Setting: The universe has been ravaged by war. After years of expansion and progress, a period of stagnation created powerful factions that bid for control of the galaxy. Years of war and rebellion, the universal government was dismantled and each planet was allowed to govern itself more or less. Our heroes are smugglers, soldiers, bandits and vagabonds trying to make their way in this crazy universe.
Our "Heroes"
Elieth RuneStar
"Full Time Lover, Part Time Captain"
Elieth is the ships pilot, captain and owner. Despite his lecherous ways, he's a good negotiator and a bit of a people person. He grew up on ships and now works as a smuggler aboard the Crimson Star.
Bora
"Pissed off Psychic"
Bora grew up in the controversial Psi-Corp and that's where some say he got his attitude. He has no qualms about lighting his enemies on fire and then blowing their brains out their ears. Violent but always reliable, he's the co-owner of the Crimson Star.
Vera
"Shoots First, then Keeps on Shooting!"
Vera may seem like she's constantly pissed off...and that's because she usually is. She was hired as the muscle and also acts as the groups gunner. May be a functioning alcoholic if you stretch your definition of functional.
Javelin Ruby
"Janitor..."
A bizarre spartan that believes he can amount to anything if he tries. This is unfortunately wrong. He's the ships engineer but is mostly concerned with janitorial work. He also has a bad habit of decapitating people...
Sa'la Yela'mirõ Ghy'eliza Fenêri
"Ridiculously Long Name, or just Ridiculous?"
Sa'la is a mysterious creature that hasn't set foot off her planet before. Somehow she ended up with this insane crew and acts as one of their gunners and the ships wizard. Her past is a mystery along with everything else about her.
Episode 1: To the Stars Part 1
Elieth has just mortgaged the Crimson Star from the fairly trustworthy businessman Verner on the planet Marcus. The Crimson Star us a Courier Class 2 star ship.
Verner
"THAT Mother &@%#er"
He's a businessman on the side but his real job is organized crime. He does own a bunch of legit space docks and repair stations. Best ship modifications in the system!
As a caveat for purchasing the ship, Verner needs the crew to find a group of space pirates and recover some cargo they stole.
The crew is a bit weary of the mission as they follow a tracker signal into a nebula. They try searching for the ship but the nebula is messing with their scanners. Suddenly they're fired upon from an unknown location. They continue to try and scan for the enemy ship but it doesn't work. More shoots fire on the ship but miss.
A hail comes from the enemy ship. It's the pirates that stole the cargo. They aren't going to give back the cargo but their shots aren't going to be hitting anyone anytime soon. The captains decide on a trade. Our heroes claimed they had a cargo container full of gold. This caught the pirates attention and they agreed to trade.
On a nearby asteroid, the two ships land. Bora goes out with the fake cargo. Before the pirates can figure out what happens, Sa'la shoots a phaser gun at the enemy ship. It disables their engines and they're stuck on the asteroid. After a brief shootout, Bora kills the other pirate and secures the cargo.
The crew continuously disables the enemy ship that still can't hit our heroes. After disabling most of their systems, our heroes decide to board the enemy ship for epic loots. The ship is dark and they enter through the cargo hold so it's deserted. As they explore, a pirate bursts in yelling about trying to fix the ship. He sees our heroes and sounds the alarm. They subdue him and continue to search, eventually finding the engines with another pirate. Bora blasts his brain away and he dies instantly. They're caught off guard when Captain Torgrim and the remaining crew appear behind them.
Captain Torgrim
"BURN!"
A space pirate and lover of magical artifacts. He named his shotguns Bubbles and Sally. No one knows why.
The battle is tough with the captain wielding two magical shotguns with fire ammo. The pirate crew is killed quickly but the captain continues to fight on until he's decapitated by Ruby. Ruby decides to bring the head along as proof of their victory (despite the fact that they could just take their ID chips as proof). The head is stored in the fridge for some reason and the crew flies home, but not before stealing some crates of goods that the pirates had along with all their equipment.
They arrive back at Verner's office. He's in a meeting when they show up but it ends pretty quickly when he throws his business partner out a window saying, "it's all about supply and demand my friend, and demand just dropped." He greets Elieth and Bora and is happy that they accomplished the job. He does get upset when they show him the head and at the sloppy job they did. Verner is worried that pirates will be all over the crew now that they killed one of their own in such a brutal manner. However, he does pay them a bundle for the job.
