Travellers, tell us about your experiences in the Pirates of Drinax!

[alex_greene]

How do you conduct the biggest heist in the universe?
You start with a simple premise. How do you make a whole Treasure Ship disappear?
So, the story goes like this.
First, the news hears about a distress signal from the Martin II. It's Misjumped outsystem. A flotilla of tugs have been sent out to tow in the stricken ship. Rescue operations underway.
Arunisiir is captivated by the live, ongoing rescue. Only a handful of survivors can be rescued. Shockwaves from the ship's Engineering section turned a couple of hundred crew into shadows on the walls when the Jump drive imploded. There are rumours of sabotage and calumny.
So the ship turns up, and it's being repaired on Platform 28, way out on the outskirts. Drone footage is all they can get of it because the intense radiation is making it hard for anyone to come near the ship.
The Martin II remains on the platform for six weeks: enough time for the news to start getting stale. People start talking about other stuff again.
And then the pirates came.

 

[alex_greene]

What the news see is a big light show. An Aslan ship roars in, pursued by Imperial small boats. Their little lasers plink off the big Aslan ship's armour. The Aslan ship turns its Big Blue Beam on the Martin II. There is a huge cloud. By the time it clears, there is nothing left of the Martin II.
The tiny boats somehow drive the Aslan cruiser out of the atmosphere, and save the day. Everybody cheers.
And then someone notices that the Martin II has completely disappeared. As if there were not even so much of a rivet of it left.
It's not much longer than that that some people start to panic, because the Martin II had been repaired, and somebody had just put three billion credits' worth of lanthanum into its cargo hold just before the Aslan had turned its Disintegrator onto the ship, vapourising it.

 

[alex_greene]

A rescue ship arrives, parks next to the smoking wreckage. People can be seen emerging from the interior, dressed in HAZMAT suits. No sign of the crew of the Martin II. The rescue ship takes off.
And disappears.
Along with the three billion creds of lanthanum someone had just put into the vault, hush hush. A big cargo, stamped with the GeDeCo logo on the containers. All gone.

 

[alex_greene]

And what was my character doing throughout this elaborate heist?
Spending six weeks spreading rumours via Carouse and Streetwise, altering some records, rerouting the lanthanum to the "treasure ship" through some Admin, Advocate, and Persuade skill checks and, on the day, sitting back to enjoy the light show from the Starport's hotel rooftop, on a lounge chair, sipping Mai Tais.

 

[alex_greene]

Unlike a lot of heist scenarios, there was no ironic ending. Nobody turned coat on the Harrier's crew and stole all the booty. It all ended up on Thieve, where a large chunk of the lanthanum just disappeared under a blanket and the Travellers watched as their credit accounts acquired a large number followed by so many zeroes.
Every participant went away happy, apart from GeDeCo who lost three billion in lanthanum. It turned out that the lanthanum didn't belong to them, and they'd been trying to find a way of shifting the stuff off planet before Imperial tax authorities turned up for an audit of their holdings. So technically, the lanthanum did not exist, any more than the Martin II had.

 

[alex_greene]

So my character, call her Intensity Reigns, can now pay for a Starship in cash.
But Mari Jagad, from page 70, is too good a character to just drop like a stone.

Playing Jagad:
• Imagine her as the slightly Mary-Sueish protagonist of a series of military-sci-fi novels. She is the heroine of an adventure that is happening parallel to the adventures of the pirates.

She's Honor Harrington!

So I'm guessing she's going to cross swords with Intensity Reigns some time down the line, for sure.
Either that, or they're going to keep waking up next to each other in hotel beds up and down the Trojan Reach ...

 

[stevenpoore]

Our heist went somewhat differently.
First, we fixed the Martin II's engines, and ingratiated ourselves with the crew. Then, under cover of friendship, we swapped out the jump coordinates and suborned the astrogator. The Martin gained a couple of passengers, "disillusioned" by Kit Kimble's inept captaincy. When the Martin and its escort jumped outsystem, the treasure ship jumped half an AU across the system instead of where it was supposed to go.
By that time, the crew was already toast.
Weeks later, the Martin III (no relation) appeared at Drinax.

Well, that was the plan.

Give or take a couple of Murderbots, an impatient princess, a fluctuating jump bubble, and some incredibly poor jump plotting by Kit Kimble that could have killed everybody or left them to be mopped up by the official rescue team, oh AND incurring the eternal wrath of GeDeCo before leaving Arunisiir, it was all pretty straightforward really.

 

[alex_greene]

I like bloodless heists, myself. No need to scatter bodies in my wake.
My characters' wake.

