But ya ought to thank me, before I die,
For the gravel in yer guts and the spit in yer eye
'Cause I'm the son-of-a-bitch that named you "Sue".
- Johnny Cash, A Boy Named Sue
Cordan, 1107 Week 16
Mazun buys himself a laser rifle and discovers that, for this week only, the suppliers are giving away a free line projector with every laser rifle. Meanwhile, Dr Matauranga is now wearing both the Second and Third Most Valuable Things; in the hope of concealing the earpieces so that the red lenses might be taken for augmented spectacles of some kind, he has taken to wearing a deerstalker hat with the flaps as low down as they will go.
Wildeman, 1107 Week 18
While quaffing Tree Toad beers at the starport bar, the crew is approached by one Klim Gobbo, asteroid miner, who has seen them travel this route several times and has a proposition.
A century ago, this region was terrorised by the notorious pirate Tamby Dour, reputed to have stashed a fortune somewhere. The Imperial Navy eventually caught and vaporised him and his ship, and his treasure was never found. However, Gobbo accidentally found Dour’s hideout while prospecting; it has an obvious treasure vault, with a DNA lock – only Dour or a direct descendant can open it; they must be alive and present in person. He knows where the vault is, but there is no-one in the system descended from Dour, and he only has an in-system mining craft with no jump drive. If the crew can find a descendant, he will take them to the location, and they can share the contents of the vault, 50/50.
Vila is not having this, and a spirited argument over the exact split of the treasure breaks out. At length, the deal struck is 50% to the Macavity’s crew (10% to each of them and Troisei, who will have to fund operating expenses for the search), 15% to the heir, and 35% to Gobbo. Vila puts his head together with the Matauranga Collective (which now numbers six) and makes up a shopping list of things needed for breaking into a vault protected by a DNA lock; these items are not available locally at a price Vila is willing to pay.
Dr Matauranga digs into local records and discovers a number of Dour’s crew were vargr from Umemii, including a first mate whom Dour especially trusted, at which point Rex diffidently reveals that one of his ancestors was a childhood friend of the first mate; Rex knows the first mate’s real name and the area where he lived.
Vila thinks he has found out some useful data on Dour himself, but it turns out he has been researching the life of the actor who played Dour in a second-rate holofilm.
Off to Umemii!
Umemii, 1107 Week 20
The first thing to do on Umemii is visit Rex’s grandmother in Essfaiyr. Rex at first threatens her, then resorts to actually beating the old vargr, and extracts from her a number of useful names and addresses, as well as the fact that shortly after Tamby Dour died, his first mate came home with a young human in his care, and the vargr and human families have been close ever since.
Troisei is disturbed by Rex’s behaviour, but Mazun reassures her this is normal for vargr. Probably.
Rex justifies his approach by explaining that his grandmother sold his mother when he was quite young, raised him herself, and gave him his vargr name, which does not have a complimentary meaning and has caused him a good deal of trouble over the years.
Deciding that “least said, soonest mended”, they unleash Dr Matauranga on the planetary data net, and in a matter of hours he has provided extensive lists of names, addresses, family trees, medical histories, and other data which one would have expected to be private. This reveals the existence of one Glinnet Dour, great-great-granddaughter of Tamby Dour, and her contact details.
Mazun composes a carefully-worded and mostly truthful message, and requests a meeting. Glinnet agrees, suggests an expensive restaurant, and brings with her a vargr called Zalvou Gzargu, who seems to be somewhere between a business manager, a bodyguard, and an affectionate uncle. Negotiations are with Zalvou, as Glinnet is completely clueless and more interested in Troisei, who is the first aslan she has ever seen. However, a trip offworld with the promise of a fortune at the end of it appeals to both Zalvou and Glinnet, so they pack their bags, and the Macavity returns to Wildeman.
Wildeman, 1107 Week 22
Vila and Rex are suspicious when Gobbo suggests following him to the location in his beat-up mining ship, but so far as they can tell he is being truthful, so off they go.
Gobbo leads the Macavity to an asteroid, where there is an obsolescent but well-equipped base with parking, partially pressurised. Gobbo explains that he set up a pressure shelter while the Macavity was away so that the descendant would be able to take off their spacesuit; he didn’t see how they could work the lock while wearing one.
Glinnet operates the lock, but despite this being successful, the vault door fails to open. Vila states that his skills are now needed to get into the vault, and unless his cut of the proceeds is renegotiated, the Macavity will leave. (He mentions on a private channel that the ship can then return later and the crew can cut Gobbo and Dour out of the deal entirely.)
