Damn! He's Dashing!

With the reactor silent and the AI within the Selshorian colony off by way of self destruction, the crew waits patiently in the El Camino for response from Edward. To the relief of all Edward is impressed and sets the Zephyr down next to the El Camino. After some quick musing about their situation and promising to deliver the weapons Edward mentions that "I'm an honorable man, so here are you're weapons. Normally I would shoot someone that might come to act as a witness against me in court, but I've thought of a way to kill two birds with one stone. I have a present for you." 2 men and a hover dolly full of the weapons crates labeled "Hand Warmers" that the crew needs exit the Zephyr. The crew ejects the consumer goods onto the deck of the starport. One of the men leaving the Zephyr is cuffed and restrained. The restrained man is left in the airlock while the other crewman quickly removes the explosive and nonchalantly walks away leaving the crew man with him. When questioned to Edward over who he is, he responds "He's your problem now mates. He's a cop, or something. But what I noticed is that you have a Seeker class ship... Crew capacity 4... and already you have 5 crew members. Now you have 6. Good luck with that."

Fully aware of the situation now the crew interrogates the new member of the crew. He's nervous and pleading for his life and for clemency. His name is Rick Ricardo and he confirms that he was an undercover cop for the Belguardian government.

Ref note: I really lost my train of thought when it was interjected that his name is "Roll... Rick Roll". Because Veln really was about to 'Give it up, let you down'.

Sam went into the environmentals and attempted to extend the system to last a little longer, unsuccessfully. The ship now had life support for about a week and a half... far short of the J-3 necessary for the trip. After spending some time sharing the deck with a criminal warship, the crew takes off. Veln readies his pistol, getting ready to solve the problem himself. The crew stopping him short, they look over the local star chart, and realize the next world is J-1 distance, habitable, and of sufficient tech to provide something to aid them. It's the only world J-1 away. They plot the course and jump cleanly.

Mainer is repaired during this jump interim. The world is brought up in the databanks that Paige stored away from the White Wing on Gollere. It's Carben, a travel world for the X'Thil and sort of breeding ground and cultural destination unique to the creatures that took care of Paige in the TAS establishment. The vast marshes and climate uniquely suit them.

Appearing over the mottled blue world of Carben they make a quick sensors check to realize the world is remarkably silent with one errant beacon intermittently transponding the location of the starport below. Paige uses the radio to hail with no response. The crew casually takes the ship down through the atmosphere when it is violently interrupted by the impact of not one but two missiles careening into the fuel tanks. The control board bleeds red as the fuel tanks dump their contents in a hot plume of searing gas cutting a hole through the bottom of the ship's tanks. Sam yanks the controls up and in the disarray catches the alarms of 2 more missiles screaming toward them. "CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIRE!" yells Paige into the coms, dumping his message against all frequencies with no response. Strenek scrambles to the controls of the pulse laser and begins firing at them, downing one while the other missile screams past them into the depth of space missing the El Camino.

The El Camino drifts back into orbit exhausting the last of the fuel in the tanks to get there. The ship involuntarily powers down to it's emergency lights. After some discussion, Veln volunteers to fix the hole. "It's what I was trained to do back in the Thousand Worlds", later embellishing a conflict that he likely never took place in. He patches it to hold fuel but advises that it's a temporary fix at best.
During the interim while the hasty patch work is done, Paige scans the sensors and sees several high atmospheric fighters fueling and preparing to boost to low orbit. In addition, the comms continually discuss "Finally getting those fuckers", among other insults that now are in the open air waves unencrypted. Paige eventually gets a hold of someone on the ground and failing to make head way, he is insulted and hung up on.

Cpt. Tukie orders the bladder to be dumped into the the fuel tank and the ship powered up. Then, coasting toward the beacon, it is evidenced to some poorly placed, perhaps hasty or casual, weapons fire. They then pick a spot on Carben far from civilization to land the ship to fresh the air, take on water, and convert it. Successfully landing in a grassy field Veln bolts from the ship and isn't immediately shot.
The coast is clear.

Ref Note: I can't help but think of how many different way's the El Camino would have been screwed if it didn't have the bladder. It's well worth it's stored weight. It saved the game for the most part.

Paige stays on the sensor suite looking for trouble. It isn't long into the refueling operation that sensors pick up a low flying VTOL trying to evade radar on the horizon. With 30 minutes till arrival, Sam orders Rick to cut down some trees with Veln's help to cover the ship.
The rest of the crew points out how retarded that idea was.

Ref Note: For one, any IR goggle is going to see that red hot reactor. It would have been a disaster.

The VTOL comes over the horizon in a hot hurry. Sam targets the craft but does not fire. The vaguely Osprey-ish VTOL hovers disembarking 6 X'thill soldiers not far away. Seeing their intent, Sam fires the pulse laser - missing it only barely. This is the first time the X'thill are seen without all the head dressing that was worn on Gollere. It's because to a human, their teeth laden faces are terrifying. Aware that the crew is fucked proper, Rick drops his hatchet and runs into the wilderness.

The ensuing firefight sees the X'thill combat unit unloading their weapons (assault rifles) into the most impressive member of the party, Strenek, whom is wearing combat armor. The armor takes the brunt of the weaponry leaving him scuffed and walks off the insult.

Sam tries to arm the sand caster faster than usual and manages to fire it off a turn early, and blows the whole charge into the distance affecting no one. The helo spins up, aware of the lost situation only to be cut into a falling burning wreck by the pulse laser.

With the ship mostly fueled and one crew member lighter, they head to a local gas giant to fill up the rest of the ship and jump away to the next stop, Ashley's Rock. It's the last stop before leaping the void to Imperial space.

Ashley's Rock is an airless world with a rather elaborate underground colony/refueling station. As they land, the crew is incredibly cautious and clears the landing first. Once berthed they are confronted with the stale smell of the air. From behind a bulkhead, they are greeted by a frightened older woman who, through some conversation, reveals the beset panic on the station.

The transponder for the El Camino reads "Zephyr" of Edward's infamy. Sam exclaims "DAMN HE'S DASHING!". Paige checks the transponder ID on the ship to find that it is indeed broadcasting the code for the Zephyr and changes it to the proper code. Veln estimates the cost and time to repair the ship and Paige takes care of that and maintenance costs from the ship's locker. Sam barters unsuccessfully to get cheap fuel from the old woman to no avail but learns of a ship graveyard not far outside the starport covered in the ruins of the ships Edward thought took to long to get out of his parking space.
Streneck casually mentions "How did we miss that?"
The woman responds "It's just around the hill, it's easy to miss."

Ref Note: My bad on this, I should have been obvious about the littered remains of destroyed ships parked right out side the ship airlock.

The crew rents rooms individually from the starport with Paige (pampered to a fault) paying for high class accountments and paying for Tukie and Veln as well. Sam hedges by with a moderate room. Strenek clutches his credits and declines to give up anything by paying the absolute least amount of money for a sleeping tube on the bottom decks.

Arriving at the elevator to the lower colony, Veln, Tukie, and Paige leave on the luxury deck; clad in faux wood, leather, and brilliant carpets.

Sam leaves on a middle tier deck. The deck is passable with only slight leaking of fluids from the top decks permeating to this one.

