I like the idea of refreshing Bennies and Wealth dice at the same time in my group games as well, one less thing to track.

The Solo encounter rolls for this session:

• Ship encounter leaving Jewell: Private small craft, medical emergency - doctor is ill. Arion can't help with that so I swap 'doctor is ill' for 'drive is broken'.
• Event (non-passenger): Broken fresher floods stateroom. That sounds like cause for a reaction check, which I decide ought to be a Spirit roll; critical failure, and the reaction check gives 'Panic/Anxiety'.
• Ship encounter arriving Mongo: Mining cutter, thinks Arion is a pirate based on rumour.
• Starport encounter Mongo: Potential contact, reaction roll of 8 confirms as a friend. Roll type on Patron table (Solo p. 59), soldier.
• World encounter Mongo: Invited to a posh function. Roll patron to see who the host is; local military officer, reaction 11.

The 'soldier' encounter offers a good chance to start getting the band back together, so since he is friendly, I decide that this NPC is Mr Osheen, a regular supporting character; the rest of it comes from One Page Mythic rolls, which I won't bore you with.

One full-fledged PC is enough for the moment, so based on Mr Osheen's origin in earlier campaigns as a 5150 grath, I assign him the SWADE Zombie statblock. In 5150, grath are shot on sight in Gaian Hegemony space, which is the 5150 equivalent of the Imperium; that seems a bit harsh, so I decided to interpret that as a Law Level check whenever Mr Osheen leaves the ship on an Imperial world. It also gave me an idea for the reason behind the party invitation, which you see above.

Aslan Route 13: The Alley Cat

"The first rule of running a hexcrawl is: Never let the players know you're running a hexcrawl." - Baron de Ropp

Sink, 1105 Week 40

Checking with the abbot that he has nothing for them to deliver or pick up, the crew of the Macavity lift off from Sink bound for The World, where the Prince's boon companions have now completed their security contract at the starport. They are carrying an invitation from the Prince to his friends, offering them positions on his new landhold.

En route to the jump limit they encounter an aslan patrol cruiser looking for pirates, which asks for news from Sink; they report that an affair of honour has occurred between two groups of ihatei, but otherwise things have been quiet.

Jumpspace, 1105 Week 41

Sensor failures lead the crew to suspect they have a dead stowaway on board, but in fact one of the replaceable modules has failed, so Vila replaces it and all returns to normal.

The World, 1105 Week 42

The Macavity delivers Prince Hteleitoirl's offer to a mixed reception, ranging from joyful acceptance to muttered observations that his last adventure didn't go so well, and maybe better luck could be had elsewhere. All the same, the ship will have full cabins on its way back to Sink.

While the crew are loading and offloading cargo, a group of aslan approach the ship, and the leader addresses Captain Ashran - unusual as she is female and he is legally male. She and her entourage have no clan markings, and are clearly accustomed to violence. She confirms that the crew are associated with the Prince, and wishes to buy passage for two negotiators back to Sink, where they will make him a business proposition. Mazun figures their money is as good as anyone's, and agrees.

Later, he has a few drinks with the captain of the ship that brought her in - Captain Salma Hadi of the Chesterton's Fence, who has clearly seen better days; she and tells him that these are representatives of the Rea’a Hrilkhir, the aslan organised crime syndicate on Tyokh, led by Okheai, also known as 'the Alley Cat', and are not to be trifled with. The captain warns Mazun that the mob has effective control of the lucrative guide and interpreter market on Tyokh, and any guide or interpreter he hires there should be assumed to be reporting back to the mob.

While Mazun is digesting this, Governor Olc - the local ruler - approaches them and says he has a problem; the station's main fusion plant is failing, could he borrow their engineers to take a look at it? Overnight, of course, so that the locals don't start asking any awkward questions.

The engineers of both traders, plus a couple from an aslan survey vessel that chances to be in the system and the insatiably curious Dr Matauranga, are conducted through the depressurised ring section between the starport and the station proper. Vila speaks for all of them when he sucks air sadly through his teeth and says: "What cowboy put that in for you? Fixing it won't be cheap." The Governor explains that this is an original Rule of Man installation, and to maintain the inhabitants' belief that there is no universe apart from this decaying ring of crumbling corridors and hydroponics vats, the failing parts must not only be replaced but must appear identical to those already in place.

After extensive discussions which propose and discard multiple options, the crew settles on getting the mob to buy and install a new fusion plant from Tyokh in the depressurised ring section and run an extension cord through to the official plant. The Alley Cat explains to Governor Olc that he works for her now, and enquires how he intends to pay? She has him over a barrel, as without a functioning power plant things get cold and dark very quickly.

The Governor has nothing to offer but indentured servants selected from his population, which it turns out is how he was paying for the security contract. For their part in brokering the deal, the Macavity's crew fill up their low berths with hydroponics technicians for Sink.

Jumpspace, 1105 Week 43

A blindingly persuasive Captain Ashran gets the Alley Cat's emissaries to spill the beans; their offer is a simple one. They have money and muscle, both useful for a startup landhold with a security contract, and as they are composed of outcastes, what they want is a way back into aslan society - respectability, if you will. The Alley Cat proposes to bankroll the Prince's landhold and provide him with troops posing as wandering ihatei, including her own son; in return, the Prince will arrange for them to be adopted by Clan Iuwoi.

Sink, 1105 Week 44

Mazun and Vila seek out the Prince and Ellie respectively, due to their official genders, and explain the deal that will be offered to them. Vila, who has personal experience of this sort of thing, stresses that once you get involved with the mob, you never get out, and while initially what they ask of you is harmless, it will grow less and less honourable over time.

The Prince considers this at great length, and almost agrees; but in the end he declines politely, and equally politely the envoys tell him they will be back later with a better offer.

