Olympus RPG Blog

Scooby Trap

The Crew were at the crew-lounge table discussing their next moves when the bug they found in the hold activated, then went dark again. They knew, then, that the spy knew they had found it, so after some deliberation, one of them smashed it. Studying the pieces, Buck decided there was something strange about it, at which point Haank examined it as well, and pointed out that it did not appear to have any sort of radio receiver—it was likely psionically controlled. This suggested Zhodani involvement—sensible, as they were the other party in the War—or potentially some covert psi agency; either way, it meant they had a psi-agent aboard, and would have to assume that their thoughts had been, or would be read—no secrets. However, there was really nothing more to be done except to wait for the spy to make its next move. Sam continued to study the data on the OSD, and found a number of interesting coordinates in the near-empty Gileden system, that did not correspond to any astronomical feature he could determine; as far as Haank could recall, Gileden had no real significance in the War—on record, at least. Copies were made, as insurance.

On the last night before exiting jump-space, on Buck’s watch, he felt a strange, disorienting sensation wash over him. He concluded the psi-spy was making his move, and turned to leave the cockpit to rouse the others, but was met at the open hatch by a baklava-wearing, black-clad intruder. The assailant tried to grab for Buck’s sidearm and put him in a hold, showing some martial skill, but dinged his—no, her—arm on the door-frame, such that it fell useless. Yelling an alarm for the others, Buck continued to backpedal into the lounge as the intruder tried to grapple (one-handed), and sweep at his feet, to no avail, as Buck had some martial arts training as well. A heartbeat later the entire Crew was in the lounge with pistols leveled at the spy; she surrendered, and was bound with duct-tape. Removing her mask, they discovered her to be, not Eleanor, but the courier, Katelyn.

Ella deferred to Haank for the questioning of their captive. Haank attempted to convince her to give up her handlers; he asked her name in the Zhodani language, which, although she didn’t answer as such, did elicit a reaction that indicated she understood it; he also played at not knowing what it was she was looking for, but she didn’t fall for it. She refused to name the organization she worked for, but would only say that the information the Crew now had in their possession put them in danger, and that their safest action would be to let her walk off the ship with the OSD, and forget about it. She informed them that handing over the data to either the Imperial Navy or the Zhodani would be a grave mistake, as would be handing her over to either. Resigned to not getting anything more from her, they decided to put her in a low-berth stasis for the remainder of the trip—one of the low-berth passengers would get an upgraded ticket, taking over her cabin. As Buck looked on, Abe settled her into her sleep-pod; at Buck’s last-second encouragement, she offered to give up some helpful details in exchange for a safe exit, but she wasn’t buying Buck’s disingenuous “agreement” to her condition, and so said nothing more before entering hypersleep.

The Crew was left with little more than speculation: she appeared to be working for some unknown third-party to the War, and had not indicated what was so important about the data in any way. They brought her things down from her cabin to rummage through for clues; she had a datapad that contained a contact list, including some Navy and Zhodani contacts. A few of those contacts were on Porozlo, so they decided to keep her on ice after arrival, until they could look into those contacts and determine what the danger of letting her and/or the information go might be.

The Spinward Star emerged from jump-space near Porozlo II, and some hours later, landed at their assigned pad at the spaceport, where the cargo and passengers—minus the courier/spy—were offloaded.

Notes

• In the end, all the Players are suspecting the Psionic Institute is involved, but it’s not commonly known to exist, so the Characters don’t share that suspicion (yet)
• After a roll, the GM gave Haank a recollection about Zhodani Jump-Commandos; during the session, we never tried to figure out how the spy got out without us knowing it, but that recollection suggests she might’ve teleported—will probably try to confirm that later
• Herodian encountered, to his benefit this time, the “Crit Success on defense causes Crit Fail on the attacker” issue, resulting in his attacker’s temporarily crippled arm—he still doesn’t like that rule
• Rigil was unavailable this week, due to work, so Abe mostly acted in the background; had he been present, he would have undoubtedly been involved in the questioning process—might’ve gone better

Bug Hunt

Around a day in jump-space, the members of the Crew had separately taken some time to socialize with the passengers, in an effort to present a friendly and available persona. During that process, the secretive female passenger, Eleanor, approached Sam, asking to be escorted to her luggage, stowed in the ship’s hold. After recovering from the fact that a woman was speaking to him, he referred Eleanor to Haank, the de facto “security chief” aboard. Haank agreed, and led her to her luggage, musing to himself that some ground-rules regarding fetching of luggage while in-flight might need to be discussed. As Haank looked on, Eleanor found her case, took care to keep her pass-code hidden as she entered it—not unusual—and retrieved a box from it. On request, she agreed to allow Haank to scan the contents for security risks; using his multipurpose hand-scanner, Haank detected nothing of any interest within. He then escorted the woman back to the passenger deck.

