Wildwood

Its been a month since our last session of Traveller Deepnight Revelation. With work, Worldcon and COVID there have been plenty of reasons for skipping sessions. So it was good to get back to the game after such a long break. Though I had been finding it difficult to get into the mood to prep. I figured there was going to be some discussion about what happened last, and then a couple of possible directions that the players would want to go.

As it happened, they brought up a third option, but both options two and three would involve a lot of travel through random systems which wouldn’t require too much pre-planning.

First thing to do was to tidy up after the events of the after party. Initially, there was some confusion about what had happened, and who had been responsible. Some thought that the Travellers had shot first and blamed them. Some diplomacy by Lord Sivas put the record straight, and by the end of things it was clear to everyone that it had all been the fault of Earl Egrane.

By this point a lot of video footage of the brief fight between the Deepnight and the Imperial ship Avenger had made it to the local news networks. An anti-Imperial (not Imperium) spin was being put on things. Possibly because nobody else wanted to be on the receiving end of the spinal mount.

Officially, Countess Egrane was innocent of all the events. In return for which, she wasn’t making any complaints about seizing of Imperial assets in retaliation for the acts of aggression. Lady Grey had headed down to the planet just before the events kicked off. Officially, she was just an video streamer, so was ignored by the government. The Travellers checked in on her to make sure that she was okay though.

The following day, discussions were had about where to go next. One options was to head to Wildwood, where there were large concentrations of the red ‘blood petal’ flowers. There were also talk of strange things being seen in the woods – possibly variants on the “War Ents” that the Deepnight had encountered previously.

Another destination was the system of Abyrezuky, a TL 12 world with a class A starport which had recently gone quiet. There was talk of some big science experiment being run there, but that was the last that was heard.

A third option was the system of Opadajo, where there was a ruin of the Ancients. It had been preserved from being destroyed or broken into, and possibly had a bio-lock on it which the Travellers thought that their Priestess Talliena might be able to open.

It was decided to head to Wildwood first, and they would give a lift to Anna Yamis, the diplomat from that world who had been seeking help for some of their problems.

On 1117-142, the Deepnight Revelation arrives at Wildwood. After the usual refuelling and general greetings, the science team contact the local biology experts on the world to find out what they know about the blood petals and any other unusual biological specimens.

Since I picked some suitable looking randomly generated worlds rather than following the exact UWP profiles given in the campaign, my version of Wildwood is slightly more populous (400M, compared to 1M) and higher tech (TL 9 v TL 8) than what is in the book. This meant a few more resources were available – but even so, my players first course of action was to contact local specialists and seek advice and information rather than just dropping in and ‘adventuring’ on their own.

They found Professor Paul Balos at a local university, who was the leading specialist in alien fauna. Not only were there Blood Petals here, but there were also fossils of strange organic constructs. Most ranged between 100,000 and 300,000 years old, though a few smaller specimens were around 50,000 years old.

They were similar in structure to the specimens the crew had discovered. Evolved, organic, but heavily genetically engineered and half way between machine and plant. Such finds weren’t uncommon in the sector, and they tended to be tailored for the local conditions.

Some of the specimens looked like a cross between trees and humanoids. But remains were partial, and with only a few specimens definite classifications hadn’t been possible.

There was a logging camp where some of the more recent problems had occurred, so a team took the Sex Thing down to the planet to investigate. Landing near the town of Entolere, it was discovered that recent events had caused all the loggers to abandon the camp and come to the town. They were refusing to go back.

Some had video footage on their phones showing strange creatures attacking them from out of the woods. They had lost heavy equipment, and also friends. One had a small piece of wooden ‘machinery’ which he had picked up from the area. Problems had started after logging had begun on a large mound covered in some really large trees. The mound was covered in the toxic blood petals.

It was around this time that the locals started getting news of the Deepnight’s exploits at Tradeport. Since the Empire wasn’t liked due to its habit of raiding undefended worlds, several rounds of drinks were offered to the crew.

The next plan was to send some probes to the logging camp and examine the place from a distance before going in themselves. It would be the safest option. They also contacted the local government to warn them that there could be a bigger threat from the mound.

This is something that will happen next session.

Since I’ve been working on adding more support for Spacecraft to my Foundry system, I’ve given the crew members aboard the Sex Thing roles so that they can make skill checks directly from the ship sheet.

I’ve also started doing the same for the Deepnight Revelation itself, though with several hundred crew members this is going to be more complicated. I do have a plan to allow crew on larger navy vessels to be divided up into departments so that they can be better organised. It’s going to required some thinking about how to display ships with hundreds of crew, and similar numbers of weapon systems.