Reluctantly pressing the "Fiesta deck" elevator button, Streneck leaves into a floor covered in industrial grating and exposed thermal piping. The sleeping tube he sleeps in is barely larger than what can take in his combat armor.

The crew then shops around the guest area as Streneck rigs up the local tech to upgrade his armor while painting it a woodland camo scheme ("Steiner Woodland"). Later the crew pulls salvage tonnage from the graveyard for the El Camino.

Lifting off, they successfully jump away to Aster.

Ref Note: And the DM rejoiced as the crew made it back to the original campaign scope. And then, he did a little dance. <("<) (>")> (^"^) (v"v) <("<) (>")>

Cautiously, the ship comes down to the near frozen water world to land at a LSP research station. The databanks indicate that it's some sort of hydrogen research lab. They are coldly greeted by a fueling droid but offered nothing else. Fueling up, they leave the world and jump to Overnale.

Coming out over Overnale the sensors light up with electronic warfare traffic and the constant hammering of expletives between 3 different positions in orbit. An LSP corporate fleet and a Overnale Military fleet each occupy geostationary orbits over the west and east sides of the main continent and compromise most of the saber rattling. Interrupting courteously from time to time is the Imperial capital ship Persuer sitting in the LaGrange point between Overnale and its moon.

Paige hails the Persuer about the current situation and advises of the recently upgraded TAS status of Overnale to amber. The El Camino is then taken closer to the planet and discovers 2 separate starport beacons emitting from the surface, one from Overnale Starport and the other from Ghiritz. Bringing up communications (and successfully realizing that landing anywhere other than the starport might tick someone off) with Ghiritz he convinces the operator that they need special clearance to land at the K'Kree colony of Haus under the guise that they are delivering medical supplies.

The town of Haus has been victimized by fighting recently with sand bag entrenchments lining the perimeter of the town and the outer buildings either burnt or destroyed. Picking a vague impression of a flattish spot on the ground (the impact site of the Unforgiving Boon), Veln opens the door and leaps from the ship before it even touches the down and disappears into the distance. The ship is soon surrounded by bystanders and 2 armed K'Kree asking them of their intentions and refusing to let them leave the ship. They are soon interrupted when Neil comes to sort out the brouhaha. Startled to see the crew alive at all, he asks them to come with him to see Shoval whom is now living in the back of a large truck. He mentions briefly in transit that they have a bounty on their heads that was placed on them months ago.

Shoval, somewhat frail now, is displeased to not only find them alive, but without the weapons they ordered. Cordially interested in hearing the story of the misjump, he listens on to the party's recount of the 4 month journey home. However the situation in Haus was already hostile with the weapons being necessary months ago. Grinding his teeth between words he orders the party to make do on their side of the bargain and to forget about Veln, whom without his herd is likely going to be in therapy for quite some time.

Leaving the weapons and launching away, the crew plots for New Rome where Strenek thinks he can contact an old friend in the forces, Phillip, for some assistance.

Landing in New Rome, Sam and Tukie don filter masks to breathe the air. Strenek and Paige are from here and require neither. A fuel droid rolls up and asks if they would like to refuel, Sam declines partially because bartering with droids is difficult and free hydrogen is just a couple AU away. They then arrive at the starport terminal where they look up Phillip and hail a cab to go meet him. Once there they buzz his apartment, to which the surprised Phillip buzzes them in.

Arriving to the apartment the exterior is well groomed and relatively high class. Upon entering the apartment however reveals a man in disarray. The domicile is completely unkempt with Phillip obviously not taking care of himself. He offers beers to everyone. Strenek begins to talk to him and his mental state becomes clear, he hasn't forgotten the mistake Strenek made with the rookies 3 years ago, when 2 died and 3 more were critically injured in a space borne vacuum chamber training incident. He hasn't slept since then, with the thought of all those recruits grasping their eyes trying to stay alive as the rescue teams began cutting open the capsule.

He wants to end it... To make things right and end the thoughts that haunt him... and hands him a gun and asks him if he will end it with him.

Strenek puts on his helmet and begins to speak.

Ref Note: I then ask him to cover his mouth to simulate talking through the combat armor and just what message that action would make. Though really funny, he declines to do that.

After some discussion Paige talks him out of it and Phillip writes down the location of someone that can help, a supply officer in the dockyards of Glisten by the name of Mardigan.

Ref Note: Mad Mardigan of Willow fame was the first thing I thought of. I was soliciting names for the impromptu characters at this point because I was drawing blanks since 'Rick Roll' on Selshor.

Phillip kindly asks everyone to leave as the party progressively became more insincere. Strenek turns to the door and mutters, "I'm sorry". A soft thump is heard on the other side of the door.

Ref Note: Great roleplay from Strenek and Tukie.

The party returns to the El Camino and takes off. Not wanting to spend a dime on local fuel the ship makes a bee line to the nearest gas giant. Sam mentions briefly about wanting to plunge through the clouds and makes a piloting roll.

Ref Note: Though not explicitly said, I imagined Sam proclaiming "WATCH THIS GUYS!"

*snake eyes*

As the ship plowed into the clouds of the jovian world at once the imposing visage of a monolithic object tears into view. Sam yanks the controls into hard maneuvers and successfully avoids it. Pulling the ship around they discover an ship of alien origin whose power is perceptively silent aside the obvious gravatics. Initial scans indicate the vessel to be around 7000 tons.

Ref Note: This is one of those things about good game design that I try to abide. There are a fountain of rolls that can TPK, this shouldn't be one of them (misjumps on the other hand)- hence the plot hook and the roll to save from the "oh fuck" moment. But I digress... I took a roll on the encounters table and I went with the inspiration. I rolled a derelict. And like a bolt of friggin lightening, the campaign was back on the track that was written for the first session. And thus, the DM did a little dance. <("<) (>")> (^"^) (v"v) <("<) (>")>

Landing on what is perceptively a wing, the El Camino launches its umbilical toward what appears to be a door. Sam exits the vehicle slowly, first being assaulted by the pressure difference then by the torrential winds. Upon manipulating the door and entering, the craft itself is greenish and cold despite the hot atmosphere outside. After some investigation the rest of the crew enters behind him with Paige staying behind on the El Camino and monitoring the activities of Mainer. The environment is incredibly hostile outside the ship with radiological concerns limiting any outside activities- or hope of finding the ship again if they leave. The air at this pressure of the gas giant is a helium/hydrogen mix with some trace elements.

Ref Note: Paige draws a picture of himself playing tetris.

Mainer analyzes the air inside the ship to be a chlorine/fluorine mixture and begins photographing everything.
Investigating the ship, they come across the engine room and are unable to activate it.
The come across some fighter bays and examine the strangely shaped tools.
Mainer torches open one of the doors that remained locked revealing some bunking and 8 large aliens not before seen to them. They are large (9ft tall) and vaguely crustacean/lobster like in appearance with 2 large claws and antennae. They've been dead for eons apparently.
The crew finds the command deck, but it is unpowered.
Further investigating the ship they come across some combat droids, an armory, some alien vacc suits that appeared charged and ready for use, and a boarding shuttle. Of which they successfully board and hot wire it to turn on, but were unable to discover the locking mechanism that would enable it to run. They do however learn a little of the aliens written language from the computer display.