A good portion of the first day of jump had been taken up with installation and testing of the ship’s new security system, purchased before they left Rhylanor. In the wee hours of the next morning, during Sam’s watch, the security system indicated a hatch opening—the passenger deck iris leading down to mid deck. He could see nothing on the camera system except the hatch being opened, as if by some invisible intruder. He woke Ella, and the two looked around the access area on mid deck for whatever-it-was, but found nothing, though Ella swore she had heard something scraping around under the lounge table. As they searched around the lounge, they heard the iris-hatch to the lower deck open. They rushed over and cautiously peered into the hold, eventually descending and triggering the lights, but again, saw nothing.

The rest of the Crew was roused, and together, they all started poring over the available security camera footage, but saw nothing but the hatches opening of their own apparent accord. Tabling the discussion about security procedures for later, Haank checked all the passenger cabins for occupants, and found them all where they were expected (although the corporate manager was a little put out at having been awakened so early). As they tried to come up with other ways of detecting the intruder, Sam spent the entire morning reviewing the recordings; in a lucky break, he managed to briefly spot a tiny, unidentifiable object moving around the area of the hatch at the time it opened. After showing his find to the others, they all agreed it was probably some sort of robo-bug, remotely-operated by one of the passengers, the most-likely suspect being Eleanor, with the most-likely purpose of locating whatever-it-was that the commandos were looking for previously. Since damage to the ship or Crew was unlikely, as counter-productive and unnecessary, they decided to keep the details from the passengers and allow the culprit to think he/she remained unsuspected. Abe was dispatched to give the passengers the story that there was a glitch in the new security system that had been addressed and corrected; he also set his robotic pet dog, K-9, to sniffing around the lower hold. Haank pored over the ladar data in a fruitless attempt to detect the bug, while calibrating the system for better detection of the tiny object. Buck produced an EM-detection wand, normally used to find radiation leaks, and calibrated it to home in on the bug’s and/or its controller’s transmissions. Sam also spent some more time rummaging about the lower hold, between the containers and packages, in a continued attempt to figure out where someone might smuggle something, to find whatever-it-was.

The following morning, during Haank’s last watch, using Buck’s EM detector, he picked up transmissions coming from above (passenger deck) and below (lower hold). While waking the others, he moved around the mid deck to triangulate the origin of what he assumed to be the “controller” transmission, narrowing it down to cabin three or five—five being Eleanor’s. Once awake, Abe and Sam went below with the EM-detector to find the bug. As they closed in, the transmission went dead—their search had been detected. After quite some time, about to give up, Sam finally pulled the right panel (that he hadn’t previously) and found an old, dusty OSD cleverly tucked away, about the same time that Abe spotted the robo-bug, which he cautiously collected with some vacc-tape, and handed over to Buck for analysis. They opted to plug the OSD into a personal computer disconnected from any network, for safety reasons, and found a vast wealth of 10-year-old, military navigational data centered around the Rhylanor Sector; they surmised that it was far too specific and complete to have been compiled by either side of the Fifth Frontier War, though they were unable, at the time, to determine the source of its apparent value.

With both the bug and its presumed objective in hand, the Crew had a decision to make—what to do with it all? Getting the spy to fess up who it’s handlers were would not be easy, and wouldn’t really change anything, in the end. They could let the spy off the ship without being the wiser, going so far as to put the bug back where they found it, as if nothing had happened—it would, of course, never find what it was looking for (that having been already recovered), and may convince the spy’s handlers that it was never on the ship in the first place. They could hand over the OSD to the spy, having had the data removed and replaced with something else (the images of the commandos from the Rhylanor docks incident came to mind). They could keep the data and sell it to whomever wanted to pay for it—though the Crew would need to determine what sort of threat its possession might impose on the Sector before giving it to anyone. They could turn it over to the Imperial Navy, as-is.

