Traveller: Patron Encounter - The Package

1 - 4 Players

Corporate Agent    

Required Skills: None

Required Equipment: None

At the high port at a system at the edge of the Imperium, the adventurers are approached by a tall gentleperson of indeterminate gender (not uncommon in this system). Offering to buy the adventurers a meal at the Redonkously Expensive restaurant, they will tell their tale.

"My employer had me send a package via X-Boat to the neighboring system. The boat is currently docked in the Scout Bays. I found out that the package was switched by an agent for the Ine Givar and will cause the Imperium and the neighboring polity to possibly go to way. The Scout Service won't allow me to retrieve the package via the normal channels as it is already locked in the mail vault. Perhaps you could manage to retrieve it? The boat is in bay 1 undergoing routine maintenance before getting towed to the jump point. I can pay Cr5000 each for your services."

Some notes: the Xboat Service takes data and package delivery very seriously. Once a package is consigned to the mail locker on the boat there should be no retrievals. So this is definitely an illegal theft even if the owner of the package wants it retrieved. But hey, we are on the edge of the Imperium.

Even though Xboat Tenders tend to do most of the work, sometimes in busier systems that have a high port, the boats will get towed to the station and moved to the Xboat docks. This allows the pilots more space to stretch their legs while the boat is serviced, as well as being a convenient location for those small packages that they can transport for a significant fee to the next stop on their route. Additionally, the tender will restock their supplies from the port as well. 

1. All is as they said: the package is already locked into the mail vault of Xboat 334-A and they are who they say they are if any intelligence gathering is made.
2. All is not quite as they say: they are  in fact the agent of the Ine Givar and want that package removed to prevent the Imperium from considering annexing the neighboring system.
3. As per 1, but the package is actually in the cargo bay area and not yet loaded.
4. As per 2, but the package is actually in the cargo bay area and not yet loaded.
5. The "corporate" patron is in fact Scout security: there have been rumors that packages are not as secured as they are supposed to be, and Scouts may be taking bribes to part with physical mail and fix the data trail. If the players balk at illegal activity, they may reveal themselves and give them a temporary warrant to try to get the package.
6. the package is actually a remote detonated device and the Ine Givar or local terrorist group wants to make the Imperium look bad. The players are to be victims of lax Imperial safety precautions.

The Xboat docks are from Yet Another Traveller Blog that has some excellent resources. This link takes you directly to the geomorph post. 

My backgrounds rotate through my deck plans directory, and when this popped up, it really made me want to use it for something. And it has been too long since my last actual Traveller post on what was ostensibly a Traveller blog (as noted before, I really don't see a reason to create blogs specific to my games even if they are free. One blog to rule them all for me works)

Patron Encounter: Vax Datas CEO of Psziz Autonomous Autos

 Noble / Executive    Required Skills: Computer, Investigation    Required Equipment: None

System Requirements:  High tech (TL B+), High Law Level, Moderate to High Population

Target group: traders, 2-6 players. Rewards could be adjusted for non-traders: substitute a military vehicle perhaps as the reward for a more mercenary group

Players Information The group was beat to the sale of a lucrative contract for shipping  autonomous vehicles to a neighboring system at a huge profit. The CEO, Vax Datas, brings the players to his expansive private offices to proffer a deal that may even be better. He will give them up to 4 vehicles, and, depending on how well they do in their job, fill their passenger roster with high passage-paying sales team to go to the next system to start a sales group there. 

The job: fearing that a rival company is doing industrial espionage, he would like the group to gather evidence. His legal alternatives are slim: the high law level is working against them with a large set of laws limiting access to other corporations, and needs a group that is unknown to the other company. There is a safe on the 33rd floor of the office that has the information he needs.

Referee's Information

1. All is as it seems: there is industrial espionage, and the safe does have physical evidence of this. 
2. There is no evidence in the safe, but a more careful analysis and searching will turn up evidence. The reward will be higher if the players find this other evidence.
3. The safe only has the normal legal hard-copies and no evidence. There is no industrial evidence.
4. The safe actually has plans for the rival's vehicle, and Datas is performing his own industrial espionage. How the players handles this should provide a number of possible outcomes. 
5. The safe is empty and is actually a honey-pot trap: the players will be captured upon attempting to open this. There are larger plans between the companies and they have become pawns in the game.
6. There is no safe. Nor cake.

Other information: being a high-tech system, there will be all sorts of high-tech security devices. Due diligence before attempting any sort of break-in should be taken: floor plans, alarm systems, guard routes, etc. The high-law level also means probably jail time should they be caught. 