 

[alex_greene]

To be fair, the rest of the adventures in the campaign didn't really appeal to the Ref, so there was a lot of improvising. The pirate Travellers managed to get in some adventures in the Reach. They visited Acrid in the thick of the Revolution on Acrid adventure, participated in a rescue mission which combined elements of Gods of Marduk and Marooned on Marduk, and visited Kteiroa as part of Friends in Dry Places rather than the Ihatei! chapter.
Intensity kept bumping into Mari Jagad very often, usually in some hotel room on Theev. Intensity Reigns finally got to learn to spell "Theev" correctly.

 

[kkirss]

I've been running a campaign based on Pirates of Drinax for 33 sessions now. Here's what has happened so far:

Marooned on Marduk
We started the campaign off with the Marooned on Marduk adventure. It was a great introduction to the basic mechanics of the game.

Heist on Marduk
I continued that with the Gods of Marduk adventure. However, they abandoned it halfway through, to rob a warehouse on Marduk - Ring World Meats. They stole some drugs being prepared for delivery. After a hasty escape, they sold the bounty for a nice payday.
They then decided to name themselves Absolute Chaos.

But what they didn't know: Ring World Meats is a front for a "no questions asked" storage service.

Honour Among Thieves
King Oleb invited them to Drinax, starting the Pirates of Drinax campaign. They were given a mission to restore the Drinax Empire. And a harrier, which they named "Freedom".

Next up was catching pirates in Honour Among Thieves. After a day of looking around on Theev, their ship was approached by a heavily armed squad at night. The squad asked about their involvement with the raid on Marduk. After admitting to it, they were invited to meet with Hroal Irontooth.
He explained that his cargo is stuck due to the raid on Marduk. The party agreed to get it back for him, using the laptop they stole on Marduk. In exchange for getting Miria Silverhand's location immediately and more rewards once done.

Eventually, they found Ferrik Redthane. During a firefight on his ship, Redthane set off a self-destruct sequence. They managed to kill Redthane and took his hand as a trophy. Right before running out of the ship, a moment before it blew up, barely escaping death.
They made stops on the way to Drinax to parade the hand (rotten for weeks..) and collect their bounties.

Return to Ring World Meats
On Drinax, they went to the Scholar's Tower to get help with deciphering the stolen laptop but it wasn't enough. With Irontooth's lieutenant pressuring them, they headed back to Marduk to look for more clues.

On Marduk they spent the day looking for clues but didn't get very far.
They spent the night in their ship, on the outskirts of the main town. That's when their sensors alerted that their transponder had been pinged with elevated access, despite the transponder being turned off.
After spotting a heat signature in bushes across a field, they scrambled all marines to go for it. While running across the field, an air raft approached.

An Alluring Offer
They were hailed by a representative of Ring World Meats. He made an alluring offer: 20MCr and a percentage of profit from Ring World Meats. In exhange, the party had to promise to stay silent about everything and frame someone else. If the offer were to be refused or the promise broken, they would be hunted to the edge of the galaxy.

The party agreed, requesting Irontooth's wish to be fulfilled too. They had made a powerful ally - Ine Givar (from JTAS 9), a massive criminal enterprise spanning multiple sectors. With ears and eyes everywhere, it would surely prove useful to restore the Drinax Empire.

Payday on Theev
They made a quick stop on Theev. Irontooth was happy his wish had been fulfilled and fixed up their harrier in exchange. While it was being repaired, they spent their credits on various powerful items.
With the harrier repaired, they headed back to Drinax, making stops to do some piracy. They found some prey in Marduk, of all places. After finding too much cargo for the Harrier to carry, they day-dreamed of a bigger ship.

Downed Treasure Ship
Back on Drinax, they made a grandiose party to celebrate their success. The next day, an Ine Givar representative spoke of a downed Treasure Ship. They lit up the engines of Freedom to head to Arunisiir.

On Arunisiir, they started planning their approach. Over many days, they managed to hear many rumours and got a local trader to sell jump drive parts to the Treasure Ship. Their engineer and gunner got hired on the Treasure Ship. Who helped smuggle 3 of their marines into the cargo hold.
When their engineer realized that the ship jump drive is almost fixed, they decided to make their move. Their plan was bold - steal the entire ship.

After the ship's captain opened his door to a knock, he was quickly lying in a pool of blood. A moment later, 3 imperial marines were neutralized while playing poker in the common room. And then, the alarms started blaring and chaos ensued.
They stole imperial battle dresses. They captured and threatened people. The local military boarded with 10 soldiers. The gunner managed to get flight control and take off with the ship. There were more firefights, with 2 party members barely escaping death. The situation was looking dire, with the party clearly being outgunned.

Finally, they found the first officer. She threatened to blow up the whole ship. But her real aim is to climb the Navy ranks. Not die in a blaze of glory. Luckily for her, the crew didn't know much about what was going on. So she proposed to order everyone to abandon ship. In exchange for keeping their deal secret.