Meanwhile, we check in on the hydroponics technicians. They went to sleep in their own beds, were drugged and kidnapped, and woke up several weeks later in low berths in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by people they've never seen before and big furry demons with claws and fangs. If it were not for Dr Matauranga's tranquilisers, they might well have had a fit. The Prince is having none of this 'indentured servant' nonsense - a slave is a slave, and the concept offends him - so he frees them on the spot, and offers them employment and his protection as part of his landhold. The crew gently breaks the news to them that they can never go home again, so although the Prince means well, they have no real choice but to accept, and step out blinking into the Big Room with the Blue Ceiling, wondering what that warm yellow thing is up there.

The crew decide to take the mob envoys with them to Paal directly, so they don't have time to cause any trouble; the envoys are fine with this, as it will get them home faster than waiting for a ship on Sink. Ahoakhi asks them to deliver some reports and letters to Paal for forwarding to Tyokh. These include a situation report from the Prince to his father the Clanlord, warning him to be on his guard against the local mob.

Captain Ashran decides it is time to check in with his handler on Cordan, and notes that by the time the Macavity arrives there it will be time for the annual overhaul anyway, so they lay in a course to Tech-World, Exe and Cordan.

GM Notes

A short session this week as I was feeling a bit under the weather, but an eventful one nonetheless. The spotlight was on Mazun and Vila this time, so next session I must find some way to turn it on Rex and the good doctor.

Since I'm running both this campaign and the Arioniad in weekly 'turns', it simplifies things to acknowledge that in the writeup. Again, I had no real plan for this session, so I turned to Solo for some events; I rolled those up in advance for the first few weeks, and then winged it, using Solo, Mythic, and some actual physical dice. I'll try this for the next week or two, and if it's successful I'll use that going forward, and let the Fury plotline blossom or die on the vine as the players dictate. What I found this session was that the items I had rolled up in advance and had time to think about worked really well, but those I diced up on the spot did not - my improvisational skills weren't up to the task, at least not this week.

It was helpful to work through Solo, print out the tables I wanted to use, and put them in a binder in the order they come up during a game; Solo first gives you the tables common to all four campaign types it covers, then tables specific to each campaign, and the tables are often separated by explanatory text. This is a good choice for book size and layout, and works well on the initial read-through, but it results in a lot of page flipping at the table; as is often the case with RPG products, the order that is best for learning the product is not the best one for using it in play. Doing this highlighted for me that I've been missing out several of the encounter rolls; the week travelling should include two starport encounters and two ship encounters, I must fix that going forward. (As an aside, this exercise was the point where I finally rage-quit Adobe Acrobat for being unusably slow and continuously trying to sell me extra features and AI 'support' I neither need nor want. I just want to read the freakin' PDF, is that too much to ask? I installed Sumatra PDF Reader and haven't looked back.)

Another thing I am considering doing is abandoning the world writeups and just letting the players look up whatever they want in the Traveller Wiki. The last month or two have established that as GM or solo player, I don't really use anything beyond the world profiles. I never did that back in the day either, and that worked well enough, so maybe I should revert to that approach.

One thing I do enjoy is presenting the players with moral dilemmas and seeing how they react. With the best of intentions, the kind the road to Hell is paved with, they wound up handing over an entire world to the aslan equivalent of the yakuza (which they took to calling "the unpronounceable mafia") and becoming slavers themselves. They have not yet thought to ask why the Alley Cat wants Sink.

All of that will have consequences downstream.

Arion 1-03: Helping With Enquiries

"The vast majority of the experience is just you and your friends talking and making some skill rolls. All those extra rules are there when you want or need them to help make a decision." - Savage Worlds Adventure Edition

Jumpspace, 1105 Week 4

Arion thanks Lieutenant Girma for dealing with the impoundment of his ship on Emerald, but otherwise they maintain a professional distance throughout the jump, and there are no onboard events of interest. Even the dodgy fuel pump behaves itself; it knows what it'll get if it doesn't.

Arion doesn't ask what's in the cargo. He has no 'need to know', and he strongly suspects Girma doesn't either, so even if she wanted to tell him - and why would she? - she probably couldn't.

Jewell, 1105 Week 5

Exchanging pleasantries with the subsidised liner Spinward Star, outbound as he arrives, Arion lands the Dolphin without incident.

No sooner has Lieutenant Girma departed with her cargo pod on a crawler than starport security knocks on the hatch, wanting a few words with Arion.

"Arion Metaxas?" asks the man in charge, clearly a plainclothes detective. "I'm Detective Falk, Port Authority. May we ask you a few questions?"

"Sure, go ahead."

"How do you know Factor Phillips?"

"He brokered a cargo for me about three weeks ago. It got me into trouble on Emerald, had something illegal in it, some kind of white powder."

"Did you know that was inside?"

"No, the crates were sealed, as usual. I don't know if Phillips knew about it. May I ask what your interest in him is?"

"He was found murdered shortly after you left Jewell. You're the last person we know of to see him alive. Do you mind if we check your flight logs?"

"Not at all." Falk gives Arion a network address and the logs are copied; there is a brief pause while the security AI digests them, and a ping as a message returns to Falk.

"Well, Mr Metaxas, it seems you're in the clear. The time of death is quite a few hours after you left, and Surveillance gives you a solid alibi. Do you know any reason why someone would want to kill Phillips?" Arion shakes his head.

"The we'll bid you good day. I am required by law to inform you that you will be under automated surveillance until the case is resolved. If you think of anything else, message me at that address." Arion nods, but his mind is already turning to finding his next cargo.

Phillips is no more, but business has already adapted like water flowing into the hole where he once was. Casting around, Arion finds a cargo for Mongo and accepts the contract; judging by the warning labels it is not something he wants to open up in flight, nor is it especially valuable, but beggars can't be choosers. He loads it up and is on his way.

GM Notes

One of the beauties of solo play is that you can change the rules whenever you feel like it, without worrying what anyone else thinks. I lean into this by using rules which allow me to zoom in and out to different levels of detail, depending on how much time and energy I have.

Being low on spoons this week, I decide on a low-resolution episode; that means switching from SWADE daily encounter checks to Solo weekly ones, which in turn means I only need to track at a weekly level, not a daily one.

