[Traveller d20] The Traveller Adventure:Memoirs from the Crew (updated 1/12!)

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Broccli_Head

Explorer
Thanks for the encouragement. We played for the first time since before the Iraq War last weekend. One of our players (Epetslatl) was sent to Kuwait and now he's been back. Cool thing is, everyone forgot how fun Traveller was... so it looks like we will be playing again soon. Got one more Port of Call to write up.

Incidentally, I posted Mr. Atari in the Gallery
 
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Broccli_Head

Explorer
from The Traveller Adventure: Memoirs of a Merchant
Captain...and His Crew

---Traveller's Aide Society Press, 1116

Port of Call: Zila

Captain's Log:

Missed me? I know that I have been away, but I feel so much better now. We made some money!

Did I ever mention how much I love my crew? All of them are experts in their field and could be teaching at a prestigious university or military academy or leading some Imperial megacorp's subsector or even sector's interest. How I got them to join the
Harrier, only Dieux knows. However, they do have a knack for attracting trouble, but this time that trouble seems to have become a blessing in disguise. The turn of events gave me such a warm feeling that I even smiled at the Zhodani. He's not so bad after all. And those anolas are kinda cute, too.

On Zila, we had to land onworld where the best fuel they had was water from a nearby lake. I can't believe that they charged us for this, but with the law level so high on that planet, it would have been supremely foolish to do some wilderness refueling. Even with their low technology, I'd heard that a far trader was blasted with some type of long range projectile without warning, and the suprised crew were thrown in prison for nearly a year until the parent company could come and bail them out. So, we paid.

I stayed on board trying to find cargo from this backwater, but guess what? There was none. Their principal export, fine Zilan wine, was shippped exclusively by Tukeran subsidary Akerut. We were out of luck with a partial hold full of petrified wood. I warned them, but Mr. Atari, Vincent, Al and Epestlatl went out on the town--a prescription for disaster if you ask me.

Atari, Vincent, and the Zhodani came back. Al had been incarcerated for starting a brawl. Fortunately, they had all paid to keep a law firm on retainer (a neccessity on a world that restricted most of your personal freedoms), so hopefully, Al would get out the next day, but he would have to pay some fines. Atari related that the fight had been between Akerut employees and the crew of the slow hauler
Margin of Profit owned by Oberlindes, Inc. Like us, Oberlindes was trying to gain inroads in the region amidst a near-monopoly by Tukera, LIC and its subsidaries. Al apparently took offense when they insulted our ship and jumped in on the side of Oberlindes. Vincent smiled as he told me that his fellow marine had knocked in more than a few heads. I shook my head. The last thing we needed was more bad PR with anything Tukera.

But here's where it gets good. Apparently, the
MoP was giving old man Oberlindes himself a lift to Aramanx. He and his chief assistant were moving their subsector offices to a more populated world and the ship that they were on had broken down on this backwater world and was grounded for at least another five weeks waiting for parts. Because Al helped out his employees, the old man bailed him out, paid his fees, and then asked if we could accomodate him and his assistant and 50 tons of equipment and data. He also said that he would pay for the whole cargo hold (150 tons!). I said yes right away even when I found out that his assistant was another Vargr. I even gave him my stateroom. We had to reshuffle the crew a bit, but we've gotten along so well the last few weeks, that the cramped conditions will be no sweat.

Marc hault-Oberlindes wants us to get there fast, and Aramanx is three jumps away. Lou suggests that we can refuel at one of the gas giants in the Carsten system and then jump out. I hope this goes without a hitch. We've already gotten back in the black with the old man's up front money, and on Aramanx we can finally get rid of that wood $$$! Finally, we will get to a world that actually has an economy. I think that our luck is finally turning around.
 
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honorwolf

First Post
Righteous of the Captain to start smiling again. I feared we were going to drive the oldman into a catatonic state. WE ARE IN THE BLACK!!! Whopee. The brawl was worth it. Imperial Marines lead the way! Hoah!!! By the way, no one insults my ship, with out paying the price! :D
 

Broccli_Head

Explorer
from The Traveller Adventure: Memoirs of a Merchant
Captain...and His Crew

---Traveller's Aide Society Press, 1116


Security Officer's log stardate 5.635.75*

< It seems strange to be writing this... Me in the employ of a ship run by ex imperial marines. If someone had told me this even a year ago I would have laughed and had them put under survelliance as a possible subversive element. Times were so much simpler then, I almost wish I hadn't discovered "them".>

Well, the past aside, this is where I have found myself for the moment, best to focus on the tasks at hand. The one bright spot is that wherever the
Neptune** goes she seems to attract trouble, heh. On Pysadi we were gathering rare wood to try and lighten the losses of an otherwise fruitless stop over when the natives got an eyefull of Luu with some strange little lemur-like creatures climbing all over him... The natural conclusion of course is that Luu must be sacred and they should lock him up in a monestary for the rest of his natural life. Doesn't make any sense, does it? It didn't to me either.

