Conspiracies at New Home
In the last session of our Traveller campaign, the Deepnight Revelation was at Amondiage, where it there was a political reception for it. The next port of call was New Home, where no such reception had been planned so it should be a simple refuel and leave.
The players wanted to know whether there was any news about New Home before they left for them, so I consulted by list of rumours for anything New Home related. There were a couple, but they got attached to the first one so I left it at that.
The ‘famous’ Imperium-denialist Tom Hagitty of New Home has put out a Cr10,000 reward for anyone who can show proof that Aslan and Vargr are just humans in stupid costumes. All you need to do is to pull the costume off one of them in public whilst videoing it.
— Rumour from New Home
The players decided that it would be fun to run a competition for the ship’s crew to see who could come up with the best fake video showing an Aslan or Vargr being ‘de-costumed. This would not only be amusing, but it would give the crew something to do to keep them occupied and raise morale.
Personally, I thought this was a great idea, so at the end of the jump the various divisions make a check to see who got the best video. The winner was from Operations division, which had an Aslan being revealed to be a (real) Vargr – who was then revealed to be a human using some CGI.
They’re given a huge sendoff from Amondiage, and make the jump towards New Home.
On arrival at New Home near the sole gas giant, they notice that there is quite a bit of traffic, as well as some small space ports, in orbit around the world. There are also some military vessels (in the few thousand tonne range) which begin powering up their drives. Nonetheless, they are greeted by star port control and no threats are made.
Shortly afterwards, they are contacted by several news crews who want to come aboard and do interviews – though the government here hasn’t shown interest in the mission, word has got out to journalists who think it would be a good story and have been waiting around. A plan is made to meet with them after refuelling.
As they head in towards the gas giant, navigating it’s rather complicated ring system (my random world generator has been a bit enthusiastic at adding rings to gas giants), the bridge notice an unauthorised attempt to transmit data from the ship to the local in-system network – the Operations Division is trying to insert their video into the local network, but got caught by ship security. The bridge grants them permission.
For allowing the journalists aboard, the players talk about making sure security are suitably briefed to make sure that the journalists behave themselves. I had planned for one of the journalists to try to sneak off and poke around the ship (nothing nefarious, just journalistic curiosity), but since the players had talked about specifically preventing this, I allowed the journalist to be automatically caught.
Before they leave the system, they find out that their video has got a lot of traction – with both conspiracy theorists and normal people. Whether it causes anyone to try to “remove the fur suit” from an Aslan for real, the crew don’t find out.
They make the jump from New Home to Neubayern, and head in to the main world where they refuel, take on journalists (including the famed science presenter, Dr Jacob Weber, who they agree to name a planet around a neutron star after) and meet with government officials.
Whilst at the reception, a member of the Neubayern navy pulls the PCs aside and asks about their planned route. He’s wanting to know if they’re going via Topas, and if so, warns them about the various ‘uncultured ruffians’ that are around the gas giant there.
The crew have already been given instructions about the Hybris Trading Consortium, which are basically pirates who try to control access to the gas giant at Topas. Their instructions are that using deadly force against them should be considered a valid option. Neubayern is effectively also giving them permission (if not outright asking them) to use force against the pirates.
The ship performs a full gravity scan of the system, picking up a few possible hidden asteroid bases, and is then ready to depart for Topas.