Patron Encounter - Mad Scientist

Equipment needed:  None; optionally their own ship.
Skills needed: depends if they are piloting their own craft or travelling as passengers. Admin, Legal, Forgery, Carousing, and personal skills could come in handy.

Players Information: In searching for cargo on the cargo boards, the group sees a request for a specialized package pickup from a neighboring world that pays above and beyond normal rates. Upon calling, they converse with a Dr, Ruce Robarne. There is a final piece to an invention he has been working on for several years, and the only nearby planet that can produce the part refuses to sell it to him. Upon pressing as to why, it turns out that this particular part is considered illegal on this planet. All he needs is to get it to the port, and he says he can get it from there. There should be no legal issues for the group.

If the group does not have their own ship, he is willing to pay for up to 4 people (2 at high passage, 4 at mid passage) to the neighboring world on a the next subsidized liner and to retrieve the parts. He gives them a line of credit that is valid in this section of space that will cover the costs.

If the group has their own ship, he is willing to pay basically for fuel, salaries and Cr3000 for transporting what amounts to a 2dton cargo. They are free to carry other cargo of course if this is a merchant vessel.

Upon successful transportation to a designated warehouse, he will pay up to Cr10,000 per person for a total of Cr40,000.

Referee Information
1. All is at it seems: the neighboring worlds are experiencing a trade embargo in an escalating trade war, and supplies of certain parts and severely curtailed.
2. The scientist is a deep-cover spy from the neighboring world, and the parts in question are additional equipment loads to help him continue his mission.
3. The scientist is one of the forgetful scientists types: when the group returns with the package safely stored in the warehouse, he will profess to no knowledge of their transaction.
4. The package is interdicted by the system. Getting it unloaded, even in the port, may require some finesse with the local and port authorities.
5. The scientist refuses to actually pay until the Travellers actually deliver the parts to his lab. The parts are illegal on this world.
6. The scientist is indeed a mad scientist, and the completion of his project is a bomb powerful enough to take out a small city. He is wanting to take over the world!

General notes: I just started looking for public domain science fiction images. I am still thinking about a month challenge, so perhaps this is a warmup...get an image, wrap something around it.

Patron Encounter

Players: 2 - 6
Equipment needed: none
Skills needed: none, but recon, survival or hunting would be useful
Patron Type: Scientist
World: something with a breathable atmosphere and at least 30% water. The starport could be anything really but there needs to be enough people to have at least a small local population as well as a fair number of transients but large swaths of raw countryside. As well as a local university.

While at the port and enjoying the sites, the Travellers are approached by a bedraggled looking older man, waving what appears to be a cryogenic test tube of some sort. He asks for some a few moments of their time.  Sir Reginald Artani was a well-respected archeologist, but in the last few years has been searching for what all others believe is extinct, the Mega-Duckahedron that was native to the planet more than a million years ago. He has lost his tenured position at the university after declaring that this extinct giant duck was still alive in the hinterlands. He exhausted his personal finances after losing his job, and is now searching for someone to help prove his theory.

Should the Travellers take some time, there is indeed a very large feather in the test tube. Should they research this at the university they will see that it does match fossil remnants of the 8 foot tall duck dino. Sir Reginald has satellite maps of the location where he found this, a journey of several days via air/raft or ATV  He has an ancient ATV large enough for 8 people. He will split any proceeds from the discovery with the group, and swears he has potential buyers in the millions of credits range for a live specimen.

1. All is as he says: there are a few groupings left of this large feathered dinosaur duck. The maps, searching, finding, capturing and returning a live specimen is up to the referee. While not millions of credits, several hundred thousand will be provided.
2. All is as he says, but there is just the one remaining animal (hey, it happens in movies all the time). Same as (1) above.
3. There are no living dinoducks left, but there are remains that are only a few hundred years old, hence the well preserved feather. Perhaps a few thousand credits reward for helping rewrite the local research on the local fauna.
4. Sir Reginald is deluded, and someone is playing a cruel hoax on him for something he did years before (failing a student? didn't approve a published paper?). Nothing more, nothing less. Just lost time for all involved.
5. There is no dinoduck, and someone is out to kill Sir Reginald. Once out in the hinterlands, there will be a lone gunner who is not too picky about who he kills.
6. Sir Reginald is the con man for a slave labor group in the hinterlands. Once miles into the wilderness, they will be surrounded by armed gunmen and taken as forced labor in an illegal crop farm.