Post Session Report 3: Back in the Saddle

After a too-long hiatus from actually playing the game, my wife and I returned to the MTU this past weekend. You can check here and there for the first two sessions, if you like. The condensed version is as follows: Pilar (my wife’s character) and Nathan (her NPC partner) were aboard their modified Type A scout ship, the Longshot, and headed outbound from the Ovuurn System. The pair had just delivered much needed spare parts to the belter’s colony there and was now deciding a course between leaving Ovuurn all-together or returning to an eerily dark and dangerous research station in distress at the outskirts of the system. The lone occupant encountered there during a brief exploration was shot through the chest with a laser blast when he attacked Pilar. Given his bizarre physical and mental state, the assailant (Dr. Fines) was possibly under the influence of some foreign or chemical agent.

Apparently not wishing to risk further harm to themselves or others without reasonable cause (or profit), and suspecting that whatever was happening aboard the station was indeed quite dangerous on many levels, they  decided to leave Ovuurn. As an aside, I’m trying to have Nathan Khyber, the NPC, be more than some dice rolls to fly the ship around. To that effect, he was a little more involved in the decision making this session without actually making the decisions on what to do. I’m still concerned about steering the game too much from my side of the screen, but things did go much better and my wife was more engaged in discussing things now that she got more than non-committal shrugs from her partner. Hey, there’s some great relationship advice somewhere in there…

The Llewellyn system, one jump away, was where the crew would receive payment for the Ovuurn job (just enough credits to cover their monthly costs). Returning to Llewellyn and getting paid was accomplished with ease. Finding the next job, however, proved to be difficult. Rather than wait it out, the pair decided that the Longshot should head core-ward a few parsecs to the Loki system, where a previous tip from an old acquaintance indicated that they could earn many times the going freight rate by smuggling contraband onto the rather restrictive world of Agape.

The trip would be three jumps in duration for the Longshot and would cross a sparsely settled and travelled area of the subsector. The first jump was inaccurately made (bit not a misjump), so the crew and ship spent an additional day or so travelling to the system’s gas giant. Here they collected and processed fuel before jumping out, with nary another ship detected the entire time. Upon arriving at the next system, Tyr, the Longshot’s active sensors picked up what appeared to be a tight debris field or a derelict ship (initial sensor check was not conclusive enough to indicate which). Hoping for the opportunity at some salvage and a subsequent improving of their finances, the Longshot approached the object or objects with care.

Upon closer examination, it indeed turned out to be a derelict Type A Free Trader. The ship was not responding to communication attempts and appeared to be powered down. Some scoring and burn marks on the exterior hull indicated that it had likely seen some kind of trouble, but none of it seemed indicative of the kind and amount of damage required to cripple such a craft. The crew decided to attempt a boarding by mating the airlocks, an easy task made difficult since the other ship was drifting. Nathan Khyber believed it within his piloting ability, and (barely) made his roll to safely join.

Both Nathan and Pilar suited up and armed themselves to investigate the drifting ship. Upon gaining the other ship’s airlock they noted that it had already been overridden from the outside and could be opened with ease. They weren’t the first to come this way. The ship beyond was without gravity, but life-support was on-line and operating as indicated by the airlock’s control panel. As the airlock finished cycling, the team entered the derelict amidst pale emergency lighting. These barely but adequately lit the compartments beyond  to navigate in the zero-G.

The crew’s common area was empty save for some floating debris such as errant foodstuff, containers and holodiscs. Pilar wanted to check out the cargo hold first so the pair made their way aft rather than investigate the nearby bridge or staterooms. There the duo discovered a compartment packed with unmolested freight containers. A brief survey revealed some to be filled with engine parts for petroleum-based technology and others filled with pre-packaged foodstuff. Forgoing a more thorough search of the remaining containers, the pair moved further aft. They were now in search of the engine room but came instead to a bulkhead at what would otherwise be the midpoint of the cargo hold on this class of ship. A brief search over the stacked and secured freight containers revealed a door on this bulkhead toward the starboard side of the ship.

The compartment beyond the door was approximately the same size and dimensions of the cargo hold, but was filled with rows and rows of cryogenic low-berths. Pilar estimated perhaps 120 in total. A search of the space revealed most of them (over 100) to be empty. The remaining units contained the passengers that apparently did not survive the resuscitation process. One unit was curiously functioning but contained only a set of the plain, grey coveralls that the other low berth passengers wore, arrayed as if one such passenger were still lying within.

The partners decided to try to open the low berth containing the coveralls, and as it began to cycle (a process that I decided would take several minutes) Pilar passed a recon check that I asked for and noticed some movement over her right shoulder, toward the aft end of the compartment. Turning about, she saw nothing more than the rows of low-berth units and the access ladder for the passenger deck above. She informed Nathan of the movement and decided to investigate the access while the berthing unit completed the opening process. Nathan, doing his best to find cover in zero-G, trained his auto pistol toward the hatch while Pilar approached it.

The hatch above was open and the shaft beyond appeared to lead to both the passenger deck and the gun turret above that. By the time Pilar gained the next deck the low berth had completed its cycle. Other then the coveralls, it appeared to be empty to Nathan, who passed this information over the comm. Joining his partner above, the pair then searched the passenger deck.

