Thursday, July 11, 2013

Session 6: No One Expected Jet's Head to Explode

Best In-Game Quote: When someone says that people called him mad, that right there is a red flag.

The crew had a month to kill before the expedition. They decided to spend their first few days indulging themselves. As they prepare to set out, they are met by Thatcher the Badger, ready to rejoin the crew. With their numbers grown, the crew sets out for fun. Searching for a fight club on Sin, they discover an underground Shock Hobo Fighting Federation. Jet steps up to challenge the various heavyweight hobos. Eventually the crew starts fighting each other, and afterwards stumble into bars. This is what follows-

Kay saves the life of a Heyson agent. He doesn't know how or why.

Kevo once again saves Uncle Bartholomew's life. He is now his uncle's double favorite nephew.

Jet wakes up overdosed on drugs. After he promised never to take drugs again.

Dr. Vespers wakes up in Providence's cargo bay with a fancy sports hover-car.

Kiki wakes up in a tour bus. A rock band thanks her for helping them with groupies and gives her an autographed guitar.

Halic spent the night fighting people in the streets and ended up in jail. Unfortunately, he's on Sin, meaning that he needs to bribe the police to go free. Originally the "bail" was set at 120,000, but Halic was rude to the crooked cop and the price got raised to 150,000. Halic curses the man, gets his gear, camps outside until the cop leaves, and discreetly shoots him dead.

The crew trains for a few weeks before going to Zenna to get Dax. Dax was successful in getting back what his rival stole from him: an expensive mind-enhancing chip and an old gun. The crew quickly turn the ship around and head back to Sin for the professor.

On the third day in jump space, the crew wakes up with mild headaches. After a quick medical scan they disregard the headaches and continue on as normal. They all go to sleep that night as usual, but mysteriously wake up on the ship's bridge. All of their computer systems are down,  and the crew are all in their sleeping clothes. Arming up in the ships lockers, they proceed towards their rooms. This is what they find-

Halic: The ghost of Barbosa, whose ship he stole.

Kiki: A member of her rival gang, the Acids.

Jet: His sister zombified.

Kevo: A giant panda (a reference to an ODnD dungeon).

Thatcher: His deceased friend Saxon, a martial artist who eschewed technology in favor of his own body.

Kay: A bug-like alien (a reference to SC2).

Dr. Vespers: His insane rival, Dr. Mercy (complete with a poison-dart gun).

In addition, the crew finds their own physical selves sleeping in their beds. All attempts to wake themselves up fail.

After defeating their nightmares, the crew goes down to the cargo bay. Fighting past a demonic Gabriel, they see a miniature storm brewing over the Prophet.They do a breach into the passenger section and encounter passive reflections of all the people that they recently killed. Breaching into the cockpit, they find a young woman in combat armor sleeping in the pilot's chair. She has a metal band around her head. When Thatcher touches his mysterious black amulet to the band, the illusion shatters and the crew wakes up in their beds.

Kay spearheads the rush to the Prophet. When he opens the cockpit door, he is blasted back by a wave of psionic energy. The woman is fully awake and wielding deadly mental powers. Jet deals massive damage to her, but she is able to use a mixture of regenerative and shielding powers to stay alive. Jet believes that the situation has become hopeless and seals himself in the cockpit with the woman. Taking out a simple spoon, he scoops out his camera eye. Suddenly, a massive explosion engulfs the cockpit.

Apparently Jet had a "nanobomb" inside his head. The crew doesn't know much except that for some reason he was being monitored through the eye and the bomb was put there to prevent Jet from resisting. The blast kills both Jet and the woman. The rest of the jump is uneventful, and when the ship lands on Sin, Halic uses Jet's blood to paint a small memorial on the hull of the ship.

The crew gathers the professor and Dunlap (whose success on Sin rewarded him with battle dress and a 50-cal. rifle). As they leave Sin, they find a drifting escape pod. Inside is Dr. Harrison, a buff scientist who has been cryo-frozen for nearly 500 years. He decides to stay with the crew. Their jump to the mysterious planet is uneventful. When they get into normal space, the crew encounters a small Gubrox ship. Expert shooting from Kevo and Halic brings the ship down.

The professor guides the crew to the excavation location. To get there, they need to navigate through a tunnel system inside of a large mountain. While inside they encounter dangerous predators. They resemble killer whales in size and appearance, but have four strong legs and skin made to mimic the surface of the cave. Using their Armored Fighting Vehicle (known as Jericho), the crew gets plows through the monsters and discovers a crystalline wall surrounded by a cluster of buildings. To their disappointment, the crew finds that the buildings are actually just a human mining camp that was abandoned a few years ago.

The professor completely ignores the buildings. He begins digging in the dirt, excavating some sort of round crystal symbol a few feet in diameter. The symbol looks like a crescent moon. Unfortunately, the professor's mental health starts to deteriorate rapidly. He speaks in confusing and paranoid sentences, much to the annoyance of Halic. He briefly threatens the crew and then proceeds to dig small random holes around the symbol.

