Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Solo Session 2: 227-234 1106 in jump to Preacep

227-1106 Enter Jump

Entering jump, the captain actually dimmed the lights. Seems like an old Navy tradition as the No Refunds had enough power to initiate jump and keep the lights on. Some Imperial traditions will never die apparently. Malik was at his duty station on the bridge, manning the comms and sensors as the ship smoothly transitioned from real space to the weird universe that was jump space. At that point, all external communication ceased, and the only options he had were reviewing internal ship systems. With the boards all green, he signed off to check on the passengers, and to start prep for the first meal after entering jump space. Another tradition: a nice meal to celebrate no dying.

Going down the spiral stairs and going aft, Malik starts checking out the stores to see what he can come up with. Ewo is already there, tail curling around her as she studied her slate.

"Just checking the passenger manifest, Malik" she said, looking up over the slate. "We've two passengers and I did not have time to vet them before Lynwood took them on. Really wish he'd let me deal with that, we've had some rather interesting guests in the past.  Anyway, we've a couple human females heading to Preacep, they should still be in their staterooms up front. And the fresh veggies are in that lower bin on your left."

Finding all he needed, Malik spends the next hour prepping the meal, finding out where things are in the various storage units and how to work the various controls for the heating surfaces.

Dinner as...adequate (8 on the reaction roll just to see. We also have previously unannounced passengers as the onboard event calls for 2 passengers to have a blazing and unresolved argument. So perhaps post-dinner the argument erupts: it would not be a good thing to have a fight while constrained to the ship for 7 or so days!). What started as a pointed conversation veered quickly into a shouting match between the two passengers. (rolling on the patrons table, we get a broker and a Scout pilot. We don't really need to know more at the moment - depending on how the rolls come out we could get new enemies, nothing special, or new contacts. So this calls for a plan to see how we can resolve this. Seeing as we're stuck in a ship for a week, the only weaponry are forks and dinner knives, I can't see too much happening. So, first, a plan: we'll see if we can mediate between the two to keep the peace for at least the duration of this trip. While Malik is not aware of it, Ewo does have diplomacy one as well as persuade, and factoring in his persuade 0 and carouse 0, perhaps they can pull this off. So not fool-proof as we're dealing with sophonts feelings, but solid. Danger level is safe, unless someone has butter knife 3 or something. So, our required roll is 8+, and we'll add the +1 for the diplomacy skill: rolled an 8, so success! Not having a huge success, nor a failure, we'll gain neither contacts nor enemies on this based on that success. However, rolling an 11 on the consequences, we have a good consequence: rolling a three, the task only took half as long as expected. So apparently it was really a trifling matter once they started to hash things out. The other option is, of course, to assign my own consequences. At this point, I'll just stick with the tables and continue on. The story line is the actual role playing, the how things were resolved based on the success or failure. As this was a minor thing, and I am horrible at writing dialog, we'll just leave it here as is: nothing calamitous or beneficial really came out of that action.

The week passes well after that initial argument: the old holo viewer has a number of ancient sitcoms apparently, and the food supplies are well. Malik inspects all the storage lockers. (There is a running thread over on COTI about what is in the ship's lockers. I've always gone with the bare minimum needed. However, as a 'player' in this solo game, Malik will be inspecting all vacc suits, power systems and supplies to verify that all is up to date. )  On the bridge deck, there are two lockers, each locked to ship personnel, which now includes Malik. There is one next to his Ops/Comms station, and another next to the computer/internal ops station. Each locker contains an emergency vacc suit, not intended for extended use but useful for emergencies. He verifies the air tanks are topped off and battery systems are fully charged and operational. Additionally, there are some snub pistols and rounds, patch kits, first aid kits and miscellaneous tools and cruft. On the main deck, the forward cargo bay/vehicle hanger has two storage areas, but those contain cargo and mechanic tools mostly, as well as odds and ends picked up over the life time of the ship and no place else to stick them. The odds and ends collection. The three lockers per air lock had the regular vacc suits designed to fit a wide variety of sizes. There was one that was Aslan-specific in the port lock. Along with the suits, there were a couple of shot guns, more first aid kits, and an inflatable life raft that was also an extended emergency ball, each able to support two people for about 48 hours with air and rations for longer than that.. Each also included the regulation survival kits: flares, first aid, water purification systems. The rations had a while to go before expiring except for one case, which Malik dumped in the recycler. The kitchen/commons area lockers just contained foods and the regular kitchen supplies. He verified the 6 life boats were fully charged and operational. The lower deck was filled with shipping containers full of aluminum, and her had little room to move about. As there were no lockers here for him to maintain, he just verified that the cargo containers were locked down.

Between meal prep, learning the boards on the No Refunds, and befriending the two passengers, the week does pass relatively quietly and quickly enough. Rolling for Malik's interactions with Robard, the doctor and astrogater, I roll a 5. So not so friendly!

Looking back at the relationships (Solo Relationships), we can see that Eaaia is good friends with the doctor, so hopefully she can help fix anything. So, I will roll for a reaction roll over that first week in jump space, needing an 8+ to avoid conflict. Sadly, I roll a 7: Malik and his new roommate have a confrontation! Someone loses their temper. I give it a 50/50 for each: 6 was the good doctor, who apparently has a temper. Not sure what set him off exactly. Fortunately, the reaction roll to Lando, the engineer, as a 9, so Malik can at least hide out when tempers flair if need be. ANd Lando is often buried in the engineering spaces. Malik apparently was checking the med station our to check to see if it had lockers, and the doctor is very, very particular about "his" space: "So unless you are holed up or puking your guts out, do not come back in here!". Malik avoids med bay after that. Besides, there were no lockers to check in there anyway.

He is also writing down his new adventures, thinking about writing a book about his travels. While he did a successful series a few years back, that was a series of news posts, not a cohesive book. Malik has dreams of being a published author.

They come out of jump on day 234 of 1106. Stay tuned in for the next session!

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