Passengers

After last weeks session with a haunted house theme, I figured that this week’s session of Traveller should involve large explosions in order to continue matching the season. After leaving Khash, the Travellers would be heading out towards the Fringe (the worlds bordering the civilised region around the Imperium), before venturing into the Outback (those worlds which are still in the Long Night).

I wasn’t sure how far they would get, so came up with a serious of encounters along the route that should take them up to the Trailing edge of Core, before they crossed the border into Fornast sector. As often is the case, things didn’t quite go as planned.

Their next destination was the world of Argash. There are Chirpers here, and about 40,000 humans. The seas are shallow, rarely more than 200m deep, so and many of the coastlines have wide expanses of mangrove-like swamps. For Gan, this was a good opportunity to go swimming.

Some of the others though were distracted by a secondary station which was run by BiodyneSys, a corporation working on genetics and finding ways of allowing humans to live on harsh worlds. The Director of the station, Narltha Temosha, had invited the crew over for a meal. Since the Loopback was a LabShip, he thought that they may have interesting information to share about scientific research.

I didn’t need a full actor defined for him, just a micro-NPC defined in a journal entry. This is may way of defining NPCs with just a line of text, though more information can now be added if desired. You just insert a [[/upp …]] macro into the journal.

Nashu tried to get information out of him about what research they were doing at the station, but he was able to deflect her questions without too much trouble. He did share that he was interested in any samples they could bring back from the world of Matinger at Fornast/1126. There were creatures there which were a cross between plants and animals.

Gan didn’t get eaten by any of the predators down on the planet, and after picking up some passengers, they headed towards the world of Likhamii. I had decided to leave the explosions until later. Not every planet has to have something exciting happen at it, and I wanted to move things along and allow them visit several worlds this session.

One of the passengers though was a spy, a member of the Star Chamber at Likhami. The Star Chamber (non-canon) is a group of spies, assassins and similar people who operate from the planet. They tend to be hired out by those seeking their services. They are a legal organisation as far as the world of Likhami is concerned, though are secretive in terms of who their members are.

The other passengers had a bit of background as well. My passenger generator does provide random passenger backgrounds, though it isn’t very varied. At some point I need to expand upon it.

I hadn’t really decided what this passenger would be up to, so was making it up as things went along. I hadn’t meant for this subplot to take up the entire rest of the session, but it pretty much ended up doing so.

Gan was the first to notice that one of the passengers was always making sure he sat with his back to the wall, and seemed to be keeping an eye on the others but keeping to himself. Gan told Nashu, who went to talk to him. He was just a tourist coming back from Sylea. She managed to figure out though that everything he mentioned about what he did on Sylea were things that someone who had never been there would know about. She managed to catch him in a few lies.

Since she’s a telepath (but doesn’t really know it), she picked up that he had an interest in one of the other passengers. Something to do with a ring and a drink. With only a couple of days left before the ship came out of Jump, they didn’t have much time to figure out what was going on.

Their doctor (and ship’s captain), Dr Durunarar, took a look at the victim, Nancy White, and realised that something was wrong with her. She wasn’t feeling well, and was sweating with bloodshot eyes and breathing heavily. He offered to take a look at her, which she accepted.

After an examination, he realised that she was being fed drugs which would probably kill her in the next few days. Not a poison as such, but drugs which in the right doses would lead to heart failure. He gave her something to counter-act the effects, and she retired to her room. Apparently she was heading to a security conference at Likhamii, where she was going to give a talk exposing some security flaws.

After much discussion about what to do, I clarified that the ship’s Captain actually has a lot of authority aboard his ship, and could legally detain someone considered a threat. So they detained the would-be assassin and searched him and his room. Drugs were found in his luggage, and his ring could hold a liquid which could be dispensed subtly into a drink or food.

So they locked him up in a room. On coming out of jump, they notified the planet so that he could be arrested on arrival, and Ms White could be taken to hospital.

A few days later, they hear that someone has announced security flaws in starship safety systems. It’s an announcement that comes before any vulnerabilities can be patched, so could put people’s lives at risk.

So we just got two planets done for the session, and there were no explosions. That means I already have things planned out for the next session or two. I’ll probably flesh some things out, and it gives me time to plan interesting things in Fornast, as the Travellers really move out into the wilderness.

Note that I’m not really trying to match canon for the worlds. Milieu Zero seems a bit undefined in terms of the world descriptions. Traveller Map doesn’t seem to match the 4th edition Milieu 0 book, and much of what’s described is ambiguous. Or at least, I’ve found it so.

Fornast sector is also completely lacking in detail, so I just took data from the 1105 era and modified it. I used my Foundry Traveller Map plugin to import the worlds, then ran a macro to modify TL, population and star port rating. I will then fill in the details with whatever seems like a good idea.