Present:
- Anastasia "Stasi" Tepes. Zhodani Soldier from Querion – Shane
- Emerse Gee. Daryen Scientist from Torment – Darryl
- "Riley" O'Reilly. Sword-Worlder Pilot from Winston - Richard
- MARMALADING: Anton Tositova. Solomani Gunner from Entrope - Ian
- Sang "Spanner" Hoang. Sword-Worlder Mechanic from Winston – Jeff
- MARMALADING: Hoff Ende. Sword-Worlder Scientist from Winston - Kevin
- Gnostic Hands. Solomani Scientist from Entrope – Jamie
- MARMALADING: Belle Ende. Sword-Worlder Medic from Winston - Steven
- Split "Penny" Ende. Sword-Worlder Minstrel from Winston - Jason
- NPC: Scurry. Drone Gunner from Winston
- NPC: Zeraphina Althira. Zhodani Winston Diplomat from Querion
- NPC: Finn Cyborg from Querion
by Richard
With our feet up at Bitter End (the Ende holiday home on Winston) we await our next command, still being in the employ of Belle, Split, Hoff, and Itzy's mother Contessa Ende. The Lost Crown orbits Winston.
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| New (Zhodani) Winston Governor Right-honorable Naya Riviera |
Even Spanner is restless.
There have been many political changes on Winston and in the solar system. The Zhodani have a much larger presence and have installed their own Governor for Winston, Naya Riviera. The previous Sword-Worlder governor, the Right-Honorable Glen Tunnel, had been accused of corruption, and had gone to ground with his family.
All Sword-Worlder bases on Winston are closed and the Zhodani are building their own.
Contessa is closely aligned with the Zhodani and there is a large presence of Zhodani soldiers in the grounds of the mansion.
"I don’t like all these Zhodani around – what have we done?" mused Gnostic.
"What is your problem?" responded Stasi (Zhodani herself), looking up from sharpening her knife.
[ As predicted in our last write-up, we re-open the debate on which staterooms each of us has on the Lost Crown. Fortunately, such debate had been foreshadowed and we were able to close it down quickly with reference to last week's write-up. ]
Whilst staying in the mansion, Riley and Penny had sleep disturbed by unfortunate dreams also known as nightmares. Neither could recall the detail until Gnostic successfully psycho-analyzed Penny (he didn’t dare do Riley) and Penny recalled spiders and a large one on her face.
That day Contessa summons us to a meeting.
"Are you happy to work for the Zhodani?" she asks
"Of course," responds Stasi
"Ah, not so quickly" chips in Gnostic – "Doing what?"
"Well, the Zhodani are arranging to establish a Secret Police force to help manage Winston. They haven’t been able to finalize that yet and have a number of resistors who need arresting"
"Sounds good to me" says Riley "How much do we get paid"
"Your normal salary plus a number of Zhodani tech items"
"Done" says Riley
"Not so quick" Emerse interrupts. "I don’t like this – it sounds very fascist to me"
We debated this for a while and then voted and agreed to accept the job with Emerse voicing his reluctance (and voting against).
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| Nasty nightmares |
Emerse, Gnostic and Stasi are all plagued by nightmares of spiders and blood encrusted fangs. The rest of us sleep like babies.
The next morning over breakfast we theorize that these dreams may be the Ancients trying to get our attention and do something about the Zhodani.
Of course, we ignore that and get on with the job at hand.
While the arrest warrant for the previous Governor of Winston Glen Tunnel was going through the courts, the new Zhodani administration wanted him out of the way more quickly, but to distance themselves from this, they arranged for a third-party, us, to do the dirty work. So we had been provided arrest warrants (on Zhodani administration letterhead) for Glen Tunnel, and his brother Homer, plus his wife Otira, and two grown daughters Hataitai and Manapouri Tailrace. We are also provided a location of a building where they are thought to be hiding in downtown Bitter End.
