Micky
Cosmic Mongoose
MGT2E Core Adventure 3 - Errant Lightning
Another adventure I absolutely loved, and thought was well-conceived with an interesting premise and set upon an even more interesting and unique world. It is an adventure capped off with a potential ending which, if successful, can leave you smiling and feeling warm inside at having done some real good. Unlike the first two Core Sector adventures, this is a single-setting, one-planet, linear-plot adventure which fits smoothly into an even more fleshed out and highly detailed Core Sector setting such as the one presented in this campaign guide.
The only thing that might have fallen short as written and been a bit of an issue trying to fit into an ongoing campaign is a common one with many Traveller adventures. It is an issue that can arise when not playing one-shot adventures but instead playing a sandbox style campaign. The kind of game where a party of Traveller characters have the choice and freedom to go where they want and choose which jobs they wish. With Errant Lightning, one might have to establish why the Traveller characters have travelled great distances across Core Sector to such an unimportant world on the fringes of the sector. A world likely to be some distance from wherever the players have a home starport. The place where an adventure ‘hook’ is likely to find them. One such likely homeport could be at Affinity’s highport, close to the center of Core sector, where our Traveller characters can rest between their travels and adventures. Enjoying the free well drinks and ½ priced Fusion Wings for life from Eneri’s Cantina after saving the day in Core Adventure 2!
How one might hook the Hook!!!
For campaigns in which Affinity’s highport, or some other location central to Core sector, is a campaign homebase for the Traveller characters, the distance to Adan is not insignificant. Adan is 16 parsecs rimward of Affinity. Complicating that distance is the existence of a stellar gap in the coreward part of the Dunea subsector. A J-2 capable ship would require 11 jumps, approximately 3 months of travel, to make the trip from Affinity to Adan. A J-3 capable starship, however, can bridge that gap and only needs 7 jumps to make the trip, thus shaving a month and more off the J-2 travel time.
On top of likely travel distances and time to travel, there is a more profound problem in working Errant Lighting into an existing sandbox campaign. There is no explanation as to why a group of Traveller characters would be contacted by a distant planet and asked to come to help solve its scientifically based problem. Why is our planet dying? Unless one of the Traveller characters was a renowned scientific expert (skill level 4 or 5?) in the biological and/or planetology-based sciences that Adan needs to help solve its problem, it doesn’t make much sense why the Traveller characters would be sought out by Adan. Especially if one takes into account the large distances likely at play when working this adventure into an existing campaign. While Errant Lightning has a nice amount of ‘action’ during the adventure, which will have the Traveller characters use many of their traditional physical and martial skills, the beginning hook presupposes one character has a scientific expertise that Traveller characters may not even possess - much less being renowned experts with a reputation in that field that would explain why a small backwater planet would seek or even want the help of a distant group of Traveller characters.
The introductory ‘hooks’ that published adventures have can easily be sorted into two categories. Those adventures that characters ‘fall into’ as we saw with Core Adventure 2, and just being at the right place at the right time and then being sucked into the adventure. The other category is the ‘patron’ where you are hired such as we saw with Core Adventure 1. Naturally if one of the Traveller characters is indeed a renowned scholar of the biological and planetology sciences, they can be sought out directly by the planet’s government. While they were not promised any kind of fee or payment for their time and trouble to come to Adan, the Traveller characters can do their normal thing, moving freight, mail, passengers, between star systems to earn credits as they make the trip to Adan and the adventure which then can run as it was written.
It is highly likely, however, that a group of Traveller characters does not have such a renowned expert in their party: thus, a direct patron type of ‘hook’ could be seen as rather implausible. Thus, for an adventure ‘hook’ we are left with the ‘fall into’ category or variation of one. Instead of tweaking the adventure itself as we have done previously, we’ll look at two possible suggestions for getting a party of Traveller characters to ‘fall into’ the adventure upon Adan within the context of an ongoing Core Sector campaign and still being able to run this adventure as it was written. While both suggestions assume the characters have successfully completed Core Adventure 2 and now consider Affinity highport their ‘homebase’, the actual location can easily be changed to fit any ongoing Core sector campaign and any starport the characters have chosen to make their own homebase.