At the same time, Kay finally decodes an encrypted transmission that he found a few days ago. It is a warrant for the arrest of the professor, who killed a colleague at Zenna University. When prompted about the message the professor goes totally nuts, screaming at everybody. Suddenly, a gunshot goes off. The professor's chest explodes instantly. The crew turns around to see that Dunlap took the matter into his own hands and shot the maniac.

We cut off right after this happened.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Session 5: No One is Surprised to be Ambushed by a Space-Lion

In-Session Quote: "Ya know, I think that Nazi zombies kinda sullied the name of the Nazis."

At the conclusion of the last session, Dax goes off on a solo mission to take out his rival, Garry Morrison. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew regroup with the Red Dogs, who have set up a training camp outside of Micallo City. Their hunt for information was unsuccessful, but they promise to provide aid whenever their services are needed.

With a ship full of drugs, the crew heads to planet Sin. In jump-space, they encounter a bizarre pirate ship (an actual sailing ship). After a quick expedition the crew adds to their inventory several antique weapons, clothes, and tools. They plan to find a good museum to sell it all to.

The crew faces a second and more dangerous encounter later in jump-space. Kevo awakes one night to find the battle-drone Gabriel wandering into the cargo bay. Kevo hears a sharp noise; Beep. Beep. Beep... When Kevo goes to inspect the him, a bomb strapped to Gabriel explodes, destroying his gun. Kevo quickly wakes the crew, and a manhunt is orchestrated room by room. While they are inspecting the low-birth (cryo) room, they are blasted with a powerful grenade. Kevo runs outside to face the grenadier, and it attacked from above.

An invisible force crushes down on Kevo. The crew watch in horror as massive claw marks appear on his chest armor. Jet swings his massive energy blade above Kevo, revealing a fearsome figure in black and blue battle dress. He fights with glowing energy claws and wears a lion-like mask. In epic close-quarters combat, the crew work to pierce the stranger's armor (Kiki's plasma rifle does the best). When Jet is knocked unconscious, Halic herds the crew back into the low-birth room and seals the door. Moments later-

Beep. Beep. Beep... The crew huddles in the corner as an energy blast obliterates the door. Luckily, the blast also damaged the stranger. His mast falls away to reveal an actual lion's face! An expert shot by Halic brings down the man-beast. Kiki proceeds to behead the creature. Then, the armor glows bright blue.

Beep. Beep. Beep... The crew flees the ensuing blast, which melts the low-birth room and destroys all traces of the lion-man. A quick evaluation of the ship ensures that no more predators are hunting the crew. Halic hypothesizes that the stranger came aboard from the pirate ship. The fact that he was a lion-man doesn't seem to phase the crew.

Finally, the crew reaches Sin. They sell the drugs for 200.000 and buy more seeds. Kevo takes advantage of Sin's liberal markets and buys materials to create suitcase and gas bombs with Kiki. The crew attends a convention hosted by the followers of Ooba-Mai. The contents of that convention will be posted at a later date, but long story short Kevo is tranquilized, Halic gets wasted, and Jet befriends a priest named Father Julian.

The next day, Kevo is contacted by his wealthy Uncle Bartholomew. Bartholomew tasks the crew to deliver combat drugs to war-torn planet Don. The crew accepts when promised a lucrative reward. Kevo also places an order for nerve gas from Bartholomew's scientists. On their way to jump space, they encounter a strange man named Dunlap in an escape pod. He claims to be an expert sniper and requests only minimal pay. The crew allows him to stay for now.

The jump is uneventful. When they reach the planet's outer space, they are harassed by a ship belonging to Don's rival planet, Ton. Kevo  suggests that they bribe the ship to get an escort. The crew accepts, and they head closer to the planet. One massive lie later gives them an even better escort directly to orbit (Ton currently controls the orbit around Don). The crew lands to find a heavily-damaged starport. Soldiers help unload the drugs. While this is happening, the station is subject to a bombing run by fighters.

Providence has the only functioning guns in the area. Kevo jumps into the top turret and blasts away at the fighters. When the ship is fully unloaded (and the crew fully paid) Providence shoots up into the air. When they reach their old escort in orbit, they are prompted as to whether or not the President safely made it to the ground. They successfully go along with the lie and escape the deadly war zone.

The crew returns triumphantly to Uncle Bartholomew. They are now significantly richer and finally respected by the rich tycoon. Kevo buys two massive kegs of nerve gas from the Bartholomew. They disguise the old low-birth room as a pantry and hide the kegs behind the wall.

Back on Sin, they repair their ship. While that is going on a strange old man known as Professor Humphrey approaches them with a dangerous expedition to Gubrox space. Apparently, his old university colleagues declared him to be mad and the Scouts were too frightened by the threat of the Gubrox to take up his work. The crew accepts his mission in the hopes of finding riches (or at least a contact through which to sell their pirate swag). The expedition is scheduled to depart in one month. Dunlap leaves the ship to make some money on Sin, promising to return for the expedition. The crew plans to get Dax back before departing.

Also, my players wanted the link to this-
http://www.travellersrd.com/content/official/mongoose_traveller_srd/mercenary_srd/mercenary_srd_1-2_index.html

Open-Source material that they can use in my game if they wish. As long as they let me know ahead of time.