The Rescue

So after the distraction in our previous session of Traveller, I wanted to see how far we could get out of Core sector. We ended with the assassin being handed over to the starport security, and the Travellers now at the world of Likhamii.

The players decide to spend a bit of time here, visiting bars and picking up rumours and information. This will be their last stop before leaving the Imperium after all. So I rolled on the random rumours tables to see what came up:

• Dr. Jonas is looking for a crew to find the Tiq-Suen Pyramid, so is his longtime rival, Dr. Belloth. Whoever can get to it first will surely earn the hefty bounty offered by the Imperial Heritage Institute.
• Professional duellists killed one of my friends. They can be hired to provoke a victim into a fight, then killing them in a challenge.

The first was I think from the T4 Milieu 0 book, the second may be one of one. When the Pyramid one came up, I knew I had to use it given the fascination some of the players had with pyramids in our previous campaign. Which means I’ll need to flesh out some more rumours about it later on. The information that they have is that it’s possibly an Ancient artefact, and that the scouts that came back from there died from some machine-virus infection.

The Travellers picked up some passengers, then headed to Indshiim Ganme, a world renowned for its universities. In my campaign, it used to be under the power of the world of Anuug 2 parsecs away, but gained independence when the latter world suffered a crippling civil war.

There was a chance to pick up more rumours:

• A scout ship docked at a way station on the periphery two weeks ago. What is unusual is the ship had been presumed lost in a misjump a little over three years ago. The ship’s pilot said he misjumped to a far sector and landed near a ringworld, and spent the better part of a year surveying it before he started heading home.
• A derelict heavy cruiser from the Second Imperium has been spotted drifting in the interstellar void between subsectors. It’s said to still have its Jump-3 drives intact—tech the Third Imperium is desperate to recover.
• The Imperium is expanding only so it can support its core member worlds (and the megacorporations within this exclusive clique) by allowing megacorps to strip the outlying planets of their natural resources.

Do I want to stick a ringworld into the campaign? Probably not. There is a Ringworld in the official material, but off in Hinterworlds sector (several sectors away – potentially reachable, but we probably don’t want to go there). One of the things I like about the Third Imperium setting, is that it’s so big, it’s effectively many different settings. The Client States region between the Imperium and the Hivers and Two Thousand Worlds could make for an interesting campaign.

Anyway…. a young woman comes up to Nashu whilst they are in a bar, asking if they are providing passage off world. Nashu hands her over to Irian, who finds out the details. The young woman, Lusakhraa Arirarsuu, has a bit of money (not enough), and no travel papers. She is also pregnant, and looking to get away from her abusive husband. Apparently on this world the husband has a lot of authority over their wives, and he hasn’t allowed her to have a passport.

Irian wants to help, Nashu doesn’t care, but is persuaded to help out. I was sort of expecting a hop down to the surface to smuggle her off-world that way, but they came up with a method using Nashu’s disguise kit, and some good persuade and admin checks.

From there, it was a hop to the world of Anuug. This world is a Sylean (the human sub-species) world, that threw off the yoke of their Vilani oppressors about 70 years ago. The Vilani were responsible for all sorts of atrocities, and the war for freedom was brutal and long.

Irian does manage to find out though that the official version of events given by the Syleans of this world might not be entirely accurate and complete. According to some versions, the atrocities committed by the Syleans against the Vilani were even worse, and resulted in almost complete genocide. But that was 70 years ago – so they’re all bound to be friends by now?

They come out of jump around Anuug on 000-223, and start heading in towards the world. It’s a dry world, where there is a single sea along the equatorial regions.

Shortly after coming out of jump, there is a general distress signal broadcast by another ship in orbit. They’ve suffered an unexpected explosion in their M-Drive just after turn-over, and are now heading towards the planet without any means of controlling their ship.

The ship is the Star Skipper, a 1,500t cargo hauler. They have 7 crew and 3 passengers, having just come in from Shand. One of their crew was killed in the explosion. Gan, Dmitri and Nya hop aboard their shuttle, the Nameless, and head at maximum burn towards the stricken ship.

The rest stay in communication with the captain, who is pushed aside and another voice comes on the channel – a rather pompous and aggressive guy called Baron Kami Karukmamki. He demands that he is rescued, and that nobody wastes any time about it.

Irian has vague memories of him – we was in the news many years ago when he was in charge of the world of Lauursha, and had a small revolt put down. Many civilians were killed, and it was considered to have been a rather large overreaction to the events which had started as a simple protest about religious rights.

As the Nameless approaches, there is a second explosion as the airlock is destroyed. Another crew is immediately killed, and others are lost as the ship loses atmosphere. The general thought at this point is that there’s sabotage at work. Nya takes a look at the damage to the engines from the outside, and her first thoughts are that it’s not a system failure. The bit that exploded isn’t a part of the drive system that is likely to explode.

Gan carefully lines up the shuttle, and Dmitri goes across to start rescuing people. The Baron, a rather large fellow, demands to be first off the ship, so he is pushed out the airlock – fortunately in the direction of the Nameless and he is brought on board.

The rest of the crew and passengers are rescued, and Dmitry does a final search around the ship before they abandon it.

Meanwhile, down on the planet, landing pads have been cleared for the Nameless to land and get people to hospital if necessary. The Star Skipper beats them to the surface – breaking up in the atmosphere and smashing into some mountains.

I was expecting the Travellers to be a bit more paranoid about allowing people aboard the Nameless, but they didn’t stop to see if anyone was carrying explosives – even though their working hypothesis was that someone was trying to kill the Baron. Fortunately for them, if anyone was they didn’t set anything off.

So they’ve now rescued a Vilani Baron, and are down on a world that is noted for hating Vilani. Fortunately for them, Irian outranks him (SOC 14 to his SOC 12), so she can probably prevent him from trying to boss everyone around.

We got about as far as I expected in this session. I do want to get to the bit where they start exploring strange new worlds, but I also don’t want to just skip over all these civilised worlds just outside the Imperium.