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.