Suggestion 1: The Direct Method. ‘Falling into’ a ‘Patron’
In the Background
Adan’s planetary authority, or perhaps even its resident Imperial nobility (a Knight again per Travellermap.com/T5), has sent messages out to the great universities of Core Sector seeking help to attempt to save his dying world. One of the greatest universities of the Imperium, The University of Shudusham, responds and sends one of its foremost experts on Biological Planetology sciences. Wanting to avoid a leisurely, and lengthy, voyage upon the many corporate starships that transport passengers across Core Sector, the university has hired a private starship to transport the scientist, and a cargo hold full of scientific equipment, from Shudusham to Adan. Hiring a private starship avoids the numerous and lengthy stops at various major ports and worlds a passenger liner would make. The university, offering a princely sum as it has nearly unlimited funds at its disposal, quickly finds such a starship and signs a contract with the crew. Several days later the starship leaves Shudusham for the long journey rimward to Adan.
In the Background
Adan’s planetary authority, or perhaps even its resident Imperial nobility (a Knight again per Travellermap.com/T5), has sent messages out to the great universities of Core Sector seeking help to attempt to save his dying world. One of the greatest universities of the Imperium, The University of Shudusham, responds and sends one of its foremost experts on Biological Planetology sciences. Wanting to avoid a leisurely, and lengthy, voyage upon the many corporate starships that transport passengers across Core Sector, the university has hired a private starship to transport the scientist, and a cargo hold full of scientific equipment, from Shudusham to Adan. Hiring a private starship avoids the numerous and lengthy stops at various major ports and worlds a passenger liner would make. The university, offering a princely sum as it has nearly unlimited funds at its disposal, quickly finds such a starship and signs a contract with the crew. Several days later the starship leaves Shudusham for the long journey rimward to Adan.
Meanwhile our group of Traveller characters are relaxing at Affinity highport, sitting at their reserved table at Eneri’s Cantina and enjoying mass quantities of cold brews and hot wings. The party have been here at the highport for the last week, having their yearly mandated shipyard maintenance and Imperial recertifications done on their starship the Closet Queen (or whatever name the Travellers’ have given their starship). The character’s conversation about where they should next proceed in search of credits and adventures is interrupted by the loud arrival of a motley group of misfits. Fellow Travellers no doubt! The group consists of two Vargr, one obviously a female and just as obviously pregnant, two large, muscular human males and a female Bwap. They order drinks, fire up some of their favorite funny smelling smoking materials, and proceed to speak loudly amongst themselves. So loudly in fact you can easily overhear their conversation even without trying to eavesdrop.
Listening to them, you pick up that they are the crew of the starship Disraeli Gears, and that they have a big problem and are rather angry. The root of that anger is the subject of much ranting over the first several rounds of drinks. As the characters listen, they learn that the crew were just starting a plum high paying assignment transporting a scientist to some world called Adan (Astrogation skill check for any characters to recognize the planet and its astrographic location in Core Sector) when their starship’s Jump Drive completely melted down. The J-Drive failed when Disraeli Gears attempted to make a jump from Affinity to Radd Caulo after a quick fuel-and-go at Affinity’s highport. They continue to complain loudly and you hear that once they got the estimate from the SPA shipyard that the repairs to the starship would take 3-4 weeks to complete, they lost the job due to legal fine print. They complain loudly, over yet another round of drinks, about the contract they signed that specified that a ‘failure to timely complete’ would result in total forfeiture of the contract amount. How unfair!!!! AARRG!!!
At this point the Traveller characters can sit back and continue to watch and listen or decide to approach the crew of Disraeli Gears, perhaps buying them a sympathy round of drinks. If they do and decide to ask about this plum gig they had, the crew refuses to speak of it, saying that it is a private matter. Either way they choose, right about the time the characters decide to leave the bar for the night, another person arrives at Eneri’s Cantina. One they have not seen at the bar before. One unmistakably female (upholding the Logan maxim that there will be no need for undergarments in the future) wearing a green outfit. Not just any outfit mind you but one you are likely to remember for many decades after first seeing. An outfit seemingly consisting of a piece of thin short shear green fabric which barely covers the front and back and leaves the sides exposed. All that holds the front and back pieces together is a small silver chain.
All conversation and music immediately stop at the bar, and more than a few (male) patrons are seen and heard to fall out of their chairs. One bar patron is heard by the characters to drunkenly slur ‘Jenny? Is that you??’ Standing upon the threshold on the bar’s entrance the woman scans the crowd. The characters notice she pauses her scanning of the crowd as her gaze falls upon the crew of the Disraeli Gears. After the noticeable pause she raises her head and speaks, addressing everyone in Eneri’s with a loud, confident, and commanding voice.
‘I was told that I could find the crew of the starship Closet Queen here. Is that true?’
