Author: Larp Wellington

#RustbucketTales   #Part4  

Fourth session. I abandoned my plans to open with a new Jump Point, since I really wanted to find out what happened to the Cadmium. So, another new system opening, with a few basic questions designed to establish threats. The opening was a bit slow as I struggled to turn the mundanity of “we hit the bar” into action. But it took off quite nicely after that.

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

…the “Shadow” dodges between laser blasts as Orcha-37 tumbles through the rear cargo door with his jetpack.

…Kestrel promises Alvin Hassani a share of a cargo – high fluid vegetables, real coffee. Hassani says “if you cross me this time, it will hurt you”.

…Dev tells Kestrel that she was an indentured servant and wants to go “anywhere far away”.

…Anvil says to his friend “the problem is the declaration of whether or not you’re human”.

…Kestrel’s attempts to sell his cargo are frustrated by a strike.

…Anvil is hit with a hand-stunner by a Nakamoto agent and goes down like a sack of potatoes.

…Orcha shoots two Nakamoto agents with a silenced pistol; a third runs for cover and escapes.

…The Rustbucket soars into orbit from Ghazan.

Asherah is a thick belt of rock and ice orbiting close to a dim red star. A few decades ago they discovered unusual concentrations of radioactives and rare earths, and so now Asherah is the site of a colonisation effort, with a small but determined group of colonists trying to bootstrap themselves into an orbital industrial economy. “Port”, the major settlement, is built into a small rock, spun for gravity. Nearby, there’s the glistening array of the system’s new solar power project – and a garishly coloured, heavily armed Shards of Xa destroyer. As “Rustbucket” negotiates docking clearance and noses towards the port facilities at the axis, the SectorNet is full of nervous talk about the Shards of Xa wanting “tribute” from the new colony…

On the way out of Ghazan, Orcha-37 received a tipoff from Orcha-17, one of his clone-brothers who was just arriving. The Reverend Klune of Green Worlds is probably in the Asherah system. Ironclad has a price on their head for inciting a mutiny, and wants them – preferably alive, so they can hold a show-trial.

After they clear customs, Kestrel heads immediately for a dockside bar, in search of faces other than the four she’s been cooped up with for the last few weeks. Orcha and Dev the deckhand tag along. Its a rough-and-tumble place, full of belters, port-workers, and scarred, armoured pirates on “shore leave”. Orcha starts asking questions about whether there’s any Greenworlders on Port, and a couple of people remember someone. But his clumsy attempt to bribe a customs officer causes offence, and he barely manages to talk his way out of the police being called. Meanwhile, it doesn’t take long for the pirates to cause trouble. A scruffy belter spills someone’s drink, and he’s quickly up against a wall with a knife to his throat. Kestrel decides to intervene and tries to talk the pirates down, but merely makes herself their target. When the pirates turn on her, she dodges out of the way, but it doesn’t come to blows – Orcha has his own knife out and is backing her up. Together, they back nervously out of the bar, as the pirates threaten to cut them up if they ever see them again.

Outside they meet up with Dev and the belter Kestrel rescued. He offers to buy them a drink, and they head up a few levels to somewhere away from the docks. The belter, Europa, fills them in a bit on the local economy and the landscape (the racks, where belters and itinerants spend their time dockside, and Brook Park, which has trees and flowing water – admission 5 credits). They spend the rest of the evening getting happily drunk.

Meanwhile Anvil has been looking for work. He wants to upgrade the ship’s engines, and is looking to barter his engineering skills for some parts which will help. After scanning the SectorNet, he gets a job working on the Kublai, a class-1 refinery ship, repairing its misaligned drive in exchange for a five tonne Necklin Rod. But when he gets in from his first EVA scoping out the task, there’s an unwelcome surprise: a pair of goons from the ALF, the mafia which runs the port. They dabble in slavery, and view synthetics like Anvil as risk-free investments, able to be easily sold on worlds which don’t consider them human. But they haven’t pegged him as a synth yet, and he keeps his engineering suit faceplate closed to minimise the chances. The ALF have a simple rule: “no-one works on our docks without us getting a cut”. Anvil folds immediately, apologises, wants to make it right. So they offer him a choice: he can pay them 10% of the value of his job up front (which would wipe him out), or use his job on the Kublai to boost some parts for them. Anvil weighs the options, and agrees to scam his employer…

Last night Europa had told Orcha that the Housing Office has info on everyone in Port, but he suspects they’re unlikely to be friendly to a bounty hunter, so he asks Dev to make some inquiries. She agrees, but only after he promises he won’t kill his target. Ten minutes later, she emerges from the Housing Office with a scrap of paper with a name and address: the only Greenworlder on Port is a “Lee Oret”, with a single down in the Racks. Orcha heads off to a stakeout, and Dev heads back to the ship.