Care is required. The police of Winston still support the Governor (or rather ex-Governor) and we are sure that the building will be guarded. Since Itzy decided to stay at home with his Mum for a time, we lack fire power.
Two security guards stand outside the front door and one outside the door into the alley.
"Let's go to the tavern and stake it out a bit" suggests Riley with an alternative agenda.
"Good idea" says Stasi.
"I'm not so sure a Zhodani should go in there" Gnostic questions.
"It will be fine, let's go. What could happen?" asks Riley, parking the van and heading off with the rest in tow.
The Married Bee seems a popular place with good patronage. We enter and conversation stops and they stare at Stasi.
Ignoring them we get a table and sit down with Riley and Stasi going to the bar for drinks.
A large man with an even larger beer belly comes up to the two of them.
"Tell that Zhodani bitch to fuck off" he demands.
"You talking to me fatso?" responds Riley with a large grin developing on his face.
"Yeah I am and what's more….." he trails off as Riley's fist knocks three of his teeth out dropping him to the floor.
Riley follows up with several well aimed kicks before returning to the bar to get the drinks.
"Did you need to do that?" Emerse softly asks.
"Yes" responds Riley taking a large drink of whisky.
"You've kind of killed our cover"
"What cover?"
"Exactly – I ah ah ah might go" and with that Emerse exits and gets a taxi home.
During the distraction Penny and Gnostic had slipped out and sussed out the building.
The alley at night has two guards.
Penny, who is very stealthy, slips into the shadows and successfully climbs onto the roof. She quietly creeps along it and lowers herself to a ledge adjacent to a top floor window. She manages to jimmy it open and then decides to leave it an inch or so and re-joins Gnostic.
Meanwhile Stasi has decided to take photos of the inn patrons before making a hasty retreat to our parked van.
Spanner and Riley who have been sitting quietly, also now leave but not before buying his toothless friend a drink (no hard feelings in a pub fight). We all meet back at the van (except Emerse who has skulked off home).
After some debate a plan is hatched:
- Riley will offer a distraction by going into the alley and "acting" like a drunk;
- Penny will climb to the widow she left slightly ajar;
- she will lower a rope to Stasi (who can't climb very well);
- Stasi and Penny will enter the building and arrest the sleeping Tunnel family;
- They will then use Emerse's walkie talkies to radio Spanner;
- Spanner will back the van up to the alley;
- We will throw everyone in the van and drive off.
What could go wrong?
And guess what? – nothing did. In fact, everything went exactly to plan. The only slight variances were that Riley punched one of the guards (although no surprise) and that we ended up disarming and taking the two alley guards with us also.
We drive back to Contessa's mansion, rather delighted with ourselves and to the delight of Contessa, and the surprise of Emerse.
The family and guards are placed in an outhouse, and thirty minutes or so later two Zhodani arrive with a van and load the Tunnel family on and take them away.
Before leaving however, they summarily execute the two guards in front of us. We all stood shocked including Contessa. Killing in cold blood isn’t our style!
We have a few days to wait, hoping the Zhodani tech we are getting for payment arrives soon.
Jolly Doctor Dollywell (a psychiatrist) has been called for the bad dreams trauma, and works with Split and Gnostic who are especially edgy.
Riley has convinced Emerse that another valid coping mechanism is whisky and that it's worked very well for him for the past ten years. Emerse, still reeling from recent events, joins Riley and even tries to go glass for glass with him. Alas, Emerse's system is not as well attuned to the medicinal remedy of whisky and is asleep before long.
We continue to have unwanted dreams and some are very severe [we are losing psych points.]
"We need to get out of here" says Gnostic
"I want to fly that ship" slurs Riley.
We vote after each voicing our various concerns and unanimously agree to leave and go one system over to Entrope (Gnostic's home solar system).
Contessa provides us with a letter of introduction to one Sydney Walsh in Kingston (on the main planet Entrope). Well, we assume it’s a letter of introduction as its in a sealed envelope.