Ref Note: No one checked the atmosphere content of the alien vacc suit. It was something that seemed obvious to me, I think I hinted at it. But alas it got glanced over and shoved into the El Camino. It was a methane mixture.

Mainer at this point is ordered to start loading the alien weapons on to the El Camino and does so successfully, barely denting the stock on the ship.

Ref Note: Paige draws himself patting Mainer on the head and calling him a "good boy".

Strenek notices a door that the others missed and proceeds to find 3 more rooms. One with no identifiable function, the other with a series of blinking lights indicating chemical codes in their simplest form. Methane keeps blinking in red. The last is a computer room with a blinking switch.

After searching around the ship and unsuccessfully attempting to hot wire the craft into running the crew about gives up before they decide to flip the switch in the computer room. Instantly, the ship comes to life. Returning to the control room, they muck about trying to get the ship to move. Unable to affect the ship, they realize the aliens had a few extra appendages than a human does.

Sam throws his hands into the air and emulates long antennae. The ship stumbles and lurches forward. With the success, he experiments some more throwing his hands around in a windmill motion. The ship tilts and rolls violently attempting to comprehend the instructions.

Meanwhile... the El Camino stumbles and slides as the alien derelict begins to move. With a quick shrug, the vessel slights off the El Camino as it careens off the side of the wing and tumbles into the cloud banks below. The panicked Paige stumbles out of the comm room and daftly presses his way into the cockpit. He straps himself into the control chair and begins hammering at the controls. The ship tumbles, unaffected by Paige's actions, and begins to groan under the weight of atmosphere as the derelict slowly fades into the clouds above. Desperate to control the craft Paige struggles with the controls but is soon silenced with a sickening thud as the planet crushes the craft like a tin can leaving only small explosion in it's wake.
The character sheet is handed over.

Ref Note: Paige then begins to scrawl "YOUR DOOOOOOMED" with a ghost-ish version of himself flipping off the survivors.

The surviving crew collectively recoils at the mistake they just made and plot a course for New Rome. Unfamiliar with the ship, it will take a hair longer than required to get there than with what their suits can provide. They set to work on the environmental controls and discover the chemical symbol for oxygen. Pressing the button causes the ship to emit oxygen, but only for a second before returning to its red methane symbol state. Strenek is asked to keep pressing the button till they reach New Rome. During the voyage, Paige's robot, bereft of the remote op that was guiding it, is disassembled to make a primitive radio transmitter.

Ref Note: This is done the moment Paige walks away from the table no less - much to his dismay.

With this the crew gets ready to approach the New Rome space yards.

Wolves in the Alleys

Taking stock of the situation on Eleson, the surviving crew of Tukie and Strenek examine the surrounds in greater detail while Veln maintains the ship and takes his chances chewing on the local plant life. The starport itself is well built but abandoned and decaying; a dirt road leads off to the west. The crew takes the opportunity to look at the visitor's center/offices after Veln begins to highlight the specifics of their plight ("We're way off course... The nearest habitable star is a J-3 away... the Barge can only do J-1, we need to find a fuel blatter or make one").

The visitor's center comes to life when the crew enters it. The building itself is in disrepair and covered in a thin yellow dust. After shuffling through some papers detailing an evacuation schedule that occurred within a week 3 months ago and some propaganda against something called "The Heirate", the terminal springs on and attempts to assist the travellers. It is unaware of it's situation and cued to some of the nationalist jingo of the Belguardian government. It recites the regional information available to any tourist, but advises quick departure.
Strenek asks if there is an arms cache nearby. The terminal asks for some identification to which Tukie quickly grabs the dog tags from the deceased Belguardian officer and recites the numbers. The terminal responds with the location of the military offices being west of the city. It even provides the location of the department ATV hidden behind the building. Upon further questioning it reveals the location of the military scrap yard/moth ball fleet to the south.
After briefly checking the hydrogen tanks (10% full, 200t) they mount into the ATV and head down the dirt road to the town. The town itself has been hit repeatedly by near miss nuclear war heads. The city itself is looted and in ruins.
Continuing on to the depot reveals the target of the weapons, a deep crater exists where a previously submerged weapons cache existed. It too has been looted of anything the Travellers could find.

Travelling back to the starship, Veln fuels it up and the crew flies south outside of the habitable band of the planet to the scarp yard. He lands the ship inelegantly a few kilometers outside the walled in scrapyard and the party walks the remaining distance.

The scrapyard itself is owned/operated by a wheel chair bound man scarred from the bombardment named James. He's almost oblivious to the travellers and otherwise interested in having visitors to take some items from his inventory. He introduces the travellers to Paige (formerly Carik) and Sam (formerly LaChuck) who are doing contract work in the yard and currently living in the on site dormitories (of which is obviously male centric- almost resembling a male fraterntiy more so than a traditional office).

Paige is a frail looking man, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and eloquent with his words. A service droid "Mainer" follows and attends to him. Sam is vaguely islander-ish, also in a Hawaiian shirt, who come across as being more of a grease monkey.

James mentions that they need to get off the rock on the next boat out and recites the history of Eleson. There has been frequent colonization/evacuations and a near constant cat and mouse games with the Heirate. They seem to be losing the war. In a desperate gambit the Heirate nuked the colony site to an irradiated cinder a few months ago. The conflict has died down since. He knows this only because rookie crews haven't been crashing through the atmosphere trying to get away from the Heirate raiding parties.

James mentions, after chuckling at the traveller's misfortune, that there is a Seeker mining vessel he needs to get rid of. It was the prize of Kouniko, who had paid for it but did not pick it up. She mentioned coming across something "BIG" before she disappeared a few months ago. James offers it to them for free to get it out of the military lot.

Among the debris of the yard included a few other vessels that James alluded to letting go, including some of Belguardian Lancers among other things. A rather large Cryptic class ground support droid ship towers in the back of the yard.

After some discussion, and at one point Veln recounts the trip to Eleson to Sam angrily, the players decide the best way to go is to trade in the Aspiration class barge for the Seeker. The ship is cleaned up and made ready for service with a 10t fuel blatter in the starboard cargo bay (giving it an effective J-3). An extra day is spent in the yard fitting the turret with a pulse laser and a sand caster with the help of a almost cartoonishly volumptious and ill-ly suited "female" personal droid acting as a cargo hauler.

During the refitting Veln brings up a troubling math. The Seeker can only support 4. The crew then decides to pack on some food (6 tons of military rations from the yard) and some air tanks to fresh the air of the cargo bay. It takes longer than expected to rig it up and another day is spent on Eleson. Veln is less than amused.

The time comes when it is time to leave SUDDENLY! Sam takes to the controls as the rest of the crew holds on for dear life.

The ship successfully jumps to Gollere and descends into the brouhaha of the starport after a quick sensor sweep. After entertaining the locals (at one point a boy offers to sell the crew some "sushi like" items. The ships computer long ago pointed out there is no natural fish... or oceans on Gollere; just a kind of all encompassing foreign lichen), selling the cargo, and fueling up the ship with unrefined fuel for cheap thanks to Sam's incessive bartering, the crew moves into town to spend the day.

