Monday, February 20, 2017

Traveller Sunday - to the Prison

After a day of rest and non-ship food at the at least adequate hotel and dining establishment of the Class C starport on Cyan, our intrepid group, accompanied by Li Brewster from the prison ship, make the flight to the Imperial Prison known locally as the Jungle.

Dr. Boris is expected to inspect the hospital facilities, and question some randomly selected prisoners.  Travis, Purity & Li are flying over to the Level 1 prisoners to begin with.  They plan on inspecting various locations and seeing if there is any truth to the rumors of abuse and maltreatment.

So...yesterday's game play was fairly slow as I've not really had the time to get a lot of the background into place despite the 2 week hiatus between sessions.  As the prison is almost 200x200 kilometers, houses 100,000 prisoners, and has almost 10,000 personnel, it is a bit of an undertaking.

Hopefully this week I'll have time to get more details, gen up some interesting prisoners, figure out the hospital complex, the fusion complex, some sample guard barracks...at least I borrowed some deck plans that work well enough for the prison cells.

BTW: Li is getting a free trip as she was most helpful in the prison ship, she is nearing the end of her prison term, and she actually has some useful skills that may be of use to the players.  I need to flesh her out a bit more with emotional characteristics, maybe an interesting image or something.

And no - I've not had time to get back to the software development. Maybe when Bryson goes to college...

Monday, February 06, 2017

Traveller Sunday

After a longer hiatus than expected, we resumed our game.  Travis & Boris both failed to maintain the required concentration while studying to improve some skills. Travis' jump coordinates were far off the intended plot: instead of coming out of jump near the planetoid belt housing the Scout Way station, they emerged from jump at the 100 diameter limit of Cyan itself.  While this is not necessarily a bad thing, coming out of jump less than 45 minutes away from a captured Imperial Prison ship, was not fortuitous.

At this point, Purity Truth came out to let Boris and Travis know she is actually an Imperial Intelligence Agent, at the point of retirement but doing one last mission to inspect rumors of the Imperial Prison on Cyan.  While she was hoping for a more clandestine approach to her investigation, events compelled her to help out.

As the prison ship was approaching, the ISS Renegade was also approaching from the Way Station. Sadly it was still more than 2 hours out.  Knowing the prison ship only had 2 missile launchers for defense, Le Suroit opened fire with her pulse lasers in an attempt to disable the launchers. Sadly this was an epically bad night for dice rolls: the shot went wild, and they were notified by the prisoners that another attempt would be fatal. Part of the reason for the miss, despite having a gunner, is the pulse lasers on Le Suroit are more akin to mining lasers as well as having a more limited firing arc. That and rolling a 3 on the to hit did not help.

The two ships docked, but our crew could hear fighting in the background of the prison ship.  Communicating with the Imperial Starport below, our crew was deputized under Purity's command. A face to face parley was requested by Star, the leader of the prisoners currently in charge of the ship.  Docking was a bit problematical as the ships were at a 90 degree angle to each other do to the location of the docking ports (the lab ship really does not make it easy to get in and out of!).

At the upper jump pod, where the ships are joined, our crew hears knocking at the door.  An Imperial prisoner is on the other side, hands up in the universal sign of don't shoot me please.  They let her in.  The situation on the prison ship is explained: there are 3 groups, two of which are not really that violent. Star, the leader on the bridge, is one of the not violent ones who as requested the parley.

So our players, after removing all weapons as per Captain Boris, along with Purity, head to thge bridge of the prison ship. While Travis and Boris managed the athletic transition, Purity, despite being an Aslan and one would think land on her feet, was not as graceful (she has a lower dexterity due to failing a couple of aging rolls).

They are met by a Vargr who leads them to the elevators, past some bloodstained walls that were witness to the bloody uprising from the prisoners. The elevators still play musak in the far future it turns out.  A brief parley, and confirmation that the prisoners will be held at the Imperial starport pending investigation of the prison situation, and the ship is yielded to Purity.

While Travis goes back for Cudgel and his stunner, Star and Boris make for a quick survey of the ship to let the other prisoners know what the deal is.  There are a few bodies scattered, and a few prisoners still in there cells, refusing to come out.  In the starboard prison pod they find the remnants of the most xenophobic and violent prisoners. They refuse to be handed over to the Imperial scum, and one of them lunges at Boris with a hidden shiv. it was at this point Travis returns, and hearing the ruckus, fires his stunner. Sadly, another horrible roll and he takes out Star. Meanwhile, the good Doctor and the shiv carrying thug are tussling but both are inept at physical combat.  Finally our thug cuts the doctor, causing 4 points of damage. Travis has managed to get behind the struggle and attempts to pull off the thug. Sadly he is not nearly as strong, and only manages to distract him for a moment. Using Cudgel he attempts to smack the guy on the head. He does actually hit but does only 1 point of damage.

At this point, 2 ISS security guards (yes, my Scout Service has a security division) show up and the fight is shortly over.

And that's pretty much where we left off.  I'll try and get a better synopsis with names and all that in place, and the fallout of this.  Le Suroit is still orbiting Cyan, the amber zoned world, and may be there a while for legal proceedings.