Pirates of Drinax

345-1106 Acrid Surface

Following the successful revolution on Acrid, the Travellers decided not to wait for PRQ’s response, fearing that it may be overwhelming. Knowing that they were fighting a vast corporation, they suspected that the best approach was to convince Pax Rulin Quartermasters that retaking Acrid was an unprofitable concern. At a conference of the captains of their fleet in Acrid City, they suspected that PRQ, whose fleet was mainly capable of a 2 parsec jump, would not have fleet tankers on hand, but that they would not jump in without the ability to ensure that they could exit again if necessary.

Thus, the commodore’s conference came to the conclusion that PRQ would jump, first, to Cordan. Looking at the time it would take news of the revolution to reach Argona, and working out how long it would take PRQ to assemble the mercenary forces they would need for reconquest, the party decided they had at least four weeks in hand. They pondered an attempted ambush at Acrid, but with three possible refuelling sites, this risked being outflanked.

Instead, they decided to take an aggressive approach. Rather than waiting for PRQ’s response, they would take the fight to Argona.

The Acrid shipyard was able to supply fuel bladders and two additional modules for the Phlebotomist, which would act as a tanker. The Mercifuge, maintaining her disguise as the Steelgrinder, a ship reported as taking part in the revolution on Acrid, was further loaded up with fuel in bladders in her large cargo bay, and her spare berths were filled with marines. The So Much For Subtlety, too, carried a mixture of extra fuel, marines and droid marines. Finally, the Mercifuge was fitted with an UNREP system to enable her to refuel the SMFS for the return journey. They had allowed for the loss of fuel in the fight, so were confident that they would have enough if they could rendezvous back with the Phlebotomist.

348-1106 Deep Space

The three ships performed a synchronised jump to deep space in TR2822, one parsec from Argona. However, disaster struck! The astrogator, with the combined complexity of a deep space jump and synchronisation, miscalculated the plot, and the three ships emerged in the deep space of TR2723, a parsec further away from Argona than planned! Now, fuel was critical: they only had 17 tons to spare from the 350 or so tons they had assembled.

Thoughts of abandoning the mission were put aside, refuelling was completed, and the Mercifuge and the So Much For Subtlety jumped on towards their destination: Argona itself.

The astrogator rolled a double-one on their skill check, then rolled for distance and direction. While this was potentially disastrous for the operation, they made a misjump on the edge of the Great Rift and not only survived but it happened the one time they had overtanked with fuel, to the extent of having a tanker along!

362-1106 Argona Orbital Space

The two ships jumped to 100 diameters above Argona’s lowport, and the Mercifuge, with Krrsh at her helm and her transponder proclaiming her to be the Steelgrinder, started creating as flamboyant a display as the Vargr could achieve, which turned out to be quite flamboyant indeed, attempting to burn towards the highport at rather less than her maximum 1G.

Sure enough, in no time the Defiant – a PRQ-flagged, D-Class System Defence Boat mounting a 50-ton particle bay perfectly capable of shredding the unamoured Mercifuge in a couple of hits – started burning out from the planet, accompanied by two 35-ton, G-Class fighters. Krrsh pretended not to notice, before turning back and heading for the jump point, his engineer told to overload the engines to achieve 1.7G: not too fast: he didn’t want to actually escape!

The So Much For Subtlety, in the meantime, with her advanced stealth and her stealth-jump-capable jump drives, was lying stationary between the Defiant and the Mercifuge and using only her passive sensors. The two fighters burned past the SMFS at 12G without any chance of spotting her, while the Defiant lagged behind them at “only” 6G. When she came within less than a hundred miles of the SMFS, Timaeus ordered the crew to come to full power: Lars on the helm rotated the ship to unmask her weapons, aiding the gunners with their called shots; while Timaeus moved from one gunnery station to the other, helping them aim, Eric, manning the beam lasers, aimed a called-shot at the sensor radome at the front of the Defiant, immediately disabling their sensors: the Defiant was blind, but she could still move at 6G. Now Dr Parsifal unleashed the power of the particle barbette in a called-shot on the Defiant’s M-Drive. The barbette is a less accurate weapon, but a deadly one, and his called shot also connected resulting in the thrust of the Defiant being cut in half, while her pilot could barely control the remaining acceleration.

In game terms, the Subtlety has advanced stealth (-6 to detection) and the PRQ ships were TL12 (-3 to detect a TL15 ship). This meant that, even with a skill modifier of +2 and military sensors, the PRQ ships needed 15 on 2D6: impossible!

Krrsh returned to normal power in the Mercifuge, and the four pulse laser batteries of the big salvager engaged the two remaining fighters, while Lars took the SMFS in close to the Defiant to force a docking. The Mercifuge and the Subtlety’s particle beam picked off first one, then the other of the fighters, whose pilots were taken by surprise by the new threat behind them.

Using the TL15 forced-docking facility on the Subtlety, the Sindalian commerce raider soon grappled the crippled SDB, and a quick and bloody skirmish followed: the air of the Subtlety was evacuated, both airlock doors were opened, and no fewer than 16 Vespexers and boarding droids cut open the airlock doors of the Defiant, boarding behind boarding shields. The sixteen marines and combat droids took damage in the boarding, but the five marines on the SDB were outnumbered,less armoured, and under inferior officers, and the fight was over rapidly. The Defiant had been taken, cut out from the jaws of Argona itself in the greatest tradition of the navy!

