Out There - Session 4
A session report of a planet-hopping sci-fi game I am writing and playing with my in-person group.
We rejoined the crew of My Ex Husband as they prepared to board the luxury transport Late Again Darling. They gathered at the mouth of the docking gantry:
- Captain Polly, former atmo rigger, and divorcée
- Evit, currently at the helm, a smoker and void runner
- Iago, wreck picker and face of the crew
- Bettie, a droid just human-like enough to pass as organic, but only just
- Dr. Timor, cybernetics specialist and heavy sleeper
They donned hardsuits and readied sidearms, except for Bettie, who needed neither. Iago tried to hail the other ship over the intercom, but no one responded.
Bettie crossed the gantry first, finding Late Again Darling's hatch sealed. She quickly bypassed the door security via a keypad, locking the hatch open in the process. The facing airlock door hung open, revealing a darkened corridor of white wooden paneling and faux marble floors. The ship had air, but seemingly no power.
Iago, Polly, and Timor followed behind, leaving Evit in the cockpit in case they needed to make a quick getaway. Iago called out, invoking a spacer's Good Samaritan tradition to sweep for the missing crew. They heard a faint "Hello? Who's there?" from a nearby compartment.
The boarding team followed the voice down a central corridor and into an immaculate show kitchen — the kind cooking shows use as sets. The voice was Dogberry, valet to their former employer Lord Cassian Thorne-Vey. The poor fellow had hidden inside of a dumbwaiter that connected the kitchen to a cargo hold on the lower deck and gotten stuck. Iago and Bettie stayed to investigate while Polly and Dr. Timor headed to the cockpit. Priyava Farrow, the Salvage Licensing Bureau agent, peered into some of the luxury quarters to investigate.
A Familiar Face
Polly stepped onto the bridge. The space was rigged with a faux captain's chair on an elevated platform — tastefully out of reach of any actual controls. The dark room flickered with control readouts on emergency power.
She didn't have time to investigate, though, as she was immediately rushed by an assailant waiting in the dark. She tried to throw an elbow and yelled "Excuse me!" This spared her the worst of the blow but sent both her and her attacker tumbling onto the floor.
Timor rushed forward to help. He was confused to find Polly grappling with Bettie. He tried to wrestle her away, shoving her against a nearby wall as the droid extended blades from her forearms to lash at his face. He managed to secure her for a moment, long enough for the real Bettie to rush around the corner and depress a hidden soft reset button on the droid's spine. The attacker slumped, temporarily disabled.
The crew didn't have long to process this. The ship shook. Evit, from his vantage point on My Ex Husband, saw a gout of flame erupt from the other ship's lower port side, quickly snuffed by the vacuum.
Damage Control
Trusting the rest of the crew to manage matters in the cockpit, Iago had descended below deck to free Dogberry. The lower level was mostly a small cargo hold with an oversized walk-in freezer and a rear engineering compartment. The hatch to that compartment was bulging but intact.
The wreck picker pulled a hacksaw from their belt and quickly cut the brakes on the dumbwaiter, dropping Dogberry a yard or so before dispensing him in a heap. The thankful servant let himself be dragged to his feet. Iago escorted him up the ladder to the main deck, where they met with Priyava.
The agent had found signs of a struggle in the luxury quarters. A burst of automatic fire had punched through the walls and into a water purifier system. A minibar disguised as a globe had been smashed. Priyava had taken detailed recordings to discuss later, but noted that these did seem like real signs of a struggle, and also that there was no sign of Thorne-Vey's baggage. Perhaps he was in on this? Iago and Priyava helped Dogberry back to the ship.
Captain Polly did some math. This ship was worth at least 1milcr (less a little for damage). The luxury quarters alone were worth 50kcr and could be a route to easy and consistent work. Despite the explosions that periodically shook the vessel, she and Iago set about trying to stabilize the vessel.
Evit wasn't having it. Over comms, he yelled for everyone to get off the ship. Bettie and Dr. Timor shrugged, but generally agreed. Bettie carried her prone alter ego away to tie up in their hold. Dr. Timor did one last sweep of Late Again Darling for other survivors and, finding none, returned as well.
Last Minute Business
Iago worked below deck to try to access the engineering room. They engineered a tricky bypass, triggering the fire suppressant system in the hold to jumpstart the system next door. A gush of foam filled both chambers. They opened the hold hatch to vent oxygen from the ship, then they quickly cut into a ceiling vent, pulling aside a drop shutter to peer inside.
In the room beyond, someone (probably the Bettie-lookalike) had sliced a huge gouge into the wall, sending pressurized jump fuel spewing into the chamber. A jumble of flashing lights filled the consoles, reading off garbled error messages and warnings. Someone had triggered some kind of delayed operation, but finding out what exactly would require direct access and more time.
Dogberry and Priyava arrived in the cockpit. Evit questioned the manservant about Lord Thorne-Vey. Dogberry was dismissive, saying he couldn't share his master's business. Over comms, Iago chimed in that Thorne-Vey had left Dogberry to die. He tutted that such was his lot in life, but didn't seem fazed.
Evit drew a knife and held it to Dogberry's throat. The servant flinched, letting slip that Thorne-Vey's contact was someone named Tassel, and that she clearly was spireborn like him based on how his master regarded her. Evit pressed the blade closer, demanding more, but Priyava intervened — "I thought we were the good guys!" Evit said the man was clearly a criminal, but the young agent pointed out that Evit clearly was too. He relented, dropping the knife, and Priyava gently refastened the strap on the sidearm at her hip.
The crew thought better of it. Iago fled to the cockpit to grab the transponder there before returning to My Ex Husband. Polly rejoined the crew in the hold to plan a last-ditch effort to save the other vessel. Before she could issue commands, though, Evit detached the docking gantry and began to pull the ship to a safe distance. Polly fumed.
A few minutes passed, and then boom. As My Ex Husband watched from a distance, Late Again Darling's pin drives misfired, rending the ship in half as a series of explosions ripped through its hull. The ship was reduced to silvery shreds.
GM Notes
This was a fun session! The closest to a Mothership pamphlet module of anything we have run so far. I structured this session like a bit of a puzzle dungeon. The sabotaged engineering room was a multi-layered problem to access safely, let alone disarm, that was ticking from the moment the crew arrived. I gave them a 6-segment clock that decremented on failures to track how close they were to catastrophe.
We had a curious PvP persuasion roll this session. Evit demanded the other player characters flee the ship. I adjudicated this by saying that anyone who felt their character could be persuaded could opt into accepting the results of the roll. It was a partial success, and they both seemed to have read that as ambivalence. There is an interesting question about whether PvP persuasion should be allowed in the first place, but also these players do seem to emergently ask for it from time to time.
I've been enjoying having Priyava around as a persistent passenger. She has helped avoid party splitting by being delegated to tasks like being launched in the skiff last session or investigating the quarters this time. She also provides someone willing to be commanded by Polly. We're getting a better picture of her now — novice, yes, but maybe a little more steely than the crew has given her credit for.
Next session will probably involve interrogating Dogberry and debriefing with Priyava. Then the question is whether the party heads back to Egret to get paid or follows the mysterious SLB ship down to Hawk. My Traveller brain thinks it would be wise to seek paid work to cover the costs headed back starward. This does fork me a little bit in terms of prep, but both seem manageable as a sort of downtime session between jobs.