• Jumpspace: In-Game Reaction (Solo p.19) - 2d6 = 8, no emotional outbursts. On board Events, non-passenger ship (Solo p. 56) - 24, typical trip, nothing special.
• Jewell: Ship Encounter (Solo pp. 40-45); a 600 ton subbie politely ignores us. World Encounter (Solo p. 58) - 65, legal trouble. Again. The current context immediately tells me what that is, and I decide Arion needs to talk his way out of it; he rolls Persuasion 1d6 plus his Wild Die (or as I usually abbreviate it, 1d6w); 11, success with a raise.

Had I been feeling more energetic, I might have dealt with the legal trouble as a Social Conflict. On to the trading...

Conveniently, there are six worlds within jump-2; a die roll tells me the next port of call is Mongo. That has an xboat route, so I decide it's a busy route and draw four cards; Spade 3, Diamond Queen, Spade 8, Diamond Jack. Arion rolls a 3 for Persuasion - failure - so gets the lowest paying contract; Trader Voyages tells me that's the Jack of Diamonds, raw materials worth $110 of profit per unit. The Gagarin deck plans show me the Dolphin is 80' long, which makes it Size 12, Gargantuan; it can carry three units of goods. Finally, I roll 1d10 for the complication and get a 4, hazardous goods.

Mulling over how to use Trader Voyages with the optional Wealth rules in SWADE (p. 145), I decide that for the trading profit to count as a Reward, it needs to be the PC's starting cash times his current Rank, in this case $500 x 1 (Novice) = $500. The total profit on this voyage, $330, isn't enough to be a Reward.

I'll park the story there while I imagine what that cargo can be and how it will feature in the story. Adapting a trick from the Tale of the Manticore podcast, I roll a One-Page Mythic suggestion to hold in reserve; Action 72, Nature, and Description 10, Clean. Not immediately obvious how that plays into things, but I trust the process.

Aslan Route 12: The Uninvited Guests

You may not recall the moment that you asked me
But your invitation was clear
You'll pretend you've never met me but it's far too late
Now I'm here
- Marillion, The Uninvited Guest

Fast Travel, 246-1105 to 267-1105

Escaping the vargr corsairs raiding the House of Shrouded Mirrors on Pourne, the crew of the Macavity carry the monks they were able to rescue, including the abbot and the Sage, back to Sink via Paal. They use the trip to discuss their options.

Nobody much fancies dealing with the Fury on Torpol and Drinax through a combination of stealth and violence, trusting to the psionic shield helmets they bought on Tech-World to protect them against mind control. There's an Imperial agent involved, so it's not entirely clear if the Imperium is pro- or anti-Fury, assuming they even know about it. Vila points out that nobody is paying the crew to deal with the Fury, so he is against doing so. Dr Matauranga, although curious, wants some time to do more research; besides, he has a new toy, a curious spike made of precious metals and engraved with who-knows-what, which he grabbed on the way out while Vila was picking up more fenceable loot.

So, they decide to return to trading along the Aslan Route, dropping in on Cordan to report to Mazun's handler and receive further orders. That might include handing off the whole Fury thing to the Navy or Marines, or they might go after the Fury later, when they're better prepared.

The first step of this plan is to drop off the assorted monks on Sink.

Sink, 268-1105 to 275-1105

When the Macavity arrives back at Sink, Ahoakhi informs them that Clan Htyowao has sent a small group of ihatei to disrupt Prince Hteleitoirl's settlement plans. As yet, his allies have not joined him - they must first complete their security contract on The World - so it falls to the crew of the Macavity to deal with the situation. For the moment, she says, there is a warrior called Iroioah with five males and a dozen females, but if this is not nipped in the bud, more will come.

The abbot informs them that he would like them to deal with the situation; one set of ihatei is bad enough, but two groups that hate each other can't end well, and he and the Sage need to focus their attention on how to deal with the Fury. Vila gets a codicil appended to their contract so that in addition to hauling cargo, the Macavity may also "carry out such other missions as the abbott may from time to time propose".

Vila argues forcefully that the Macavity should flatten the new ihatei camp from orbit, and Dr Matauranga builds on this by suggesting they dump the bodies in the Swamp, which would surely be pleased with the new input; but as they are associate members of Clan Iuwoi, this is bound to get them talked about and would probably be dishonourable behaviour, leading to a new Enemy for the crew. The Macavity locates the ihatei camp by making a high-altitude pass; the new neighbours are about 100 km away and seem to be settling in for the long term.

After much discussion, the crew decides against "nuking them from orbit" (dishonourable), setting wildfires to burn them out (dishonourable and obvious), and engineering a flash flood to wash them away (impractical). Rex suggests a duel; if the party wins, the Htyowao ihatei must leave and never return, while if they win, they gain the right to settle permanently. No-one can think of a better plan, so they propose this to Prince Hteleitoirl. He approves, thinking it a fine and calculated insult for Rex to challenge the newcomers' leader, Iroioah, on his behalf; but counsels that Iroioah is an experienced duellist, with five victories in duels to the death. This suggests to the crew that he is no simple ihatei, rather a clan troubleshooter, and the situation has been engineered by Clan Htyowao to revenge themselves for the damage to their reputation.

Vila negotiates terms with the ihatei females, agreeing the stakes and settling on a duel to third blood. The stakes are a little asymmetrical, as if the newcomers are allowed to claim land, they become part of their clan again and establish a foothold for it on Sink, while if they are expelled, that doesn't bind other members of their clan; but it's the best Vila can manage.

The duel begins with Rex and Iroioah circling, each trying to intimidate the other. The exchange of threats continues throughout the duel, which lasts less than a minute; Iroioah trips on something unseen and sprawls at Rex's feet, and although he manages to recover, Rex cuts him at each exchange of blows while dodging everything aimed at him. At length, Iroioah is too bloodied to continue, and Rex claims victory.

