Previously, on the Aslan Route... The crew of the Macavity are on a long-term charter to Troisei, trader of Clan Aftei, who wants them to begin by taking her to Sink to visit her sister, Elehasei...
Sink, 1107 Week 02
While Rex delivers Troisei to the landhold to visit her sister, Ahoakhi the Port Authority takes the rest of the crew aside and says she has some suspicions about the other ship in port, another Far Trader called the Cash Cow. Showing them the collection of holograms over the bar, depicting the bar's regulars in front of their ships, she points out that one woman is missing from the crew, and has been replaced by a handful of aslan; also, none of them are coming ashore. As the woman is the captain's wife she thinks something is going on; can the PCs discreetly investigate for her?
After a discussion of possible situations and approaches, the crew decided to run surveillance on the ship. This told them that the aslan are members of Hroal Irontooth's crew, holding the woman hostage to ensure the good behaviour of her husband, brother-in-law, and son, who make up the rest of the crew. The captain and engineer are stalling, the aslan grow restless, but the captain insists he cannot dock at the next port without a cargo, it would be suspicious.
The Macavity's crew call in a favour from the Abbot of Sink's monastery; he invites the captain over to discuss a cargo, and when he and two aslan minders turn up, they find Dr Matauranga, Rex and Mazun waiting for them, and the minders shuffled off to wait in a lobby with snacks and drinks. Mazun's portable bug sniffer discerns that Captain Cash (for it is he) is wired for son et lumiere, but they hack the body camera and feed in a previously prepared video loop which runs while the Abbot and humans discuss a fictitious cargo and the two trader captains communicate by notes, confirming and extending the crew's understanding. Meanwhile, Dr Matauranga has spiked the minders' drinks and by now they are snoring gently in the lobby.
Propping up the unconscious aslan in the Cash Cow's air/raft, Rex, Matauranga and Mazun conceal themselves in crates, and Cash flies them back to his ship. He radios ahead to explain he is returning with cargo, but that his minders have overindulged and are sleeping it off. The Cash Cow's engineer is sent out under guard to finish refuelling - a task he has contrived to stretch out to several days - and Vila emerges to join him, after all the Macavity needs fuel too. He tries to pass a note to the other engineer explaining what is going on, but the female aslan watching over him catches him at it, and a scuffle begins, ending when Vila drops her with his stun baton. He is spotted trying to drag her away and hide her, and without a responsible female adult to keep them in line, the two male aslan aboard charge out of the cargo hatch to deal with the problem.
Mazun, Rex and Dr Matauranga choose this moment to pop up and engage while Cash is bent on ramming the aslan with the air/raft. At this point, it should be mentioned that Sink is a law level 0 planet, and the Macavity's crew are boon companions of the local aslan landholder and have been engaged by the monastery to protect it against pirates. They are therefore at liberty to carry whatever they like; Mazun is sporting a 12-gauge full-auto shotgun, Rex has a brace of laser SMGs, and Dr Matauranga has a medical kit, reasoning - correctly - that the others are able to take care of most situations, but will do so in a way which generates work for the ship's medic.
As the two aslan charge Vila, Cash's mad charge forces them to drop prone as Mazun walks automatic shotgun fire towards and through one of them; Vila meanwhile has unlimbered his stun gun and fired at the second, who unfortunately suffers a heart attack and dies. Rex is inconsolable, until Mazun points out that they have prisoners who can doubtless be executed by him in some judicial duel.
Dr Matauranga's medical kit proves to contain aslan truth drugs ("Just in case," he says) and while Rex intimidates one of their three prisoners, Mazun soft-talks the others. From this they learn the pirate's names and recognition signals and roughly where the captain's wife is being held - the fortress of one of the smaller groups on Inurin, which has made a deal with Irontooth - and that she is well-guarded as Irontooth expects someone to try and rescue her, or at least kidnap her for another group. The survivors and Cash know they were going to Tyokh, but only the pirate who died of a heart attack knew why.