Tukie and Paige hear from the kid as well as a bar keep about the legendary captain "Edward the Zephyr" whom was in port and his recent exploit regarding some arms smugglers. The star town is apparently a ghost town when he isn't in port and the locals love him. "You should be able to find him by the train of prostitutes that linger near him... where they are... so is the business"

Sam and Streneck look for the nearest weapons store. It had mostly slug throwers and other TL-7 style weaponry. Wearing nothing but the helmet from the combat armor, Streneck pleads to buy another suit. Though the shop keep refuses initially, a bribe looses his tongue and asks him to meet behind the store later that evening.
Sam barters the hell out of every item he has to earn a few more credits.

Paige learns of the "White Wing" a TAS establishment just down the street and goes there with Tukie. They are greeted within the well crafted and luxuriously appointed hostel by a tall masked alien that referred to herself as one of the X'Thil. After showing the TAS badge, and declining to pay for Tukie on a guest voucher, Paige spends the evening in abject luxury downloading information off the local net.

Ref Note: Anyone catch this Raymond E. Fiest reference? Fun times here.

Later that evening Tukie, Streneck, and Sam visit another individual behind the store. Unable to come to a deal over the primitive, but functional, combat armor that he had Sam realizes that he could get more from him and help the other 2 in their original goal to pickup some black market arms for the K'Kree.

Ref Note: I mentioned a failed streetwise check. This one was it. It was just 1 shy actually.

The shadowy figure agrees to send over a couple of tons of weapons next evening. The next day passes as Veln maintains the ship, Paige lives la vida loca in the White Wing, and the others take in the local sights and sounds. Sam tracks down an alien food bar and gets Veln some K'Kree delicacies... or at least it's as close as he can tell. Veln enjoys it.
The next evening rolls by and the party meets the arms dealer again. After a short exchange, the price of 1.2m is agreed upon for the 6 tons of advanced weapons with the condition that the combat armor is part of the deal. Money is exchanged and the dealer hands over the keys to the flatbed truck they were loaded on and hurries away.

Ref Note: 1t of Advanced Weapons is only worth 150k.

It's not long after driving down the street that the deal appears to have been a setup. The lights along the road shut off and a lone figure, somewhat portly and stuffed into his combat vacc suit stands in the middle of the road escorted by 2 other individuals clad in combat armor. In the dim distance other figures are moving about in the dark.

It's Edward the Zephyr, somewhat irate that someone was shuffling around his merchandise behind his back but otherwise happy to have it returned. He accurately describes the ship they've been using and it's something that he could use. If he could be convenienced to use them for a little operation he's planning then he gives his "honor" to not kill them immediately. It would be a hassle to recrew their ship.
After getting the crew's approval, at gun point, Edward tells of a distress beacon on a reclusive colony on Selshor that is incredibly weak and unanswered. They need to act quickly to, as Edward restated from Sam, "Liberate and redistribute the wealth" before someone does something noble. The trick is, they are dug in and Edward requires the use of the mining equipment on the Seeker class.

Arriving back to the ship, the crew discovers Veln bound and gagged and an hilariously obvious explosive latched to the hydrogen tanks. Unable to diffuse it, they wait till they receive launch orders the next morning. (Edward would later go into detail as to how it worked, it's listening for a radio signal from the Zypher. If it goes more than a week without hearing it, "kablooie").

Jumping cleanly to Selshor with the corsair vessel Zephyr, whose holographic controls and variable geometry keep shifting the ship to appear different, the crew descends down to the remote colony. Picking up the weak signal, Paige is unable to pinpoint where it is. Sam shoves him aside and begins using the sensor/com station where upon in the scuffle the machinery is damaged.
Paige shows him the door to the room and fixes the device (rebooted it). A follow up scan points the signal coming from the north in a small cave. They report the information to Edward sitting high in orbit over the airless world. He's unconcerned about some random distress signal and patiently, as much as he can, ask them to just bring the doors down so that they can get in.

Landing the ship back outside the colony at the star port, of which appears to be perfectly fine albeit not answering any communications. The drones are released and, eventually, control is handled over to the incredibly apt Veln (Remote Ops being a critical field to most K'Kree crewman). The hangar doors are brought down with explosive decompressions after a few hours and the drones are sent in, fighting what appears to be automated armatures.
Tukie, Paige, and Mainer then follow into the gaping holes the drones have been tearing loose, careful to stay outside of the carnage the drones are causing. Veln reports that he can't accurately control the drones anymore at the depth they are at and pulls them back.

Streneck points out "Did anyone just open the doors? You know, push the open buttons?"
Silence fell over the party.

Ref Note: Yes, they were open. Sam mused quite accurately at my DMing style.

Tukie and Paige proceed down the dark unlit corridor to the center of the colony. They pass what appears to be a scanner of sorts. When he does, the corridor springs to life lighting up the passage way to the last door that Veln got to and around the debris of the arm that fought the drone.

Upon getting close, the door slides open allowing entry to the now lit central colony.
Immediately upon stepping into the room, the door slams shut behind them and the colony corridors pressurize. Confetti blows from out of the ceiling and an omnipresent voice booms over the speakers. "Welcome Citizen 3215 and Citizen 3216! Please proceed to the dormitory for assignments. There is much work to be done."

The doors open and floor lights up along the path they are requested to go. Upon arrival to their rooms the voice requests that they wear their assigned jumpsuits. Tukie and Paige refuse. Instead they ask the voice various questions, invariably leading to "Permission Denied, you do not have the required security permissions". Paige presses the issue and requests to know who the voice is; earning the response "You are obviously faulty, please report to reeducation immediately".
Tukie begins enquiring as well and the voice assumes the same as two industrial armatures attempt to apprehend the "faulty citizens". Tukie slings her carbine and fights back. After a short fire fight they begin running back to the front door while being accosted by cleaning droids.
The door slams shut along with another on the north side of the domicile enclosure.

In the distance the grinding noises of the mining drones can be heard cutting down the doors to get to them.

Mainer hot wires the door to open and at once the lights go out and the air leaves the domiciles. The trio slowly walks into the room they were guided through before, a cafeteria. Slowly moving forward with their lights on, they are surprised by a mechanical culinary horror swinging various cutlery at them. The machine misses, Tukie responds with high intensity laser fire.

Paige orders Mainer forward to the next door. Eagerly complying he rushes into the darkness. He twitches for a second, his head lights flailing toward the ceiling, when a mechanical hand lunges for him dragging the droid into the dark where several knives and blades began stabbing at it. Tukie makes a shot at it.
She misses... but then hits Mainer, severing it into several hot glowing pieces that now roll around the floor in the ill lit room. Successive rounds make quick work of the culinary droid that grabbed him.

It's not long before the mining droid takes down the wall thanks to Streneck who took a transceiver down the hall way to assist with drone control. Veln orders it to pick up the pieces of the dismembered droid.

Then Streneck, Tukie, and Paige pickup some of the mining tools and begin to drill out all the cameras within the facility, steadily making their way down the halls. Where resistance is met, they respond with either drilling out the control panel and wedging the door open or sending a drone at it. Despite the vacuum, the speakers vibrate noiselessly with Paige occasionally tapping in to hear the speaker berate the travellers for not complying with citizen codes.

Again, Sam relay's their progress to Edward who is less than pleased that the colony grade fusion reactor and it's atmospheric processors are not already in his hold. Sam tapes a cigar to his helmet and enters the colony.