The session ended with the crew relaxing on their new ship and Vera discovering a new bar.
Episode 2: To the Stars Part 2
It's been about a week since the first session. Elieth has managed to find a new job with a business type named Slugworth.
Slugworth
"Judge this Book by its Cover"
Slugworth is a businessman focusing on import and export. He imports cash and exports stuff you shouldn't be bothering about.
Slugworth wants our heroes to transport some goods to Loki III. He offers this job for a discount on the goods that Elieth is trying to sell. Elieth agrees and gets the heck out of there.
Vera has settled into her favorite bar, Space Moe's (he franchised). She's planning to just relax but since she's a regular and doesn't cause trouble, the bar tender calls her over. He tells her that a guy has been casing the place looking for her. Vera decides to wait until he makes a move. A huge Ogron approaches her and says he's got business with her. He wants her to go somewhere private but she won't move.
The Ogron explains that he works for the pirates and that she has a bounty on her head. He's also got a pistol trained onto her gut. Before he can attack she throws whiskey into his eyes. She gets up behind him with her sword and tries to put it around his neck. He breaks her grip and tries to shoot but misses. She goes at him and manages to take the big guy down.
Despite the treat of pirates looking for an easy bounty, the crew flies off the next day to Loki III. It's not going to be easy to get into Loki because all ships need to go through a space port before landing on the planet. Using an invisibility spell, they manage to hide the crates from the scanners. However, it's here where they meet Mitch and Steve.
Officer Mitch & Officer Steve
"Bastard, Bigger Bastard"
The two most pissed off cops in the galaxy. Hobbies include corruption and stun batons.
Mitch and Steve are customs officers and subject the crew to a "random" search. Elieth tries to diffuse the situation but they take everything he does as a threat and uses their stun batons. "Is he threatening an officer of the law Steve?" "I believe he is Mitch." Stun baton on Elieth and only Elieth. Despite their best efforts, they don't find anything on the ship and let the crew leave but not before stunning Elieth one more time.
The crew takes the crates through the seedy world that is Loki III until they end up as a warehouse. They enter to find a bunch of well armed men sitting at a table. The crew introduces themselves and the goons are pushed out of the way as the leader says, "Sit! Sit down my friends!" They come face to face with the android Don Krogeth.
Don Krogeth
"Your Friendly Neighborhood Psycho-Bot"
A high ranking member of the Star Families (the mafia of the galaxy). He may have some wires crossed as he's very erratic.
Krogeth congratulates the crew on completing the job, but quickly brings up the fact that he has a gun pointed at Elieth. Elieth tries to use his charms to diffuse the situation. Krogeth explains that Slugworth paid him to kill the crew when they delivered the goods. But, Krogeth doesn't exactly like Slugworth and makes that very clear. He does like Elieth though and says he won't kill them, on a few conditions.
They have to drop off some cargo in an asteroid field, and they have to kill Slugworth. The crew quickly agrees and Krogeth is incredibly happy that they aren't dead. Instead of dealing with another "random" check, they decide to bribe Mitch and Steve. As the crew leaves Loki, Elieth looks out the window and sees Mitch and Steve flipping him off.
They fly out and drop off the cargo pretty quickly, but as they're leading the nebula they're suddenly attacked. Two pirate ships fly up next to the ship and fire at them. The crew is assaulted a few more times before finally getting in contact with the two pirates. The pirates explain that they're trying to get the bounty on their heads which comes to about 8000 credits.
The battle is fairly shot with Vera getting off some major hits on the two tiny ships and nearly destroying both. They let the ships leave but not before finding out who set up the bounty, Captain Spalding. They also leave a message that any pirates are going to get destroyed if they attack the Crimson Star.
Fleet Captain Spalding
"???"
Pirate. Everything else Unknown.
The crew stops back on Marcos where they started to deal with Slugworth. They decide to be subtle and just go through the front door, pushing past employees and secretaries. In Slugworth's officer, they get in his face and ask for their money or they're going to kill him. Slugworth agrees and rummages through his desk for some Data Sticks. He then yells, "Get Them!" A shoot is fired that hits Elieth in the back. Three guards with guns have shown up.
A battle ensues with each side firing from different rooms. The guards try to talk their way through the situation and get Slugworth to safety but they see it's going south. As a last resort they hold a gun up to Bora's head and threaten to blow his brains out.