Gnostic sets up the jump computer with the correct navigational coordinates and set off. We move a million km from Winston (100+ diameters) and jump.
"Whoo hoo" calls Riley immediately before he vomits. Everyone else follows suit (except Stasi) – [ Jumping causes nausea and vomiting for the uninitiated. ]
In a week we will be in Entrope. Riley has already made one successful psych roll. Who will be crazy when we arrive ……?
Lore-dump: X-Boats and Traveller interstellar communications
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| Jump-6 X-boat |
To get around this, communication is done with X-boats. These are the Traveller equivalent of the Known World "Gnome Post" (or the Pony-Express in America in 1860). They travel around Imperium space* moving packages and information via jump space (hyperspace). The local version of Galactipedia is also updated on every X-boat trip.
The X-boat comes in three flavours: Jump-2, Jump-4, Jump-6 (which is the pinnacle of jump-engine technology).
The jump-6 X-boats are made almost entirely of fuel tanks with a small state-room for the single pilot and life-support, and a small one-tonne cargo-hold. The lesser jump X-boats have the same crew quarters, but can carry more cargo in leu of jump distance.
X-boats don't even have normal drives (atmospheric drives, space drives nor thrusters), so are totally dependent on their support ships ("dockers" or "catchers"). They have a small thruster ("quy bomb") to get them to 1G just before entering jump space (when entering in jump-space, the velocity vector is preserved, and the Quy effect preserves instantaneous acceleration during the jump-moment, so the ship feels like 1G onboard during the trip). This way they don't need expensive (and heavy) grav plates.
Every day, once a day, every Imperium system* launches an X-boat to every settled hex within six parsecs.
* = every settled Imperium hex, and every settled non-Imperium hex within six hexes of any Imperium hex. Plus every hex on the white X-boat "jump routes".
X-boats with different jump speeds are, of course, arranged so as not to waste the higher jump X-boats on trips where the larger engine is not needed.
The X-boat pilots are in fact gnome-speaking folks, and have the same motto as Gnome Post "We'll get your package there on time - or we'll drink our own urine".
And like Gnome Post, the cargo can not be alive (even low-berthers - who are effectively dead - are forbidden.)
The jump trip takes the normal seven days to do the trip, so at any one time, most of the X-boat fleet is in jump-space.
To save on cost, the X-boats use unrefined fuel (which is effectively free). The X-boat corporation bears this risk (and the cost) of a 1 in 216 chance of a misjump. Because systems tend to be on straight lines, more often than not, a misjump will arrive in a viable system anyway, so the X-boat can be recovered and refueled as normal. If it lands in an empty system, the X-boat is stranded (empty tanks), and crewman will have to wait some time while search parties are sent out. He better hope the misjump was not too far - it is possible to jump a vast distance (throw D6 to see how many D6s you throw - that is the number of hexes away from your target hex), so it may take some time for a rescue. He may end up drinking his own urine after all (he has enough subsistence rations to last a year).
On the rare occasion where the misjump destroys the ship (1 in 216 of misjumps), the corporation wears that. The hapless crewman knows this risk. He can console himself in that it is a quick death - when his ship materializes inside a star or planet.
As the (human) Imperium has 11,000 systems plus another 3500 adjacent systems, every day, there are about one million X-boat trips. Of these one million jumps, 4800 will misjump. Most of these misjumps will end up in a settled system, but 1600 will misjump to an empty system (and need to be rescued). 22 will misjump inside a star, asteroid or planet.
An individual X-boat pilot typically has a 10 year career in which time he will do 450 jumps, so will have two misjumps in that time; and will more than likely survive these.
Other cultures run their own version of X-boats. The Zhodani have the Z-boats, the Aslan have A-boats, and the Droyne have Scaly-crawlers. The smaller confederacies, like the Sword-Worlders and the Darrians, just use the Imperium's system.