The party comes across a large store room full of consumables and processed ores. They ferry away 6 tons of basic manufacutured goods.

Coming to the reactor room, they discover the floor has been trapped-electrified to the point of disintegrating anything that might go through it. A drone met an untimely demise this way.

They move on to meet the hydroponics farm where they continue to drill open doors. Streneck just barely dodges the door exploding out from decompression. Sam casually steps out of the way of the cart wheeling door.

Continuing on they come across the server room and open it up. Cautiously they shoot all the cameras in the room and chuck the drill in low-G into the room to test the floor; nothing happens. They notice the room is surrounded on the ceiling by what appears to be exhaust vents.

In the distance a lone terminal is flashing a command prompt. Paige, after becoming sure the room was safe, discusses the proper command to type, walks up to it and sets off the pressure plate in the room. A high strength acid fires from all the exhaust points and dissolves the metal, servers, and everything else in the room.

As he attempts to flee the exhaust covers Paige in the acid-foam, it tears through the suit causing it to decompress suddenly. The foam enters his skin and while he looses consciousness, writhing on the floor of the room. Sam reaches in and pulls him out, his suit singing from the acid but not failing.

Ref Note: It's not failing because it's a high tech no-no. It was made explicit that all equipment purchases at character creation are to be done at the lowest tech level.

His suit is quickly patched and pressurized. Streneck loads his unconscious body on his back and huffs it back the ship (hence forth christianed "El Camino") to give him first aid where upon he quickly stops the bleeding and brings him to a stable, if slightly scarred state.

With the AI dead, the fusion reaction shuts off. Edward is pleased and begins his descent...

Ref Note: Good roleplay all around. I really enjoyed this session.

Art: Character's Megaman style

Talently rendered as envisioned by Carik's player.

A Sticky Situation

(Ref Note: Credit were credit is due, some of the ideas for Ganulph's moon were lifted from a forum thread. Though there were significant changes. The original inspiration is related, but in allot of ways only vaguely. It doesn't feel right to not mention it.)

Once again we return to the crew of the 'Unforgiving Boon' Aspiration Class Minimum Capability Barge and their recovery from a tragic jump failure. With the distress beacon sent into orbit, the ship descends through the murky clouds of a moon of Ganulph. Carik, a veteran belter, tunes the scanner to pick up dense objects and a suitable landing site. 4 Contacts come out from an otherwise rough rocky plateau, 1 being the highest rock formation and most suitable landing spot on the otherwise wet planet, the others being dense but loose structures. Veln makes mention on descent, reminding the crew that they have just enough fuel to complete the descent and perhaps move the ship once. He makes mention of a few other cursory items in the ship's locker that might prove useful (An industrial anchor gun, 200' of wire, and all the tools the K'Kree used in placing the Unforgiving Boon upright when it crashed, in addition to some portable fuel tanks and hoses).

Carik chooses the most hospitable landing site. The barge fires it's retro thrusters in the last few minutes of decent and assists the anti gravity drives before landing in the thick mud of the planet. It sinks briefly before settling still. The doors open as quickly as the K'Kree engineer Veln bolts through the doors. In the distance upon the fell air, the sounds of distress emanate. A man screams for help in the distance in between coughing and the sounds of vomiting. He is desperately clawing through the thick mud in a half run/crawl. The planet is covered in a thick fog making visual recognition almost impossible beyond 9 feet.

LaChuck and Tookie use their infrared goggles to point him out in the distance; Behind him many more heat sources. Their lasers, hampered in the fog, are slung in favor of revolvers and the tricked out ACR. The crew manages to down the assailants behind the wounded man before he claws his way onto the craft, shoving Strenek aside and attempts to gain access to the ship. He is coughing, his face bears the signs of some sort of pox. His baby-blue jump suit uniform, tattered and dirty, is covered in blood and the evidence of knife wounds. A faint insignia is on his shoulder, that of the "Belgaurdian Soujorn Navy". Veln and Stenek eventually subdue the crazed man with their stun sticks before he gains access to the interior of the ship. Obviously sick and dieing of his wounds, the crew attempts to mend him and sets him to rest on the top cargo deck, hence forth referred to as "The Quarantine Zone".

The assailants are primitive and spoke briefly in an old unidentifiable solomani dialect (ref note: German, but the PCs wouldn't know). They were armed primitively with daggers made of bone, hewn of a faint metallic shiny substance and one of a large cudgel made of corroding metal. The group wore only the most basic of leather clothing and foot waders, aside from one obviously larger individual whose dress was somewhat more ornate.
LaChuck loots the leather and carries the bodies into the mist and buries them.

The ground holds tracks incredibly well and a path is easily followed to the north west, roughly in the direction of one of the densomiter contacts. The crew suits up and begins to follow the tracks with Veln keeping the ship secure. After some discussion he powers the ship down to all but the radio and doors in order to preserve power.

The crew makes to a site after about 5 hours of slogging through the, at times, thigh deep mud. It is obvious a scuffle occurred here. Tracks lead in different directions, chaotically. Blood appears to have been spilt and has mixed with the mud; trailing back toward the landing site. Tracks continue to the south west and again to the northwest in a rough proximity of the contact.

The crew continues to follow the trail to the densomiter contact. They arrive to see the nose cone of a up armored far trader protruding from the mud- it's transponder emanating an incredibly weak signal GK. Besides the Belguardian Soujorn naval insignia, there is some nose art and a name "The Lucky Witch". All that remains of the Lucky Witch is the cabin section and a window.
A crude survival tent lays next to the ship, torn and battered. Within it, several bone knives and a neatly stacked and cleaned set of human bones.
"Oh Great, we saved a psycho path" mentions LaChuck.

After some discussion, Streneck levels his laser carbine at the window of the craft and breaks it. Moldy air comes rushing out in a quick blast and the ground around the ship bubbles slightly.

Carik jumps into the cabin and fiddles with the dead cabin, attempting to power it up to no avail while the others descend into the lower depths. They open doors and find little of interest.
LaChuck, deep within the ship finds a door that is hard to open. He pries it open successfully and air once again streams out of the ship violently.
The Lucky Witch tilts slightly and the silty mud begins flooding around LaChuck, he desperately begins running back to the ladder to the top deck while the earth around him quickly entombs him. The rest of the crew quickly evacuate back through the window with little problem.
LaChuck narrowly crawls out the window as the Lucky Witch gives one last exasperated gasp.

The party collectively scratch their heads on how to recover from this. An Intelligence + Mechanics check was offered for a suggestion from the Ref, Strenek passes and I remind them of the anchor gun back on the ship. Not long later they figure that the Unforgiving Boon could be used as an anchor point from which the Lucky Witch could be hoisted from the mud. But it was a gamble.
The move to the next densomiter contact away from any trail.

They come across after roughly 10 hours of slogging through the mud to a group of heat signatures in the distance. A large group of humans are sifting through the mud as far as they can tell. They opt out of confrontation and successfully stealth around them.
Several other groups of people are found and none pay any attention to them. Before long the frequency of the groups lessens and the ground becomes softer and softer, deeper and deeper.
Wading through waist deep mud the crew moves at an ever decreasing pace. The party considers this for a second and presses on.

