Dishonourable Secrets

I ended the previous session of our weekly Traveller game with the PCs presence being requested by the Aslan Embassy. The holovid about their exploration of the old Aslan base had just been published, and the Aslan ambassador was now quite interested in talking to them. Or at least, his wife was quite interested in talking to them and had convinced her husband that he was as well.

At the Embassy, they were greeted by the Ambassador Eahytel, who was a typical bombastic male Aslan. After greeting them and talking to Khadashi about how he’d heroically led the team through the traps to uncover the base, he invited Khadashi to come on a hunt tomorrow. They have a couple of Feakhefourar (‘Aslan fighting cats’) and a hunting compound.

When the assistant comes back and informs Yeihh of the identification, she bares her teeth and becomes quite angry. She informs the PCs that she wants them to ensure that all further information on the findings is destroyed and knowledge about it is not told to anyone.

After that Eahytel left his first wife, Yeihh, to deal with them. She was interested in whatever other information they had, and would organise some ambassadorial clearance to get the ‘biological finds’ (dead Aslan) and ancients weapons off their ship and to the Embassy. Zanobia shows her the other information they have, and the clan markings, and Yeihh sends an assistant off to try and identify the clan.

The clan markings identify them as clan Tek’wevarki, a minor clan that was outcast from the Tokouea’we some time ago. They were extreme even for the Tokouea’we – who went on to form the Glorious Empire. Yeihh considers them a stain on the honour of the Hierate, and wants all evidence about them suppressed.

Zanobia and the others are quite agreeable to this. I did think that there would be a possibility of some disagreement here, but it all stayed civilised. The Aslan would have been willing to be more… assertive in their demands if the PCs hadn’t been so willing to cooperate. I also hadn’t originally planned on the Aslan base being an outlawed clan – I I hadn’t really thought too much about who they had been.

When I was fleshing out some of the extra details though last week, I wondered whether it was possible to tie it to the Glorious Empire. It turned out that the time frame didn’t quite work for a direct link, but an indirect link would work.

Yeihh did ask Khadashi how he had any concerns going on a hunt with her husband, and when Khadashi raised some concerns, she promised to balance things in his favour.

She also mentioned that someone else had been trying to sell them some artefacts, but she hadn’t met with them yet. Since they may well be whoever had planted the bombs the crew had ran into, she offered them the chance to meet up with them instead. They accepted.

The next day, they went down to the hunting park where a couple of Feakhefourar had been let loose, Khadashi was given a laser carbine, and one of the females ensured that it had a sensor that would feedback an audio signal to his earpiece that would let him know the direction and distance to the cats. He also had a cutlass for close in combat, but armour was considered cheating.

Out in the wooded park, Khadashi and Eahytel go hunting some cats. Or rather, the cats go hunting them. There is some betting on ‘First hit’, ‘First kill’ and ‘First to be wounded’, and Shinzaro bets that Khadashi will be first wounded.

He follows behind the Aslan, keeping track of where the two Feakhefourar are – one is on the other side of the park, the other seems to be closer and tracking them. With his tracker, he is able to determine exactly where it will burst out of the trees, giving him a slight edge on Eahytel. As it leaps from the trees at Eahytel who shoots at it but misses. Khadashi shoots it, just hitting it but rolling really poor damage – so he burns it along its back. It misses its attack, turns and charges for Khadashi. Fortunately Eahytel shoots it and takes it out.

My Roll20 scripts automatically roll the death/injury table in the Companion, so thought it was taken to zero hitpoints, it wasn’t actually killed:

Feakhefourar #1 will survive if given basic medical (6+) assistance within 4 minutes. If they do not receive proper medical treatment whilst recovering, they will permanently lose D3 points from both STR and END.

This commotion had attracted the second one, which also goes for the Aslan who didn’t spot it this time. Khadashi shoots it first again, injuring it but not killing it, and it pounces on the Aslan taking them both down. The Aslan claws it, and Khadashi drops his laser and goes for it with his cutlass, killing it.

After the hunt, Khadashi is given the cutlass to keep – it’s pretty standard, though has some nice artwork on it.

Later on that day they arranged to meet up with the other ‘archaeologists’ at a local bar. Whilst sitting in there, they spot a couple come in and head over towards them, then they paused, took a closer look, and turned around and left hurriedly. Basically, they’d realised that they were about to meet with the people who had walked into their traps, and decided that this wasn’t a great idea.

The crew chased after them, leading to a “follow that cab” chase, and caught up with them at the starport where they convinced them to stop and have a chat at the local Astroburger. The conversation ended up being reasonably civilised, partly because the crew realised that seeking revenge in a high law level station would probably not be a good idea. They purchased the goods that the two had taken from the base for a reasonable price, and let them depart.

The final job for the evening was finding cargo and passengers for the trip to Zuflucht. They also picked up some rumours whilst they were here as well:

On the world of Nebelwelt, there has been a nuclear explosion on one of the small islands. The Esperanza government government is investigating, but is being stymied by locals who are trying to prevent them from getting involved. There are rumours of some high technology cache that has been discovered that the locals want to keep for themselves.

The anti-rad medicines being produced by Viygor Pharmaceuticals contain poisons and tracking elements, which are being shipped to Topaz to weaken that population ready for take over by Serendip Forces.

There is an archaeological conference being held at New Colchis, the quad-yearly Presentations in History. Many xeno-archaeologists from across the Islands are expected to turn up and present their latest and best papers.

They pick up some advanced vehicles and robotics, as well as 4 passengers for middle passage and 7 in low passage. It’s two 2-parsec jumps for them to Zuflucht, but nothing exciting happens on-route.

They arrive at Zuflucht on 1106-196 where they are able to off-load passengers and their cargo for a reasonable profit. They also get paid the Cr8,000,000 for finding the Deepnight Endeavour, leaving them with a sizeable ship fund, though the low tech level at Zuflucht meant that there wasn’t much to buy here.