A prize crew was rapidly put aboard the Defiant, the hulks of the two fighters were destroyed to deny them to PRQ, and all three ships made for their jump point, while PRQ dispatched three more ships – one of them a 1200-ton planetoid frigate! – from low orbit. But the Mercifuge – a salvage hauler with a docking clamp able of carrying ships up to 300 tons in size – was able to secure the Defiant and all three ships jumped out the one parsec to Exe, constrained by the Mercifuge’s reduced jump capability at 600 tons, including her new cargo. At Exe, they refuelled and made their way home: the SMFS directly in case Argona’s counter-attack was about to land, while the Mercifuge and her prize – still reduced to Jump-1, went via the deep space rendezvous with the Phlebotomist.

012-1107 Acrid

On arriving at Acrid, the party received a message from their spy-mistress Basemath, sent the day before the Argona battle:

“PRQ have hired a mixture of 5 ships in the 400 to 800-ton range, including one logistics ship and one mercenary assault craft. These are currently docked at the lowport and are undergoing preparations. Their fleet is J2-capable and they intend to jump to a neighbouring system, refuel and then jump into Acrid, leaving them fuel to extract if outgunned in the orbital fight.

Furthermore, PRQ have retained two units from Tanith, which they will rendezvous with before jumping in:

• Resolute Environmental Logistics – small platoon-sized unit of mainly ex-marine Vacc troopers
• One battalion of Veilpoint Asset Control troops

They know about the SDBs, the So Much For Subtlety and the Janel Torsk. They believe you have the Steelgrinder on your side. They believe that you possess one other ship, but do not know their identity.

Furthermore, they are deploying one of their Free Trade class Armed Merchantmen to Cordan then Arunisiir to intercept, capture, burn or destroy the Acrid supply hauler Texel.

Suggestions made that they may be hiring an Captutian changer assassin.”

015-1107 Acrid Highport

Three days after the So Much For Subtlety and her crew returned to Acrid, they received a message from the Highport at Acrid: PRQ had sent a negotiating crew directly from Argona ten days after the battle there, and they wished to talk to the representatives of Drinax. They refused to speak to anyone from the Acrid government.

With GeDeCo warning both parties not to attempt any attacks during negotations, the party travelled to the highport to begin negotiations. The PRQ representatives were clearly vastly wealthy, with much restorative surgery and anagathics use evident in their youthful faces, except for one of them, Dimiti Volkov, who turned out to be a Vespexer. Three were wearing dark glasses, a current fashion in Reach business circles which shows that they are important enough to have data and updates prepared for them and projected onto the rear of the glasses. They introduced themselves as:

Dmitri Volkov – Senior VP of Security – Vespexer
Maris Kade – Director of Legal Services
Harlan Beckett – COO for PRQ Argona
Anika Voss – Senior Vice President, Stakeholder Alignment
Rafe Calderón – Executive Vice President, Asset Risk & Recovery

Their initial offer was unappetising:

PRQ would take back over Acrid. There would be an amnesty for all involved workers. A new management team would be in place, with a Workers Consultation Comittee set up to agree compensation and working practices. They demanded the return of all seized SDBs.

The Travellers declined the offer scornfully, and mentioned the illegality of indentured servitude and murder-for-hire for an Imperium-registered corporation. Many hours of debate later, the two sides broke up.

Overnight, Lars and Anastasia worked on building a tiny repeater that would sniff the frequencies used by the PRQ team’s dataglasses and allow the TL15 sensor and ECM suite on the harrier to jam them.

[Note: after each day’s negotiation we made opposed diplomacy checks between the PRQ team and Timaeus haut-Roth, which the latter won handily each time. Depending on the results various clauses would be added or removed.]

016-1107 Acrid Highport

The next day, negotiations resumed. The PRQ representatives assured the Drinaxians that the previous management team had been fired, and that cases would be raised against them for several hundred megacredits for malfeasance and for the loss of reputation for PRQ for their misdeeds. Their new position was:

PRQ take over and Drinax withdraw. PRQ to set up mineral extraction facilities employing not less than five hundred employees each on Drinax or within Drinax planetary system. Forgiveness of all worker debts and mandatory free passage offworld for those involved in acts of violence as organisers or participants. Ex-gratia consulting and negotiation payment to each player of 10 million credits. Binding agreement not to visit Acrid or Argona nor to engage with any employees of PRQ for a period of not less than five years. Return of all records illegally seized from PRQ Argona and a ten year NDA signed by all parties.

Recognising that the PRQ offers on Drinax were careful Trojan Horsery from the corporation, the party played hardball, reminding PRQ of the results of the previous two battles – a billion credits’ worth of ships taken or destroyed – and informing them that the Tobia Commerce Guild corporation had announced their intention to set up subsidised trade routes for food from Arunisiir and Cordan. There was a marked flicker of interest on the cash offer, but less cupidinous heads prevailed.

At this, Dmitri Volkov lost his temper and added “sign and we agree not to hire professionals to ensure the permanent and messy retirement of any offworld individuals involved in organising this incident…”

017-1107 Acrid Highport

The final day saw the PRQ team turn up without dark glasses, and Rafe Calderón took over leading the negotiations from their side. Their new position was based entirely on the records of slavery and murder not coming to light.

PRQ would announce the sale of Acrid operation to a Drinaxian shell corporation. There would be a 20-year leaseback agreement for a nominal fee of 1Cr per annum for all machinery and equipment. The price was to remain confidential in perpetuity. There would be a two year NDA on any records found in the illegally-accessed archives of PRQ Acrid. In return PRQ would formally recognise the political change and would agree not to pursue legal recompense in Imperium court system. Hundreds of megacredits in penalty clauses for breaking of the agreement by either party.

