Back to the Imperium
We’d missed last week’s session of Traveller due to two players being off, and this week we were down one due to illness again but I wanted to move things forward. Something I’ve found since I’ve been back to working in the office, is that I’m a lot more tired by the end of the week so it’s very easy for me to want to just cancel. Commuting into work again, and being around lots of people, really takes it out of me, even if it’s only three days a week.
The previous session had involved a short space battle around the gas giant of Topas, but the rest of the pirates of the Hybris Trading Consortium were not keen to get into a fight so left the Deepnight Revelation alone. There was plenty of open radio chatter going on in the system by the time that the Deepnight was heading out to Jump, with merchant craft wondering whether this would break the pirate stranglehold on refuelling at the gas giant, or cause them to double down on their violence to protect their ‘image’.
This is one aspect of the Deepnight campaign that I’m not fond of – the players will be continuously moving on from one location to another, never returning. This means that any consequences of their actions won’t have an effect on the campaign world from their perspective. One aspect I did like of keeping things within the Islands, was that there could be ongoing events which the players would come back to in later sessions. As it is, the only consequences will be what happens to the ship itself.
The next destination was Serendip Belt, where there was another series of ambassadorial events. The Deepnight may be a large ship, but compared to the ancient C-Jammer it was tiny in comparison. I had decided not go into the festivities at Serendip Belt in detail, since I wanted to push things on to Tobia in this session so we could begin the mission for real.
One thing that did happen was that the PCs discovered that one of the crew was smuggling aboard goods – chocolates, alcohol and other things which might make for good bargaining aboard the ship once it was in the middle of nowhere. Since the crew of the Sex Thing had done much the same, they couldn’t complain too much, but there was some objection to the fact that he’d also brought aboard some recreational drugs.
There was some disagreement amongst the players as to what to do with him, but eventually it was decided to give him some shit jobs in the drive systems for a while as punishment, and the drugs were thrown off the ship. He was allowed to keep the rest of his haul however. There was also a bit of concern that he’d managed to get these things aboard without anyone else noticing – an issue for the head of security to deal with when the player is back.
The PCs did have a chance to meet the Aslan ambassadors again, and they got a bit of information about the Aslan Hierate in the Trojan Reach, Beyond and Touchstone sectors. This did spur some discussion about the route they wanted to take, with the current favourite seeming to be going across Sindal and Dpres sub-sectors, through the Florian League and up past the Stormhaven Republic into the Corellan League. Which is a perfectly reasonable route.
After Serendip Belt, they headed to Zuflucht, then to Chandler Station for a quite refuel and onto Cerebin which brought them back into the Imperium. On 1107-226, they arrived at Tobia, the heart of Imperium culture in the Reach.
The first things that they want to do, is to get hold of a second particle barbette to pair with the one that they took off the pirate ship around Topas. I’d already decided that there was a black market of sorts here, which provides a couple of ways of them getting hold of some more hardware for their ship. How that pans out I’ll leave until next session.
The next step is to finalise re-supply of the Deepnight Revelation, and for the players to decide what they want to fill the hold with. There is plenty of room for ground and grav vehicles, extra supplies and so-on, so some decisions will need to be made. After that, they can begin the journey across the Outrim Void and leave the Imperium behind them.
There will also be time for a briefing on the journey ahead, with information gained by the advanced scouting missing led by the Varikuur, and also from the couriers which brought the information back to Tobia.