And, they had four more days in jump-space to figure it out.

Notes

• We had no idea, when we decided to purchase the Basic Security system (SS69), that it would be featured centrally in the next session; lucky it was there
• The idea of the “bug” inevitably spawned the mental image of this scene
• The EM detector was Buck’s use of Gizmo for the session; we all said it looked/sounded like a sonic screwdriver
• Sam kept attempting skills at default, to have an excuse to spend points in them; his player has been trying to figure out what to do with him to make him more useful when he isn’t flying the ship
• Sam was using his Smuggling skill, Perception-based, when searching the hold; this had been done repeatedly over the last few sessions, trying to find what the commandos were looking for, but finally paid off
• We’re treating the OSD as a “treasure map” until we learn otherwise

Cloak and Dagger

After Sam alerted the rest of the Crew to the presence of the intruders in the lower hold, they all sprang into action, fetching their personal weapons in expectation of combat. They had no idea what it might be that the intruders were looking for, except for the knowledge that the ship might have been involved in military operations during the Fifth Frontier War, and could easily have something hidden away. Ella headed for the bridge, to contact port security, but immediately saw telltale signs of computer-hacking underway on one of the terminal screens—all systems were locked down. At the same time, Haank used the intercom, and in a calm, diplomatic manner, asked the intruders to identify themselves and state their business, even offering to help find whatever-it-was; the intruders responded that the Crew should remain where they are and, “Don’t do anything stupid,” as they had taken control of the ship. The Crew then called port security via personal communicator; the message was received, but earned them an intercom-delivered scolding by the intruders. Some moments later, they heard approaching sirens, and saw the flashing lights of port-security officers en-route. They arrived to find no intruders on the ship—they had vacated. With nothing really to be done about it after-the-fact, statements were taken, and assurances given that it would be looked into.

Haank and Abe spent a good deal of the day researching what could be learned about their new ship’s past on the planetary info network. They dug up quite a lot of records; manifests, flight-plans, and heavily-censored accounts of missions on behalf of the Imperium during the War, to places unknown, for purposes unknown. From what they gathered, the crew that was buried next to the ship, on Kegena, was the same crew that conducted these clandestine operations—they would not be revealing any secrets now—and that some of the ship’s upgrades were paid for, covertly, by the military. Cross-referencing manifests and logs left them with a reasonable assumption that those black-missions were based out of Jae Tellona and/or Porozlo, probably into a number of systems in the Rhylanor sector that were under Zhodani occupation at the time. Ella was unable to reach Cpt. Gloval for any assistance on that account, still away on Navy business.

Sometime during the research process, the port-security investigator assigned to their break-in case came by the ship to let the Crew know that there was no camera-footage available, and that they wouldn’t be able to do much of anything to resolve their case. A few of the Crew were not convinced he was giving them the truth; Abe turned on the smooth-talk, and convinced the guy to, very-reluctantly, admit to the fact that some “Navy” suits came in and confiscated all their data, and told them to forget the whole thing.

The Crew decided, for a number of reasons that included the ship’s connection to operations there, that they would go to Porozlo next. Haank set about getting some freight and passengers for the trip, and spent the rest of the day dealing with the particulars, and getting it all loaded. They also decided that it would be a good idea to get a security system installed on the ship; Abe and Buck would see to its acquisition during the freight-loading. Later, during the freight-loading process, Haank was approached by a port security runner who handed him an OSD on behalf of parties unknown. Haank checked it on his datapad, and it contained camera footage and stills from the break-in, featuring the masked intruders, including the unmasked face of the one assumed to be their leader, at the gate to a Navy logistics center at the docks. Haank relayed the information the others before getting back to work.