Carik, gleefully chewing on a meat like substance from the week's worth of rations that they have notices that he is not keeping pace. He begins to work faster and struggle to keep up, only, he is sinking. The ground rises up around him to roughly chest deep during this attempt to free himself. He yells to the others, spitting out the food he was eating. LaChuck runs toward him as the mud rose to Carik's chin and grabs his still visible arm, and embraces Strenek with his other. Before long Carik's face sinks below the soupy mud (and the character sheet is handed over). LaChuck himself, burdened with a platoon's worth of ACR ammo, ammo for weapons he does not have, Glisten-issue combat armor, and a pawn shop's worth of assorted goods begins to sink himself.
He releases Carik and begins to struggle himself, sinking rapidly. In a desperate, and bitter sweet, move he unbuckles his armor, lets go of all his equipment and rations, and he is pulled to safety.

(Ref Note: At this point the player of Carik begins to inscribe on the densomiter map pictures of his character as a ghost and that they were all "DoooOOoOOoomed".)

With LaChuck in nothing more than a skin tight speedo designed to work with the combat armor, they trek back to the Unforgiving Boon. As they pass another large group of humans, Tookie investigates closer. The humans are naked and eating the dirt. They also appear to almost completely blind however as she gets closer they all raise their heads in her direction and begin yelling "INTERLOPER!?" "InterLOPER?!" "inTerLoper!" in old Vilani.
The surviving crew double time it back to the ship. On the way back however, LaChuck realizes they may not have quite the food problem they thought they had. He scoops up a handful of the soil and swallows it... and vomiting back onto the ground the contents of his stomach.

Veln, startled by the savagery he has already witnessed just after landing. Immediately notices that 1 of them is dead and questions them about it. LaChuck points out he has no armor either and that the sand took him in. Veln releases his guard.

Weighing their options they realize the only pilot of the ship is dead and question Veln as to whether or not he can pilot the craft. He responds with a hazy "Are you crazy?". Further investigation reveals that he does have some knowledge, but isn't proficient.

The Unforgiving Boon, at once renamed -since Captain Carik was dead- to 'Enterprise 69' then hazardously glides by way of Veln over to the Lucky Witch where it landed like a marble into a bowl of oatmeal. The airlock opens and the stewy mess of the surface of Ganulph pours into the ship but otherwise did nothing.

The crew then tethers the Lucky Witch to the Enterprise 69 and winches the top half of it above the surface. A gaping hole in the side of the craft is plainly visible, evidence of some sort of weapons fire. LaChuck begins to patch it with the tools at hand. The rest of the crew explore the lower depths of the ship and shovel out compartments where necessary.
The lower engineering bay is sealed off however and required some work to open the doors. A raw stench leaves the room. And as the doors eventually come loose it reveals the rather horrific sight of a Belguardian Sojourn Officer who had committed suicide some month before. Her name was "Lt. Kouniko".

The crew then properly takes stock of the Lucky Witch. It's a Belguardian Sojourn Lancer strike craft with most of it's armaments mostly functioning with some repair aside from the gaping whole in the hull. The Jump Drive, however, was completely shot. LaChuck deems the ship "LaChuk Special 69", to a collective groan from the group.
The fuel tanks however, were still charged with 55 tons of refined fuel, which is way more than what the Enterprise 69 needed to jump away. Immediately the crew ran the hoses necessary to fill the ship through the decks of the ship and out the air lock and into the broken window of the Lucky Witch.
(Ref Note: At this point I began making endurance checks against LaChuck to see if caught the disease the wanderer had. He failed, miserably. I passed on a note that he felt sick. He then stopped helping the team and raided the ship's medical kit for anti biotics.)

The pumping operation began without a hitch... until later a horn blew in the distance. It was a terrible sound, the sound of a war horn. 12 warriors emerged from the distant mist charging at the ship. Carik was given control of the war band and the fight ensued.
A desperate struggle began immediately in the air lock with Tookie chucking stun grenades out like beads during Mardi Gras; Strenek made pot shots into the mist. Stripped of his armor, and now wearing civies and a flack jacket looted from the cops on Overnale, he assisted Veln and tried to get the fuel on board faster.

Downing several of the war band but not stopping them the warriors piled into the air lock, grappling Strenek to the ground as Tookie shot into the distance with her revolver. The bone knives proved mostly ineffective against Strenek and his TL14 combat armor, even when prone and being stabbed repeatedly.
Tookie unsheathes her saber and valiantly begins to stab and shove the attackers out of the air lock. Just as Streneck rights himself to re-enter the action, a large man, dressed ceremonially like a war chief from before, wielding one of the large cudgels swings at Strenek knocking him back a step but otherwise unphasing him. Another warrior tackles Strenek again before Tookie can loose his blood into the airlock. The pitched fight continues desperately as the seconds tick away and the hydrogen hold fills.
The hydrogen tank is filled! With blows still being traded, Veln runs back down to the controls and fires up the craft. The airlock is then shut, severing the still live hydrogen hose leading back to the Lucky Witch. It writhes about with force, injuring some of the attackers.

(Ref Note: Observation; Carik should have, during the many grapples that he won with Strenek, opted to drag him out of the airlock and to the waiting crowd outside instead of attempting to stab him right then and there.)

As the ship slowly leaves the ground, LaChuck takes one of the surviving, but injured, attackers and turns the airlock into a make-shift guillotine. The top half of the attacker tumbles back to the earth before the other half is kicked out.

(Ref Note: Another check was made for the disease, this time with a +3 modifier for the antibiotics and it was failed again... So his body wasn't going to fight it easily or at least the antibiotics contained nothing to help him. He subtracts 3 from his endurance. His sickness is now apparent to everyone else.)

The crew now has to face the other dilemma. When they came to Ganulph they had only 1 week worth of rations and no more on the ship. While on Ganulph they consumed another day and a half and lost all of LaChuck's. Strenek advises that the rations be stretched out over the stay in jump space. LaChuck then demands his debt from Strenek be paid out in the form of his combat armor to which Strenek obliges and lets LaChuck wear the armor.

(Ref Note: I considered this undue stress for LaChuck's illness. The accommodations of the Enterprise 69 made it even less bearable and accounted for that in all future rolls for the disease.)

Veln plotted the next jump handily after getting their bearing toward the next closest star (and only one within range) and slowly, methodically, pulled the ship into jump space. The jump was inaccurate, but not a misjump.

Over the course of the stay in jump space, LaChuck's condition continually disintegrates with a roll being made every day in jump and failing (now with modifiers from his damaged endurance) every endurance check but 2.
He is placed in the "Quarantine Area" with the now dead body of the wanderer.
Upon reaching their destination, Elseson, LaChuck is afflicted with rampant diarrhea, vomiting, dizziness, constant sweats and shakes. His face is riddled with red pock marks and he is incapable of rapid movement. The combat armor is thoroughly ruined of ever attaining a pleasant aroma.
It is apparent that his situation is so dire that he needs immediate medical help.

Eleson is a temperate world around it's equator with it being completely inhospitable any far north or south of it. The Enterprise 69 follows a landing beacon down to a crude starport devoid of any recent activity- or life.

(Ref Note: At the time I didn't know the name of the planet because the PC was out of commission. Turns out I guessed right. Go subliminal consciousness?)

