Captain's GLoG - Session 5
My micro-campaign group is back at it, this time with a scifi GLoGhack and Joel Hines Desert Moon of Karth. You can find our previous session here.
Loose ends
We rejoined the crew just as they had finished searching the hold of a crashed leisure skiff. As ever, the crew was:
- Captain Belee Vanda, smuggler/bounty hunter and lead negotiator
- Jaspar Fury, psion, ghost-finder, and lookout.
- Hora Tilly, explorer and advanced battle dress operator.
Belee was awoken from a late afternoon nap by radio hails from Captain Jonah Kelly of the Catherizer. Kelly reported that his second in command, Moira, had suggested robbing the Condor, but since "you seem like decent folks and you are working on a job for me" they could negotiate a cut instead.
Captain Vanda explained the details of the job: hover the Catherizer over a nearby wreck to create an artificial sandstorm, so her crew could slip in and salvage a quartet of ship-to-land torpedoes. In exchange she offered 25%. Captain Kelly agreed and said they'd be ready for the rendezvous in a few hours.
In the meantime, Jaspar and Hora wrapped up their salvage. Hora sprung the locks on a cage that contained a desiccated, coral-like animal corpse - all tentacles and brain-like folds. They hauled the corpse, a stack of hull plates, and a hookah set from the cabin back to the Condor and packed everything tightly into the ship's crew compartment.
Belee scanned the radio waves to see if they could hail Dr. Fayed, the android physician of Larstown. A quick search found an MEF frequency, someone reporting on this morning's space elevator contents, the Catherizer, and a horrible AI-generated country radio station. She hailed the MEF and managed to get a hold of Dr. Fayed, who more or less confirmed the corpse in their hold was an intact wigoy corpse and thus immensely valuable.
Worried that the Catherizer might still rob them, the crew discussed bailing, just giving Kelly the torpedoes, or hiding the wigoy and coming back later. They decided to stick with the original plan and hastily patched the hull to protect themselves from the coming artificial sandstorm using the plates they had just salvaged.
Once more into the breach
On cue, the Catherizer took off from the center of the ship graveyard, using its enormous vertical-takeoff thrusters to kick up a cloud of sandstorm. Over radio, they agreed to hover for 30 minutes to buy time for the Condor's operation.
The plan was this:
- The sandstorm would cause the circus beetles to come out of the wrecked gunboat where they nested.
- Hora would don the power armor, sneak inside, and use its immense strength to carry the torpedoes out one at a time.
- Belee would provide overwatch over their bodycams while Jaspar waited at the Condor's hatch with his laser carbine in case things went south.
The first phase went off without a hitch. Hora disappeared into the sand kicked up by the Catherizer to find the ground and exterior hull littered with curious circus beetles, their dangling pseudopods probing the air. She slipped by and into the wreck's airlock, then by flashlight into the cargo hold.
Rather than fussing with the lock, Hora braced herself and just tore the mechanism apart with her servo-assisted strength. The four torpedoes were still intact inside, braced by a central piece of packing foam.
Then she began the laborious and stressful process of unloading the torpedoes, carrying them one at a time down the tight hallways and out into the sand nearby. Carrying the first missile, she managed to wedge herself in the airlock, clangingly loudly. This drew the attention of the beetles who began to congregate around the hatch, grasping into the open air and blocking her exit.
From the ship, Jaspar sprayed his carbine at the ship's hall. Beams tinkled as they instantly turned the whipped up sand to glass. The noise and heat was enough to distract the beetles just long enough for Hora to grab the last missile and hustle outside.
Mission accomplished, the Catherizer returned to its previous resting place, landing with a colossal thud. As the sand cleared, the crew could see the hull was bristling with dozens of beetles who were busily tearing apart the exterior of the ship, their tentacles effortlessly ripping up hull plating as they probed for meat in the spots where the laser fire had connected.
Hora and Jaspar decided to check Dr. Fayed's psionic detector. The beetles seemed mostly not to be capable of psionics, but one seemed to be flagged with something resembling a bar code like stripe. The crew decided not to investigate.
