Carnival of the Goat

In our previous session of Traveller, the Deepnight Revelation had reached Atlantis Sector, and had encountered a couple of ships – a 2,400t freighter the Carnival of the Goat, and a 300t trader, Clayton’s Chariot. They have invitations from both ships to visit, and decide that the offer from Clayton’s Chariot is the most suitable to take up.

As they get closer, they perform a scan of both ships. There seem to be several hundred people aboard the larger ship, which makes the Travellers think that possibly it is a slaver ship. There are people even in areas that look like they should be fuel tanks.

Shiiguma, Kadashi and Lord Sivas head over to Clayton’s Chariot with a couple of scientists. Being Vilani, they suit up in vaccsuits to avoid catching any strange diseases from a new population of humans until their biologists have given the all clear. Clayton herself greets them as they come aboard, though is slightly surprised that they insist on wearing protection. She has a couple of crew members with her, who are carrying pistols but seem wary rather than aggressive.

Clayton is the captain of the ship, and is more than happy to provide information to a group of Travellers from outside of civilised space. Especially since they have such a large, obviously high tech ship. The Travellers think that she’s either angling to turn this into profit for herself, or possibly seek to betray them outright. For now, they go with the former.

According to Clayton, there are two major powers in the nearby sectors of space – the Commonwealth (who aren’t to be trusted) and the Grand Republic (who are a lot more sensible to deal with). Not too far away is the much smaller ‘Empire’, which is little more than a group of opportunistic raiders.

Some distance beyond the two main powers is a group of humans and Droyne. Much closer, is the Tradeport Consortium, which is where she is working from at the moment. There are a lot of factions there, and dealing with them is tricky, but fortunately for the Travellers she has many contacts and could make things easy for them.

Back aboard the Deepnight, there is an attempt to hack into the internal comms of the two ships. Getting access to the Goat’s internal video feeds isn’t too difficult – it’s almost as if they aren’t that concerned about privacy. There is a high population aboard, mostly humans, but also some Droyne. There are zero-g areas, heavy drug use and lots of body modifications. There is no sign of non-consensual activity however, and as far as anyone can tell it seems to be some form of anarchic commune.

On the lower decks there is what looks like a biology/medical lab. The ship is run by a geneticist named Emma, who provides the drugs and genetics for the rest of the crew and traders.

Meanwhile, Clayton provides maps of the local sectors to the crew, as a gesture of good will. Though neither she nor her crew are students of history, they do provide some history files. It seems the human colonists to this area arrived about 1,500 years ago. This means that they left Terra during the Long Night, apparently with the help of some advanced technology that they came across.

They settled the area, which was lightly populated with low tech humans and droyne at the time.

Back at the ship, the Travellers decide to head on to Tradeport. It might be a place to perform any necessary servicing of their ship, and to find out more information about the area. There might also be someone who knows something about the radio signals coming from the Deepnight’s final destination.

This was a relatively short session. I was surprised that the players didn’t show any interest in the droyne that were here. Previously they’ve been very keen to follow up on any droyne activity. Maybe because these droyne aren’t obviously sporting ancient tech. I was also expecting more interest in the Carnival of the Goat, especially from Zanobia who normally has a strong interest in anything medical.

Now they know a bit about the route across, they seem to have a preference for crossing via the Grand Republic, then down towards Voidshore where the radio signals (and possibly the Entity) is located.