Meanwhile, Kestrel heads for a cargo brokerage to finally shift that Cadmium. She manages to move one unit, in exchange for some fragile solar panels, but demand is low at the moment. She takes the opportunity to fill the rest of the hold with rare earths and processed ores, and on the way out the broker warns her that she’ll need to pay off the “cargo handlers guild” (AKA the ALF) as well if she wants her cargo to make it into the hold intact. Sighing, she heads off to another dockside bar to negotiate a price. It eats up her profit from her passengers to Ghazan, but she negotiates special handling for the solar panels, and a discount for breakages. Leaving Dev in charge of the loading, she heads off to another bar to find some passengers for their next stop.

Anvil works on the Kublai, scavenging some of its hyper-capacitors to pay off the ALF. Next time they crank up the drive to push a rock, it’ll go “krunk”, and a ship full of people will be left in the middle of nowhere with no power. But Anvil will be in the next system by then. Sealing them into a crate for the ALF, he heads back to the ship to supervise delivery of his Necklin rod.

Orcha stakes out “Lee Oret”‘s space in the racks, and verifies that he is indeed Reverend Klune. When he gets back to the ship, he finds it a hive of activity, with cargo handlers sporting ALF tattoos loading containers into the hold. He asks Anvil about ways to get his bounty aboard without attracting attention, and Anvil points him at the ALF. Sure, they can help him move a human sized “package”. Living or dead? Conscious or unconscious? Having made multiple positive business connections with a profit-motivated criminal organisation with a sideline in slavery pays off; it’ll cost Orcha 10% of his bounty, up front, but he can afford that (though it’ll hurt if he doesn’t get paid). All he has to do is get his target to a particular warehouse near the docks, and the ALF will handle the rest.

Orcha heads back to the racks for the pickup, and intercepts his target as he is coming home at shift-break. Klune’s shoulders sag as Orcha sticks the stunner against his back and declares that he’s collecting the bounty – it was only a matter of time before he got caught. Still, he tries to talk Orcha out of it as he walks him down quiet corridors in the direction of the docks. They’re most of the way there when they turn a corner and almost walk into a pair of police; Klune, seeing his chance, cries out that he’s being kidnapped, and it all goes to shit. Orcha tries to disable the cops quickly with a stun grenade, but gets tagged with a stun pistol; Klune runs for it as the cops call for backup. Orcha gets stunned again breaking contact, but manages to stagger away and hide. He’s lost Klune in the confusion, and the place is swarming with cops looking for a piece of the scumbag who took a go at them. Cursing, he sneaks his way back to the ship…

#RustbucketTales   #Part3  

Third session. I’d structured questions to try and create new baggage (around the girl they picked up last session, unwelcome arrivals, and old friends with problems they needed help solving), but most of the responses weren’t used. Instead, the characters went haring off after the unwelcome information gleaned from a failed assessment, before some old baggage came back to haunt them (and gave one of them Debt). But we’re also at a point where we can drop out of continuous play if we wish and open with a new Jump Point next episode.

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

…Anvil finishes cutting an armoured vault door open, then looks down at a significant (and bulky) looking cargo crate.

…Orcha-37 scans the package with a handheld X-ray scanner, turning it to full power at the precise alignment specified by his HUD to scramble the AI core’s short-term memory.

…Kestrel and Orcha-37 wait nervously in the dark on the bridge of the “Rustbucket” as a pirate cruiser passes nearby.

…Kestrel offers a young woman passage on the Rustbucket; she is obviously nervous

…Orcha tells his contact, Ito Hiroshi, that there is a Nakamoto agent on his tail.

…Kestrel promises Alvin Hassani a share of a cargo – high fluid vegetables, real coffee. Hassani says “if you cross me this time, it will hurt you”.

…Anvil gets into an argument with Wray the backpacker and confines him to quarters.

…Orcha steps out of the shadows behind Hiroshi, slits his throat with a kitchen knife, then places the knife beside him as he gurgles and bleeds out.

Rustbucket touches down on a landing pad on Ghazan. In the background, huge factories pump plumes of smoke into the atmosphere. The air here tastes of sulphur and pollution; everyone wears masks when outdoors.

During the trip the girl, Dev Nekor, had revealed to Kestrel that she was an indentured servant fleeing her contract with Nakamoto Horizons. She wants to go “anywhere far away”, and is willing to work her passage to get there. Since the crew needs a deckhand, they hire her on and give her a comm so she won’t be left behind. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew get to their business: Kestrel and Orcha to try and sell their cargo of Cadmium, and Anvil to look up an old friend.