She pauses awaiting an answer. Unless the Traveller characters revert to a mental age of 8 and try to hide under the table, they should announce themselves. Even if they try to hide, or decide to remain silent, the crew will be pointed out by other patrons of the bar as they are obviously well known to Eneri’s regular patrons after Core Adventure 2. She takes a seat at the Traveller character’s table and introduces herself.
Her name is Jezzika Sixxx Ammirkish and she is a field researcher and professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Shudusham. After the exchange of introductions are completed, she wastes no time and gets straight to the point. She had an important
assignment she needs quick and *casts a glance over at the table of the crew of Disraeli Gears as she speaks* reliable transport to a world called Adan in the Dunea subsector. She tells the characters that she has asked around the highport and the characters and their starship came highly recommended to her.
At this point the mass quantities of booze have achieved its desired effect at the table of the crew of the Disraeli Gears. They have reached oblivion status and entered prime zero fucks territory. You hear the warning sound of a drinking glass smashing and you turn your head towards the table of the crew of the Disraeli Gears to see the two large human men, one bigger but much slower moving pregnant Vargr, and one normally adorable-looking but now thoroughly enraged Bwap with murder it its eyes wielding a broken beer bottle, approaching your table. At least the male Vargr apparently has already passed out with its face buried in plate of wings. Unless the Traveller characters think and act quickly, they will find themselves in a brawl for at least two combat rounds before the Eneri’s patrons intervene and separate the combatants. The crew of Disraeli Gears will be tossed out of the bar by Zashe Pamzirma, allowing Jezzika to finish her proposal to the Traveller characters.
Her university is offering to charter the Traveller character’s ship to transport Jezzika and her cargo of forty tons of scientific gear to Adan. She explains, with obvious pride in her voice, that the university can more than afford to do such things as it is extremely well- endowed financially and famed throughout the Imperium for its academic excellence. She says that the University of Shudusham is sort of a Yale to Sylea University’s Harvard. They have been rivals since before the dawn of the Third Imperium, going back the Sylean Federation, and the university wants Jezzika to arrive before an expert from Sylea University could possibly arrive. She dangles the hint that this trip might lead to other offers from the University if they deliver her safely and quickly to Adan.
The charter cost is based upon the following: Ship Fee (the weekly calculated mortgage [ship cost/960]) per week needed to reach Adan + life support costs + routine maintenance costs + berthing costs + fuel costs + standard crew salaries per week + 10% of the total ship’s fee.
Out of pocket expenses such as berthing and fuel will be paid by her as required. The wages and ship fee, however, will not be paid by Jezzika until they arrive at Adan’s starport. The contract has a small print clause (as the characters should be aware to look for) for ‘failure of complete trip in a timely manner’. So, she warns the characters, no short jumping or dragging out the trip will be tolerated. The type of J-Drive an Imperium-registered starship has is public information. Such information is noted when a starship is registered, along with its assessed value (purchase price), upon which taxes were paid when purchased. She wants maximized jumps and with few delays as possible. Thus, there will be no time lost trying to take on or sell off freight and cargo, taking on mail, or other passengers. The contract is a one-way contract, but Jezzika tells the party that a return contract can be offered if they are available once she is ready to leave Adan.
If asked, she tells them she plans on being on Adan for at least a month, but could extend her time there if the circumstances and her research upon Adan merit it. She informs the characters that she is in a hurry and wants to leave as soon as possible and asks if they find the contract acceptable and are willing to charter their starship to her - to leave as soon as possible. One could allow a bit of bargaining on the part of the characters. She wants you and truly is in a hurry. The reputation of the Traveller characters around the highport is an excellent one, which allows the characters a chance (if they choose to!) to negotiate with Jezzika. She will be open to negotiation for a higher fee based on the percentage of the weeks of accumulated ship’s fees accrued during the trip to Adan. The lead negotiator for the Traveller character makes a Broker (10+) skill roll. Failure will not decrease the proposed fee, but success will increase the percentage of the total of the ship’s fee. The amount increased is based on Effect. Each level of Effect success raising the fee by 5%. A 0 Effect raising the fee 5% to 15%, a 1 Effect raising the fee by 10% to 20%, and 2 Effect raising the fee to 25% etc.
If the characters accept, they are off to Adan and will be asked by Jezzika to accompany her from Adan’s downport to her meeting with Nesin Colport at Zisduum Nagani, the capital city of Adan. If they choose not to accept the charter or decide to bail on Jezzika immediately after dropping her off at the downport and being paid, then we have no Errant Lighting adventure upon Adan. You can’t say you didn’t try. The joys of running a sandbox campaign for players. You can lead them to water but…
Suggestion 2: The Indirect Method. ‘Patron’ a ‘Falling Into’