The Supreme Soviet of Acrid overuled Elisabet Zhong, who wanted to reveal everything PRQ had done more than she wanted peace. The party decided to sign and the Acrid Revolution was complete.

Epilogue:

076-1107 Tobia

After years of disappointing returns on its investment, PRQ has decided to divest itself of the PRQ Acrid operation in order to concentrate on its more profitable Argona operation. PRQ’s Head of Sector Operations, Sir Volan haut-Teizil, announced the withdrawal from Acrid – known for its famously challenging environmental conditions – after a recent attempt to turn around the failing operation failed to yield the hoped-for dividends. “We are excited to announce that the Drinaxian Investment Trust, the sovereign wealth fund of the Drinaxian Royal Family, has bought a 100% stake in Acrid, as well as signing twenty-year deal to lease in-place capital equipment from our subsidiary, PRQ Equipment Services. This frees up capital for us to invest in exciting new ventures in the region. We wish DIT all the best in their attempts to operate in this challenging environment.”

PRQ shares finished the day up 1.8% in local trading on the news.

348-1106 – Acrid

This session began with discussions between the Travellers and Elizabeth Zhong in her new role of Chief Secretary of the new Acrid Politburo. When would Acrid send an admiral to command the system defence boat fleet that protected Acrid? And how would the ships be crewed? Many of the crew were permanent employees of PRQ, and most were leaving rather than serving the new government. Some were contractors, many of whom were willing to stay, while a few spacers were to be found amongst the planetside workers. But they still lacked a couple of dozen crew.

In the short term, the players stripped almost all of their non-combat fleet of crew, and placed them into the SDBs in order to bolster Acrid’s defences ahead of PRQ’s expected counter-strike. They also deployed the Shipmate crew droids they had bought on Tech World. But this was not a long-term solution. They needed to find more crew.

Zhong also stressed the need for trade: would the Drinaxians send out the word that Acrid was open for business? The government had nationalised the PRQ hauler Texel, which had been in port during the seizure. But the planet needed vast freighters to visit and to ship the valuable ore and condensates Acrid’s mines and wells produced to markets, while the survival of both inhabitants and industry depended on the arrival of food and supplies.

The Lady Luck, with a skeleton crew of three, was sent to Tech World with a shopping list of droids and other high-tech items to acquire.

The Travellers also started to investigate what PRQ might have on their books: a mixture of attention from expert torturer investigator Dr Parsifal and budding psionicist Anastasia yielded the PRQ Acrid Branch CEO’s password fairly quickly, and with that, Deanna started to search for evidence of misdeeds. Millions of emails, invoices and requisitions meant that only the most targeted searches would work for now, but along with some interviews of workers the Travellers found evidence that:

• PRQ had indeed had Vi Lon’s union colleagues on Theev assassinated
• This was one of four targeted assassinations of labour organisers from Argona or Acrid
• There had been extensive use of borderline slavery and indentiture on Acrid
• GeDeCo had at the very least been compliant in this practise, returning indebted workers to Acrid surface for PRQ if they made it to the highport

356-1106 – Tanith System

Next, Lady P, Anastasia, Cauldron and Lars took the Shinkiro to Pylkoe City on Tanith: a location well known for its operations as a clearing-house for mercenary forces in the rimward subsectors of the Trojan Reach. The Shinkiro has an adaptive hull, and the crew had set this to appear like a hauler. Jumping in at 100 diameters from the Pylkoe gas giant – a long journey – the party decided not to indulge in piracy and ignored the down-at-heel Fat Trader – its transponder announced its name as the Jazz Hands – that was dragging itself out of the gravity well on its way to the jump point.

However, this fat trader, when it got within range of its modified, long-range beam lasers, accelerated at 3G, launched five missiles from a barbette, and raked the Shinkiro with its lasers. The Jazz Hands was, in fact, the Hellspawn, and she was an upgraded extended trader with some retro-fitted armour attached to her hull, and she had mistaken the disguised Shinkiro for harmless prey!

The Hellspawn had the element of surprise, but after that the fight swung against her: the Shinkiro was able to pull just far enough away to avoid being hit immediately by the first volley of missiles, and Anastasia was able to use the ship’s ECM to make them miss. This was the story throughout the fight: the Shinkiro was hit by lasers twice, but each volley of missiles and most of the laser attacks were negated by Penelope’s evasive piloting or Anastasia’s electronic warfare. Meanwhile, Sharyl’s use of the screens absorbed one laser attack that landed while Deanna and the shipmate droid worked over the pirates, who stubbornly refused to yield despite having their manuevre drives destroyed, their fuel tanks damaged, their hull repeatedly pierced and 60% of their cargo destroyed (much to the immiseration of the Travellers). Demands for the Hellspawn to surrender were met with more volleys of missiles.

Eventually, keen to have some sort of prize left to take, Lady P took the Shinkiro in to dock with the crippled pirates. Leaving only a droid on the bridge, the undermanned crew of the Shinkiro prepared to force the airlock. Anastasia (the psion) used clairvoyance to discover what awaited them – five defenders in cover with weapons – and then the airlock was blown. Advancing behind Lady P’s boarding shield, Denna threw a grenade then Sharyl stepped out, shrugging off laser fire to slice one of the defenders clean in two with his blade. Deanna shot a second which was then finished-off by Lady P, who eschewed the boarding shield to advance with a blade. After Sharyl eviscerated a third defender, the surviving defenders surrendered and lead the Travellers to the bridge, where the captain yielded his ship with complaints and an ill grace.

