Solo Session 5: Preacep 234-238 1106

Preacep, 234 through 238 1106 at the Port

The next four days Malik & Ewo check for cargos. Two are found, a 55 ton lot of textiles that, despite getting a good purchase DM due to the non-industrial nature of Preacep, we still only get at 90% and costing us Cr148,500. The other option was 2 tons of crystals at 100% of the base cost, C40,000. We could dip into the ship reserves for the textiles, but none of the systems available to us to jump to next have any beneficial selling modifiers. Now, as a player / ref of the game, I could indicate that ASB&TS has a broker in the system. So I am going to allow a re-roll for each with a -1 applied due to our broker: miraculously I really rolled snake eyes, so we can get the textiles at 40% or Cr66,000. The crystals are at 80%, or  Cr32,000. So Cr98,000 for both lots and only having to dip a bit into the reserves to cover those costs. We still have about 50 tons of storage space left if we include the ship's shuttle or vehicle bay. Rolling on for general cargo, we have 3 tons of major cargo and 2 tons of minor cargos. There were no incidental cargos. So that will be a payment of Cr5000 for the 1 jump into League space.

Checking for passengers, we can get 2 high passage passengers or 4 mid-passage. Going with the 4 mid-passage may be stretching the rules a bit, but I can go with that. There is an excessively large common area after all, and we also have the entire vehicle bay empty. We could spend some more time trying to find cargo but we are really out of credits.

As we are also trying to save money, and paying for the life support, the ship's crew will sleep on-board, but roam the port to stretch their legs and get out and about. Unfortunately, despite being an island, the tainted atmosphere prevents any real site seeing on the island. Few people to see the mighty fluketails leap in the tainted oceans, or see the majestic isheer frolic in the oddly shaped and colored trees.

Looking at the map, we've got 6 possible systems to jump to:

• Back to Yllom  A689997-A
• To Finnigan's World, bypassing Yllom C694566-9
• Finnigan's Beta A568201-B, non-industrial
• Finnigan's Gamma E672AAA-3
• Krim, red-zoned by the Imperium but part of the League AND having a Naval base B318AA8-E
• 010-705 E576698-7

As I am really wanting to head into the League to explore that a bit, I do have to come up with some justification on getting there. And Krim is a TL E world so should be a lot of fun to visit: with that atmosphere and that population, there must be huge arcologies that are entirely self-contained, floating grav cities, huge stations. 

Looking closer at the map, turns out that Preacep is actually a non-aligned system: although in the Imperium, it is not of the Imperium. Now, whether that was a mistake or intentional, as I originally made up this system 30+ years ago I could not say. But it does work its way wonderfully as a port between systems. I'll have to expand out the description, making this a more neutral territory somehow, the gateway to the League. Maybe they sell t-shirts with that on them in the few shops available in the class C port...

But back to our destination, now decided, Krim. A very high tech-level planet, meaning (if I interpreted the book 2 rules correctly) I add 4 to the roll for passengers, so likely we'll get the max of 2 passengers we can carry, maybe 4 if double-bunking the staterooms. Technically, no cargo due its being a red zone when we do get there. 

So after 4 days, we have 4 passengers, some speculative cargo, and some freight we are shipping across the border. The ship has been refueled and two week maintenance performed, the larder restocked with whatever foods Preacep can offer. Deciding to go ahead & roll on the world encounter table, I get seller is involved in legal trouble and we risk getting involved. Not knowing how bad this could be, I'll go ahead and roll on some more interesting tables in the SOLO book. The seller turns out to be a decent enough person, and he was up front with us on the textiles purchase (perhaps why we got this at 40% of cost?). The textiles were produced by a small group of people in the Free Egalitarian Party's country. Apparently not all people are equal, and this small group wishes to maintain its cultural heritage a bit more than the general Egalitarian wants. Some are just more equal than others....regardless, these textiles are considered a cultural heritage by some, and with the system's prohibition on contact with off-worlders, some see this as breaking the law. However, the textiles were purchased legally, and sold legally to the No Refunds, and another roll on a table indicates that we're ok for now. So no mad dash off-planet, or enemies created. Just some of the population not happy with  Regardless, we'll add another contact:
Contact: Stoddy Johnson of Preacep, textile seller
 As we've only the 2 planets so far, rolling for contacts is not a thing that needs to get done.

Rolling on the port encounters, we get something that actually fits in with the above legal issues: the ships crew is in some sort of trouble, perhaps legal.  We will need to come up with a plan. Being a legal issue, seeing as Eaaia has several skills that apply (Advocate-1, Diplomat-1, perhaps even the Admin-1 and Persuade-1 can all work in here) we will get a bonus for that. However, this world is not a part of the Imperium, so her legal acumen may not entirely be as advantaguous. However, I'll say she comes up with a solid plan with the +1 bonus. And...I roll a 5, meaning the plan failed! The textiles are currently in legal limbo. And rolling for consequences, we get damage to a useful or valuable piece of kit. As this was a legal tussle, the only thing I can think of is that perhaps the ship was damaged when the local enforcers decided to forcefully take back the textiles. So we're into deeper trouble than I thought!

I've a number of choices to make: do we just pay a fine and look for another cargo? Retry the legal process? And it looks like we'll be on Preacep another few days while I decide what to do next.