Abe and Buck went to check out the logistics center, surveilling it from a safe distance; they saw nothing of interest, except to note that security there was rather inadequate, enough to allow a covert team to easily operate without notice. The two left their brief stakeout to purchase the security system for the ship, and they were soon able to determine that they were being followed by someone they presumed to be one of the “Navy” men—they led the guy around a bit, in a successful attempt to prove he was following them. They went to a public terminal, as if to make a call, and left their tail a note with their contact information and a message to, “Call us.” A few hours before scheduled departure, after Abe and Buck had returned to the ship, the call came; it was put on speaker-mode for the whole Crew to hear. Ella, in her new official role as Captain, spoke for the Crew, and offered to allow the agents to come search the ship providing they display proper Navy credentials, although there was a limited time-window before departure, and a full load of freight had already been loaded, so it would be tight quarters. The voice demanded to be allowed to search freely, and insisted that they were not “Navy.” Ella would not back down from her demand for Navy credentials, and ended the call, though the voice warned that this was not over.

The Crew neverminded the warning and finished prepping the ship, departing on schedule outbound for Porozlo, and jumped out without incident.

During the jump, Abe was exercising his new duties as Steward, and attracted the interest of one of the passengers, a secretive woman of unstated profession. She inquired about the cargo hold, and how she might retrieve some of her belongings stowed there…

Notes

• Ella’s player was out for vacation, so the character was run by Herodian in her stead
• The lead commando having been revealed as Keanu Reeves resulted in some inevitable remarks about him being back at the base, eating a sandwich, alone (for those unfamiliar with that meme)
• The “OSD” term comes from Mass Effect—I’m not sure what the canonical storage device is for Traveller; I just like that term

Market Value

Six days after the arrival at Rhylanor-Prime, the Rhylanor Capital Protection Service made contact with the Team, and set up a meeting to discuss ownership of the Proud Mary. All of the members of the former-crew of the Titanic VII would attend the meeting, dressed in their finest—which, for some, had to be purchased locally, and for Sam, consisted of “the usual” (Hawaiian shirt & spacer-boots). Some of the Team hadn’t been to Rhylanor before, and were rather impressed with the lavish offices of the Turuump Tower, in the finance district of the sector-capitol. They appeared to make a good enough impression with the RCPS representative (in spite of Sam’s casual dress); Ella elected to let Haank do most of the talking, as he had the most training and experience in business and finance matters. Haank happened to notice the representative’s cuff-links indicating nobility, and made a point of his proper address so the other Team-members would be aware. The meeting seemed to go well. RCPS had already taken a loss on the ship and were looking to recover what they could, but were willing to hand over ownership of the ship for five million credits, or buy it back for half the original purchase cost of 49 million credits. Haank enlisted Buck’s expert opinion on the ship’s condition, but was unable to convince the company to lower the offered amount. Both sides being satisfied with the negotiations, the meeting was ended so that the Team could confer and return an answer to the RCPS offer, which would remain open for a week.

After some serious discussion, the Team decided it would be better and/or easier to keep the ship, as-is, than to take the near-25 million and attempt to buy a new one. Over the next three days, they worked together to build a solid business plan to present to a bank for a business-capital loan. Having decided to keep her, Buck finalized the arrangements, and sent her off to have the annual maintenance done, and everyone checked into a local hotel for the duration. At the summit of the mountain of paperwork, they would form a limited-liability partnership under the name, Spinward Star, LLP; Smith and Jones would be officially hired on as employees. Roughly a week after registering their new partnership with the Imperial offices, they easily secured a bank loan for 7.5 million credits against the ship. After paying the 5 million to RCPS, as negotiated, ownership of the Proud Mary was officially transferred to the new company.

The ship now belonged to the Team, and they, to the ship. And the ship’s cat.

Four days hence, the ship was returned from its annual maintenance, and after a thorough checking-over by her new crew, given a clean bill-of-health. It was unanimously decided to spend a tiny amount of the remaining capital on a christening-party aboardships—officially christened Spinward Star. That evening, there was much celebratory drinking (though Sam made himself rather annoying, especially to those that were not drinking to excess), and near-half the Crew passed out in their beds.

Some hours before sunrise, Sam was awakened by the cat, for reasons his drink-and-sleep-addled mind couldn’t process. As he stumbled into the crew lounge, he heard some shuffling noise from below, and so, made his way to the central hatchway, to descend into the lower cargo hold to see who these intruders might be. He keyed the ship’s intercom and demanded the occupants of the lower hold identify themselves, to no response. He then opened the hatch, and began to descend, but was greeted from below by a handful of gun-wielding commandos, pulling wall-panels in the hold, obviously looking for something left there long ago. The commandos demanded he quietly continue to descend, and to “not do anything stupid.” However, he instead lept back up the access ladder, pulled his feet clear of the expected gunfire (which did not occur), and reflexively slapped the close-switch for the iris-hatch, locking it down.