The crew found a little high-value cargo had survived in the ship’s hold, and they also found that the pirates had taken three hostages: a Llellewyloly (more easily known to humans as Dandelions or Dandies) called Pleasantly Complex and a big man called Billy Garret whose bulk and smooth movement screamed cyberware.

There was also a girl of about ten, who turned out to be Sara Garret, known to her father as Tinsel, much to her embarrassment. Garret, it transpired, had been a debt enforcer for what sounded very much like a criminal organisation on Attee who had been wiped out by an opposing crew. This lead to the need for Garret – who stressed that this journey only confirmed his hatred of spaceflight – to make a sharp exit. He was now looking for a good school for Tinsel.

Billy (blessed with an antipodean accent) was politely grateful for his liberation, but asked “do you mind if I have a private word with that feller there? It’ll only take a few minutes.”

He pointed at a surviving crewmember of Hellspawn. The Travellers were somewhat sceptical and asked why.

“Ah, mate, you know, he was pretty aggressive towards Tinsel {“Daaad!”} there and I just want to have a talk to him about how to treat other people with a bit of respect, y’know?”

With this, he was granted permission and a stateroom out of sight of his daughter for a swift interview with the boorish pirate, who he freed from his zip ties (“give the feller a fair crack, you know?”) before taking him away, before returning dragging the offender’s unconscious body a few minutes later.

“Thanks fellers. Much obliged: I appreciate it.”

Pleasantly Complex turned out to have been the Minister of Finance on Lilgan before a sudden change of political alignment on the world had introduced a new government who were avowedly racist about non-human species. They had given him a substantial payment to retire early so, after years of solid and reliable achievement, Pleasantly Complex decided to travel the Reach in order to see sights and experience something more exciting.

After three months of travel seeing the vast trenches of Umemii, the glittering ice caves of Argona and the rolling, wooded hills of northern Cordan he was on a ship attacked by these pirates and taken hostage for ransom. He observed that he had set out for excitement and had, indeed, found it. Very blunt and somewhat pedantic, Pleasantly Complex observed that he was delighted to find that the pirates had had their ship seized by what he was sure were in fact more pirates, explaining his reasoning clearly.

The party jury-rigged and lashed together the immobilised ship and their own in order to make 0.25 for the long journey of several days into Pylkoe City.

359-1106 – Pylkoe City, Tanith System

Pylkoe turned out to be somewhat like a more tasteful version of the Las Vegas Strip: high end casinos, conference centres and hotels dominated the enclosed city, which was on a moon in the outsystem of Tanith.

There, the Travellers collected the bounty on the crew of the Hellspawn, and set about hiring a mercenary cruiser to help defend Acrid from PRQ, being delighted to find that the Retribution was in port and was available for contract. Three months at 2 million credits per month was the agreed price, and a contract was signed.

360-1106 – Pylkoe City, Tanith System

Basemath sent word from Argona to say that she had found out that PRQ were cautious about leaving Argona undefended, so they were not going to use a carrier to redeploy their SDBs. Those will remain at Argona. They have one patrol corvette and have sent out messages to hire mercenary cruisers. They also have at least one PRQ-registered merchant cruiser.

Lady P met Pharos Etimos, under-minister for defence for Tanith. He was on Pylkoe to negotiate a contract for a battalion from Veilpoint Asset Control or, failing that, from Abelard Technical (who used droids). The intent was to use them for a big push against encroaching Ihatei on some of Tanith’s more remote islands.

May it please Your Majesty,

I have the profound Honour to report a most Glorious & Decisive Victory over the Enemy’s Fleet off Acrid.

Your Majesty’s Brave Officers, Ratings, & Marines, acting with unparalleled Courage & Discipline, utterly defeated the Enemy, securing the Dominions & Honour of Your Crown.

The three Ships of the Line captured bear testimony to the unwavering Loyalty & Valour of Your Subjects.

Though we mourn the loss of many gallant Souls, their sacrifice ensures the continued Security & Prosperity of Your Realm.

It is with further pleasure that I convey the ardent desire of the government and citizens of Acrid that they be granted leave to swear loyalty and accede to the Kingdom of Drinax, rightful successor to the Dragon Empire of Sindal.

I remain, with the deepest Humility & Devotion,

Your Majesty’s Most Humble & Obedient Servant,

Sir Timaeus haut-Roth, Commodore

302-1106 Drinax

The Diplomats started the session on Drinax, preparing the troops and flotilla to leave under the despairing eye of the young, female Aslan logistician Sum-Of-All-Hopes, who had been sent by senior Iuwoi females to ensure that the Drinaxians weren’t just going to get the Iuwoi-ko’s favourite son sentenced to execution (again).

They put aside some budget and despatched Vi Lon to Tech-World to continue her ascent to Mentat status with funds sufficient to have her gain a TL12 cognitive augmentation, and skill augments in Admin and Persuade.

Meanwhile, the Black Ops party headed from Tech-World via Acrid (where they acted as casually as possible) and Arunisiir to Bulhai Station in the Blue system.

286-1106 – Arunisiir

On Arunisiir, they received a mysterious message (which they shrugged and took at face value without particularly questioning the source). The message was anonymous, but claimed that Geraldo Antiquo, the PRQ Acrid Division Chief Maintenance Officer, was an agent for GeDeCo. The party sent this information to Basemath Mondrane, their spy-master, whom they had dispatched to Acrid to provide them with intelligence. They asked her, if it seemed true, to blackmail Antiquo into arranging for two of the PRQ System Defence Boats, including the heavy, 400 ton, D-Class monster, to be in docks for maintenance for the Drinaxian flotilla’s arrival.