The Macavity's crew decides this is not an insurmountable problem; they are now accustomed to paying the monastery in the dead bodies of sentients, so they deliver the new casualties to the Abbot and explain once he has processed the corpses, they need some answers from one of them. The Abbot agrees, but all they get out of the dead pirate is that he was meeting someone on Tyokh as part of a recruiting drive - credible to the party, who by their count have killed over half Irontooth's crew already and expect more may have left him since. The Abbot apologises, saying that it takes some time for newcomers to acclimatise to being dead, and even longer to come to terms with being part of an ancient hive mind. "It's especially confusing for aslan," he says, "Because they don't believe in an afterlife."
They decide recognition signals are a good idea, and set up a simple code for "acting under duress" with Ahoakhi.
A council of war follows; Vila wants to know where the profit in all this is, and is told GeDeCo will issue a finder's fee for the location of the Meatgrinder. This may even be true. The plan is to visit Byrni and sell the location to GeDeCo for passing on to local pirate hunters, who can do the heavy lifting of taking out the corsair, then go to Inurin via Ergo to rescue Cash's wife. Vila tells them that after their last encounter, the Meatgrinder will need some time in a class A or B starport for repairs, and Dr Matauranga calculates that the Macavity can get to Inurin before Irontooth realises the Cash Cow has gone missing. Troisei - who has bonded with Rex over a shared interest in duelling - is easily persuaded; these are the same pirates who assaulted her sister's clanmates, and as a trader she is against pirates in general.
Next stop: Byrni...
GM Notes
"That's the first time I've seen Speak With Dead used in a Traveller game," said Vila's player.
"You just haven't been playing with the right groups," Mazun's player replied.
It's interesting that whatever SF game I run, the players refer to it as Traveller.
-o0o-
I began preparation for this session by rolling up a mission using Interstellar Rebels. This gave me the following:
- The PCs decide to: Steal plans or intel.
- Which leads them to: A backwater planet.
- But they must also deal with a: Dangerous spaceship.
The second and third questions were easy; the PCs were already headed for Sink, which is a backwater planet, and the Law of Conservation of NPCs dictated that the dangerous spaceship should be the Meatgrinder, bringing Captain Hroal Irontooth back into play.
What plans or intel could they steal, and why would they want to? I slept on that, and woke the next morning with the idea that Irontooth has seized control of a free trader; he deposits loot in a prearranged location, the free trader picks it up and sells it legitimately, then buys supplies and takes them back to said location, leaving them plus some cash for him to pick up. This intel covers the rendezvous location and schedule for pickups, and they got it by talking to Cash and interrogating their prisoners.
The hook was that their friend in the Port Authority on Sink knows the crew, sees there is one missing and a few thuggish additions, and becomes suspicious. IMTU, crews of small freighters are often related, running the ship as a family business, so crewmembers make good hostages.
Then, inspired by Brass Jester's use of a modified version of the SWADE Chase rules for abstract combat - which I envision as working something like range bands in Classic Traveller - I spent most of my prep time working out a suitable card layout (borrowed from 5150 Fringe Space in the end) and rules mods for sneaking aboard (basically, using Stealth as the manoeuvring skill). I was quite pleased with how well that worked out, and looked forward to trying it; naturally, therefore, the PCs did something else entirely, luring the pirates outside and shooting them. I'll park the boarding rules for the moment, I'm sure one of my campaigns will use them eventually. Tracking this under the Interstellar Rebels scene progression rules, I decide to give the party 2 VP for this session and count it as a Dramatic Task. I think the work on Byrni can be a Social Conflict. When they rack up 10 VP, they have dealt with Irontooth - for now. I think he and his pirates will make a good recurring villain.
Mazun made good use of Bennies to gain narrative control by invoking flashbacks in which he prepared for the meeting with the other captain. The others were so certain that of course Dr Matauranga, with his well-known interest in catgirls, would have previously researched "aslan rohypnol" that of course he had some with him. The crew as a whole also made good use of their burgeoning knowledge of the aslan code to manipulate assorted aslan into doing their bidding.
The thing to remember with all this is that our joint objective is to have fun playing the game, not exercise any specific rules or situations.
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