Meanwhile, Elieth and Slugworth are fighting each other. Elieth shoots Slugworth in the shoulder and disables him but Slugworth manages to stab Elieth with a hidden knife. The guards are taken out and the crew gangs up on Slugworth. Sa'la uses her magic to to invoke horrible fear into Slugworth and he's ready to give them everything. She's pissed that he lied and went back on their deal. Elieth gives her a nod and she sends his head into another dimension (that obviously kills him).
The cops are quickly on their way so the crew pockets the Data Sticks and some documents before leaving.
So it turns out Elieth didn't intend for Sa'la to kill Slugworth. He was just saying they should take the money and leave but Sa'la didn't understand.
Back on the Crimson Star, the crew is relaxing when they get a call from Krogeth. He's very happy they killed Slugworth and informs them that they're on television. He explains that there's security footage of them killing all those people. They then get a call from Verner. He's furious with them for getting into so much trouble that might also lead to him. He also informs the crew that there's a 100,000 Credit bounty on their heads.
Elieth is freaked but he says that Verner should just say that they stole the ship. Verner calms down and says that he will try to help when he can but that they need to leave the system. He suggests they go to the Muscae system since it's removed from most of the goings on in other systems. The crew agrees and leaves as quickly as they can.
Cue Theme Music! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1QUZzeZoPQ
So yeah, that was our first two sessions. Overall, I think it went really well. We're all much more used to the system and have a better grasp of our characters. I've decided to make the game much less serious and make the story more about the characters. I've given them a big world to explore and full of little details and factions. That gave them a lot to work with and work off of when making their characters and interacting with the world.
The ending to the last session was very...surprising. I thought they would remember the camera but apparently not. I didn't want to make it easy on them so I put that bounty on them and they decided to leave the system. They've got about 2 months before they reach the Muscae system so they can level up and do stuff.
We tried running this with Theatre of the Mind rules and it actually worked out pretty well. The players seemed to take to it and it sped up combat immensely. There's some issues to work out but we've decided to play the game this way from now on.
One thing I did differently was make the players aware of their Reputation with certain characters. Depending on their actions, their reputations change with the characters they meet. I think this gives interactions a bit more depth and certain things can come into play depending on what happens. For Vera, I used her Rep with the bar to determine if the barman helped her.
So yeah. Next week we've got a player missing and with Christmas coming up soon we're going to do some one-shots with the characters in the Muscae system. That should be fun.
Our "Heroes"
Elieth RuneStar
"Full Time Lover, Part Time Captain"
Elieth is the ships pilot, captain and owner. Despite his lecherous ways, he's a good negotiator and a bit of a people person. He grew up on ships and now works as a smuggler aboard the Crimson Star.
Bora
"Pissed off Psychic"
Bora grew up in the controversial Psi-Corp and that's where some say he got his attitude. He has no qualms about lighting his enemies on fire and then blowing their brains out their ears. Violent but always reliable, he's the co-owner of the Crimson Star.
Vera
"Shoots First, then Keeps on Shooting!"
Vera may seem like she's constantly pissed off...and that's because she usually is. She was hired as the muscle and also acts as the groups gunner. May be a functioning alcoholic if you stretch your definition of functional.
Javelin Ruby
"Janitor..."
A bizarre spartan that believes he can amount to anything if he tries. This is unfortunately wrong. He's the ships engineer but is mostly concerned with janitorial work. He also has a bad habit of decapitating people...
Sa'la Yela'mirõ Ghy'eliza Fenêri
"Ridiculously Long Name, or just Ridiculous?"
Sa'la is a mysterious creature that hasn't set foot off her planet before. Somehow she ended up with this insane crew and acts as one of their gunners and the ships wizard. Her past is a mystery along with everything else about her.
Episode 1: To the Stars Part 1
Elieth has just mortgaged the Crimson Star from the fairly trustworthy businessman Verner on the planet Marcus. The Crimson Star us a Courier Class 2 star ship.
Verner
"THAT Mother &@%#er"
He's a businessman on the side but his real job is organized crime. He does own a bunch of legit space docks and repair stations. Best ship modifications in the system!
As a caveat for purchasing the ship, Verner needs the crew to find a group of space pirates and recover some cargo they stole.
The crew is a bit weary of the mission as they follow a tracker signal into a nebula. They try searching for the ship but the nebula is messing with their scanners. Suddenly they're fired upon from an unknown location. They continue to try and scan for the enemy ship but it doesn't work. More shoots fire on the ship but miss.