293-1106 – Bulhai Station (Blue)

Arriving at Bulhai, they met with Tug Wilson’s contact at Carper Logistics to procure TL12 equipment for their troops. They decided to spend sufficiently to provide lavish amounts of equipment for both the Vespexers and the Tech-World droid platoons, boosting their CBAS and TL statistics considerably. They then had that equipment delivered to Clarke, in the next-door system, where the party had achieved Haven status.

They also met Gamaagin Kaashukiin, the Mistress of the Retribution mercenary cruiser, once more. She was intrigued by how they had defeated the Lamprey and the Seskehalen, and offered advice on how to fight using the So Much For Subtlety. She was clearly something of an enthusiast for naval warfare theory.

310-1106 – Clarke

On Clarke, both PC parties met up and were welcomed to perform military manuevres that might help see off any passing Oghman Raiders. And so the Vespexers and Droids were properly equipped and brought together to form the 1st Company (Drinaxian Light Infantry) for a few days of familiarisation ahead of their assault on Acrid.

On Clarke, the party had, for the first time, assembled virtually their entire strength: the flagship Harrier-class So Much For Subtlety; the Mercenary Class Lamprey, now renamed the Slightly Bent after her damaged state on being seized; the stealthy smuggler Shinkiro; the jump cutter Phlebotomist; the piratically converted far trader the Grey Area; the 400-ton Vulture-class salvager the Mercifuge which had to serve as improvised troop carrier; and the innocent-looking far trader the Lucky Lady.

On the ground, they had two platoons of highy-effective Vespexer light infantry, and three platoons of untested (but highly advanced) droid light infantry from Tech-World, making for a strong company of almost 200 soldiers.

The party also met their old acquaintance Keeper Maelos. He explained that The Progressive faction – of which he is now a leading member – want Harrick as Head Pyschopomp: he represents the summation of their religion (death, freezing, rebirth and anagithics). But to ensure they can do so, they need to weaken the Conservative faction. He told the Travellers that the Progressives suspect that a leading Conservative figure has been corruptly making money from his control of the sarcophagi for building purposes. If that is exposed, he was sure that the Progressives could win the necessary debate and extend the invitation to Harrick. Clarke would then rejoin the Kingdom of Drinax with its Prince as their ruler and religious head.

343-1106 – Acrid

The Mercifuge (disguised as the Steelgrinder, a regular habitue of Acrid), the Phlebotomist and the Lady Luck, carrying troops and their equipment, docked at Acrid lowport. The workers in control of the docks were able to infiltrate sufficient weapons through the docks for two sections of Vespexers to have pre-positioned armour and equipment in-place before the attack.

The other ships, under the command of their Commodore, Timaeus haut-Roth and the rest of the Diplomats, remained in orbit.

The next day, on 344-1106, one section of eight Vespexers assaulted the atmospherics-processing life support facility, deep in the heart of the Acrid complex. Simultaneously, explosives-expert Cauldron and the rest of the Black Ops party set off explosives at the Armoury facility, destroying the single entrance to that complex and cutting off the ability of the PRQ authorities to arm the Citizens’ Militia, and to distribute heavy weapons to their security forces.

Meanwhile, in the lowport docks, the rest of the Vespexers and Droids boiled out of the transports, quickly seizing the port facilities and making their way towards the lifts and missile launchers.

Wherever the Drinaxians went, they encountered bad luck: an alert sentry; a locked door slowing assaults; a guard who decided to make a stand and buy time for his comrades. Added to this, two weeks in confined, improvised barracks facilities on ill-suited haulers and a salvaging ship left the troops ill-prepared (with a -2 DM to all checks).

But, despite heavy losses, the key Atmospherics plant was taken, the armoury had been taken off the map and the central turbo-lift facilities were secured. Now, droids and Vespexers deployed in platoon strength to secure water-processing and the medical centre, while both missile launchers were secured within an hour of the coup’s beginning. The barracks were cut-off, and first the union cadre and then the revolutionary militia formed and made their way to the docks to be equipped. Throughout the city, isolated pockets of the on-duty platoon of security forces had been defeated in detail.

By now, the tide had turned against the PRQ forces, although fierce fighting – led by Glorious Empire mercenary Aslan, raged at the barracks checkpoints. The mercenaries sold their lives dearly, but the citizen militia and the remaining security forces (the latter having suffered losses) surrendered, and the city had fallen to the revolutionary council of Acrid and their Drinaxian backers.

The first act of the Acrid unions was to proclaim the Revolutionary Soviet of Acrid. Their next act, within minutes, was to apply for membership of, and protection from, the Kingdom of Drinax, as had been promised in advance. This was granted by the players in their role as plenipotentiaries of the Dragon Kingdom.

A varied session, from logistics to the blooding of the Vespexer soldiers.

280-1106 Drinax

The Travellers returned to Drinax after nine months’ absence, and were greeted in a somewhat more low key manner than before, despite their arrival at the head of a five-ship flotilla, newly expanded with the powerful, 300-ton Lamprey mercenary corvette. With the arrival of a Third Imperium ambassador on the Floating Palace, and recent rumours about ships engaged in piracy being seen in the Royal Docks, Rao had decided to keep matters low-key.

