Had a fantastic session tonight.

Had a fantastic session tonight. I might be biased since it’s the first campaign I’ve GMed but I’d call it the most fun RPG session I’ve ever played.

I won’t give you the full story because I’m tired but I’ll give you the summarized version. The crew of the Hornet met with the Johnathon Julius of the Capulus mafia and were tasked with abducting the prized pet of a Republican Senator to scare her into line. Naturally, this pet was an eight foot tall space wolf.

So they go in disguised as chefs for an upcoming eclipse festival and (after getting rid of their radioactive cargo) are invited into the senator’s mansion. They find out that the beast is basically just kept in a range of wild forest and summoned with the sound of a whistle broadcast through the area.

They begin their preparation. Captain Vass finds Captain Khal, an old war buddy of his who’s on security detail, and convinces him to temporarily shut down the anti-aircraft defenses. Pilot Kip and Navigator June scout out the forest and it’s security, discovering that most of the security relies on IR, and that the canopy is too thick to land the ship. Meanwhile, Engineer Pierre constructs an IR smoke bomb out of kitchen materials, and sends his AI to hack into the forest’s security.

Now here’s the plan. Vass, Kip and Pierre head into the forest and use the hacked security to play the whistling sound, leading the creature towards a predefined point at the edge of the forest. If they had to, they’d use the smoke bomb to hide from the security (they didn’t). June flies the ship to this point and prepares for pick up.

Surprisingly, the plan went pretty well, but with a few issues. Kip had to kill two security guard who followed them in. Pierre successfully activated the whistle system but he had to leave his AI (Icebreaker) behind, so that will be interesting in the future. Then there’s probably the dumbest thing I’ll ever have to ask a Reckless roll for. The creature stopped well short of the ship so Kip had to reveal his secret weapon. A suit of fresh meat (from the kitchen) strapped to his body, which he would use to lead the creature towards its cage in the cargo hold. One of the dumbest plans I’ve ever heard in an rpg so it should come as no surprise that he rolled a perfect six and easily lead the thing into the cage. Then the crew shot it to hell with stun guns.

But this isn’t enough for the Hornet crew, so they cut off one of the beast’s toes. Then Vass takes it back to the kitchen and slips it into the soup that will be part of the senator’s meal. He directs a server to send the meal to the senator’s table. Then he warns the senator that the Capulus mob are after her, and promises to help protect her under the name of “Romeo Montague” (it’s worth mentioning that his real last name is Montago and he’s a wanted deserter). Then he accuses the poor server of being a Capulus agent just as the toe is revealed, and in the ensuing chaos escapes by a rope hanging from the ship hovering above (the roof was open to view the eclipse). Captain Kahl decides he’s gone too far and tries to stop him but is too late. I’ve got a returning villain out of it though so I’m not complaining.

As the legend of “Romeo Montague” spreads throughout the galaxy the crew make it back to Julius’s ship, The Necessary Evil, and hand the creature over. Vass and June have their debt removed, and Vass even gets a favour for his big show in the dining hall (Julius is a sucker for dramatics). Kip’s debt is not revoked though, and then he makes a big mistake.

He confronts Julius which eventually becomes a threat. Then he goes for his machete and pulls out a dose of combat drugs he kept from the previous mission. Julius sees the drugs, grabs his hand in a flash and twists it out of his hand with unnatural strength, revealing himself to be at least partially cyborg. The two attempt to fight but Vass distracts Kip by ordering him to stand down, resulting in him being disarmed and pinned. Vass immediately expends his favour to let Kip go unharmed, and also has to reveal the location of the rest of the drugs (these things are way more valuable than they look). So they sell out Jibbly Jones, the guy they gave the drugs to in exchange for a medbay (they got seriously ripped off :P). They leave and the Capulus ship immediately jumps off towards Jone’s home base.

A fantastic session, and it even leaves things conveniently open for the future. I was already planning on the factions going after the drugs in the background, and I wanted a foil villain to chase after Vass. I got golden opportunities for both of these so I’m well pleased.

Geeze, that was nowhere near as short as I expected. 😛