Dramatis Personae
- Gherson: Drinaxi minor noble who spent decades partying on the Floating Palace and somehow shirking all responsibility. Currently the nominal captain of the unnamed Harrier and party Face due to his high SOC and social skills.
- Zigured "Ziggy Space" Dirt: Former Imperial Navy Lieutenant whom was forced out at the prime of his career. Now journeying for fame and fortune to spite his rivals, and has naturally fallen into the role of XO, bookkeeper, and party trademaster.
- Marco Bro'Lo: A down-on-his-luck vagabond whom tried and failed to join the Imperial army, and spent several years that he cannot remember as a barbarian before finally spending some time with the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service. (His player failed almost every entry and survival roll he made during character creation.) Is the most ground operations- and combat-oriented party member, and also drags the party into the most interesting roleplaying situations.
- Xander: A retired Merchant Marine with almost 30 years of experience under his belt. Wears a Retired Merchant Marine cap wherever he goes with his ship designation on it. Now spends his time becoming a L33T Hackerman and fulfilling his wanderlust, as well as being the party's pilot and Uhura.
Previous sessions:
We have played about four sessions prior to this, with the first two playing out Flatlined with two former party members, Orynn Zahra and Cordelia. Cordelia's player left the group, but Orynn's has just been extremely busy with life stuff, so he may rejoin at some point. The two sessions after that involved them getting their bearings back on Tobia and transitioning into a highly modified High and Dry, being tasked to finding the stolen Harrier. Shenanigans ensued as they tracked the thieves' trail to Exocet. When we last left off, Ziggy had been gravely wounded putting down the dog the hijackers left behind, they had managed to replace the key electronic components the Harrier needed, and had taken off to the highport in order to get Ziggy medical attention and patch the dilapidated Harrier into a suitable enough shape to fly back to Drinax for refurbishment.
With all the previous context out of the way, on to the actual show. This was our first session since September of last year, and we ran for about six hours.
Adapting to the Harrier's unusual control scheme, the party manages to fly up to the highport and get priority docking access for a critically-injured crew member. Ziggy is wheeled out to the medic, and while Gherson and Xander arrange for the jump drive to be patched up enough to get to Drinax, Marco wanders off to start a session B-plot. He finds a child's crayon drawing on a bulletin board of a boy and his mom losing their home to a volcanic eruption (replete with frowny faces and tears), and is so moved that he tries to search for these two NPCs for half an hour of real time. Gherson and Xander bribe the highport's less-than-scrupulous medical officer, Dr. Rickon Hyde, to use some of his emergency stash of slow drug on Ziggy, saving them potential weeks of bedrest. In doing so, the party now has a known shady contact for pharmaceuticals, which I intend to bring back once they run through First Prize in the future and find the load of smuggled meds.
(As an aside, Marco proceeded to go to the medbay, just missing Gherson and Xander, and convinced Dr. Hyde to send out a station-wide lost child page for the rest of the party. This embarrassed Gherson and Xander so much that they have been scouring shops on every single starport and world they visit. All for a high TL phone and transceiver so that he never loses contact with the party again.)
After Ziggy wakes up the next day, he manages to secure for the party a load of mail and incidental freight bound for Blue. (He has convinced himself that being a mailman is the best way to make money, and that speculative trading is entirely not worth it.) He also managed to rustle up a bunch of low passengers bound for Blue, including the aforementioned son and his mother whom are heading to Clarke. Marco then proceeds to offer them free medium passage to Clarke in one of the Harrier's spare staterooms, accepting a pay dock for not running it by Ziggy and Gherson first, while also locking in their next-to-last destination as Clarke instead of Torpol. With everything all wrapped up, the party leaves Exocet and jumps for Blue.
The jump to Blue from Exocet is largely uneventful, except for Marco learning that the boy, Benni, aspires to be an artist, and Gherson attempting unsuccessfully to hit on the mom, Loree. Upon arriving in Blue, the party notices an Imperium Patrol Corvette sitting around the 50d mark halfway between them and the highport. Despite having no illegal cargo on board, the party paranoidly decides to try and "fly casual" around the Corvette so they don't attract any suspicion. They fail miserably at this, immediately drawing attention and being ordered to heave to for a Random Inspection. Gherson almost talks his way out of the whole mess and convinces Lieutenant Fredrick that they have no contraband on board and just need to get to the Highport quickly for repairs, until Ziggy steps in. Ziggy's player had neglected to look at his Associates tab since chargen, and had completely forgotten that Lieutenant Fredrick is his Rival whom had forced Ziggy out of the Navy. Thus, he hops on the communicator and announces hisself to lend credibility. This draws Fredrick's attention back to the party, and they are boarded even faster now. Words are exchanged, and nothing illegal is found, but oh, look at this. This ship hasn't been registered with an Imperium starport, or any relevant as such authority, as salvage! Since the Travellers can only barely prove that they were flying the ship on the orders of Drinax and were not in fact, starship thieves, he levies them a massive fine and retroactive registration fee, which Gherson is forced to pay out of pocket. The unique and highly identifiable Harrier is now registered with the Imperium as flying under the banner of Drinax, and is also now associated with the party all by name, since Ziggy drew up a report himself to try and preclude any shenanigans. This may have consequences later that the Travellers have not yet realized.