So the party met Oleb in his private quarters. Even the King does not command vast halls on the Floating Palace, and they found Oleb engaged in his latest love – archery – in a narrow hallway (albeit it one festooned with glorious artworks). Archery, he declared, while doing irreparable damage to the wall behind the target, was his calling. Falconry had been a foolish interruption, no more. Archery was a true sport of kings.

Oleb is a great man with vast appetites trapped in a tiny space with close constraints and constantly seeking wider horizons.

Oleb was overjoyed at the millions of credits which the party was able to present him with: profits from pirate-hunting, from privateering (the sale of the Seskehalen contributed a large part of the funds) and from trade. He listened intently and approvingly to the party’s plans to contribute their soldiers to aiding revolution on Acrid: how he longed to fight alongside them, he declared! And Clarke, also, seemed to him a fine idea: they had been part of the kingdom of Drinax for millenia. But, he asked wistfully, did they have any plans to seize anywhere with a spot of hunting land?

“I don’t suppose there are any plans for anything with a bit of decent hunting, is there? Maybe a bit of a woodland for shooting, ideally without radioactive dust making the day’s bag inedible? Or a spot of fishing? I hear Marduk has fish a hundred metres long. What a fight that would be to land!” His eyes glaze a little.

“The Lord High Custodian of the Exchequer is bloody grateful for the extra liquidity, and I’m damnable happy about not having to sell off any heirlooms for a few months just to keep the haulers flying with food from Asim. And I have to say I’m damned happy to see your base popping up on the planet. It warms me heart to see troopers training on Drinax again.”

Oleb also commented on the film of the fight on Tyokh, and made some astute observations about the behaviour of Timaeus’s opponent.

After this discussion, Timaeus approached Admiral Wrax, who had burst out in indignation at the addition of the Lamprey to the privateers’ forces, when he barely had the ships to ward off the smallest attack by pirates of Oghman raiders, himself. Timaeus assured him that he had not forgotten the needs of the Star Guard of Drinax, and asked for a list of what ships were needed to defend the Palace, and what would enable greater projection of power.

He closes with suggestions: “This damned spy from the Imperium – have to make yourselves scarce for a while – cause some piratical chaos somewhere far away from Drinax for a while, make them watch the damnable birdy somewhere in the Dustbelt or the Borderlands. You have the holographic hull: use it to distract attention somewhere.”

A discussion with Rao followed, where the party updated her on their progress. She seemed content. She was talking with Sal Dancett, mistress of the Passing Glance, a 400-ton Fast Trader currently docked at Drinax.

“I procure specialised items for her Royal Highness, on occasion. Discreetly pass on the odd message. That sort of thing.

“People say that the Black Arrow gang have declared vendetta against the Drinaxian crew who murdered their shipmates and stole their property on Ergo. There’s a reward of 200,000 credits to anyone who provides them with information on where to find the crew of the So Much For Subtlety, either on their ship or planetside.”

Administration

The party inspected the base which Vi Lon had had constructed by the construction robots that the party had sent from Inurin, months before. There, they found that nine months of recruitment [using the rules from the Mercenary Box Set] had built up a force of almost exactly two 40-soldier platoons of Vespexer light infantry. They were poorly equipped with a wide variety of light weaponry – ranging from shotguns to hunting rifles – but well-led and motivated and with great potential as soldiers.

Other Miscellaneous elements achieved in this session

The Patrickswarm was installed across all the ships of the fleet. These were copies of the android Patrick Steward, programmed to report to the So Much For Subtlety on any rebellious sentiments of the crews of the various ships whener in the same system as her, as a distributed spying network.

The remaining damage to the Lamprey was repaired in GeDeCo’s Tech-World highport for 880KCr.

The Three parties of Maestro and Roustabout drones were deployed to build medical centres in each of the nine major tribes’ capital towns, with a TL13 autodoc and an admin/medic droid installed in each. This moved each remaining tribe two steps towards loyalty.

Finally, Dr. Leitz-Meyer arrived from the Imperium, lured by Dr Parsifal’s messages regarding Dr Nazif, who she is attempting to sue for plagiarism and IP theft.

283 to 295-1106: Vespexers

• The Travellers attempted to persuade the Black Shroud tribe to let them repair their failing
  bio-filtration and air recycling systems. Such was the distrust of the Floating Palace that this was refused, so Erik volunteered to earn their trust by submitting to their traditional test: surviving a night in their ash-zones with no external gear, only gifted Shroud garb and a single knife. Ths he did, although he was wounded fighting a viscious beast the size of a black bear that hunted him by scent.
• After this the party were allowed to put their engineers to work on the bio-flitration gear, which improved the Black Shroud view of them further.
• Finally, the Travellers sought down and disposed of a leaking bio-weapon from the Aslan attack that was contaminating the Shroud’s water supplies. This brought the Black Shroud into loyal status with Oleb.
• For the Firemanes, the party had their droids construct a hardened arena stronghold for rituals, duels, and war council meetings
• They then personally lead their Vespexer forces to attack a rogue Firemane splinter group that had started using forbidden, salvaged plasma tech. In a dawn ambush, they used sniper fire to eliminate the plasma-gun wielding leader, then had their troops deal with the rest in a sweeping victory
• Turning their attention to the Thornbacks, they deployed mechanics and engineers to build a mobile refinery for scrap smelting and vehicle repair in the eastern flats
• They also tracked and eliminated a rogue, schismatic Thornback war-band that had harmed their relations with neighbouring tribes, and who were now discovered to be planning an attack to steal water treatment equipment from an outlying facility. This second battle for the Vespexers started poorly, with over-eager troops attacking before the enemy forces were fully within the killing zone. However, the Vespexers rallied under the party’s leadership, and pressed home their attack with substantial losses. In the end, the party’s provision of medical droids and access to advanced autodoc facilities saved the lives of almost all the injured Vespexers, but casualties amounted to around 10% of the force.