A hail comes from the enemy ship. It's the pirates that stole the cargo. They aren't going to give back the cargo but their shots aren't going to be hitting anyone anytime soon. The captains decide on a trade. Our heroes claimed they had a cargo container full of gold. This caught the pirates attention and they agreed to trade.
On a nearby asteroid, the two ships land. Bora goes out with the fake cargo. Before the pirates can figure out what happens, Sa'la shoots a phaser gun at the enemy ship. It disables their engines and they're stuck on the asteroid. After a brief shootout, Bora kills the other pirate and secures the cargo.
The crew continuously disables the enemy ship that still can't hit our heroes. After disabling most of their systems, our heroes decide to board the enemy ship for epic loots. The ship is dark and they enter through the cargo hold so it's deserted. As they explore, a pirate bursts in yelling about trying to fix the ship. He sees our heroes and sounds the alarm. They subdue him and continue to search, eventually finding the engines with another pirate. Bora blasts his brain away and he dies instantly. They're caught off guard when Captain Torgrim and the remaining crew appear behind them.
Captain Torgrim
"BURN!"
A space pirate and lover of magical artifacts. He named his shotguns Bubbles and Sally. No one knows why.
The battle is tough with the captain wielding two magical shotguns with fire ammo. The pirate crew is killed quickly but the captain continues to fight on until he's decapitated by Ruby. Ruby decides to bring the head along as proof of their victory (despite the fact that they could just take their ID chips as proof). The head is stored in the fridge for some reason and the crew flies home, but not before stealing some crates of goods that the pirates had along with all their equipment.
They arrive back at Verner's office. He's in a meeting when they show up but it ends pretty quickly when he throws his business partner out a window saying, "it's all about supply and demand my friend, and demand just dropped." He greets Elieth and Bora and is happy that they accomplished the job. He does get upset when they show him the head and at the sloppy job they did. Verner is worried that pirates will be all over the crew now that they killed one of their own in such a brutal manner. However, he does pay them a bundle for the job.
The session ended with the crew relaxing on their new ship and Vera discovering a new bar.
Episode 2: To the Stars Part 2
It's been about a week since the first session. Elieth has managed to find a new job with a business type named Slugworth.
Slugworth
"Judge this Book by its Cover"
Slugworth is a businessman focusing on import and export. He imports cash and exports stuff you shouldn't be bothering about.
Slugworth wants our heroes to transport some goods to Loki III. He offers this job for a discount on the goods that Elieth is trying to sell. Elieth agrees and gets the heck out of there.
Vera has settled into her favorite bar, Space Moe's (he franchised). She's planning to just relax but since she's a regular and doesn't cause trouble, the bar tender calls her over. He tells her that a guy has been casing the place looking for her. Vera decides to wait until he makes a move. A huge Ogron approaches her and says he's got business with her. He wants her to go somewhere private but she won't move.
The Ogron explains that he works for the pirates and that she has a bounty on her head. He's also got a pistol trained onto her gut. Before he can attack she throws whiskey into his eyes. She gets up behind him with her sword and tries to put it around his neck. He breaks her grip and tries to shoot but misses. She goes at him and manages to take the big guy down.
Despite the treat of pirates looking for an easy bounty, the crew flies off the next day to Loki III. It's not going to be easy to get into Loki because all ships need to go through a space port before landing on the planet. Using an invisibility spell, they manage to hide the crates from the scanners. However, it's here where they meet Mitch and Steve.
Officer Mitch & Officer Steve
"Bastard, Bigger Bastard"
The two most pissed off cops in the galaxy. Hobbies include corruption and stun batons.
Mitch and Steve are customs officers and subject the crew to a "random" search. Elieth tries to diffuse the situation but they take everything he does as a threat and uses their stun batons. "Is he threatening an officer of the law Steve?" "I believe he is Mitch." Stun baton on Elieth and only Elieth. Despite their best efforts, they don't find anything on the ship and let the crew leave but not before stunning Elieth one more time.
The crew takes the crates through the seedy world that is Loki III until they end up as a warehouse. They enter to find a bunch of well armed men sitting at a table. The crew introduces themselves and the goons are pushed out of the way as the leader says, "Sit! Sit down my friends!" They come face to face with the android Don Krogeth.
Don Krogeth
"Your Friendly Neighborhood Psycho-Bot"
A high ranking member of the Star Families (the mafia of the galaxy). He may have some wires crossed as he's very erratic.
