Ruins of Steel
The Travellers arrive at the world of Miium, a garden world with a population of under a thousand. Or at least, a reported population of under a thousand. The Imperium Scout Service believes that the population is somewhat higher, with the bulk of the population living beneath the ruins of the world’s great cities.
Miium is on the path for the Travellers’ shakedown cruise, and as well as doing trade here, they’ve been asked to have a nose around and see what evidence they can find of the real population numbers. The only complication is that the local “Star Gazers” cult which run the world do have access to anti-aircraft weapons, radar systems, and other ways of keeping outsiders away from the sacred ruins of the ancient arcologies which used to house the billions who lived here prior to the Long Night.
The Big Sphincter (the Travellers’ Laboratory Ship) comes into orbit around the planet at a bad angle, giving it an excuse to complete a couple of orbits before getting into position to drop off Nameless, their pinnace which is used for planetary excursions. They’ve already been provided with some interesting sights, plus information of radar holes and hot spots in case they want to try sneaking down to the surface. A bit of passive scanning does pick up unusual activity near some of the sites – warm water coming from the ground near some hot spots, electronic activity, and some farms in one area. Even an aircraft flying into some of the northern ruins.
The Nameless heads down to the main starport, and is directed to land at a pad. The port is built into the top of the rusting ruins of a large building – part of a city sized mega structure that is mostly skeletal structures half consumed by forest and swamp. There are clusters of buildings built on top of the ruins, and some circular landing pads inset into the structure’s roof. Calling this a C class star port could be stretching the definition.
I did a quick sketch map of the port, to get down what it looked like. I tried to scale ship tokens to be the right size, which worked for the larger spacecraft, but not quite for the smallcraft such as Nameless which needed to be sub-grid dimensions. In future, I might use a smaller grid at a larger scale (maybe 25px, but at 6m or 15m) to be able to represent large areas.
There are three other craft landed here – a couple of 200t traders, plus a 400t subsidised merchant. As soon as the Nameless lands, a group of white robed people come out of one of the buildings, and begins to chant and throw water over the craft. They seem to be blessing it.
As the Traveller’s disembark, they are greeted as “Star Travellers from Afar” by Arch-Mechanic Kaelen, who seems to be some type of tech-priest. There are a couple of what seem to be crew from one of the other ships who seem to be watching with amused smirks. The Travellers immediately label them as pirates/smugglers. Which isn’t entirely fair.
The Travellers ask to trade, and they are directed to one of the larger buildings. Heading that way, they spot a teenage boy and a young woman chatting. He’s wearing what looks like scraps of vacc suit and a mix of local garb, she is wearing a long t-shirt and not much else. She is barefoot, and has a huge mop of red hair, which also seems to cover her shoulders, arms and legs. Her face is also somehow ‘off’ – very pronounced brow ridges and protruding jaw.
She comes running over to the Travellers, and gives Irian a big hug, introducing herself as Gakak. She then proceeds to try and hug everyone, though Dr Durunarar and Dmitry both indicate that they would prefer not to be quite so hands-on.
She’s with the crew of the Lady of Courage, the merchant vessel, who are here to do some trade. She seems very gregarious and hands-on whilst chatting with people. Eventually, the Travellers disentangle themselves, and head in to the building to do some trade. A comment by Irian does lead Gakak to confide that Joro, the boy, has shown her some interesting parts of the star port. He does seem to be very keen on Gakak.
So the session goes into trade mode at this point, with lots of discussions about what to buy and sell. It also gives me some practical ideas for improvements in FoundryVTT, on how to display cargo in a ship’s actor sheet. It would be good to display port of origin I think, so players can remember where they purchased things from. I believe that data is stored on the objects, but it’s not exposed anywhere.
Gakak was there not only because she’s a useful hook for this scenario, but also because I wanted to introduce some aliens. There aren’t too many options in the Milieu Zero setting, at least not right at year zero. Gakak is a Suerrat, one of the species of humans taken from Terra 300,000 years ago. The Suerrat are descendents of Neanderthal, hence the red hair and facial features. They are a minor race, though think they should be a major race since they’d built generation ships by the time they were first encountered by the Vilani.
I figured that there’s probably some in the region, and Gakak herself comes from Sylea. She isn’t pure Suerrat – there are probably not many pureblood Suerrat on Sylea at this point. Their homeworld is a sector or two Spinward from Core.
Suerrat are gregarious, hate being alone, aren’t too fond of clothing (their body hair keeps them warm), and treat sex a lot more casually than other human species.
Whilst trade negotiations are ongoing, one of the trade vessels leaves. The crew of that were a possible source of information for the Travellers, but they were always going to be leaving shortly after the Travellers turned up. I didn’t see any reason to have them hang around just so they could give a shortcut to some info which the Travellers should be able to get via other means. Some of it (such as the farms in the West) they’ve already discovered anyway.
Gan picks up some personal weapons. They have grenades and submachine guns here, which seem locally produced. With an official population of 800, it’s not clear why they’d need such weapons.
Dr Durunarar asks about the local sea life, which the Tech Priests don’t know much about. The land is poisoned according to them, so they don’t go out into the wilds, let alone out to sea. However, they are happy for him to fly out to the sea and look for himself. They just don’t want outsiders to be poking around in the sacred ruins. It would upset the spirits.
Irian stays behind to finish trade negotiations, and the other Travellers get into their air/raft and fly westwards across the continent towards the ocean.
They use the opportunity to scan the land for signs of anything interesting, such as animal life, ruins, signs of current civilisation, or groups of people armed with surface to air missiles. Yikes!
A shouted warning from Dr Durunarar allows Gak time to do a hard turn as a rocket narrowly misses them. It’s more due to extreme range and that it turns out to be a dumb rocket rather than smart missile that saves them, rather than Gan’s piloting skill. A group of three people start moving to tree cover, as the air/raft begins randomly dodging through the air.
The Travellers are surprised that they are being randomly shot at. One of the men stops at the tree line and begins reloading. Dmitry takes careful aim, and despite the jinking of the raft, manages to put a shot into their attacker. He drops.
The Travellers decide to land and try and find out why they’re being shot at. This seems a good point to end things for the evening. For the next bit, it may be useful for me to have a map, and have a think about just what it is that they’ve disturbed. I mean, I know broadly, but some extra thinking time would be nice.