Officially, the ship was hopelessly overrun by pirates and the officer managed to save most of the crew. She came out alive and a hero.

Stolen Treasure Ship
They took the ship on an asteroid to do final repairs on the jump drive and took of towards Drinax.
They had done it. They stole the whole Treasure Ship.

On Drinax, they gave good news to King Oleb, who was pleasantly surprised. They teamed up with their friend from the Scholar's Tower to crack the vault. Thanks to an advanced supercomputer, they managed to open the vault.
They found plentiful bounty within, including documents that Ine Givar was happy to get their hands on.


That is the story of our campaign from 1-1105 to 315-1105. What will happen next? Only time will tell. But one thing is for certain - Absolute Chaos.

 

[alex_greene]

Intensity's campaign was not exactly standard. There was a lot of Persuade involved. Broker, Admin, Stealth. Melee Combat, a little. A lot of Athletics, most often with Mari Jagad in hotel rooms.
On Tech-World, Intensity broke into a lab to get her hands on an experimental piece of technology for use in The Dorito Gambit, and was reunited with Pixie, her beloved bug thing from the first adventure. Pixie wanted to enjoy a little hunting, and there were plenty of terrified scientists to track down with her psionic abilities, which now included the full range of Telepathy powers - someone had decided to train Pixie's PSI, which was the high side of 12.
So now she had a pet Chamax hunter which could communicate with her telepathically.

 

[alex_greene]

Of course, the whole Dorito Gambit thing turned out to be a bust. It was great fun, getting Pixie to just burrow into the vault on Dorito, but instead of finding gold or lanthanum - we had been hoping for another big haul like the heist in the Treasure Ship affair - we saw some sort of hologram pretending to be Hari Seldon from Asimov's Foundation trilogy.
So we nicked it and pressed it into service on the ship as a Steward.

 

[Shadowblayde99]

I got POD on humble bundle and would like to try it for a couple of teenage players who would rather play being "good" guys rather than pirates. Reading the campaign, I thought it might be good starting them with A Game of Sun and Shadow adventure as Navy, Marines or Agents and have Oleb being secretly in league with the Imperium to bring stability to the Reach by getting rid of pirates and other negative influences in the region and having Drinax as an independent kingdom to act as a buffer to prevent invasion by the Hierate.

 

[alex_greene]

I got POD on humble bundle and would like to try it for a couple of teenage players who would rather play being "good" guys rather than pirates. Reading the campaign, I thought it might be good starting them with A Game of Sun and Shadow adventure as Navy, Marines or Agents and have Oleb being secretly in league with the Imperium to bring stability to the Reach by getting rid of pirates and other negative influences in the region and having Drinax as an independent kingdom to act as a buffer to prevent invasion by the Hierate.

You could bring them in as swashbuckling pirates, doing a Robin Hood thing, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, somewhat like Malcolm Reynolds and his crew in Firefly. The campaign need not be so much about accumulating Friendly Starports across the Reach, as much as building their reputation as good guys from their deeds, and the wild tales they hear about them over the airwaves - rescuing women from burning buildings, then wooing them by moonlight, or chasing down slavers and freeing their charges, then leaving the slavers chained up in their own cages.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I've thought about doing PoD for some time but my players and me are generally law abiding citizens. The idea of piracy never appealed. I really wish there was some campaign of the same depth and reputation for those of a law abiding nature.

Don't be pirates. Let piracy be the excuse the PCs let Oleb believe. As long as Oleb gets what he wants, and can be made to believe it is through his "brilliant idea" of using piracy, so be it. We got into planet-building and simply manufactured items that We then gave to Oleb as his share and told him they were stolen...lol...

 

[carlc]

Don't be pirates. Let piracy be the excuse the PCs let Oleb believe. As long as Oleb gets what he wants, and can be made to believe it is through his "brilliant idea" of using piracy, so be it. We got into planet-building and simply manufactured items that We then gave to Oleb as his share and told him they were stolen...lol...

Agreed, my group haven't pirated anything since the beginning. Lots of corporate intrigue, politics, exploration etc.

Their biggest problem is they have been undermining the machinations of a big Corp and an Aslan clan - both of who are out to get them.

 

[carlc]

Don't be pirates. Let piracy be the excuse the PCs let Oleb believe. As long as Oleb gets what he wants, and can be made to believe it is through his "brilliant idea" of using piracy, so be it. We got into planet-building and simply manufactured items that We then gave to Oleb as his share and told him they were stolen...lol...

To be fair, my reading of Oleb is that if you give him money he's generally happy so that scans.

He does want more influence in the sector but that was never going to happen with piracy anyway so commerce is an excellent idea.