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.
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