Anvil’s friend, Daran, needs help: he’s applying for citizenship here, but expects to have some problems with the species declaration. Like Anvil, he’s a synthetic person, made as part of a bulk lot by the Epoch Trust to work on the fringe worlds (in this case, an asteroid belt surrounding a high-G world). Anvil speculates on getting stuff taken out, or replaced with models which can pas a scan. But Daran has a better idea: false documentation. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the contacts to do it – but Anvil does. Anvil gets to work, and makes a connection with someone who can provide the necessary paperwork. He makes the deal and arranges to come back tomorrow to pick everything up.

The cadmium sale is a bust: a strike has paralysed the major buyer, while those bulk cargo haulers have flooded the market. Undeterred, Kestrel and Orcha decide to do some sniffing round in the hope of finding some way to end the strike, or at least leverage for a sale. They split the task, with Kestrel focusing on the union side, while Orcha looks into the company.

Kestrel hits the bars and starts talking to people. The strike is over shift hours, safety, wages – the usual story. Its in its early days, but the workers are committed; it could go on for some time. Still, she identifies the union leadership, and has the outline of a plan on how to sell their cargo. Unfortunately, Orcha screws everything up for her. While assessing the company and its position, Orcha notices his comm has been hacked. A little counter-hacking later, and he’s poking around the inside of a Nakamoto comm system, which includes some details on him, a dossier on Dr Hiroshi, and the case-file for the murder, which identifies Orcha as a person of interest. It appears Nakamoto security have figured out that Hiroshi was killed to silence him, and have pegged Orcha as the likely assassin. They have a team of at least two people here tailing him. But Orcha has penetrated their systems and can follow them as they watch him. He can turn the tails on them.

Orcha heads back to the ship to arm up, and runs into Anvil. After an initial failed attempt to use him as bait by switching their comm signals (resulting in him bricking Anvil’s comm), he instead decides that he will be bait. They go to a bar, then Anvil leaves early so Orcha can lure one of the two-person tail team into an ambush.

Naturally it all goes wrong. Anvil is all set up for the ambush, when a third agent – one they didn’t know about – tries to loop a garotte round his neck. He manages to shake them off, and then the one he was waiting to ambush steps round the corner and hits him with a hand-stunner. He crumples immediately. The Nakamoto agents disarm him and are just working out what to do with him when Orcha appears at the other end of the alley. He drops the one with the garotte immediately with a silenced pistol shot, dodges the return fire (also silenced) from the team leader, before shooting her as well. The third agent dashes away. Picking up the weapons and one of their comms, he drags Anvil to the other end of the alley, then hails a taxi to help him and his “drunk” friend get back to the ship.

And then its time to leave town: two bodies and a likely response from Nakamoto means its no longer safe to remain, whether they’ve sold their cargo or not. Orcha gets on the comm to summon Kestrel and Dev back, while Anvil gets departure clearance and calls to tell Daran where to pick up his documents. As they break orbit, Kestrel checks the sector net to try and find somewhere where they might finally be able to move their cargo, and finds that the market is good on Asherah. They lay in a course and head for the jump-point…

#RustbucketTales  #Part2

Ran the second session, dealing with cleanup form “Planetary Salvage”.  This one went rather differently. The lack of a strong opening scene led to a lack of focus, while I never really pushed hard enough to make their problems that big. OTOH, what we did get was character; Anvil doesn’t like people, Kestrel solves problems by talking her way out of them, Orcha by murdering people. And its created some baggage which can come back to haunt them in future sessions.

Previously on Uncharted Worlds…

…A Shards of Xa shuttle strafes the bridge of a wrecked starship; Orcha-37 flings himself away from the blast.

…Anvil finishes cutting an armoured vault door open, then looks down at a significant (and bulky) looking cargo crate.

…Orcha-37 flubs an ambush on a group of Xa pirates, catches a laser blast on the shoulder, and flees into the wreck.

…Anvil and Kestrel haul the crate across a hole blasted in the hull and into the hovering “Shadow”

…the “Shadow” dodges between laser blasts as Orcha-37 tumbles through the rear cargo door with his jetpack.

…Orcha-37 scans the package with a handheld X-ray scanner, turning it to full power at the precise alignment specified by his HUD to scramble the AI core’s short-term memory.

…Kestrel and Orcha-37 wait nervously in the dark on the bridge of the “Rustbucket” as a pirate cruiser passes nearby.

…the “Rustbucket” coasts through space, then engages its jump drive and disappears.