As agreed, Iroioah and his companions pack up and head back to the starport to await passage offworld. The Macavity's crew realise they haven't heard the last of this; Hteleitoirl asks them to pick up his boon companions from The World to make his position more defensible, as their contract is coming to an end.

GM Notes

I didn't have a suitable scenario prepared, so I created one using The Scheme Pyramid. I decided that the Prince's enemies ought to come and have a word with him, then drew cards as usual. When using The Scheme Pyramid as written, you draw the cards openly and the players decide what skill to use, as if it were a Quick Encounter; when I use it to come up with a scenario, I draw the cards secretly in advance, decide on suitable skills, and build the scenario around that. It's entirely likely that the players will come up with a different way of overcoming the obstacles, and if so, I let them; the object of the exercise is to create the obstacles in the first place, no more than that. Here's the draw for this scenario and my reasoning. Creating the scenario in this way took me just under an hour. As it turned out, the group only activated three of the seven cards, but everyone had fun and something to do, so that's okay.

Bottom Tier (one card per PC, i.e. four):

• 4 of Diamonds. Something to do with Smarts; find the ihatei camp using Electronics, Survival, etc. Dr Matauranga, Vila and Rex had the skills for that.
• Red Joker. Any skill, but what's the obstacle? Had this been drawn on the top tier I would've drawn until I got a face card, so I do that and get a Jack of Hearts; the opposition is a group of Extras, let's say five ihatei warriors. They didn't come into play.
• Ace of Spades. A Wild Card opponent with a d12, that ought to be the leader. He gets a name, Iroioah, and a Ally Personality - 5, experienced. There are now six male aslan in total, and there can be anywhere from no females to two per male; I decide to go high, suggesting to the crew that this is an officially sanctioned mission rather than a bunch of males having a laugh. The obvious way to deal with him would be a duel between him and Rex, which is what happened.
• 9 of Hearts. Something to do with Spirit. That's some sort of interpersonal skill used to avoid or limit the fighting. This was Vila negotiating the terms of the duel.

Middle Tier (half as many cards, i.e. two; none of these were invoked):

• 7 of Hearts. A Spirit skill; interpersonal skills to negotiate a settlement. I made a mental note that this could be a Social Conflict if we had time. That could've been Mazun or Vila.
• 5 of Diamonds. A Smarts skill; how about Battle to resolve a Mass Battle between the forces of the two clans, which rock up at the same time, spoiling for a fight. That would have given Mazun a chance to use his unique skill, but his player couldn't make the session.

Top Tier (cards halved again, now there is only one, and it didn't get used):

• 5 of Spades. Agility skill. How about Stealthing into the leader's tent and Thievery on his luggage to acquire something? I left figuring out what that was for later, and as it turned out, I didn't need this encounter.

Arion 1-02: Imperial Entanglements

Previously, on the Arioniad: Arion has accepted a contract to take some luxury goods from Jewell to Emerald. He does not know that the factor he dealt with concealed something in the crates, nor that a third party wants them back. Now read on...

Jewell, 007-1105

By the time Phillips' erstwhile interrogator gets to the starport, makes his way to the right hangar, and bluffs his way inside, Arion is five hours into his outbound leg.

"I wouldn't want to be Phillips today," he mutters to himself under his breath. Come to think of it, it's not going to be much fun being him, either; the boss is not a forgiving sort. Maybe he can divert the worst of it onto Phillips? Worth a try.

Jumpspace, 008-1105 to 014-1105

Two days out of Jewell, the power plant drops into standby mode, and the diagnostics tell Arion the main fuel pump has failed.

"Stupid piece of smegging..." he yells at it, belabouring it with a wrench. It glugs in protest, then starts working again right away. The power plant spools up to normal output once more, and Arion makes a mental note to replace it with the spare at the next stop, then replace the spare. It doesn't matter how good the warranty is when you're in another dimension entirely.

Emerald, 015-1105 to 021-1105

Protocol dictates taking a full day to approach and land, or take off and jump, so there is time to exchange gossip and information with other vessels. A freight hauler called Golden Harvest alerts Arion to the fact that the local Customs officials are being unusually thorough; that doesn't worry him as he's done nothing wrong.

His lack of concern changes when the Customs inspectors find something in his delivery.

"What's this?" one of them asks, holding up a bag of white powder.

"Some sort of white powder, obviously. I don't know what, I didn't know it was in there."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"Look, officer, that's a sealed container, if you check its log you'll see I haven't opened it. There's no way for me to tell what's inside, that's deliberate to stop inflight theft." The officer knows this full well, but Arion spends most of that day, and the next, explaining it in multiple different ways to various officers while their colleagues go over the Dolphin with a fine-toothed comb. Unable either to find any evidence, or trust him, they reluctantly release him after the legal limit for detention without charge, but impound the ship pending 'further investigation', which he suspects will take a long time. His cargo is confiscated, so his hoped-for profit evaporates; he'll be lucky if he doesn't go broke, and can only hope the opportunity costs aren't compounded by fines.

He spends most of 018-1105 in the starport bar, being watched by plainclothes customs officers, which attracts the attention of some local vigilantes who reason that if the local police are watching him he must have done something wrong. He manages to avoid getting into a brawl, largely because he is under surveillance and the vigilantes don't want to take any chances with starport Customs. That suggests to him that something approaching the rule of law is still in force locally, but all the same, he retires to the scout base attached to the starport for safety.

He is still there on 020-1105 when a young Navy Lieutenant walks in, dark-haired, with an alert expression and a natural grace to her movements which catches his eye. Her nametag says GIRMA.

"Arion Metaxas?"

"Yes, how can I help you?"

"You can take me and my cargo to the Navy base on Jewell, stat."

"I'd love to, but Customs impounded my ship."

"The Navy will deal with that. This is urgent."

"All right... how long will dealing with it take?"

"Less time than it takes us to get to the hangar. As I say, it's urgent. Do you have anything you need to pick up?"

"No, all my stuff is evidence, so it was impounded with the ship. Do I get paid?"

"You get your ship released, restocked and refuelled. That do?"

