Aslan Route 23: Coffee Date

Previously, on The Aslan Route… After several months of charters around Tyokh and Sink, the Macavity is undergoing her annual maintenance. Mazun’s handler wants him to set up Clan Iuwoi as the garrison on Torpol, and Troisei of Clan Aftei wants to charter the vessel for a long-range trading cruise. Meanwhile, Dr Matauranga is lurking around the docks when a woman shows up as interesting to the Third Most Valuable Thing. She looks straight at him in shock, then turns to flee...

Tyokh, 1106 Week 52

Tyokh B566A77-E GG

Dr Matauranga sees the woman turn away from him in shock and try to disappear; with only seconds to decide, he runs after her, but she loses him in the crowd.

Disappointed, he returns to ask the help of Vila and Mazun in finding her. Their opinion is that given what he looks like – golden headset, glowing red eye, monk’s robes – it’s not entirely surprising that women run away from him.

Tyokh lacks the sort of comprehensive surveillance one might expect at a similar Imperial port, since ubiquitous cameras suggest one is expecting the locals to behave dishonourably or to need rescuing, which is insulting. However, there are enough hull cameras on various human vessels for Vila and Mazun to track the woman to an office block, and the two of them decide to pay a visit, leaving Dr Matauranga behind in case he causes further panic. They do take discreet body cameras feeding back to the ship so that Rex and the good Doctor can monitor events and make quiet suggestions.

The building contains three offices; a security company and a gunshop, both aslan-owned, and a human-owned cargo brokerage. A free trader captain raises no eyebrows by talking to a cargo broker, so the pair enter, and by examining the broker’s network presence and the list of employees on the wall, they learn that their quarry is one Bridget Harris, cargo broker, and they openly arrange to meet with her to discuss ship’s business. Once inside, the polite fiction that Vila (legally female) is handling negotiations to protect Mazun’s honour is dropped, and the three talk cargo and shipping for some time. Their impression of Ms Harris is that she is genuinely friendly and knowledgeable, someone they can not only do business with but enjoy doing business with.

Vila sets up a burner email account for Dr Matauranga, who uses it to set up a coffee date with Ms Harris. Unknown to the Doctor, Vila slips an audio bug into his robes, and both he and Mazun stake out the coffee shop to keep an eye on things.

The date goes well, with her amiable intelligence and keen interest in Dr Matauranga’s passion – the creation of catgirls genetically engineered from human stock – both evident. This attracts Mazun’s attention, and he begins to put together the clues suggesting Harris is probably psionic. Dr Matauranga already suspects this because she shows up in his eyepiece as a person of interest to the Third Most Valuable Thing.

When the Doctor’s questions touch a nerve, Harris makes her apologies and leaves. He tries to follow her, but a couple bump into him and distract him long enough for her to get away. Vila and Mazun realise that Harris has brought her own insurance, who look professionally trained, and in a quick consultation decide that Harris will go back to her office and there is more to be learned by following the newcomers. These make their way back to the Port Authority security department and vanish inside; Vila and Mazun decide not to follow them into the compound.

Mulling over where the couple were part of a wider organisation or just friends making sure the date didn’t go sour, everyone returns to the ship. Mazun opines that a cargo broker would be a good source of information for the Authority. The crew agree to let this one lie for the moment, and pick up Troisei to start her charter. Mazun thinks to himself that this can easily segue into carrying out his handler’s mission, and sends off a coded report which essentially says he has found a psionic on Tyokh, and queries whether she is an Imperial agent; the reply will be back on Tyokh in 16 weeks, or possibly longer, though they might intercept it early if they head towards Cordan.

Next stop: Sink.

GM Notes

Another session mostly created on the fly using Mythic GM Emulator. What seems to work best is having some vague idea of a plot - what Mythic would call the expected next scene - and working out details in real time using the emulator. I'm using the first edition of Mythic GME for this; the second edition is too complex for me to use at the required speed, and One Page Mythic leaves out some of the bits I like most.

The charter from Clan Aftei is a fairly transparent excuse for me to move the PCs around as the fancy takes me to wherever I have an adventure available for them. I think I'll try Interstellar Rebels for the next one, on the basis that I've already tried Classic Traveller random encounters and 5150 encounters, and while both work well for solo play, neither was especially productive for this group at the table.

This session, it became important to know where everyone is from, and we now know that Mazun’s ID shows him as an Imperial citizen, Dr Matauranga is on Tech-World papers, Rex is from Umemii, and Vila is apparently from Cordan, or at least so say the best forged papers money can buy.