Notes

• Though Ella’s Contact was available the previous session, when the ship arrived, he was not available for this one; we determined he had been called away on official business, and couldn’t hang around
• I had designed Haank’s character with just this sort of thing in mind, so it was nice to get some use out of all those “business” skills
• As one might expect, the bookkeeping took up quite a bit of time. First time using the “Finance” section of Traveller: Far Trader, wasn’t so bad
• Ended up with the $7.5M at 2% interest for 10 years; having the ship as collateral meant we could get away with the bare-minimums without any problem. Our expectation is that we can make that up pretty easily
• Sam rolled an 18 on his Carousing check at the christening party; the second time he’s failed so spectacularly at carousing, something he’s supposed to be good at

Under Way

Ella and Abe headed over to the traffic-control office to speak to the director about helping the Proud Mary get clear of the expected attack by the Vargr Corsair, Ella’s nemesis. They knocked on the back door, marked “staff only,” and were eventually greeted by a traffic-control officer. The two informed the officer of their desire to speak to the director, who had earlier sent a runner to warn them; the officer let them in and fetched the director. The director was sympathetic to their situation, but there was little he could do but delay their departure—helpful, yes, but not a solution. After some discussion, it was decided to pay the usual fee to the Scout Service for an escort; the director made the call, and set up the escort. All they could provide was a single 100-ton Scout—not much, but maybe enough. Ella also asked to submit her flight-plan in person, to eliminate the need to broadcast it where the Vargr could intercept; this was not an unusual request, and the director agreed to take the flight-plan on paper. Ella gave the director her thanks, and the two returned to the ship to finish prepping for departure.

Back aboard the Proud Mary, Haank noticed that their Vargr observer a few pads down at the Corsair had fallen asleep at his post, and advised they rush their pre-flight to get more of a head-start; the Vargr were later observed frantically trying to catch up. Meanwhile, Ella coordinated their departure with the the Scout Service escort, the ISS Athinea, on a secure channel. The Proud Mary was cleared for takeoff, and Sam put her into orbit in record time; just after, the scout vessel joined them in orbit as well. The Vargr tried to follow, but were delayed by the tower—eventually, illegally breaking out of traffic to pursue. Buck overloaded the Proud Mary’s drives to squeeze out more power, doubling her acceleration. The Vargr Corsair did the same, and was easily able to keep up, and would beat them to the jump point, but the scout vessel demanded they heave-to, and when ignored, launched missiles. The Vargr dropped back to deal with the scout vessel, giving the Proud Mary the chance to escape. (The fate of the ISS Athinea is unknown.)

The rest of the voyage went without incident. The Proud Mary jumped to Belizo and unloaded her cargo and passengers. Neither freight nor passengers were available bound for Jae Tellona. After three days in transit, the ship was refueled at the nearest gas-giant, and jumped out to Jae Tellona. At the mainworld, they took on freight and passengers bound for Rhylanor, and after four days in transit, refueled at the nearest gas-giant, and jumped out for Rhylanor. At the mainworld, the Proud Mary was cleared, landed, and the passengers and cargo were unloaded.

On arrival, Buck got started arranging for the ship’s long-delayed annual maintenance, while Ella got in touch with Cpt Henry Gloval, and old friend of her father. He was surprised and delighted to hear from her, and agreed to meet her for lunch, where Ella told him her story, from asteroid strike to Vargr encounter. He confessed that there wasn’t a whole lot he could do to help with her salvage claim on the Proud Mary, but he did recognize the ship’s name, and recalled she may have a history with the Imperial military…

Notes

• Abe’s player was out, due to illness; it had already been decided that Abe would go along to talk to the traffic-control guys, but he didn’t contribute much (not that it would likely have affected the results)
• While doing pre-flight, the GM called for a Perception check to see what had been observed regarding the other ship’s preparations; Haank rolled 4; the Vargr rolled 18 😛
• The escape took up a lot of session-time; combined with a delay getting started, it was decided to fast-forward through the voyage
• Used the new freight/passenger generation spreadsheet for the first time; worked well enough, but determined it would still be optimal to handle it all beforehand, when possible—still a lot of bookkeeping, just to record the results. We were in a rush at that point, though, to get through three stops. More testing needed