"Perfect. Lead the way."

Mechanical View

The context at the start of this episode is that Phillips has concealed something in the cargo, and has revealed this under interrogation by a couple of rough types. We don't know who they are, or why Phillips did this. Arion has not yet taken off, but will do soon. (Context matters if I need to fall back on One-Page Mythic, so it's helpful to understand it.)

We begin by drawing a card for a travel encounter as per SWADE p. 144, and get a five of diamonds. Arion does not have an encounter that day, which tells me that the goons sent to recover the shipment don't manage to intercept him before he lifts off, and while there is bound to be traffic around Jewell, none of it is dramatically interesting today. (Most games have you roll for who you meet first, and then how friendly they are; SWADE reverses that order, I suspect because it's a generic ruleset and encounter tables for every possible genre would have expanded the book enormously.)

Next I make a Science roll to calculate the hyperspace jump; 1d6 with a Wild Die, and with a 2 Arion fails, but he can try again, and on the reroll he gets a 5, success. A critical failure would have meant a misjump. I often don't bother rolling for astrogation, since it rarely helps develop the story.

Now we have a week in jump, so I switch to Solo, where I need to roll for In-Game Reactions (p. 19) and Onboard Events (p. 56). The reaction is a 6, followed by a 3 to determine what kind; Arion loses his temper. The onboard event roll of 4, 2 says a fuel pump fails. Arion makes a Repair roll to fix it; the die aces twice, so he rolls a 17 - success with three raises. Those two look made for each other, so I merge them.

Then we're in a new system, so I draw cards for seven days' worth of encounters. Wow, this is going to be a busy week...

• Jack of Diamonds. A ship encounter on approach, treasure; most likely some useful information. I roll on the Solo ship encounter tables (pp. 49-44), but use the card suit instead of the Ship Reactions table (Solo p. 45). This is a 3,000 ton large transport called the Golden Harvest.
• Queen of Clubs. An obstacle on the first day groundside; maybe that's what the information was about. Solo World Encounter (p. 58) 6, 5 - legal trouble, logically that should be about the hidden cargo. I roll Persuasion for Arion to talk his way out of it and get a 4, just barely.
• Three of Diamonds. Nothing.
• King of Hearts. Neutral or friendly strangers. I roll on the Solo World Encounters table (p. 58) and get 6, 4 - meet a potential Contact; reaction roll 4, so if we meet again Arion must roll 4 or less on 2d6 to get help from them. Who are they? The Colourful Locals table (Solo p. 38) says they are vigilantes.
• Queen of Hearts. Neutral or friendly strangers. World Encounter 3, 5 - courier job to next location; that sounds like a patron; Patron Table Solo p. 59, roll 1, 1 - naval officer. I select Navy NPC 10 from Classic Traveller Supplement 1 for speed, the first one with a suitable rank, and die rolls tell me this is a female Lieutenant whose most notable feature is her youth, called Kamla Girma. I could roll randomly for a destination, but reason that a Navy officer is most likely going to a naval base, and the closest one is Jewell. I decide to shuffle the dates around a little for the sake of the story, and that it makes most sense if Customs find something in his cargo and impound the ship, but the patron springs it for him.
• Five of Spades. Nothing.
• Five of Hearts. Nothing. That would have been a ship encounter when leaving.

GM Notes

I think I now have the full set of tools for this game. The base rules, as shown last time, include the SWADE core rulebook, Zozer Games' Solo rules to add features for solitaire play in a Traveller-ish universe, Trader Voyages, and One-Page Mythic to fill any gaps. I'm considering whether to drop the SWADE card draws for encounters and just use Solo, it's a bit clunky to switch between them in mid-encounter. I'm also thinking about dropping the Classic Traveller Supplements for NPCs, since I should be able to do that with Mythic.

This week, I'm adding two more products: Moon Toad's Gagarin-class scout/courier, and the 1st edition Mongoose Traveller campaign book Tripwire. In honesty, the details and deck plans for Arion's scoutship very rarely come into play, but I do find they help me visualise the narrative; further, the Gagarin has jump-3 capability, and that is essential if you want to stay inside Jewell subsector but still have access to all the worlds. Likewise for Tripwire, the descriptions of worlds don't feature that often, but when they do, it's less effort to look them up than make them up, and for this season of the Arioniad minimum effort is my watchword.

The underlying conceit of the Arioniad is that the simulation hypothesis is true, and Arion is being run through various universes by an extremely advanced civilisation, partly as a science experiment and partly as a pay-per-view action adventure serial; so the fact that world descriptions and other aspects of the rules and setting change periodically is actually explained by the narrative itself.

That pleases me.

Review: Tripwire

"Initially, one or two sub-sectors should be quite enough for years of adventure..." - Traveller Book 3, Worlds and Adventures

Once I'd decided to use the Jewell subsector for my next solo space opera game, it seemed worthwhile to get this, so I did.

In a nutshell: Short campaign for Mongoose Traveller 1st edition, published in 2009. 93 page PDF written by Simon Beal, available here, price $15 at time of writing.

What You Get

Introduction: This sets the scene; tensions are rising between the Third Imperium and the Zhodani Consulate, and the PCs - the crew of a jump-2 ship - are about to be drawn into espionage and political intrigue. 

Jewell: Unlike the rest of the book, this five-page chapter is mostly player-safe and shows what the PCs know about the subsector; major powers, capsule descriptions of worlds, subsector map, timeline of relevant events. I would probably use the first three pages of this as a player handout, because this version of the subsector differs from other implementations. The last two pages have spoilers.

The next six chapters (Passenger, Data, Conspiracies, Keystone, Tripwire, Coda) take the PCs to every world in the subsector, beginning on Farreach when they take on a passenger for Esalin. Each chapter includes some more details on the relevant worlds, statblocks and descriptions for major NPCs, and the next piece of the plot. This is generally linear, with each encounter leading to the next with little flexibility, except for two periods, in each of which the PCs are are given a group of half-a-dozen worlds and have to visit each of them, but in whatever order they like. To collect the set and complete the campaign, the PCs need to work out some way of making three-parsec jumps.