What they found was rather grisly; mid-berth passengers in staterooms and along the passageway, dead from apparent gunshot wounds and floating in zero-G. The common area had been ransacked for food; several wrappers and empty containers floated all about. The steward’s stateroom appeared to have recently been occupied. The bunk here had been rigged with clothing belts and cargo straps as if to secure one occupying the bed, though the space was empty save the personal effects of its original occupant.

The pair quickly but cautiously made their way to engineering, where the power plant and drives appeared to be down hard. This compartment was occupied by a strangely configured robot of a kind with which neither Nathan nor Pilar were familiar. It was capable of verbal communication and aware enough to provide a status report for the ship. Both the engineering plant and the bridge were down hard, reportedly the result of a tactical electro-magnetic pulse (EMP). Emergency life support and lighting were being powered from a hardened battery back-up system that resisted the EMP but was close to being spent.

An investigation of the bridge confirmed the report. All systems here were also apparently dead. The remains of four crew members were seated about the bridge, also dead but with no obvious cause of such. Nathan surmised they were electrocuted. Lacking the ability to access the ship’s electronic log from here, but hoping that some of that data survived, Pilar sought to retrieve the data storage device from the bridge computer. This was successfully accomplished with a Computers check, but the actual data retrieval, if possible, would have to wait.

At this point the pair decided that given the ship's condition there was nothing more to do other than salvage the more valuable cargo from the ship’s hold and make a getaway. The respective cargo holds of the ships were opened and the more valuable cargo (determined to be 18 tons of personal and commercial computing devices) were passed from the derelict to the Longshot. The latter’s cargo capacity of 18 tons is due to modifications made to the ship. Once the final freight container was shuttled over, Nathan Khyber stayed aboard the Longshot to finish securing the containers and prepare for flight while Pilar returned to the bridge of the derelict to retrieve the data storage device and leave through the airlock.

Before accessing the Type A’s airlock a final time, a voice called out to Pilar, “Take me with you.” Turning about she saw a rather thin human boy, somewhere in his teens and dressed in a loose-fitting vac suit sans gloves and helmet. When she questioned him, he claimed to not be able to speak, only emit the inarticulate grunts of a mute. Upon further reflection, she realized the voice couldn’t have come from the boy… it was not muffled from the vac suit helmet. It was as if the voice sounded right into her ear… over the comm?  Into her head? She couldn’t be certain now that she actually heard anything at all. Turning to the strange robot, which had followed her about during the evolution of moving cargo, she asked who the boy was.

“A passenger.”

“From where?”

“Berth 112.”

(Over the comm. Channel) “Nathan… do you remember what berth number we opened?”

“112”

The boy and the robot followed Pilar onto the Longshot.

                                                      ***

Sorry if that was a lot. I’m writing this down as much for my purposes as for any potential reader. You see, none of the above was necessarily part of any kind of preconceived plan on my part. I really did expect my wife to give the research station on Ovuurn another try. I mean, who can resist space zombies, right? Given this belief, and that the station was essentially this… I was prepared. In the event that she decided to skip it, I was also prepared… there would be a possibility that another job cropped up on Llewellyn (I’ve got a random table) or she could follow one of the other leads provided during the first session. Since the smuggling work had always represented an opportunity with great upside, I figured she’d make it that way eventually or I’d come up with some other carrot or stick to make things interesting. I knew enough about what was going on between the Loki and Agape systems to fill up a session if need be.

But before we got there we rolled a random encounter in the Tyr system and came up with a derelict ship with some decent salvage. We paused the session at this point. More accurately, we actually split it into two sessions: Friday and Sunday. Friday ended up being about getting the dice and books out and reminding each other where we left off (the previous post-session reports on this blog were valuable for this) and getting into the swing again. It had been a rather long day for me and by the time we got around to playing I was pretty spent and having trouble focusing. By the time we sat down Sunday, I was recharged and had figured out the parts about the low berths, the full cargo hold, the boy, the robot and the dead passengers and crew.   There's a case for not toughing it out, I suppose... for only playing when you know you can.

I had managed to turn a one line entry on a random table into a mystery, and was actually rather proud of having done so. We've got a ship set adrift, apparently the target of some sophisticated EMP attack.  Its reasonably valuable cargo is intact, it's 100+  low berths are mostly empty, there are several dead passengers and crew; a lone, somewhat strange survivor and a myopic robot of unknown origin.  I have done this sort of riffing at times in D&D (with mixed results, admittedly) but this was the first time I had pulled it off in Traveller. Granted, I had an extra day to sort things out and there were a few inconsistencies as things got presented that I mostly talked my way out of, but here we were, playing way off of any kind of scripted event and in some ways making it up as we went... and it's so far potentially the most campaign-altering event to date.  There wasn't any gun play and only a few skill rolls made here and there, but we managed to create some tension and even wonder as the ship was explored and details uncovered.  There are some immediate things my wife is now considering aside from getting to Loki and finding work.  There are events afoot, BIG events, that the crew of the Longshot is now mixed up in... all off the cuff and all originating from a random encounter.  I'd say it was a successful return to the game after our hiatus, and we both can't wait to play again to see where it goes.