Skip to main content

Traveller: Session 25


 

 

This session was run on April 6, 2023

018-1118

The Prismatic Ray arrived at the Last Exit (A100776-F 1019 Kushga/Diaspora) system, after an easy jump from Twinsong, an hour and a half from the high port. Last Exit itself is an airless rock primarily used for mining, subatomic particle research, and as housing for the many workers at the Tukera Lines shipyard/depot in system. While Last Exit would normally not be a candidate for shipyard/depot activity, since it is not on a main, Tukera Lines specializes in long haul ships making the requirement for a Jump-2 capable craft a benefit rather than a drawback. Even before the Rebellion started, Diaspora had a more frontier feel to it than the other core imperial sectors, with the recent conflict, the background chance of piracy has increased dramatically. The Jump-2 requirement helps insulate them from the scrappier raiders and the potential wrath of a megacorp deters the more sophisticated corsairs. The 25 million inhabitants of the system primarily live in the domed cities on the surface.

Last Exit has not been shielded from the other effects of the Rebellion though. Fluctuating prices and plummeting demand have wreaked havoc on the local economy. Last Exit’s government balkanized following a painful miner strike last year, leaving each of the ten domed cities to govern themselves. The situation in the cities has degraded since then with mass unemployment and what may be the beginning of factional violence that is poorly understood by those in charge.

The characters’ first stop was at the orbital shipyards to see to the Ray’s required maintenance. The IISS would cover the scheduled maintenance, but not the turret upgrades they wanted. The pulse laser on the turret was destroyed when it misfired during their encounter with the Jugisaal’s Razer. Since it was a double turret, they decided to accept the replacement pulse laser that IISS would provide and add a beam laser. In order to fund the upgrade, they took out a 1M credit loan (payable at 4,167 credits a month). They were informed that the work would take 1 week and that the next open slot on the line was in four weeks (046-1118). They decided to travel down to Holvax, Last Exit’s largest city and former capital, to look for work while they waited.

Once they were on the surface, Zarf located The Last Scan, a scout bar, and decided it was the best place to start their employment search. The bartender told him that there was a lot of people looking for short-term bodyguard/escort work due to the increase in violence, ransom kidnappings, and robberies. Zarf posted an advertisement offering those services on the local job page. Arenui spent most of the day acting as a broker-for-higher on the sale of some fish and made 2,000 credits. In the late afternoon, Zarf got a call from a man named Trow Backett in response to his ad.

They met Trow in a local food court and he explained that he was meeting with an antiques collector to sell a statue that his grandfather left him. He needed to be escorted from his hotel to the collector’s house that evening. He agreed to pay them 10,000 credits for the job and an additional 2,000 credits to store a case with some of his valuables aboard the Prismatic Ray until after the meeting.

With a few hours to burn before the job, they purchased some shotguns (the only permitted firearms in the city) and Mhan bought a baby carriage to disguise the box containing the statue. Arenui scouted the route and discovered that the trip would have to be done on foot (the domed cities are built around foot traffic with vehicles used only for large cargo transfers) and that they would have to pass through several bad neighborhoods on the way. He managed to find a freight elevator that would serve as a shortcut. He returned to the group and they geared up to leave.

As they passed through an alley to get to the elevator, they were stopped by a group of five gang members who ordered them to surrender all their valuables. Zarf tried to talk his way passed the thugs, but was not successful. A brief gunfight resulted in which one enemy fled and the rest were left seriously wounded and unconscious. They looted two illegal pistols and a strange radio and retreated to the freight elevator before the police could arrive. Aryanna patched up the wounded in the elevator.

 

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