Gobbo counters that he only promised to bring them to the vault, he has done what he agreed and so the shares of the loot should stay as they were. Vila is about to leave anyway when he and Mazun both notice the problem is simple vacuum welding, and should yield to some mechanical engineering and brute force. While outwardly still determined to leave them to it, Vila shares helpful information with Mazun and Dr Matauranga. While they are still discussing how to do this, Rex kicks the vault door in frustration and it swings open.
Entering cautiously, the team see rows of empty shelves… and two empty bottles of cheap gin. Gobbo is swearing profusely and searching for the secret doors he is sure are there, but which in fact are not. Glinnet is sulking because she was promised jewellery and pretty dresses, which are nowhere to be seen. Troisei and Zalvou exchange a look and shrug; some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you.
Vila and Mazun hack into the hideout’s computer system and discover that every generation or so since Tamby Dour died, someone has been coming here and opening the vault. The last such visit was 44 years ago, then nothing until it was opened today.
The crew hypothesise that Dour’s descendants have been coming here periodically, whenever they needed money, taking some, and leaving the rest safely in the hideout. Having spent a couple of weeks with Glinnet, they understand why she would not have been told any of this.
Whatever’s left of the money is probably still on Umemii somewhere, but Mazun seems to speak for everyone when he says Glinnet’s family has more right to it than the crew does.
Gobbo smashes one of the gin bottles in a fit of pique, but Troisei takes the other, with the team's joint permission. She will display it in her home on Tyokh, and whenever visitors ask about it, she will tell the story of how it is the last remnant of Tamby Dour’s fabled pirate treasure.
Fast Travel, 1107 Weeks 23 to 42
Troisei wants to visit Hradus, where there is a large population of aslan; but Glinnet wants to go home, and Dr Matauranga is uncomfortable in Imperial space – some trifling misunderstanding about ethics violations – so the Macavity first turns to Umemii (week 24) before following the aslan route to Wildeman (week 24) and Fist (week 26). After that, the ship meanders along the xboat routes from Fist to Imisaa (week 28), Hexx (week 30) and finally Hradus (week 32), where Mazun slips away to file a report and ponder the fact that everywhere they go, Vila seems to know someone useful.
Mazun is in a foul mood for the first leg of the journey, as he had hoped to inveigle Dr Matauranga to Batav and turn all his Ancient devices over to the Imperium for study. The good doctor, however, decided that Glinnet’s low intelligence was the result of inbreeding among the human population of Umemii, and stayed there to conduct field research.
By the time the Macavity has ambled back to Umemii to pick him up again, it is 1107 week 42, and news of the outbreak of the Fifth Frontier War is only one jump behind her.
Next stop: Inurin...
GM Notes
This session was built on one of the adventure seeds left over from The Pirates of Drinax, and it did its job, keeping us entertained for a few hours. As usual in Savage Worlds, most of the fun came from the extreme dice rolls, especially Vila's critical failure when researching Tamby Dour and Rex's ridiculously high roll on his Wild Die when trying to open the vault door. (We normally assume that if you succeed thanks to the Wild Die, it was due to some stroke of good luck.)
Riffing off each other, the players concocted a backstory for Rex which included a family more dysfunctional than I'd expected.
Reading, thinking, and discussing things with the players over the last couple of weeks, I’ve reached some decisions:
- I've set up the sequence of adventures until the end of the campaign, probably April 2026, including the secret of Most Valuable Thing. I'm just going to move the PCs from one to the next; in-game, the cargoes and charters they pick up just happen to lead them that way, but at the metagame level the players are aware they're on a railroad of sorts now, and they're happy with that; anyway, I'm the only one who knows where the stops are.
- We discussed changing game system for the next campaign, but there’s no real benefit in that. I’m not going to remember the rules of a different game any better than SWADE, and it’s good enough for what I need.
- The Traveller Wiki is back as a source of information. It has a lot of Traveller5 stuff we won’t use, but if you scroll down far enough, you get to the bits we do use. (When we were working through the Pirates of Drinax, it didn’t have world details for this region of space, but now it does.) Using it saves me a lot of work.
- I did look into replacing Roll20 with Fantasy Grounds, but the benefits from doing that are outweighed by the additional effort of setting it up and using it; FG is cool, and I like it, but it's a solution to problems I don't currently have.
TL:DR – no change except Traveller Wiki is back in play. As you were.
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