Category: Uncharted Worlds

Episode 1 of Faraday’s Folly

Dr. Kovacs was waiting in a boarding queue at the Symbaroum* starport, a vial of smuggled mutagen tucked inside his coat. Security guards conducted spot checks along the line. Kovacs tucked the vial into the bag of the woman ahead of him, foiling the guards. The woman sat in first class on the shuttle from the starport to the docking satellite, but Kovacs managed to “stumble” into her later and retrieve the vial.

Aboard the satellite, Zeke Pendergast was attempting to load the legit cargo – three giant stone tablets of dubious cultural relevance – aboard the Faraday’s Folly. A steward representing the Alliance for the Free Movement of Materials hit him up for a bribe. The guileless Pendergast fetched his remote-controlled spidertank to load the tablets himself. In retaliation, the Movers suited up into half a dozen heavy loaders (think Aliens) and flanked the Folly.

In the city, Jason Cho bailed out a former comrade, Specialist Yamato, from a night in the drunk tank. Leaving the Hall of Justice, they were surrounded by the thugs Yamato had offended the night before. Cho made short work of a couple, but the remainder ganged up on Yamato and beat him down pretty hard. Cho hustled Yamato to the starport and fast-talked him aboard the shuttle to avoid further complications with law enforcement.

Aboard the satellite, Cho spotted an old friend among the Movers, and sweet-talked her into letting the crew bribe their way off-system at a reasonable price. The Folly debarked to meet their buyer.

On Caliban Station, Kovacs handed off the vial to Mirada Kith, an arbitrator with the Flotilla. Impressed by his capability, Kith asked a favor of Kovacs: retrieving a highly secure exploratory land vehicle from Chobara Entresi, who’d borrowed it from the Flotilla and run off. So long as the tank was retrieved intact, Kith didn’t care whether subterfuge, persuasion, or force were used. Kovacs agreed.

Pendergast’s attempts to unload the tablets were not as successful. His local buyer pretended to offer him some assets of similar quality, but secretly went to call Tomahna Tomar, a ranking lieutenant in Carnak’s Corsairs who specialized in fine art. When her goons took the tablets without paying, Pendergast attempted to bluff a trade, then tried pulling the pins on two goons’ flash-bang grenades. The net result: Pendergast waking up, concussed, in Tomar’s shuttle.

After Pendergast wrecked Tomar’s shuttle in the process of trying to escape – rigging his pocket torch with a plasma battery – she ordered her goons to drag him off to some alley and execute him. Dr. Kovacs, thankfully, spotted Pendergast and ambushed the goons. The doctor got gutshot in the ensuing firefight, but Pendergast tripped an old fire suppression vent to give them some cover to escape. Cho covered their retreat to the ship with his heavy breaching armor, and the crew made it to the Folly safe, if not intact.

* no relation to the Swedish fantasy RPG of the same name. I knew I was stealing this from somewhere, but couldn’t recall where.

https://fsr2n.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/uncharted-worlds-faradays-folly-episode-1/

I’m going to start sharing recaps of my new campaign soon. We had our “Episode 0” a month ago, creating characters, outfitting the ship, and designing factions. This campaign follows the crew of the Faraday’s Folly, a light unsanctioned freighter, as it trades cargo and favors between all corners of the civilized galaxy.

The Folly is crewed by:

Zeke Pendergast (Colonial Industrial Explorer): an ambitious engineer who dreams of uncovering the secrets of the cosmos;

Dr. Lukas Kovacs (Advanced Clandestine Academic): a “special investigator” who’s retired or fled from the covert service;

Cpl. Jason Cho (Crowded Military Starfarer): a veteran space marine, specialized in retrieving spacecraft and the persons on them

They do their best to survive in a galaxy dominated by the following factions:

The Ariel Mutual Prosperity Sphere (Popular Political Network): a loose alliance of worlds bound by treaties enforcing their joint economic interests;

The Flotilla (Brutal Anarchist Society): a lashed-together mass of ships, drifting from system to system, where the strongest hold sway;

Carnac’s Korsairs (Violent Starfaring Fleet): the most feared pirate fleet, operating with no code of ethics, ruled with an iron fist by Victor Carnac;

Alliance for the Free Movement of Materials (Controlling Criminal Society): a/k/a “the Movers”, a star-spanning union of teamsters who’ve insinuated their influence into countless governments.

Episode 1 coming soon!

https://fsr2n.wordpress.com/2016/09/10/uncharted-worlds-faradays-folly-episode-0/

https://fsr2n.wordpress.com/2016/09/10/uncharted-worlds-faradays-folly-episode-0