The Eskaton Issue

In the previous session of our Traveller campaign, the Travellers rescued some traders from the clutches of some pirates. The pirate ship, the Pale Venture, was captained by Vera Vance, whilst the captain of the trader, the Future Profits, had been killed in the fight. We ended the previous session with the players undecided on what they wanted to do next.

The session started filling in last week’s missing player with the events. If the previous session had been very shooty shooty, this session was going to turn out to be talky talky. There were lots of options, though no clear answer.

Legally, they should hand the pirates and their ship over to a suitable authority. This might be the Imperium – but that was a few jumps away. The next obvious authority would be the government of Medishvlaas. Though the world didn’t really have the ability to enforce it’s law out at the gas giant, it was technically the most suitable authority.

The pirate ship would be handed over to a prize court, which would determine who it belonged to, and how much the Travellers should be paid (if at all) for saving it. Between sessions, I had worked out a bit about the crews of both ships, and there was a possible complication to be thrown in if the Travellers uncovered it. They already knew that the Future Profits was smuggling weapons to Medishvlaas, which was complication number one. To keep things simple, they were smuggling to the same place the Travellers were selling weapons to. So no conflicts of interest there.

I’d also worked out how old both ships were, and all their quirks. The Future Profits, as well as having been beaten up, was old with eight quirks. By now, it really wasn’t in great shape.

At this point I also gave some Profession checks to some of the Travellers. One minor house rule I have is that I’ve added in some Profession skills for the careers. So each term you spend in a military career, you get a level in Profession (Military), each term in academia gets you Profession (Academia) etc. This represents the Traveller having a general knowledge of their area of expertise.

Dmitry and Gan made their Profession (Military) checks to vaguely remember the name of Vera Vance. They knew that she’d been in the Imperium Navy (it always help to have a convenient tattoo which people can spot when you get strip searched), but now they recall that there had been an incident about 7 years ago. She’d been involved in some big corruption allegation, though had vanished before she could be sentenced. She had been the mastermind behind the illegal selling of military equipment, as well as misuse of military personnel for private profit, from the navy facility at Eskaton on Sylea.

When Nashu was prompted, she made a Profession (Journalism) check to also know some behind the scenes information. She had claimed to be a whistleblower, and that she’d been framed, but never really made it to what went out to the public due to the number of very credible witnesses to the contrary.

The way I handle checks like this is that the level of success determines how much information is known. They are not a binary success/failure. That way I can provide guaranteed information to the players, but their dice rolls still matter. If they’d rolled low, then they’d remember her name for some reason, but not why.

So it was time for an interview. Nashu sat down with Vera, and managed to run an excellent interview (high persuade check, helped by a chain bonus from Irian). Nashu’s telepathy (which she doesn’t know about) also helped a lot in giving her hunches and feelings. Such as Vera’s thoughts about some important data hidden in her room.

Vera was willing to cooperate, but only if she had a guarantee of freedom. She remained calm and collected throughout the interview, said she’d come from Shar, and would be willing to provide information about her contacts there, as well as the world’s defences. They are not a pirate base, but they don’t ask questions. She and her crew try not to kill people – it’s bad for business. But sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes they even do standard trading, when there’s profit to be had in that.

After the interview, it is decided that hanging around the gas giant is probably a bad idea, so they start making their way towards the main world. It will take about 8 days for the trip, so they will have time to do some repairs and search the ships.

Eventually they discover an encrypted data wafer in Vera’s captain’s quarters. After spending some time decrypting it (I do feel I need some better rules on computer hacking etc), it is revealed to contain Vera’s notes on what really happened. It seems that it was something that she’s thought a lot about over the years. As well as containing a record of her original thoughts shortly after the events, there are news ‘clippings’, information from journalists, bios on various individuals she claims were involved and basically a long string of evidence.

A lot of the evidence is testimony rather than hard facts, but there are some records in there which give weight to her story that the operation was being run by high ranking members of the Navy, and that she was made a scapegoat when it looked like she was going to whistle blow.

There were some journalists also looking into the situation leading up to that point, but they never got the hard evidence. It seems some people were concerned that they were close though. Nashu recognises some of the names of the journalists – a couple of them had unfortunate accidents soon after things went public.

Some of those responsible are dead or retired, but several are still serving as high ranking members of the Imperium Navy.

Dmitry and Irian are both very keen to see corruption exposed. Gan is concerned that if they go public, then they will become the target of some very powerful people.

So now the discussion becomes not just what to do with the pirates, but what to do with the information? Assuming it’s trustworthy (which it seems to be), could it be used to get Vera a lesser sentence? Do they need to get her and her story to the Imperium?

Much of the session is spent discussing the possible options.

In other events, a ship is detected coming out of jump near the gas giant three days after they left its orbit. Whether it’s another pirate or a trader isn’t known.

Due to jump shadows, the pirate scout couldn’t have jumped to Shar when it escaped, it would have headed in the general direction of the Imperium (possibly back to one of the class A starports the Travellers jumped over).

What to do with the not-pirate smugglers? They couldn’t deliver their goods directly to Ket, because the starport there is currently under bombardment by a neighbour they are at war with. Though they could land in a field, transporting it to a buyer would be tricky. They had planned to land at Kingston, and smuggle it out from there. Kingston, whilst it’s not at war with Ket, wouldn’t look kindly to high tech weapons being shipped to them.

The smugglers also came from Shar, and noticed that the Pale Venture left several hours before they did. They were then ambushed at the gas giant where the Pale Venture and it’s companion were waiting for them.

The Traveller’s ship could possibly do with a good mechanic, so offering the mechanic Nya (and maybe even the ‘broker’ Dax) a position aboard their ship might be a good idea. There’s not much left of their own ship, and it’s not even theirs.

So more things still to decide for next session. This was a far less action orientated session than the previous one, but that seemed to be the player’s decision, not mine.