Krogeth congratulates the crew on completing the job, but quickly brings up the fact that he has a gun pointed at Elieth. Elieth tries to use his charms to diffuse the situation. Krogeth explains that Slugworth paid him to kill the crew when they delivered the goods. But, Krogeth doesn't exactly like Slugworth and makes that very clear. He does like Elieth though and says he won't kill them, on a few conditions.
They have to drop off some cargo in an asteroid field, and they have to kill Slugworth. The crew quickly agrees and Krogeth is incredibly happy that they aren't dead. Instead of dealing with another "random" check, they decide to bribe Mitch and Steve. As the crew leaves Loki, Elieth looks out the window and sees Mitch and Steve flipping him off.
They fly out and drop off the cargo pretty quickly, but as they're leading the nebula they're suddenly attacked. Two pirate ships fly up next to the ship and fire at them. The crew is assaulted a few more times before finally getting in contact with the two pirates. The pirates explain that they're trying to get the bounty on their heads which comes to about 8000 credits.
The battle is fairly shot with Vera getting off some major hits on the two tiny ships and nearly destroying both. They let the ships leave but not before finding out who set up the bounty, Captain Spalding. They also leave a message that any pirates are going to get destroyed if they attack the Crimson Star.
Fleet Captain Spalding
"???"
Pirate. Everything else Unknown.
The crew stops back on Marcos where they started to deal with Slugworth. They decide to be subtle and just go through the front door, pushing past employees and secretaries. In Slugworth's officer, they get in his face and ask for their money or they're going to kill him. Slugworth agrees and rummages through his desk for some Data Sticks. He then yells, "Get Them!" A shoot is fired that hits Elieth in the back. Three guards with guns have shown up.
A battle ensues with each side firing from different rooms. The guards try to talk their way through the situation and get Slugworth to safety but they see it's going south. As a last resort they hold a gun up to Bora's head and threaten to blow his brains out.
Meanwhile, Elieth and Slugworth are fighting each other. Elieth shoots Slugworth in the shoulder and disables him but Slugworth manages to stab Elieth with a hidden knife. The guards are taken out and the crew gangs up on Slugworth. Sa'la uses her magic to to invoke horrible fear into Slugworth and he's ready to give them everything. She's pissed that he lied and went back on their deal. Elieth gives her a nod and she sends his head into another dimension (that obviously kills him).
The cops are quickly on their way so the crew pockets the Data Sticks and some documents before leaving.
So it turns out Elieth didn't intend for Sa'la to kill Slugworth. He was just saying they should take the money and leave but Sa'la didn't understand.
Back on the Crimson Star, the crew is relaxing when they get a call from Krogeth. He's very happy they killed Slugworth and informs them that they're on television. He explains that there's security footage of them killing all those people. They then get a call from Verner. He's furious with them for getting into so much trouble that might also lead to him. He also informs the crew that there's a 100,000 Credit bounty on their heads.
Elieth is freaked but he says that Verner should just say that they stole the ship. Verner calms down and says that he will try to help when he can but that they need to leave the system. He suggests they go to the Muscae system since it's removed from most of the goings on in other systems. The crew agrees and leaves as quickly as they can.
Cue Theme Music! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1QUZzeZoPQ
So yeah, that was our first two sessions. Overall, I think it went really well. We're all much more used to the system and have a better grasp of our characters. I've decided to make the game much less serious and make the story more about the characters. I've given them a big world to explore and full of little details and factions. That gave them a lot to work with and work off of when making their characters and interacting with the world.
The ending to the last session was very...surprising. I thought they would remember the camera but apparently not. I didn't want to make it easy on them so I put that bounty on them and they decided to leave the system. They've got about 2 months before they reach the Muscae system so they can level up and do stuff.
We tried running this with Theatre of the Mind rules and it actually worked out pretty well. The players seemed to take to it and it sped up combat immensely. There's some issues to work out but we've decided to play the game this way from now on.
One thing I did differently was make the players aware of their Reputation with certain characters. Depending on their actions, their reputations change with the characters they meet. I think this gives interactions a bit more depth and certain things can come into play depending on what happens. For Vera, I used her Rep with the bar to determine if the barman helped her.
So yeah. Next week we've got a player missing and with Christmas coming up soon we're going to do some one-shots with the characters in the Muscae system. That should be fun.