Several weeks later. While the Rustbucket escaped SR-388 without being identified by the Xa (they think), the ship has taken a back-route through the jump network in an effort to keep a low profile. Now it has arrived at its rendevous point: New Perth City on Eanope – an airless world famous for its cadmium red colour, toxic soil, and water rationing. The planetary economy revolves around extracting and exporting cadmium, and the operation is run (through a subsidiary) by Nakamoto Horizons.

Kestrel has past history here. A few years back he beat a local mine supervisor, Alvin Hassani, at cards, at least according to “the wider rules of gambling” (one of which is apparently “its not cheating if they’re too drunk to notice”). He won a consignment of ore that was supposed to go somewhere else, causing Hassani some difficulty. Orcha-37 meanwhile has to make contact with Ito Hiroshi, their Epoch Trust employer, and deliver the salvaged (and covertly lobotomised) AI core. But he works undercover as a science commission leader in the mining company, and can’t afford to have his cover blown. So the crew have reasons to tread carefully.

And they do – mostly. They split up, do their housekeeping (Anvil arranging spare parts and making more permanent repairs to the Shadow, Kestrel arranging a cargo), and let Orcha get on with it. Unfortunately he draws himself to the attention of local police by applying for a weapons permit to bypass restrictive local weapons laws, which puts him on a watchlist and gets him a tail. He makes it to the appointed meeting place, a high end bar in an upper-class entertainment district, and sends the “I’m here” signal: a simple matter of ordering the right cocktail. Then having set things in motion, he ditches his tail in a shopping mall, buys some stims to keep him running, and settles in to watch the meeting place for the next 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Kestrel has been working the starport bars to find passangers. He finds four – a pair of miners at the end of their contracts, a young girl who is obviously in trouble, and a tourist / intersteller backpacker named Wray. He’s just taken payment from the latter when he’s flanked by a pair of large miners and Alvin Hassani sits down in his booth. Hassani wants his ore back, or the money to pay for it; Kestrel claims he won it fair and square. They go back and forth a bit and Kestrel starts spinning him a line about having a hot shipment of luxury foodstuffs – high-fluid vegetables, real coffee – coming in in ten days. He’ll cut Hassani in for 50 percent to smooth things over. Hassani buys it, but makes it clear: “if you cross me this time, it will hurt you”. And he sticks one of his goons, Rusty, on Kestrel to keep an eye on him. The moment Hassani has gone, Kestrel starts work on Rusty. And before you know it, they’re best of friends, and Kestrel has brought him off with a free passage to start a new, higher-paying career on Ghazan. The moment he’s got his cadmium and Orcha has finished his business, they’re out of there, and screw Alvin.

Orcha spots his contact, but also realises that Hiroshi has a tail: a professional, far better than the cops he lost yesterday. He slips inside the bar, establishes the delivery point (a warehouse near the starport, where the AI will be interrogated), and informs Hiroshi of the tail. They plan an ambush: Orcha will leave first, then Hiroshi will follow about 20 minutes later, taking a specific route which should allow his tail to be neutralised. But as Orcha leaves the bar, he gets spotted by the cops again; rather than draw attention to himself, he tries to talk his way out of trouble. The quick study of local law he did when arriving on-planet pays off, the detective calls his supervisor, and the potential arrest is turned into a formal “character interview” at the station in the morning. But in the process he’s missed his chance at ambushing Hiroshi’s tail, so instead he heads back to the ship to sort out the delivery.

Back at the ship, Wray the backpacker has turned up early. He’s curious, friendly, and just a little bit too observant about the Shadow being a stealth shuttle – which immediately gets on Anvil’s nerves. When Orcha turns up, Wray bugs him about his business. So naturally they recruit him as a temporary cargo handler to deliver their small, high-value package to its destination. That goes well enough, but when Orcha checks out Wray on the SectorNet, he learns that Wray writes about his travels, including the illicit adventures he gets up to (apparently helping someone sell forged artworks several worlds back). So, details of his mysterious secret op may get splashed around in six months. Oh dear.

In the morning, the cadmium cargo finally arrives – delayed due to having to wait behind higher priority bulk haulers, and only half the amount they wanted, but its something. Kestrel oversees loading while Orcha tries to convince the local cops that he’s just an honest bounty-hunter looking for work, and not up to no good. Once he’s done there, he decides he has some unfinished business, a security leak in the mission to clean up. So he tracks down Hiroshi’s address (a nice apartment in a high-class neighbourhood), breaks in unobserved, disables the surveillance the Nakamoto spies have put on it, and when Hiroshi returns, slits his throat. A very professional job, except that he gets seen by a bystander walking away from the apartment and pegged as a stranger. Which means that when the body gets found, and the locals get interviewed, he’ll get noticed, and possibly marked as a suspect. But by then Rustbucket will have lifted and he’ll be halfway to the jump point…