Hello and Goodbye

The Deepnight Revelation has reached the system of Maine in the Federated Commonwealth of Worlds. This is one of the founding worlds of the Commonwealth, and a good place to stop for R&R, scientific discussion, repairs and more talk shows on the part of the crew. Maine is a world of large cities which have floating buildings. This allows large areas of parks and gardens within the cities.

It’s also time to figure when the various campaign ‘birthdays’ are. The Traveller campaign proper started in 1105, day 129. The Deepnight Revelation mission began in 1107 day 86. They also left the Imperium in day 288 of that year. Which gives them lots of excuses to have parties.

They come out of jump ensuring that their ship is clean and polished, with the fresh smell of paint pervading the corridors. This doesn’t require painting anything, just making sure some paint gets into the life support systems.

As is usually the case, they have been outrunning the news of their arrival, so everyone is surprised to see such a large, ‘alien’, ship arriving at their planet. This being one of the major worlds of the Commonwealth, there are a lot of navy ships here, so the brief panic that precedes the messages of reassurance given by their loaned officer Lt Moray is a potentially dangerous one. But things calm down, and the usual pleasantries begin. As usual, there are plenty of journalists wanting close up shots of the ship, but they are kept back and a small shuttle arrives with a medical crew on board to perform some biological safety checks.

There are the usual invitations to meet with a Grand Admiral, the world’s President and various higher ups in the Commonwealth’s government. Lord Sivas gets on well in this sort of situation, and there is the usual trade of ideas and services. There are also sporting events, talk shows and educational presentations. Zanobia is offered a job at a major hospital, but she declines.

The ship gets a bit of an overhaul, which is a good opportunity to show off some of the technology, and get some help in servicing the ship. High tech but close to worn out equipment is swapped for lower tech but brand new equipment.

It’s also a place for some of the crew to leave. After ten years, some are tired of the journey, and the Commonwealth reminds them much of the Imperium. About two dozen of them decide to leave, with a plan to possibly rejoin in five years when the Deepnight comes back this way. Or at least, that’s the plan.

But, there are plenty of people who would leap at the chance to go on such a mission, and the crew of the Deepnight are willing to take on some fresh blood. They won’t be as skilled as the departing crew, but they’ll have fresh insights and possibly break up some of the monotony of the voyage.

Information is also gained here. The crew find out more about the Dual Alliance, a polity of Droyne and Humans embedded in the rimward edge of the Commonwealth. It consists of eight systems, the capital of which is Grand Skies at Arcadia/0932. Apparently some of the Droyne split off about 700 years ago and headed Rimward.

There is also discussion about the Biologicals, and the crew share their mission details as well. The Biologicals have been attacking worlds along the Rimward edge of the Commonwealth, though no solid evidence about what the Biologicals are has been obtained.

Over the last 20-30 years though, the number of human raiders has fallen to almost zero. The number of definite sitings of “something unusual” has started to increase. Mostly they attack small undefended colonies on Gaian worlds.
Recently, the small group of systems known as the Shoh Consortium. are trying to join the Commonwealth. They are downplaying it, but they have been attacked several times and are hoping that joining the Commonwealth will provide them with military support. The most powerful of the independent worlds in that sector is Hane/0306. It provides some military aid in return for payment, but it’s navy is small and stretched thin.
There are sometimes patrols from the Grand Republic along the borders of the Commonwealth. They are not believed to be responsible for the attacks but it can’t be ruled out.

— News about the Biological attacks.

More importantly, Maine has astronomers who know something about the sectors between here and VS-X. They are more than happy to provide information on what they know, in return for star maps to Coreward.

FSN-X: This is a pulsar, orbited by a couple of gas giant remnants. The gas giants have lost most of their atmospheres, probably due to the extreme solar winds flowing out from the pulsar. Both are spiralling in towards the star, and the closest is less than 10Mkm distant from the remnant.
It is expected that it will fall into the pulsar sometime in the next thousand years. There are plans to build some big telescopes, or possibly even send a mission out that way nearer to the time. Some experiments have been done to test various Gravitational theories, so it is providing the scientists in the Commonwealth with a lot of information. However, there isn’t much there which isn’t already known to Third Imperium science.
FSD Transition Spinward (-21,11): This is a slightly denser part of the region. Some faint signals have been detected from here, in sub sector J.
VS-X: The Voidshore region is low density, so difficult to cross. No attempt has been made to explore it, or even to accurately map it. The specific point designated as VS-X by the mission is thought to be a Pulsar orbiting a class O giant star.
Not far from point VS-X is a gravitational anomaly. It was first detected through gravitational lensing. It seems to be a region about 5-10 AU in diameter, which implies a massive object. However, it’s not having a noticeable effect on nearby star systems. The lensing is also sporadic. There is not a large output of radio or x-rays coming from object either, which would be expected for something which was active. There is a large telescope at Avalon/1936 where they probably have more detailed records.

— Information from the Astronomers

Equipped with new information, and new crew, the Deepnight continues its journey after a couple of weeks. The next few jumps are a good opportunity to test out the new crew members and get them up to speed. There’s a few that could do with remedial training, but most are okay.

During this part of the trip though, Zanobia discovers that Yip isn’t happy. She really enjoyed Maine, especially the big open areas of green. She didn’t stay behind because she thought it would upset Zanobia and the other friends she has made on the voyage. However, she’s a native from a low tech world that has never known her people, and never really had a proper role amongst the crew.

It’s decided that once they reach Avalon Yip will stay behind and find a home for herself on a real world. She’ll miss the crew, but a couple more crew members have decided that they do want to stay here after all, so she won’t be without people she knows. Zanobia is sad, but realises that this is probably the best option for Yip.

After a few jumps the Deepnight gets to Avalon/1936. This is another of the founding worlds of the Commonwealth, and there are the usual parties and sharing of knowledge. They do also find out a bit more about their destination:

There are unusual stellar sizes objects in this region of space. There are thought to be several very massive objects in close orbit around each other. However, nothing has been detected in radio frequencies. However, gravity waves have been picked up from a chaotic source. They have plenty of papers on the subject, which they will be happy to share. However, most directly contradict each other as to the nature of the object. Funding for an expedition there has been requested, but denied. It’s too far, and stellar density is too low.

— More information about VS-X

They also get a better idea of where the signals are coming from in sector FSD Transition Spinward, allowing them to better plan their route. They are now right on the edge of Atlantis sector. Next up is Arcadia, and then they will be out of the Commonwealth and heading off into another wilderness.

One of the NPCs, Freda Yanosa (an engineer), helps in the planning of the parties. She seems to be very extroverted, and has a strong interest in robotics and cybernetics.

The departure of Yip was a sad moment, but her species doesn’t normally live long, so it’s probably better than her dying. The arrival of new NPCs will hopefully give some opportunity for more interesting things to happen about the ship. I think I’ve said it several times, but I haven’t really made as heavy use of the NPCs that I should have. I’m really not used to having so many to play with in a situation like this.

I’m getting better ideas about how I should run things, but I’ve mostly failed to implement them. I think it would have been good to regularly have random NPCs accompany the PCs on side missions, and give them stronger personalities and skills. I’ve only succeeded at that a handful of times though.

There’s a few NPCs that the players “know”, but not enough in my opinion.

The next session will either be in a couple of weeks, or in the new year, so I have time to think up some cross-NPC activity before then.