A droid emerges from a nearby corrugated metal shack and rolls up to them, bidding a pleasant arrival and asking of their purpose on Eleson. Tookie asks for medical assistance to which the droid points toward a metal shack on the other side of the landing field. Seeing LaChuck slither as much as walk out of the ship, vomiting his way down the steps, the droid loads him onto the back of itself and carries him over to the shack. LaChuck tries to curse the ghost of Carik, but fails his endurance check and spills the contents of his stomach over the side of the droid.

The shack itself was almost devoid of use. The doors cracked and groaned as they opened in the droid's presence revealing a series of robotic armatures covered in plastic sheets. The droid leaves LaChuck on a table and removes the plastic coverings. Turning to Tookie, he proclaims "The machines are now yours" before whisking away.

Tookie looks at one of the computer displays and, not having a relevant skill to operate the machinery, attempts blindly to "probe"(per verbatim) LaChuck. The machine accepts the strange command that she entered-executing it to the best ability that it understood.

The table straps LaChuck down. Buzz saws and various armatures come to life careening toward the coughing bewildered LaChuck. Quickly Tookie and Strenek attempt to turn the machine off and, grasping electrical cords and hammering on the display, are cut short as the saw cuts the breast plate off of LaChuck before lunging into his chest cavity- spraying his life across the room. The robotic arms begin careful removal of entrails and organs among the dieing screams of the sick ex-star marine.

He was burned in a funeral pyre along with the body of the wanderer (and the character sheet was turned over).

Moo-cenaries

Continuing from last time, the party camped out waiting for the land train to pass. During that time they tuned their radio to local affairs and learned of the local political climate, of which minor protests were in action. They learned of a large K'Kree colony to the south, their militant leader Shoval, and of Ghiritz's relationship to the west, in addition to local musical tastes.
After some ethical discussion of detonating a few hundred tons of cows and sorting out the attack plan, it was decided to let the truck pass their encampment and let the train pick up all of its northern freight before ambushing it on its southernly return route.

Fortifications are built from the local trees and a road block is constructed. Explosives were set so that they may detonate the truck at a drop of the plunger.

The truck returns as planned and stops at the road block. The 4 member crew bearing Kwik Bite jump suits looks distressed, begins to survey the situation and radio home when their lives are threatened by Tookie. She orders them away from the truck and 2 of the 4 men in the truck do so. The driver and co pilot raise their hands. They are lightly armed with only revolvers, no reloads. The crew panics asking for clemency and release. "I just want to go HOME!" screams one of the crewmen. The situation slowly deteriorates with the party failing to convince the crew that they will be safe.
The driver reaches for the radio.
Panic sets into the party, "Should we blow it!?" Strenek mentions. "BLOW IT!" cries Lachuck. Tookie hesitates, "Wait not yet."
Initiative is rolled, Tookie wins.

Tookie takes the shot, melts the glass of the windscreen, shatters the drivers head against the back seat in the process of horrifying the co pilot.
The other crew members begin to fire back but it was a futile gesture. The party had them out maneuvered and out guned. It was over before it begun, the shots stopped in under 30 seconds. Laser carbine fire riddled the crew men with Tookie making another brilliant shot into the co pilot disabling him immediately. Carik takes a defiant lucky shot to the shoulder but shrugs it off.

They then took the ATV and using some stun sticks begin corralling and herding the cattle north back to their pins. The radio in the land train cackles to life. Central Dispatch for the train was inquiring to the status of the land train whom last reported a road block.
Lachuk grabbed the radio and responded "Everything is fine here... um... situation normal?" and then shouted to Carik to get in their and take the radio.

Central Dispatch was unenthused and insisted that they send a truck to clear the road for them. Their insurance "doesn't cover work place hazards". Carik insisted it was fine and that they were clearing the road themselves. Central Dispatch wizened up to what might have occurred and asked for an ID. Carik failed to do so quickly, or perhaps gave the wrong ID.

There was silence on the radio.

Lachuk grabbed the radio and screamed "THE K'KREE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN LONG LIVE THE K'KREE REVOLUTION" and shot the radio. The party collectively groaned.
With the cattle off and Strenek successfully herding them north, Tookie wired the truck to blow. After about 10 minutes the truck detonated in a plume of black smoke and flames enriched with high explosives and fuel.

The cows are successfully herded to the pins in the nearest farm, the home of Jeb, Earl and Mae, where they had visited prior. On the distant horizon a police hover car is seen briefly inspecting the flames before following the tracks of the herd and that of the ATV. Strenek makes a cunning decision to drive erratically before parking the ATV in the barn. He then pulls out the tractor located within it to further muddy the tracks of the ATV; parking it and hiding moments before the police settle down in front of the farm house.

Carik and Tookie hide in the house while Lachuk and Strenek hide in the barn taking up advantageous firing positions about 100 yards away. The police immediately knock on the door to the house and begin a heated discussion with Jeb. Earl arms the family shot gun in preparation for conflict. After a short discussion in which the conversation becomes heated Earl then leads the officer back to where the Carik and Tookie are. They waste no time and quickly duck out the back windows, evading the officer.

Not content, but noticing an open window, the officer argues with Jeb and Earl for a while longer before deciding to check the back of the house. Carik, creeping closer and eaves dropping on the discussion is caught off guard when the officer comes around and is noticed as Carik trips to the ground, aggravating his wound and growling in pain. The officer demands that Carik halt. He does so and as the officer moves in to arrest him, he is planted in the face with a high energy beam from Tookie's carbine from around the house.
The officer is killed instantly.

Until now, all Lachuck and Strenek have seen was Carik falling, taking a prone position, and then the officer's head being vaporized. Working on this information they promptly fire up the ATV and head out to pick them up. Carik and Tookie run to the front of the house to see the second policeman frantically trying to radio for help and start the hovercar. Strenek runs the vehicle over with the ATV unapologetically.

With the heat on, the party loads up and heads south near the road but off it and back to Ghirihtz. Strenek daftly maneuvers the ATV to avoid passing patrols during 2 key points. After arriving at Ghirihtz and seeing the city in a state of lock down, they avoid it entirely and opt to drive the ATV toward the starport on the western continent.

Their luck breaks down when the ATV runs out of gas just before the southern desert. They pack what they can from the ATV, hide it, and begin walking along the road and rail way toward the next nearest city; the K'Kree colony. Carik, the least equipped for the trip, suffers from mirages during the trek but otherwise the group was fine when they were picked up by a passing driver (of whom was incredibly impressed by Lachuck's imaginary military history).

Once dropped off, the K'Kree were immediately alarmed that a group of armed men were approaching their village and were largely treated cordially. Carik went about trying to purchase a train ticket to Overnale when the group was introduced to Neil, a remarkably well dressed and out of place individual. He offered to pay their ticket if they wanted but mentioned, after sorting through the various false hoods the group gave regarding their history, that he believed there was someone they wanted to meet. The group agreed.

They were introduced to Shoval, the charismatic militant leader of the colony that was enamoured with the stories he was hearing of the "liberation" occurring in the northern farms. Lachuck negotiated with him for a short time and Shoval became increasingly irritated at his blunt attitude and inability to see his vision of an Overnale without 'Fucking Meat Eaters', as was translated. Carik interjected and pointed out that the people of Ghiritz were sympathetic to the K'Kree's plight in some regards. Shoval was overjoyed at the news and offered the players patronage to assist in the "Revolution".
He offered to pay their way off planet, no questions asked, as a reward for the damage done to the cattle operations. He also offered a sum of money for the proof of death of every Sharushid employee they come across. And lastly he offered a sum of the remainder of 10Mcr and the usage of a ship if they could smuggle in some arms for his people.

