Skip to main content

Traveller: Session 16

 


This session was run on January 19, 2023.

This session marked the start of the Far Horizon portion of our campaign. This portion of the campaign takes place in 2100 AD. It is set in a pre-interstellar Sol system. The Far Horizon is a deep space research vessel (DRV) built to facilitate humanity’s first manned mission to Pluto. Like the Mars section of our campaign, this section takes place at a lower tech level than the Traveller norm. The Far Horizon uses a nuclear thermal rocket and relies on rotating spin sections for internal gravity. The DRV’s crew of twelve had a planned mission consisting of a two year trip to Pluto in cryo sleep, a month on Pluto, and a two year return trip. The Far Horizon launched as planned and the crew entered cryo sleep a few weeks after departing. CASS, the ship’s AI, woke the crew up 18 months later to tell them that the mission had been changed. The Earth Space Development Agency (ESDA) had redirected them to Tartarus, a rogue planet, rocky and roughly the size of Mars, passing through the Kuiper Belt. The crew were to be the first humans to land on a planet from outside the solar system.

The mission to Tartarus would have a tight schedule. The diversion would require an extra six months outgoing and retrograde, adding a year to the mission. The crew would be far beyond any help that Earth could offer should something go wrong. Further, Tartarus was not in orbit around the sun, and its trajectory meant that the crew would only be able to spend four days in orbit and on the surface of the planet. Failure to initiate a de-orbit burn within 96 hours of rendezvous with Tartarus could result in the Far Horizon being unable to return to Earth. They were also warned that Tartarus had been exhibiting strange behavior, with small, almost imperceptible, changes to its velocity and heading. These changes seemed to happen on a random basis. The crew agreed to the mission change and reentered cryo sleep.

Hour 1

CASS woke the crew up 48 hours out from Tartarus to give them time to adjust and prepare before beginning the exploration mission. The roundtrip communications time of 10 hours meant that the Far Horizon would have few chances to communicate with Earth during the mission; they would be largely on their own.

They started their exploration from orbit, by conducting a series of scans and drone flights to establish sites of interest for when they dropped down to the surface. This was an all hands on deck effort with everyone either conducting a scan or drone flight, or analyzing the data collected. After 18 hours, they had narrowed their points of interest to five:

1.     Site 23: Scans indicated that this area was radioactive. While the radiation levels were not high enough to pose a risk to humans in suits, they were enough to stand out as unusual. Drone flights revealed that the radiation was coming from a collapsed cliff face.

2.     Site 24: Infrared scans revealed that this area was warmer than others. Radar showed what appeared to be 100 foot tall towers in the area as well.

3.     Site 25: Radar scans of the surface revealed rectangular shapes below ice from the frozen atmosphere. Rectangular objects rarely occurred naturally on any of the planets in the solar system.

4.     Site 56: A large crevasse, more than 1000 km in length, where they spotted a strange green coloration during a drone flight.

5.     Site 58: A thin area in the sea ice where it might be possible to insert a submersible probe.

After discussion, they decided to prioritize Site 25 and then Site 24 with the possibility of visiting other sites if schedule permits. The ground team was to be led by Katiya, with Sarah piloting the shuttle, and include Vic, Shireen, Helen, and Kurt.

Hour 24

After a six hour rest, the ground team prepared to drop to the surface.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Traveller: Session 33

  This session was run on June 15, 2023.   130-2108   They confronted Reverend Kavanaugh about the wrench and the explosive bolts and he changed his story again. He now claimed that, even in his revised story, he had still tried to protect Dieter and his memory. Dieter had not just surrendered to fate and drawn straws after his failed attempt to poison Kavanaugh at breakfast. As soon as it was clear that the paralytic was not working, he attempted to choke Kavanaugh. As the two wrestled, Kavanaugh grabbed a wrench from the toolbox, left in the common room during their repair efforts, and bashed Dieter over the head. He had then flushed Dieter’s body, along with the wrench, out of the airlock. He claimed not to have known about the explosive bolts and said that, because there were only two of them aboard, there were sixteen hours each day where only one of them was awake.   Unable to determine if this latest story was true, they informed him that they stil

Wilderlands: Session 32

  This session was run on February 13, 2023. Determined to find Uggmar, the party, now accompanied by Rasaz, headed back into the dungeon beneath the barrow mounds using the northeast entrance. They decided that they were unlikely to find him on the first level and, rather than risk getting swarmed by skeletons again,they headed directly down the stairs they found on their last expedition. After a hundred foot descent, they found themselves in a large cavern that contained what appeared to be an underground city. The architecture of the buildings they could see seemed to be from an earlier era, perhaps before man learned to work iron. As they began searching the streets, they noticed a woman standing very still in a doorway. They approched her to find that she seemed to be frozen in time, surrounded by a strange red glow. Nothing they did seemed to affect her. She could not be moved, nor could her clothes or body be disturbed. As they were examining the woman, Stranger th

Traveller: Campaign Overview

    This Traveller campaign is intended to be kind of a history of the Traveller universe (or at least my version of it). The framing device for the campaign is the start of The Rebellion in 1116 with the assassination of Emperor Strephon. The players took the roles of imperial archdukes that were present at the assassination and through them help define the fate of the Third Imperium. The archdukes will be the constant backbone of the campaign, providing context for everything else. We will return to them between arcs spent with other characters in which we explore different parts, and different eras, of the universe. I hope to visit many different times throughout the history of the Traveller universe and to tie events in those times to the fate of the empire in the future.   This page will be useful for figuring out which arcs were covered in which sessions. I hope this will make it easier to keep all of the different characters straight and to refer back when