Landing at the Blue highport, now with much less spending cash, the party decides to take a shore leave day and visit the planet's surface. Catching a bus from the startown to Blueville, the capital and only relevant city, the Travellers wish to learn more about local culture, having already been informed that art and religion are about the only interesting things to find on this planet. They get information about the "F*** the Gods" festival happening in the town square from a local painter, as well as the Biig Gallery, one of the most prestigious on Blue. In the town square, hundreds of priests, monks, pastors, and otherwise religious adherents hurl curses, litanies of profanity, and general foul language into the sky, at each other, and at their deities. This done all with smiles on their faces and in friendly tones, with the general feel of a county fair, complete with vendors selling snacks and beverages. To top it all off, profanity is illegal on Blue, so dozens and dozens of small robots are constantly printing out fines Demolition Man-style, making the whole thing a sort of performative public fundraising endeavor. This confuses and upsets some of the party greatly. Marco is arrested and sent to jail after attempting to tear down an opaque tent being used by a local fertility goddess's cult for simulating certain obscene acts and chanting the appropriate profanities, and Gherson is very nearly sent with him for trying to sneak inside the tent and join.
While all of the shenanigans are going in the town center, Ziggy and Xander choose to check out the art gallery. Wandering around, their eyes are drawn to a large landscape painting. Set on the flat top of a hill, the painting depicts an Aslan ihatei settlement in the distance, but a corner of the foreground is what draws their attention, as the faint outline of a Sindalian War Eagle is seen in relief on a rock face. Asking a curator, they discover that:
- The painting is from an anonymous artist who goes by the pen name, Jobrowol
- They are known to wander all around Blue, painting landscapes of many points out in the backwoods of the undeveloped planet
- Nobody knows what the outline of the eagle is supposed to mean. Some believe it to be a callback to Blue's former service to the Kingdom of Drinax, and some say it was added from a drug-induced dream
- There are indeed multiple uncharted ihatei settlements scattered across Blue, far from Blueville and the civilization of the downport
They couldn't do much with this information right now, as they had to go bail Marco out of jail and leave the planet for the highport again, but they started drawing up preliminary plans for coming back someday and finding where this painting was made. Ziggy managed to find more mail and freight for Clarke, as well as a full ship worth of passengers, and the party left Blue for their penultimate jump to Drinax.
During the jump to Clarke, Marco got even more attached to Loree and Benni, and eventually coaxed out of her that her husband has been missing for a couple years, kidnapped and enslaved by the Glorious Empire. Already hating slavers, Marco immediately promises her that he will look for her husband if and when he gets the chance to mess with the GE, and he makes a note of when and where this took place (Hecarda, in the Dustbelt). Shortly thereafter, excitement ensues as the party experiences their first taste of space combat. They immediately clock a far trader heading in their general direction up from the planet upon landing in realspace again, and they get a bad feeling. Upon getting to Long range and reading that the other ship's weapons are heating up, they power up the barbette and hail the far trader. The captain, calling his ship the Pride of the Borderland, says that there's nothing to worry about, and that they'll power down their turrets if the Harrier does first. Gherson considers this, as A: the party does not yet realize the power of the Harrier, and B: they have over a dozen passengers on board. Thinking that getting into a fight with passengers would be too dangerous, he hopes to take the Pride at their word and orders the barbette powered down. This proves to be an immediate mistake, as the next round the Pride fires a warning shot across the Harrier's bow and orders them to heave to so they can "exchange gifts." Luckily for the party, Xander is a good pilot, and the Harrier has Evade software built in, so they escape being hit while the barbette is powered back up. Unluckily for the Pride, that was the only shot they'd get at the Harrier. Between an Effect of 5 on the attack roll, the Pride only having 2 armor, and barbettes having 3x damage after armor is deducted, the party deals 62 damage in one shot on the Pride, eviscerating the ship, causing a fuel leak, blowing up a console Star Trek-style and damaging a crew member, and completely disabling their jump drive all in one shot. Luckily for the Pride, they didn't take any radiation damage on top of all that because Ziggy rolled just under 500 for rads. The Travellers are in shock at how devastating their new ship's weapon is, and the crew of the Pride immediately soil themselves and surrender.
Clarke highport shortly sends out an SDB to investigate and pick up the Pride's crew, and the Travellers are only shortly detained while the ship's logs are inspected to corroborate their story of being attacked first by a pirate. They are personally received at the port by an administrator and thanked for apprehending a wanted pirate, with a 200kCr bounty being awarded. (None of which went to Ziggy because Gherson was still mad at him about the run-in with Fredrick.) Marco bid an emotional, if awkward, farewell to Loree and Benni, and the rest of the Travellers made preparations to jump to Drinax next session, where Gherson has assured them that they'll all probably be rewarded for bringing the Harrier back safe and sound.