Needless to say when it came time to rescue Luu (he is apparently the only one among the crew who can calculate jump co-ords) the crew were rather indecisive. My original plan was to fly the ship in low over the village and flash the thrusters to flatten the nearby buildings, disorienting the locals. Al and I would then drop down while the Vargr and Vincent lay down supression fire from the ships guns and grab Luu. Bing! Bang! Boom! My calculations told me we'd be in and out less than 120 seconds. Al felt this was to extreme, it seems he didn't want to hurt any of the local populace. < I shake my head in wonder at how the Imperial scum ever subjugated the proud people of the Solomani with such obvious weakness towards one's foes, I believe it will be the Achille's heel that will one day allow my people to escape the wicked yoke of the Third Imperium. >

Eventually we decided to take the skiff down to the village from orbit for a night-op. Al and Vincent stayed at the skiff in a clearing a few clicks to the east of the objective as Epestlatl and myself made our way to the monastary where Luu was being held. It seems that my dear friend is extremely talented being able to affect and read minds as well as being able to teleport oneself and a companion < if we had had even one of his kind on our side in Sol-Sec we could have changed everything >. We quickly made our way to the target, Epestlatl scanned the building and with some effort determined that Luu was in fact beign held in a room on the first floor not far from us. I quietly climbed the courtyard wall and positioned myself outside the outer door leading into the hallway nearest Luu's room. Briefly, I considered just opening the door and rolling a H.E. grenade down the hall to clear out any unwanted visitors. Only the uncertainty of whether the walls inside could withstand such a blast and the thought of having to listen to Al ramble on about "Soldiers deservin' Soldiers" <sentimentalist Imperial dogma. > But I digress, I decided that the best course of action was to just tranq the guard and rescue Luu. As always with this group though something had to go wrong. In this case it was that drunkard Luu. He decided that maybe the life of a monk was in fact his true calling. After mayhaps 6 seconds of his crazy talk I put a group of four tranq darts into his forehead. After that things went much smoother and the rest of the extraction was actually rather enjoyable. I decided to bring the lemur-like creatures along as they had become rather fond of our navigator and I'm sure the Doctor would be most appreciative. The funniest part was once we returned with Luu back to the Neptune he began to ramble on still half drugged about how I had shot him, heheh. I told them he was merely suffering ill effects from his brief exposure to the planets atmosphere, I think that he even believes it. He even claims that he was instantly transported by the Zhodani to the ship. Heheh...I think that the combination of the tranq rounds and the planet's atmosphere caused him to hallucinate.

The only other item of note worth reporting from a security officer's perspective, aside from Al's drunken bar brawl, is the mysterious incident with the Tukera ship that was docked there along with us and the Oberlindes vessel. It seems that while they were insulting our ship and assaulting our 1st Officer they should have been paying more attention to their reactor core. Luckily, the spaceport's computers detected the problem before it was to late. The station ordered the ships reactor taken offline untill a replacement part could arrive, though that will seemingly take weeks and cost them thousands of credits in lost income. The irony of it struck me as humorous though. I mean the same thing that had happened to old man Oberlinde's ship happening to Tukera? Especially when animosity between the two was already running high. Well, needless to say I informed Al of the unfortunate situation with our Tukera-friend's ship, and told him that I expected my "irony bonus" to be included in my next check. He just smiled, it's nice to be appreciated, heheh.

Also, will have to go over the holovids of the
Mammoth incident when we get to Aranmanx. Learned from local spaceport personnel on Zila that apparently, the same engineer was on another ship Titan that also had engine problems which led to a transfer of some "secret military cargo" to Mammoth. Maybe that engineer also got some sort of "irony bonus".

End of Security Officer's log stardate 5.635.75*


< > Text inside is encrypted

*Mr. Atari uses the Solomani calendar for dating his entries (5.635 = 1114 IY; -.75 would be day seventy five of that year)
**Dr. Chevalier and Mr. Atari have changed the name of the ship. Visually, the markings on the ship read Neptune. However, a hardwired read of the transponder (i.e physically tapping into the ship's computer) would show that it is still the March Harrier, but the two computer brains have taught the ship to send out a Neptune signal. Obviously, this is highly illegal, but when being faced with the menance of an Imperial Megacorp...perhaps the readers (and authorities) can give the crew of the March Harrier a break.
 