By the end, the party had blooded their troops in two separate actions, and won the glowing approval of Oleb, who had been watching sensor feeds as the action unfurled on the surface.

300-1106: The Vespexer Secret

With all of the Vespexer Tribes now firmly loyal to Oleb, and with the medical centres seen as proof that Drinax would invest in the Vespexers’ well-being, the assembled heads of the tribes informed Oleb and the Travellers of the secret that they had hinted at earlier: when the Aslan forces had assaulted Drinax, it had taken weeks to reduce the planet, defended as it was by stout emplacements and deep meson gun batteries built during the milllenia as capital of the kingdom.

During these weeks, the Vespexers had been able to activate some of the old, Sindalian-era deep bunkers (any planet ruled by Sindal was foolish not to anticipate the odd bombardment), and some two million Vespexers lay in cold sleep berths, ready to be awakened as soon as the budget was there to provide them with homes and the necessities of life.

These sleepers still remained, but the renewed power and engagement of the Drinaxian throne had persuaded the Vespexer leaders that the time had come for the sleepers to awaken.

This session was filled with roleplaying of relations with NPCs, planning how to split the characters up to achieve more in parallel, plotting what to focus on next and moving the players’ assets around to achieve their goals.

Pre-Session Update over Discord

The Court of the Iuwoi-ko offers to repair the damage to the So Much For Subtlety and to suitably redesign the interior. This will save you a lot of credits and will certainly be ostentatiously glamorous and high-end, giving you the same shock-and-awe benefits as the original plans, but it will be in an Aslan style. If you do this then the clan starship architects and workers will make it their top priority, meaning that the work will be completed in 9 days.

• Tyokh counts as a Haven for you now, albeit only specifically the Iuwoi clan downport.
• Assuming Jump-3 average message propagation, you can expect that a portion of your forces will assemble at Sink as instructed with engineers and materials to repair and subvert the Lamprey and secure the Seskehalen some time between 224-1106 and 230-1106. It is currently 206-1106. Sink is a single jump from Tyokh (so about 8-9 days or so from undocking to landing.
• Basemath finishes recruiting agents in Blue as per your current instructions on 210-1106. If you have new instructions for her then let her know. Otherwise I have a timeline for what else she will do under her own initiative.
• You sent a message to Dr Leitz-Meyer (who is suing Dr Nazif) on 166-1106. You might expect to receive a message from her around 255-1106, depending on where she is when she gets it and where you are when it arrives.

208 to 218-1106 Tyokh

An older, Aslan female – approached Deanna as she believed a female would be better able to answer questions about certain matters. “Your ship’s Captain swore to aid my nephew in gaining land on Arunisiir. Tell me, what resources do you have available for such an undertaking?” “What ships do you have to establish a cordon to prevent resupply?” “What force of troops do you possess to bolster whatever forces he can assemble?” “What lift capacity do you have to insert these troops into the area of operations?” “Do you have adequate tonnage of logistics ships to supply those troops during any period of combat?” Deanna gave as detailed answers as she could, but the Aslan professional logistician seemed dubious.

“Perhaps,” she said, “it might help if I were to supply you with a member of my team in order to provide you with some guidance for the duration of any operation.” Ahkahista – Sum-of-all-Hopes – was therefore provided, partly as aide-de-camp and partly to try and avoid another embarrassingly half-baked invasion of Arunisiir by Iuwoi-aligned forces.

These rumours were gleaned during a series of feasts and duels in honour of Hteilotorl’s salvation:

• The Tiykhisto (Reaver’s Claw) (company: Glories Under the Claw) clan are enemies of the Ahroay’if (Gilded Diamond clan, currently engaged in war of Assassins) and they are key members of the aggressive, expansionist faction: aggressive proponents of raiding and seizing the Borderland sector; they are traditionalists and opposed to the commercial faction. They have turned their capital Khtiyrlo into a fortress and are attracting Ihatei settlers, with hundreds of millions expected over to settle it over the next few years. They clearly aim to attack Fantasy, Burgess and Gikarlum.
• The Gilded Diamond clan (the Ahroay’if) and their overlords – The Tlaiowaha – seized the world of Eaohfose from the Reaver’s Claw (Tykhisto) clan a couple of years ago and are using it to monitor Reaver’s Claw raiding fleets. They also launched a trade embargo to cut off the Tykhisto-dominated Glories Under the Claw corporation from the Aslan industrial heartlands to spinward.

The party had accepted the Iuwoi-ko’s offer to restore the So Much For Subtlety’s interior to her former splendour, but in an Aslan-inflected style. Patrick was purring with delight at the renovations. “The designs are unfamiliar, and I am no friend to innovation in matters aesthetic, but I am assured that the designs come with a pedigree that extends back as far as fourteen hundred years, and are therefore largely contemporaneous with the Sindalian Empire, albeit from before the Aslan arrived in the Trojan Reach.”

He went on to say “The workmanship is extraordinary and I heartily recommend inspecting the seals on the aft dining area airlock on the molecular level: they are quite exquisitely realised.”

The party also upgraded the beam laser triple turret to possess the Accurate and High Yield upgrades, at a rate heavily subsidised by the Iuwoi shipyards.