The party almost immediately agreed to take the starship. Tookie looked somewhat concerned, on which Carik asked Shoval if they could get an astronavigator or some sort of engineer. Neil then fetched the rather neurose looking K'Kree Veln - a K'Kree engineer that had spent some time refitting the vessel they were about to take.

The ship granted to the party is none other than the Aspiration class minimum capability barge that they came to Overnale on. The party points this out to which Neil replies, "It was crashed and it was just lying out there... so why not?"

After preflight, Carik fires up the craft. It launches, thundering slowly up when the gravatics come out of alignment. He is able to save it from disaster and the craft merely lands a with a disgraceful thud before snapping a leg of landing gear and falling to its side.

The K'Kree chuckle at their expense and hoist the craft back up and repair the leg. Carik attempts launch again, with success! Roaring into the atmosphere the ship quickly leaves the blue orb of Overnale.
Lachuck hears a hail almost immediately over the radio asking for identification and clarfication of it's launch point. He is unable to answer and they are requested to hold their orbit and prepare to be boarded.

Veln plots the course to Glisten and gives the green light to jump. Carik gives the order and Strenek initiates the jump dim but does so poorly for lack of familiarity and for it being a generally horrible ship. Carik throws the switch to jump and it is immediately clear as the control board flickers red and the jump timer clocks in to their ETA, that something went wrong.

The timer rolls down to its projected exit point. It passes it. The timer begins rolling into the negatives as the ship prepares to leave jump space at any moment. Hours pass. Days pass. The food stock runs dry on the ship and the crew begins to eat their rations. It lunges out of jump space a full week longer than expected.

Veln checks out the stellar patterns and declares the ship lost- by his calculations they may be as far as 42 light years off target. A hazy distant G class star with a strange EM field accompanies them but is otherwise unidentifiable. Below them is the body that yanked the barge from jump, a green gas giant with a great many airless moons.
One of which, however, is not airless. A greenish/gray hazy marble against the dark laid within landing distance. It's life signs appear to be rich and the world is otherwise incredibly wet.

Lachuk deploys the emergency beacon. Even at light speed, and assuming someone is listening it may be as long as 3 years till someone responds...

The party takes the ship down with Carik gracefully picking a spot to land. The doors open to reveal a strangely humanoid shape in the distant pea soup fog...

Travelling for 8

What follows is a loose log of a group of individuals (the Traveller campaign) beset by circumstance.

It all started with Port Almacen (The pic above was inspiration. It's asteroid Gaspra/951. Almacen litterally means 'Storage'/'Warehouse' in Spanish). A sleazy little rock distantly orbiting Glisten; too far away for a casual visit and too close to Glisten to want to go there. It's purpose as a long range scout and belter facility had long ago been exhaused leaving its lingering purpose questionable. It was a husk and all that was left was a warehousing operation. And that would be complementary, as it was more of a foot note on corporate ledgers of things they'd rather forget. It was the stopping ground for crates and containers of failed projects and clandestine cover ups. That was the rumor anyway.
Coincidentally people lived there as much as moss clings to life in a desert; scraping by a meager existence on the periphery of corporate trade lines.

It's here where we meet our characters in a gaming parlor passing away their time. LaChuk is suited in almost questionably legal combat armor; a grizzled star marine gambling away his last credits on recorded races from Horosho. Strenek hasn't a credit to his name and is similarly frittering away his time - another star marine with combat armor though not yet equipped. 'Tookie' is the only officer around - and yet another star marine. The most curious of all is Carik, a belter that had a run in with a pirate and was laying low for now.

Running low on cigarretes, Carik asks LaChuk to fetch some more from the vending machine down by the dock yards. Shortly after a large alien walks into the bar barely able to speak any common. He asks for ice from the waitress and eagerly gobbles the cubes down. Carik brilliantly uses his computer to load up a language program and begins to talk to him. He addresses himself as "Klic Clik Faernmn" and, after getting frustrated with Carik for not enunciating the 'm' in his name among other things, he reveals a transit note covered in what appears to be saliva. Stranded, He merely wishes to go to Glisten and asks for help to get there.

The team rises to the challenge.

Meanwhile Lachuk notices a ship docking that bares the resemblance of the pirate vessel that Carik is avoiding when fetching the cigarettes. Within short order the team packs up their belongings, gears up, bids farewell to the dump of a rock, and purchases 5 tickets to Glisten on the next launching pinnance.
Carik arrives to the docking platform with Faernmn and 3, previous undisclosed, members of his family in tow while the alien refers to them all as "me" and "I". (It is later revealed the exact reasoning behind this. They are his family members and of lineage to his consciousness- and before the inherit that intellect they have all the intellectual breadth of a retarded fruit fly. Faernmn treats them as such).

Arriving on Glisten the Faernmn is not easily recognized and is placed into quarantine by customs. Carik is given legal custody and is to report back in a week to retrieve him. In the interim the group goes into the bazaar to look for a translator for Faernmn to little success. They encounter an irritated Aslan among other characters.

Strenek is accosted by a woman, by the name of Chazmine, pleaing for help with their home world of Overnale. She claims to be victimized by an off world corporation and they are forcing her people to starve. Strenek checks her story out with the local guards and they confirm it to the length of their interest. Not interested in taking on a charity case, the group moves on to the scout deck to look for some other more profitable lead. Largely ambivalent, the attendant flips through the recent job postings and mentions a mercenary contract that was recently posted for Overnale to assist with local police efforts being placed by Sharushid.
The pay was hefty.

Realizing that there may be more truth to Chazmine's story they decide to take the moral high ground and assist her. They are guided to an Aspiration class minimum capability barge, of which lays fuming and dripping fluids onto the flight deck. The jump is uneventful, though the trip was longer than expected due to the horrible state the ship was in. (At this point Carik chimes in with concern that he is delequint on picking up Faernmn- by a week at the soonest). Inspite of this the crew piloting the barge slammed the ship inappropriately through the atmosphere to avoid landing at the proper starport.

It crashed and fell to its side with minor injury.
The group then journeyed by foot to the down trodden city of Ghirhitz where their garb and off world armor earned them a hero's welcome. The mayor however, was a little confused by armed individuals being forced into his office and decided to bring them to the office of the Sharushid representatives that, through a client company called Kwik-Bite, was forcing all the local cattle operations to shift product off world for an appalling cheap sum and to the more industrialized western continent as well.

The representatives were unimpressed by the group's actions and diplomatic/legal skills (LaChuck did most the negotiating with vague hints of violence). They gave dictum that they were compassionate and that their presence here was universally good before kicking them out.
This led the mayor to agree to incite a riot- he himself had no success convincing the representatives to more reasonable trade terms. He offered the group an ATV and some explosives. They were to head out and stop a cattle shipment under the advice that the locals were being watched and the police were largely under Sharushid's influence.

The group went out to a farm where the cattle were to be picked up, befriended the locals, and camped out waiting for the moment to strike the cattle train...