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honorwolf

First Post
Most excellent post from ship's security. Glad he is on our side... for now. I would like to reiterate that we did try to have a peaceful outing, and that prior to that Al and Mr. Atari just wanted to play chess. Considering how repressive the law is on the backwater port that is basically Tukera owned. Well anyway it was a cool post I like Ship's Security Officer point of view. :D
 


Malachai_rose

First Post
Great post bud, Traveller is an awesome game. Now that Brian is back from the gulf and his honeymoon maybe we can get some playtime in. Oh.. by the way


Bump
 
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Broccli_Head

Explorer
we played again!

from The Traveller Adventure: Memoirs of a Merchant
Captain...and His Crew

---Traveller's Aide Society Press, 1116

Port of Call: Aramanx, 98:1114

Astrogator's Log:

Surprisingly, this garbage scow made it through the series of successive, intense jumps that we subjected her too en route to Aramanx. We did a double jump to Carsten, first precipitating out of jump near a comet in the system's Oort Cloud. Then we entered Carsten system 100d from the gas giant. This bus had to my amazement, fuel scoops, and it held up relatively smoothly during a skim of the giant's upper atmosphere. Good thing that we had the Baron on board to oversee the "wilderness" re-fueling op. I mean ship's that I was aboard did it, but you can't feel a thing in a 100,00 ton [????]-class Dreadnought when it skims a gas giant. Plus, we only did it during wartime.

Good thing, old man Oberlindes is paying us well. The stress of the calculations was bad enough, but with his pet Vargr Arranlonghul looking over my shoulder, it was even worse. Fortunately, I had my family of anolas to calm me down in between jumps. I can't believe that Kigu' wants to space them! Crusty ol' Shugili....

Though, I have to admit the
March Harrier, er excuse me the Neptune...no now, according to Dr. Chevalier and Mr. Atari, the Kragu-mali...curious an old Viliani god...is getting to be a veritable zoo. I think that's one of the reasons why the Baron took his leave of us on Aramanx. He said good-bye pleasantly enough, saying that he needed to book passage on a ship that would be travelling more towards Trailing, while we were stuck here in the Aramis subsector. I don't blame him. I've thought about it myself, but the mysteries that have arisen keep me here, and my anolas like it also....

Aramanx has multiple nations, each vying for a monopoly on interstellar trade. Because of that, and the low tech level of the world, Sternmetal Horizons constructed an orbital facility. We docked with no problem, dislodging cargo and passengers, and going through the customary inspections. Rani and Mr. Atari took care of all that business, while the rest of us went scrounging for cargo, more passengers, and fun. I hit the TAS hostel right away to get in a good game of cards. Once again Tukera and her subsidaries beat us to the punch. There was no cargo as Akerut had hauled it all off, and the rest of the bulk cargo was reserved for our new "friends" at Oberlindes. Captain Lenard speculated that it would be at least three weeks before we could load up and head out. So we got sort of a mini-vacation. From TAS, I made my way to Concourse 3 and the Worldview: two drinking establishments that also had some good gaming tables. At Worldview, that evening we saw a report that got my hackles rising. Algesh' felt the same way. On a report about rioting in a border town planetside, I saw Rojet Bannerji, the captain of the
Wolblutn. It was an impossible coincidence, and I for one praised my luck. The itinerary we copied from his wallet said that he was supposed to still be in the Vargr Extents. And we wanted to ask him about that destroyed shuttle that we had discovered in the Patinir system.

Epeslatl and Mr. Atari were on it right away. The Security Officer told us that there was only a two-day old employment record of Mr. Bannerji, and that he was getting a pittance of a salary that did not equate to his being on the board of an important trade negotiation. Ep, with his diplomatic savvy, managed to get us a meeting with this trade mission. Unfortunately, we would have to go planetside into a country with martial law and enemy troops, including Vargr mercs, gathering at the border, but 'danger' is our crew's middle name...I guess.

I retired to my room to think about it, and ran into Gvouzdon suspiciously loitering in the corridor near my state room.

--You didn't eat the anolas, did you?
I asked him

Not answering, he proceeded to ask me about the brooch again. We should have kept him in low berth! I saw a sidearm in a holster hanging at his hip.

--Who gave you that?

--Al' says that I am a member of the crew now.

He smiled showing his teeth.

--I am not going through this again, Gvouzdon,
and I turned my back on him to get some rest.

I checked to make sure nothing was missing, and comforted the anolas. I'll have to talk to the captain about keeping that mischievous Vargr on board....
 

Broccli_Head

Explorer
Morte had asked me to post again, so here I go, but only to make an excuse.

One of my players is supposed to give me a Security Officer's log, and then I get to edit it and post!
 
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