Finally, there is an appendix of general-purpose encounters, NPCs and gear that can be added as needed, including deck plans and statblocks for a couple of Zhodani ships. Many of the NPCs are passengers, who can become involved in the plotline and join the group, possibly replacing earlier PCs.

Loose Canon

My players have a habit of relying on the Traveller Map and Traveller Wiki during play, so as I read through the product I cross-checked the information in the campaign against those. The sources are somewhat different, and you will have to choose which set of world descriptions and which nobles you want to use; the plot and encounters should be usable either way.

On the plus side, it makes me feel less guilty about constantly changing things in my campaigns; if it's good enough for the publishers, it's good enough for me.

As an aside, when I run this for my players I intend to pair it with Zozer Games' Into the Neutral Zone; that requires me to establish that Arden is a matriarchy (obviously, the principal NPC matriarchs will be called Dale and Aura). I don't think that contradicts established canon, but given the extent of the differences between this version of Jewell and the current official one, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. The world writeups in that contradict both editions of Mongoose Traveller, but that's a problem for Future Me.

What I Think

The plotline is, as I said, linear; it also assumes that the PCs are loyal to the Third Imperium, to the point of being willing to kill, torture, and risk their own lives for it. The players would need to be aware of, and buy into, those assumptions from the outset.

If you can accept the assumptions, though, this is rather a nice little campaign. Things I like about it:

• At an estimated 20-30 sessions, it's about the right length for the games I currently run.
• It's limited to a single subsector, and entirely self-contained; I don't need to have a dozen extra products to run it.
• The basic black and white layout means it's a small file, just over 6 MB.
• It would make a nice run up to the the Fifth Frontier War.

Things I don't like are that the artwork is a little basic, and it diverges a great deal from what is now established Third Imperium canon; not only is it self-contained, but you need to keep it that way.

I'm pleased with my purchase, and I wish Mongoose had done - or would do - more short campaigns like this, focussed on a single subsector. Maybe a bit less railroad and a bit more sandbox, though.

Review: Quick Ship File - Gagarin Class Scout/Courier

"To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature — could one dream of anything more?" - Yuri Gagarin

Updated 11 April 2025 to reflect revised content.

No game last Saturday due to scheduling conflicts, so let's review something instead of sharing a writeup.

In a nutshell: Cepheus Engine stats and deckplans for the Gagarin class scoutship and half a dozen variants; 51 page PDF from Moon Toad Publishing with accoutrements, available here, £4.50 at time of writing.

Intentionality check: Not an impulse purchase, so check passed. I've known Moon Toad was working on this for a while, and it appeared to be inspired by one of my favourite scoutship deckplans, the Type S as shown in Traveller20. So it went on my wishlist immediately.

What You Get

The product covers seven versions of the basic design, each with full design details and deck plans:

• Baseline configuration. The usual scoutship features, but only one stateroom, no air/raft or turret, and 22 tons cargo. This is the basic spaceframe, built at TL 12; other variants are made by adding bits to it, reducing the cargo space, and they all start by adding a turret and air/raft.
• VIP transport. This adds a luxury stateroom and four crew bunks, and has 7 tons of cargo.
• Basic mail packet. This one has three staterooms, one standard and two cramped, and 11 tons of cargo.
• Extended operations packet. Three standard staterooms, 9 tons of cargo.
• Small cargo. One standard and one cramped stateroom, 14 tons of cargo.
• Basic passenger. With four standard staterooms and 5 tons of cargo, this one is actually the closest to the stock Classic Traveller Type S.
• Maximum cargo. One standard stateroom, 17 tons of cargo.

In all cases, the ship has jump-2 drives, but enough fuel tankage for an extra jump-1 (or additional mission duration). It also has two half-ton mission pods, each of which can further customise the ship with (say) an extra sensor or a one-shot missile. The product lists 21 different mission pods, which are more fluff than crunch but still intriguing, a random location chart, a page of details on the air/raft, and statblocks and portraits for eight characters, set up to be easily printed and cut out as cards.  

This is a fairly big download for the page count, and consists of four files:

• GagarinScout.pdf (15 MB). The main PDF; introduction, full designs for each variant, several deckplans for each variant with different amounts of 'clutter' such as cargo containers. These are interspersed with illustrations of the ship type in various paint schemes and attitudes.
• GagarinAssets.zip (112 MB). A collection of 153 files; 21 clutter items (things like cargo crates), 16 environmental backdrops (roads, snow, jungle etc), 4 external views of the ship, 18 planetary backdrops, 9 illustrations from the PDF, 2 air/raft images, 12 deep space backdrops, 72 tokens of various characters. Basically, all the VTT or print-and-play assets you might need to use this product except deck plans, but I usually snapshot those from the PDF anyway. Updated: Now includes an extra 19 files of deck plans for VTT use.
• gagarin_POD.pdf (74 MB). I'm guessing this is the file you use for making your own hard copy via something like Lulu, but I'm not sure; I don't swim in those waters. It's about 5x the size of the basic PDF, so I assume higher resolution.
• Update: Now includes a fourth file, GagarinClassScoutDeckPlans.pdf. Just the deck plans (and pregenerated characters). These are in landscape rather than portrait format, so they fit better on a computer screen.

What I Think

Moon Toad deck plans have been my go-to designs since about 2020, and I think this one might take over from their previous Strela class as my favourite scoutship. One thing I especially like about it is that if I print it on A4 paper, it's exactly the right size for 15mm figures or meeples.

Moon Toad have clearly thought about how I might want to use the ship in a game, and provided me with everything I might want for 15mm print-and-play; the only things missing for VTT are the deck plans, but that's nothing a quick screenshot or two and a bit of image editing won't fix.

Given the number of ship variants and VTT assets included, I am very pleased with my purchase. 

Update 11 April 2025: Moon Toad read this review and immediately added the VTT deck plans I wanted. Thanks guys, great service!