227-1106 Sink

Leaving Tyokh on 219-1106, the party next went to Sink. There, they found an Iuwoi Clan Transport at the swampy field that passes for Sink Starport, and the treasonous Koaleia’s estate back under Iuwoi clan ownership. Koaleia himself had fled shortly after the departure of the party for Tyokh.

The party defrosted many of the ship’s crew and marines from the Lamprey, to leave them on Sink to find their own ways home. One – Jon Cardrick, a gunner and marine – approached the party:

“Begging your pardon, sirs, but I was right impressed by the way you took us down a peg after we jumped you, and I reckon you showed you’re proper honest and all, what with the waking us up again after sleeping us, which I didn’t think was your plan if you’ll forgive my honesty and all. And I hear as it’s you lot as took on Ferrik Redthane, and all, which says you ain’t just lucky, important as a lucky ship is at that. So I wondered if you might be in the hiring mood?”

“I ain’t sure as I would heartily recommend many of them, but the Osman brothers – they’re marines, like – are smart and bloodthirsty but they do tend to be on the straight, which is more than I can say for that captain, being as he owes us two months pay and all.”

On 228-1106 the party moved to the location on an in-system planetoid where they had left the Lamprey and the Seskehalen. There, they found most of their fleet assembled, with the salvage capabilities of the Mercifuge already being used to jury-rig repairs to the Lamprey while other engineers and mechanics worked on removing the security devices from throughout the Seskehalen. Only the Phlebotomist and the Lady Luck had been left behind: the Grey Area, Mercifuge and Shinkiro were all present, and the hastily-repaired Ship’s Troops module had been mounted in the Mercifuge to allow around fifty crew members to be squeezed into the various ships.

So it was with a mismatched but impressive fleet of six ships that the party left Sink for Tech-World via Paal on 233-1106.

249-1106 – Tech-World

On Tech-World, the party held a council-of-war to decide how to approach aiding the Revolution on Acrid. They were informed that Vi Lon and Tug Wilson had, in the eight months since the party were left them on Drinax, recruited a platoon of troops and had the skeleton of two more sections: around fifty Vespexers with strong combat skills (but very poor health).

This was felt to be insufficient to the task at hand, and the party decided to purchase three platoons of Chenghiz Robotics’ military droids from a very alien Tech-World droid who sold other droids. The combined forces that resulted amounted to around 160 soldiers, robotic and human: this, they felt, was sufficient for what they so far knew of so far in Acrid, but a number of questions remained: how to deal with the three System Defence Boats posted in Acrid by PRQ? How to transport 160 soldiers and deploy them on Acrid? And how to ensure that they had the supplies to keep fighting?

In the end, the Black Ops crew – Dr Parsifal, Cauldron, Lars Berg and the psionicist Anastasia – were tasked with assembling a force to support and lead the Acrid revolution, and they tasked their spy-mistress Basemath Mondrane (who had arrived on Sink three days after the party left and had been chasing them since then) with infiltrating Acrid and preparing a report for them, and with finding out the maintenance schedules for the system defence boats.

In the meantime, the Black Ops crew would take the Shinkiro to Blue. There, they would procure weaponry from the TL12 mercenary supply company at Bulhai Freeport while also contacting the two agents that Basemath had recruited and investigating why Blue was now so anti-Drinaxian, and where the money to fund their fleet expansion was coming from.

To fund their own activities, the Travellers sold the Seskehalen Far Trader at a 50% discount to a factor who would assume the risk of carrying out the prize court process to claim her since the party had provided footage of her unprovoked attack (alongside the Lamprey) upon the So Much For Subtlety.

This provided an injection of capital to pay the shares of Krrsh and Sharyl and to fund the party’s own increasingly expensive activities (they now pay over a million credits every month for crews, troops, maintenance and other employees). To deal with the remaining gaps in the crews in their fleet crewing, the Travellers also bought several Crewmate droids, and are considering buying a set of ship-board marine droids to supplement their Vespexers in the lethal business of boarding targets.

To begin to solve the health problems of the Vespexers, mainly caused by actinide-laced dust on the ravaged planet, the party begun to price providing a medical centre complete with robot medic and TL-13 Autodoc to each Vespexer tribe.

Patrick also chipped into the planning process:

“One does not wish to be seen to talk out of turn, sir, but if I may offer an observation? I cannot help but cast my mind back to the ship which so happily contributed to your early successes in the privateering line: the Steelgrinder. Whilst we were docked with her I took the unconscionable liberty – forgive me for exceeding my responsibilities here, sir – of noting her itinerary over her recent journeys. No more than a brief skim over the preceding decade or two, sir: it lasted less than a second before I remembered my place.”

“Well, sir, I cannot help but recall that the Steelgrinder was a regular habitué of Acrid, having made numerous deliveries between there and the famously agricultural world of Inurin, sir.”

“I am aware that this is a trifling detail, sir, and I beg your indulgence for mentioning it, but I believe I recall that the Steelgrinder was a Vulture-class ship, sir.”

One rumour emerged in the only sophont-frequented bar on Tech-World: the Deepnight Corporation were performing surveys along the Voidsedge Cluster. Their craft, the Deepnight Amundsen, was reported lost 16 weeks ago while operating in Ergo, and a detailed surface scan by her sister ship, the Deepnight Vespucci, has failed to find where she went down. She’s a 400 ton scout heavy corvette so Deepnight won’t give up easily, even despite the dangers of the Ergo wilds, where pirates, corsairs and reaver-bands operate, often with heavy weapons either smuggled-in or recovered from the ruins.

All in all a very busy, information-dense, four hour session of Traveller…