Into The Beyond

My plan for this session of Traveller was to get the group to the point where we were ready to split the party. The players wanted to go and visit Goblin’s Planet (The Beyond/1335), where the thought some interesting Ancient artefacts might be found. The Deepnight Revelation though had a plan to stop off at Shekerlab (The Beyond/1214) in the Corellan League, where it had been planned to pick up some information about the road ahead.

So as not to completely waste time in delaying the Deepnight, the plan was to go to Stormhaven (The Beyond/1724) and split, with the It’s A Sex Thing taking a small crew down towards Goblin’s Planet, and for the Deepnight Revelation to head coreward into the Corellan League. My plan was to just run the characters in the Sex Thing, and for the Deepnight’s journey to happen ‘off screen’. Since they’ll still be in civilised space, there shouldn’t be anything hugely exciting happening to the latter ship during this time. If it does, the players will find out about it when they meet up with it at Mien (The Beyond/1031).

For now though, the ship was still at Floria, where it put it for some repairs and refuelling. By now they had the results of the basic research from 985-373, and the science teams were able to present their findings.

At Floria, they had a chance to visit some of the Ancient wonders there, including the Well of Lights and the Seven Towers. Since they also had found some Florian ‘art’, they also wanted to visit an art gallery, but the closest that they could find was the Museum of the Abstract. It was a large metal and glass building, shaped a bit like a truncated pyramid, within which were a large number of abstract pieces. It seemed that Florians didn’t have much concept of art in the normal sense.

Kirk found one of the curators, and requested to be able to talk to someone important, in order to discuss delivery of the found art pieces. Instead there is a very practical conversation, and after checking his systems the curator suggests that space for the art can be found by tomorrow afternoon, and a shuttle will go up to the Deepnight then.

Shortly thereafter, Kirk gets messaged from the ship that they seem to have been deep scanned by the planet, though there doesn’t seem to have been any sign of aggressive action. The Florians are meant to be descendants of those that served the Ancients, and the Ancient machines on their world are said to be of considerable unknown power, so I wanted to give the impression of the Imperials being completely out of their league. The Florians don’t actually understand how any of this technology works – they just tend the machines and use them, and hope they don’t break down anytime soon.

The team aboard the Deepnight are asked to ensure that the artistic artefacts are suitably cleaned and in a state to be presented, but they find out that the items are already perfectly clean – there is not even any sign of dust on them. Whatever they are, they seem to be self-cleaning.

The next day, a Florian shuttle heads up to the Deepnight and a small of Barnai and Feskal come aboard and request to see the artefacts. They are shown through to the hold where they take a look at the coloured glass blocks with wires inside. They ask for permission to take them, and once given, the blocks vanish. The crew are thanked, and the Florians head back down to the planet.

In return, the ship is given large discounts on fuel and cost of repairs. They also manage to pick up some information about their future route, getting some more detailed information about the worlds they will be passing. This is especially useful for the Sex Thing, since some of the systems that lack Gas Giants on the way to Goblin’s Planet turn out to have worlds with suitable oceans to refuel from, which provides more options. One big discrepancy though is that Goblin’s Planet itself doesn’t seem to be there – the Florian’s own maps are missing the entire star system.

They have a couple of weeks at Floria for resting up and recuperating, and the science crew take the opportunity of shore leave to visit as many of the ancient sites as possible. Dr Nekuna takes Zanobia out for dinner one evening, and Kirk finds a rich tourist from the Imperium to spend a few nights with.

On 1108-063 though, the Deepnight Revelation makes its farewells and leaves for Indarin. From there, they head to Testrous and out of the League to Tellus.

At Tellus they run into a couple of Stormhaven destroyers – the Hellfire, a Typhoon class destroyer and the Avenger of Camlaen, a Hurricane class destroyer. The Avenger had recently returned from Bingo where it had a run-in with some I’Sred*Ni Web-Spinners.

From there the route takes them to Lahasha, Ileshanin and finally Stormhaven itself. This provides another chance for repairs and a bit of shore leave, and Sir Leon Sivas leaves to go to a meeting with some diplomats from Stormhaven, taking with him the briefcase he was given back at Pryme. Kirk decides that he wants to sneak into Sir Sivas’ room at some point and take a look at what’s in the briefcase, but at this point is too late, since when Sir Sivas returns from his meeting he no longer has it.

There is also a reception here, in which Kirk finds out that Stormhaven has recently received some technological information that will help the Republic against the Aslan.

From here, the party will split, with the Sex Thing making its own way down towards Goblin’s Planet. I have a rough idea of the best route for them, but I’ll leave that for the players to finalise next week. It will be mostly PCs going on the side mission, with a couple of NPCs to flesh things out and ensure that each player only has a single character on the Sex Thing (just to keep things simple). It will need to be a fast trip, so as to not miss their rendezvous with the Deepnight in about 100 days time, but will also be an opportunity to do some more ‘normal’ Traveller – a small ship and small crew exploring some strange new worlds with no backup.