Arion 1-01: A Glitch in the Matrix

"My mother, I dreamed a dream of stars that fell upon me." - The Epic of Gilgamesh

Elsewhere, date unknown

"Another instance?"

"Yeah. I have some predictions I want to check."

"What about the last one?"

"I've paused it. We can always restart it later... Aaannd it's fully initialised, here we go."

"This one, then coffee, okay?"

"Sure."

Jewell, 001-1105

Arion starts awake, and at first he doesn't remember getting into this particular bed. Shouldn't there be someone in it with him? Memories start assembling themselves, slowly and with a strangely unreal feeling at first, but gathering speed and fluency. He's had that a few times in recent years. After a moment, he remembers discussing it with the medic recertifying him for flight duty, who said it was called jamais vu and nothing to worry about. He realises he can't remember the doctor, just the diagnosis, but then reasons he has seen a lot of doctors over the years so that isn't too surprising.

He steps to the window of the hotel room - sealed against the atmospheric taint - and gazes out over the city lights. Only the brightest few stars are visible, and despite knowing rationally that he should recognise them instantly, it takes a few seconds; he recognises that as another symptom of jamais vu. A couple of them seem to be falling, but after a moment his experienced eye recognises them as inbound ships, radiating heat. Jewell has a big starport and this close to the border, it has a lot of military facilities too.

None of this is anything to worry about, he tells himself, and troops back to bed. Let's see how I feel in the morning.

The human equivalent of "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Jewell, 004-1105

Arion enters Godown 95 at the starport, and sees the man he's looking for; thirtysomething, unpolished shoes on the desk, cleaning his nails with a packing knife. In theory, it's illegal to carry a knife on Jewell; in practice, there are a lot of innocent things you need one for, like cooking, or opening parcels, so you still find them in a lot of places, and as long as you're in one of those places doing something innocent that needs a knife, you're okay, unless the police are looking for a reason to arrest you. The nametag on the man's chest says PHILLIPS.

"Good morning," Arion says. "I'm looking for a cargo, and people tell me you're the man to talk to."

"That's kind of them," Phillips says, with a genuine smile. "Ex-scout, just mustered out?"

"Guilty as charged," Arion smiles back. It's impossible not to like Phillips, even if you've only just met him.

"Any particular destination?"

Arion shrugs. "Anywhere I can reach with jump-2." Phillips makes a small noise to indicate he is thinking.

"I've got some luxury goods for Emerald," he says. "If you're running a Type S, you should make about 1200 Credits after operating expenses."

"That sounds good. You're familiar with the ship class, then?"

"Pfft. Second commonest in the Imperium, I wouldn't be much of a factor if I didn't know it," Phillips grins.

They shake on the deal, and thumbprint the contract on their commlinks.

"I'll get the cargo bots to load it up. What's the ship?"

"The Dolphin, hangar 87."

Jewell, 007-1105

Phillips comes to in darkness, tied to a chair. Gagged too, he thinks.

"There he is," a distorted voice says. A second voice, equally distorted, speaks to Phillips directly.

"Eshguurii, I take no pleasure in this, but I do need you to understand how serious it is." There is a bright flare of pain in Phillips' hand, and he realises one of his fingers has been broken. He tries not to cry out, because that might encourage them, but fails. The gag converts his scream to something more muffled.

"Now, I'm going to ask you some questions, some of which I already know the answers to. If you don't answer, or lie, that will cost you another finger. Once you run out of fingers, things will get more unpleasant and harder to repair. Nod to show that you understand." Phillips nods, wondering how they will be able to see that in the darkness. Obviously they can, as the second voice says "Good. Take the gag off." This is done, and voice number two continues.

"Where is my shipment?" Phillips weighs his loyalty to a man he met a couple of days ago against his loyalty to his remaining fingers, and the fingers win.

"It's in a crate of luxury goods bound for Emerald aboard a ship called the Dolphin, in hangar 87. It's scheduled to lift today, I don't know if it already has."

"Go get it back," the voice says to someone else, before turning to Phillips once more, dangerously gentle. "Now, Eshguurii, who told you to do that, and why did you think it was a good idea?"

It takes several more fingers before the voice is satisfied with the answers to those questions.

GM Notes

I'm in a low energy state at the moment, and while I want to do some more solo play, I want it to have the highest fun-to-effort ratio possible. So I've picked my favourite solo PC, solid rules I'm familiar with that allow me to operate at multiple different levels of abstraction, and a setting I know very well. To reduce the initial effort, the PC begins alone; more characters can always be added later.

In concrete terms, that means Arion's back in the Third Imperium, using a mixture of Savage Worlds and Traveller products, with One-Page Mythic in my back pocket to fill in the gaps. The character concept is "somebody who can operate a scoutship single-handed", and this time around I'm interpreting that as follows:

Arion Metaxas, human scoutship pilot

Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d6, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigour d6, Wealth d6.

Skills: Athletics d4, Common Knowledge d4, Electronics d6, Fighting d4, Notice d4, Persuasion d6, Piloting d8, Repair d6, Science d6, Shooting d4, Stealth d4.

Pace: 6; Parry: 4; Toughness: 6 (1).

Hindrances: Heroic, Impulsive. Edges: Ace, Alertness.

Gear: Scoutship, pistol, leather jacket.

I haven't used the Jewell subsector in several decades now, but it fits the spies-in-space vibe that my SF games always gravitate towards; it's detailed in the Mongoose campaign Tripwire, and I think that would pair nicely with Zozer's Into the Neutral Zone as a future group game, so the secondary purpose of this first season is to familiarise myself with the region and maybe flesh it out a little more.

