Traveller: Session 50

 

This session was run on November 30, 2023.

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They decided to see what jobs were available on Daazu in order to make som extra money between jumps.They found three patrons looking for help.

The first, Steven Brachen, the captain of the Duke Leto, an 800 ton passenger liner, was looking for help repairing his ship. He had picked up a lucrative doom trade contract in Sol Sector to transport some nobles away from a doomed world. He collided with some debris when entering Daazu orbit and damaged the streamlining on his ship. Because of the damage, he was not able to land on Daazu and refuel. As his robotic crew was not skilled in welding, he was looking for travellers that could fix the damage to his ship.

The second, Kresh, was a Vargr looking for a set of travellers with a "very specific set of skills" to handle a job for him on Opheim, a nearby world. Intrigued, they decided to contact Kresh to learn more about his job.

The third, Coorslint Fabrics, was looking for a traveller willing to entertain an out of town investor, Waq'A Aphrang, for five nights in order to ensure he had a good time.

They decided to take the first job and to learn more about Kresh before approaching him about the second. They did not think that the third job was a good fit for their abilities.

The repair job almost immediately went wrong. The damage to the Duke Leto was all to the external hull plates and they had to EVA with welders to fix the damage. Due to incidents in the past, Zarf, Aryanna, Simmi, Hal, and M’han did not feel confident in their Vacc Suit skills and proceeded carefully, but not carefully enough.  Shortly after they exited the airlock, Simmi hit Aryanna’s air tank with a cutting torch. Everyone was blown free of the ship and lost control of their suits. Fortunately, all of their tethers held, except Aryanna.  As Aryanna, badly injured, drifted further and further into space, Zarf managed to regain control of his suit. Noticing that the others were still bouncing around randomly, he detached his tether and used his emergency hand thruster to close with Aryanna.

As Zarf slowly closed the gap with the wounded medic, M’han regained control and pulled himself back into the airlock, hoping to get to a shuttle.  Zarf finally reached Aryanna and managed to stop the leaks in her suit and transfer some air from his. He attempted to use the thruster to bring them back to the ship but sent them into a violent spin instead. Realizing that he was likely to only make things worse, he waited for M’han to pick them up in the shuttle. Zarf performed first aid on Aryanna in the shuttle, and they rushed her to a hospital on the surface.

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While Aryanna spent four days in the hospital healing from her injuries, the others started to research Kresh and learned that his brother, D’Ran, had been sentenced to life for murdering his girlfriend a few years ago. However, they did not find anything that led them to believe that Kresh himself was a criminal, so they decided to meet with him and learn more about the job he was offering.

Kresh told them that a few years after D’Ran went to prison, Kenji Arkham von Opheim started an experimental prison colony on the world Opheim. He was a noted specialist in human development and learning disabilities and professed a deep dedication to rehabilitation. Von Opheim established an experimental penal colony on the garden world and offered to provide relief to the overtaxed penal systems of the surrounding systems. The colony he set up was based on the idea that the prisoners would be better off building a society for themselves. He based many of his arguments on the success of the penal colony continent on Earth called Australia. Any inmate from one of the surrounding worlds, willing to sign a waiver, could move to Opheim to take part in the experiment. D’Ran jumped at the chance and moved to the new world. In the years since, Kresh has learned that von Opeheim is performing experiments on the inmates on the surface. He lied about the safety of the planet, it is home to many aggressive, man-eating, species. He also engineered some of the inmates for aggression. He has been conducting a sick social experiment and observing it from his luxury lot. Kresh represented a group of the inmates’ families. They wanted the travellers to go to Opheim, find Von Opheim, and kill him.

The travellers decided to take the job but go about it carefully and observe Opheim first. From a library search, they learned that Opheim watched over the penal colony from a space station in orbit that he traveled to and from in a luxury yacht. They also learned that the space station was minimally staffed since there was little risk of the prisoners reaching orbit to extract their revenge. They thought there was a good chance that they might be able to get aboard by posing as a ship that needed to dock for help and then kill him once inside.

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The travellers suffered a slight misjump when they entered the Opheim system. They emerged from jumpspace far out system and had to make a twelve-hour trip to the gas giant to refuel. Even though the only ship they detected in system was the Opheim Princess, they decided not to risk an attack since they had to spend so long being observed. They refueled and made the jump to Gyration the next day.

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The travellers arrived at Gyration.