Bad News

The Proud Mary was cleared to land, after doing the usual bureaucratic tango that preceded doing anything at all on the chilly, crowded, desert-world of Bevey. During the process, Ella explained the apprehension on her countenance to the others; the Vargr ship docked below belonged to an old enemy crew from her Navy days, and she expected to be harassed. Given their presence, and the iron-fisted state of things on Bevey, the Team all agreed that they should remain within the startown limits for the duration of their hopefully-brief stay here. Once landed, Haank immediately saw to the unloading process, while the passengers were disembarked; farewells were said to Kella, while former-Ensigns Smith and Jones were invited to join the current crew—they accepted (though Jones admitted his new wife would undoubtedly be furious at his delayed return). To celebrate, Smith insisted they go for drinks at a local establishment; expecting trouble, everyone went along anyway.

Trouble didn’t wait. The Vargr crew intercepted Ella on the street, greeting her with feigned rapport and expressing their surprise at this chance-encounter; Ella kept her distance, and made no attempt to hide the fact that she had no desire to speak to them, ending the “conversation” abruptly, before continuing to the bar.

The bar was a dive, a menagerie of species. Sam’s attempts to carouse with the other patrons fell flat; Ella chatted up the bartender for the latest news; Haank kept to himself at a booth, and watched some golf-related programming while sipping at some bourbon; Abe’s and Buck’s attentions were drawn to the alien females present, and Buck ended up chatting up a table-full of blue-skinned humanoids (three of the four were female), crew of another Free-Trader looking for new work. Otherwise, the Team left after a few hours, without incident. In the morning, the Team went together to the warehouse-offices of Neverfail Freight, LLC, their soon-to-be former employers. On the way out, Haank spotted one of the Vargr Corsair’s crew keeping an eye on their comings and goings from their berth a few pads down the dock, and alerted the others.

At the office, the Team found the boss at his office, and sat him down to give him the bad news. Ella told the story of the loss of the Titanic VII, and the rest of her crew, though she left out the pertinent details of the Astro-Core unpleasantness. The boss was saddened to hear of it; he then asked if the Team were looking to be assigned to another ship. Ella informed him of their desire to leave the company to form their own opportunity with the ship they had recovered. The boss was understanding, thanked the Team for their contributions to the company, and wished them well (to the Team’s collective surprise, having expected legal hearings, at least). After collecting their final pay, the Team returned to the Proud Mary, now free to seek their fortunes wherever they liked.

Some time after they arrived at the ship, a runner for traffic control came over to give the Team a heads-up; the Vargr crew had been asking about their departure schedule. Abe tipped the guy twenty credits for the info.

The Team gathered in the crew lounge to discuss what to do next, and decided a few things: they would continue, as previously discussed, to Rhylanor, to report the salvage of the Proud Mary; they didn’t want to hang around Bevey any longer than they had to, and would depart as soon as possible; they wouldn’t go through a great deal of trouble over maintenance, nor spend a great deal of money, until they knew the ship was “theirs”; they were convinced the Vargr Corsair would attempt to jump them at some point after they left—initially they didn’t want to spend the money for fuel, but skimming for fuel at a gas-giant would leave them vulnerable to ambush, so in the end, they decided to fork over the money.

Haank hit the network and found plenty of freight lots and passengers bound for Belizo, the next stop toward Rhylanor; he signed up enough to fill the available space, and got it, and the fuel, all loaded. Ella filed the flight-plan, and Sam got the ship prepped for departure. In the final hour or so before takeoff, though, the Team tried to come up with some potential solutions to avoid the Corsair’s inevitable attack. Among the ideas discussed: delay departure to coincide with other traffic, to provide some friendly cover; sabotage their ship or their flight plans; talk local authorities into providing escort. In the end, Ella decided to take Abe with her to go see if the traffic control guys might be willing to extend a bit more help…

Notes

• The session was cut a bit short, so we didn’t accomplish as much as we would’ve liked. We were also delayed a bit by the usual lookup process that normally accompanies finding new freight & passengers; this prompted me to work on a spreadsheet/die-roller to handle the workload, which will be field-tested soon