The encounter on 004 was generated by drawing a card every day as per page 144 of the SWADE core rulebook until I got an encounter; the Ace of Hearts told me the encounter was neutral or friendly, then I switched to Zozer Games' Solo and the Starport Encounter table on page 39, which confirmed it with a 53, potential Contact, and referred me to the Patron table on page 59, where I learn this person is a government official, who rolled an 11 (friendly, SWADE p. 33) for reaction to Arion and a personality of 7 (Lazy, SWADE p. 112). What kind of NPC is this? I pull out Classic Traveller Supplement 4 and take the first pregenerated Bureaucrat, which gives me an age and an easily-converted statblock. I roll high/low for gender, and get male. I generate a name for him using Space Corsair's language generators: Eshguurii Phillips

For trading, I'm looking for something simpler than the Traveller rules, so I turn to Veiled Fury Entertainment's Trader Voyages. Looking at the map, I think the routes around Jewell are busy, so draw 4 cards - the best one is an Ace of Spades, luxury items with a 20% bonus - $600 per unit. I also roll a success for Persuasion, meaning one Complication, which a d10 tells me is an attack; some Mythic rolls shed a little more light on that.

As I walk you through each use of the various rules, I'll let them fade into the background, so we can focus on the story.

Normally, I strive for the minimum number of products in a game, especially when playing solo, but for once I'm going to unbend and use whatever is most helpful, which will generally be whatever is most familiar and relevant.

More of this as the game unfolds.

Aslan Route 011: The House of Shrouded Mirrors

Previously, on the Aslan Route: The crew of the Macavity has learned that the swamp on Sink is an alien data storage device, with a secure satellite location on Pourne for sensitive data. Their eyewitness account of the fall of Torpol alarms a missionary from Sink, who asks them to take him back there to consult the Abbot. Now read on...

Sink, Paal and Pourne, 204-1105 to 245-1105

The abbot wants to charter the Macavity to travel to the House of Shrouded Mirrors on Pourne, but the crew say that’s risky and they want hazard pay. Complex three-way negotiations end up with the Macavity’s crew owning a share of the monastery gold mine plus all the gold on hand, while Prince Hteleitoirl and his followers provide military service to the monastery in return for land, which they will develop over time.

The Macavity makes its way to Pourne and enters the dome containing the House of Shrouded Mirrors, which proves to be full of shrouded mirrors. The crew is informed this is because there is a miniature swamp (“the Pool”) in the basement and the mirrors show what various parts of it are thinking about. After some difficulty, the abbot obtains an interview with the Sage of the Stars; between that and Dr Matauranga’s stealthy peeping into mirrors, the crew learns the following:

• During the Ancients’ War, many of the factions used human troops and servants.
• One faction developed a menhir-like weapon which emits a field known as the Fury, which distorts human minds, making them xenophobic and militaristic; this was used to suborn the human troops of other factions. The fondness for black and silver uniforms is an unintended side effect.
• By kidnapping people and throwing them into the Pool, which absorbs their memories, the House has learned that archaelogists on Drinax uncovered one of the menhirs; Mazun hypothesises this is what started the problem. The Drinaxian Star Guard then emplaced a menhir near the south pole on Torpol, thus gaining control of the downport and later the rest of the planet. (The field propagates at lightspeed, so for rapid expansion menhirs must be transported by ship.)
• The field is only effective on sentients genetically engineered by the Ancients, chiefly humans and vargr. The Sage believes aslan should be unaffected. He doesn’t know if droyne are affected, but there are none in the Area of Operations so that’s not relevant.
• A few years ago one Mike Matin visited the Sage and asked similar questions, though as hypotheticals rather than based on eyewitness testimony. Mazun recognises him as a Scout Service covert operator.

While the discussion turns to questions such as how many menhirs does Drinax have, how do you destroy one, and would that help or would converted people stay converted, an aide interrupts to point out that a vargr corsair is cutting its way in through the dome.

As the corsairs barge in, Mazun offers the Sage and the abbot a ride, which they accept; if the Pool is destroyed, the Sage will be the only repository of certain data, and if not, he can always come back. Mazun leads them away at a run while Vila and Dr Matauranga sneak away, hiding behind shrouds and pilfering small objects of monetary and scientific value respectively, and Rex roars defiance at the pirates in the hope of intimidating them; it doesn’t do that, but does mean they close into melee to fight him like men… errm, vargr.

Mazun joins the fight to help Rex while the others look for a way back to the ship. Mazun uses his tactical skill to identify a line of retreat, Vila locks the doors against pursuit, and Dr Matauranga injects everyone with useful but probably illegal substances to sharpen senses and reflexes. Rex continues to hurl threats over his shoulder as the party falls back to their ship.

The corsairs appear chiefly focused on looting, and Rex jams the desultory missile locks while Vila crash-starts the engines so Mazun can fly the ship out through the new holes in the dome.

Mazun takes aboard as many of the staff of the temple as can be herded on without substantially slowing us, up to the number the Macavity can safely convey to the starport.

As soon as all are aboard, they call for help from the PDF - something that Matauranga can do while Mazun flies, Vila works the engines and Rex mans the weapons.

To be continued...

GM Notes

Having completed The Borderland Run, and being (as they say) low on spoons at the moment, I switched over to the Bulldogs! campaign Heart of the Fury as the core of the second phase of the game. I prepared for this session by working through it and seeing what could be salvaged and adapted, and sadly it's less than I hoped; part of that is how suitable the various scenarios are for the Trojan Reach, and part of it is that I've already tried to run it and one of the current players was in that game. I had to do more surgery on the setting and campaign background than expected; I'll probably wind up using less than a third of the product as written, but that's better than it languishing unused on my hard drive.

Of the 16 adventures, the first four need to be ditched because Rex's player has already played them. The next three are covered by the last couple of episodes and so are not really needed. This session merged scenarios 8 and 9. Scenario 10 is not something that the players or I would enjoy, so I scratched that one. Scenarios 11-14 I'm not sure what to do with, although that is a problem for Future Me, and the last two look viable if I relocate them to Drinax.

You'll probably see spoilers coming up, but Heart of the Fury was published in 2016 so I regret nothing. I think it would work better as a Bulldogs! game with the various free one-sheets folded into it, but I've used most of those already with other groups.

Over the next few weeks, I need to give some serious thought to where the campaign goes next.