In transit
The Condor skied over to the the Catherizer where they met with Captain Kelly and two of his pirates (including the skeletal android, Bilberto). The crew considered telling him that Bilberto might be plotting a mutiny, but didn't.
Instead, they gave him one of the torpedoes as his cut. Belee threw in the hookah set as a gift. Excited, he wished them safe travels and rushed to go try it out.
With tons of valuables either in their hold or strapped to the roof, the crew decided to return to Larstown to sell their finds. The six hour voyage was largely uneventful, aside from briefly passing two figures camped amidst the dunes.
In transit, Hora checked the radio and found the frequency that was once transmitting the contents of the space elevator was now broadcasting a call to prayer - something about the "teachers of the dunes."
Larstown by night
The Condor arrived at Larstown by midnight. The crew decided to push themselves and stay up for a few hours more rather than sleep with so much valuable cargo. Jaspar watched the ship while Hora and Belee went to make deals.
In the town square, the Hora and Belee saw some MEF marines carrying a belligerent drunk out of the Admiral Grace Inn. They passed by without interfering.
Hora went to Dr. Fayed and discussed selling the wigoy corpse. The doctor said they did not buy bodies but would grind them down and purify them into their valuable drug form for a small fee. Hora eventually agreed and after all was said in done, returned with 40 grams of concentrated wigoy powder - 4k credits on Karth or 40k credits anywhere else.
Belee went to Desperado to talk with the bartender Frances about selling the torpedoes. He said he could send a request for a quote up to his superiors, but wouldn't be able to get an answer til the next day. He expected the number to be quite large, but they'd have to pay the MEF's 75% tax: they lacked the means to smuggle something so large into orbit.
The crew discussed over comms and decided to get the quote, but that they would hold onto the torpedoes for now, figuring they could pursue getting an orbital access badge and avoid the fee.
Back on the ship, the crew considered trying the highly addictive blue wigoy powder. The dust was known to be highly addictive, stopping the process of aging as long as you took a dose per day. Jaspar in particular seemed keen to try it, but eventually they decided to stash it and get some rest.
GM Notes
This was an interesting session. In many ways, the players just had a good plan and the tools to execute it, so I let them do it. We rolled the dice a few times, but mostly I just stuck to description to build tension. I think there was probably more I could have done in that regard with the gradual maneuvering of the torpedoes, but it still was a good beat.
We tried out a slightly experimental system based on Mindstorm Press's post on adjudicated d20 tests. Anytime they attempted a test, I would tell them concretely what the risk was from the following list pulled from the post:
- Affliction: You get a condition, or fatigue.
- Alteration: Something about you or the environment is changing.
- Delay: It’s goin’ take time.
- Displacement: Something is going to end up somewhere else.
- Expense: It’s going to cost you, probably an item, or supplies.
- Indiscretion: You’re loud, or flashy, or something—you’ll be noticed.
- Injury: It’ll hurt.
- Mayhem: Collateral damage.
If I couldn't come up with a relevant risk, they wouldn't need to roll. If they wanted a different risk, they could describe how they altered their approach to set different stakes.
This worked out... pretty well. On one hand, it did its job of making sure that we only rolled dice when there was a genuine risk. On the other hand, I think it discouraged me from calling for dice rolls to the degree that I actually under mechanized the torpedo sequence. I didn't want to just call for a test for each torpedo - in our system that was bound to lead to failure - but I also think what we did (rolling once for moving the set) wasn't quite enough. Ultimately, that's not a fault of this system, rules as written, but a secondary psychological factor.
The other big note this session was how big the ship radio has become in the fiction. They're using it to coordinate tandem operations with another vessel, check in with their employers in town, and confirm information they find mid job. Karth is so small that a decent transmitter could reasonably signal anywhere on the moon. We set some stakes this session - radio transmissions are easily accessible unless you take pains to encrypt them - but I imagine that this level of communication is going to keep coming up.
Oh, and lest you think the whole Jonah Kelly shakedown was strictly a retcon, I rolled a reaction at the beginning of the session to see what the pirates' intentions towards the Condor were. They got middling positive, so I figured it was reasonable their outstanding business relationship would trump short term gain this time.