Player Characters:
Everett de Clisson (Adam), Medic and Engineer
Ganidiirsi Ashran (Ben), Steward and Cargomaster
John Matrix (Nick), Broker and Navigator
PCs Temporarily Run by the GM:
Gvoudzon, Vargr Temporary Gunner and Pilot
Dale Conan Wilder, Captain
Randall Dorsainvil, First Officer and Pilot
Significant NPCs:
Gyles Honsen, Broker on Natoko
Ulrich Baseru, Broker on Natoko
Ghan Siverns, Broker in Patinir
Gavin Kinnear, Prospector in Patinir
Homy Righte, Shuttle Pilot in Patinir
Baraatsa, Farmer and Howood Sculptor on Pysadi
5 Anolas
Dates:
021-1105 to 075-1105
Worlds:
Natoko/Aramis (Spinward Marches 3209)
Patinir/Aramis (Spinward Marches 3207)
Pysadi/Aramis (Spinward Marches 3008)
The March Harrier jumped to Natoko with a cargo of machine tools and drive parts for the Tukera starship maintenance facility, but no passengers. They arrived at the port to find a backlog of ships undergoing maintenance having reserved all the outgoing freight and passengers. Their usual broker, Gyles Honsen, told them that it take a month or more to find a significant cargo.
The next day, another broker, Ulrich Baseru, contacted the crew with a proposal. He needed some supplies carried to Patinir to supply some prospectors. Patinir was a Jump-2 away across deep space and so out of range of the March Harrier's Jump-1 drive, but Baseru said that he had some demountable fuel tanks taking up space in his warehouse, and he would trade them to the March Harrier in exchange for carrying his freight. The crew talked to the captain and did some math and determined that the value of carrying the cargo greatly exceeded the value of the tanks. Baseru eventually agreed to KCr 60 plus the tanks, installed by A Guy He Knew. It took a week to install the tanks, and when Everett and Gani inspected the work they found some of the hoses a bit fragile and liable to be damaged by cargo, so they insisted on having some protection added to make the hoses more robust.
With the fuel tanks installed and freight loaded, the March Harrier skimmed some fuel from the ocean then jumped for deep space. The captain chose to use a well-known deep space jump point rather than random coordinates, to improve the odds of being found if there was a problem. However, there were no problems, and after spending a few hours pumping fuel from the demountable tanks to the main tanks and calculating another jump course, the March Harrier jumped again to Patinir.
Patinir Belt featured two main space stations, Achilles and Ajax, at two Trojan points of the large gas giant Helen. Each station had about half a million people, and then there were close to another million people widely dispersed at various small asteroid stations throughout the belt. The March Harrier delivered their cargo to Ghan Siverns at Ajax Station, then started looking for passengers and freight. They hadn't found much when, two days later, Siverns contacted them with a job offer. His supply shuttle carrying cargo to one of the prospectors was late and could not be contacted by radio. He asked the March Harrier to carry a replacement cargo and also look for the missing shuttle. He said the in-system run only paid Cr 1000, but he'd also look for freight and passengers for the March Harrier free of charge.
On the trip from Ajax to the Belt, the sensor and comms operators found no sign of the missing shuttle. They delivered their cargo to Gavin Kinnear's small prospecting station, and Kinnear indicated that he still hadn't seen or heard from the shuttle. On the way back toward Ajax, the captain detected a faint distress signal. Vectoring toward it, the crew eventually found the shuttle, badly damaged by an apparent missile attack. There were no responses except the automated distress beacon, and a sensor sweep indicated strong radioactivity. The crew decided that the March Harrier should stay at a safe distance and they'd send the launch to the shuttle, with Everett and Gani injecting themselves with anti-radiation drugs before popping in for a quick look. They found one unconscious crewman, Homy Righte. Everett dragged him out while Gani tried to find any evidence in the shuttle's computer of what had happened. He was unable to find anything within a few minutes, and then it was time to get back on the launch and away from the radioactive shuttle.
As the March Harrier resumed its trip back to Ajax, Everett tried to provide medical care to the unconscious Righte. He awoke briefly and said one word, "Wolblutn," before passing out again. Righte died before the March Harrier reached Ajax, having taken too many rads to survive. The captain radioed the news of the shuttle to both starport control and Siverns. When the March Harrier reached the starport, the Starport Authority Police were there to receive Righte's body and interrogate the crew members. The interrogations went routinely, with it being clear that the March Harrier crews were would-be rescuers not the perpetrators of the nuclear missile attack, and the crew was allowed to go. Siverns had found them a good cargo, 100 tons of raw gemstones for Pysadi. The March Harrier refueled at the nearby gas giant, then made a double jump to Pysadi.
The captain met with the co-owners of the ship to determine whether to offer Gvoudzon a paid position, now that he'd reached the three-jump limit for working passage. There was some discussion of whether a deep space jump counted and Gvoudzon was already over the limit, but it was moot as they decided to hire him as gunner and co-pilot. Gvoudzon accepted the offer.
Pysadi was a low-tech world ruled by a local religious dictatorship, the Mother Church. It had a tainted atmosphere requiring a cheap filter mask. Unfiltered, the atmospheric taint resulted in giddiness and loss of coordination and mental control. The crew found some filter masks in the ship's locker and headed out to The Bar, the only bar on the planet, within the Extraterritorial Zone of the starport. There they found crew members of the other three ships currently docked at the small port: a Tukera freighter, the Vargr trader Thuksirra, and the Vargr trader Ghututh-Aeg. The Tukera crew didn't feel like talking. The captain of the Thuksirra told Gvoudzon that he was buying preserved groat meat for shipment back to the Vargr Extents, and gave the crew a lead to a groat farmer, Jakub Bell. The purser of the Ghututh-Aeg said that he was delivering decorative inlays from Violante for a church, but was headed out carrying candied fruits back to the Extents. He also noted that he'd heard that Pysadi's howood was currently popular, but unfortunately the Tukera ship had bought up all available stocks and he could not get any.
Gani ventured into the city of Sadi, adjacent to the starport, to try to get a permit for his grav belt. The clerk had never heard of grav belts and needed to check with a supervisor. When he came back the next day, he found that grav belts were not permitted. Looking into howood, the crew found that none was available in Sadi, but it might be possible to harvest some near the town of Itzeny, about 1000 kilometers away. They would have to take a train there, as flying the March Harrier or its launch anywhere except the standard approach route to the starport was not allowed. Howood was a very dense tree with its wood almost as hard as metal, so gathering it was usually done using explosives to blow the dense trees to bits, then gathering the bits.
The junior crew got visas and train tickets and headed for Itzeny, while the captain and first officer stayed behind to look for freight and passengers. At Itzeny, the crew found an elderly woman selling various arts and crafts, including some sculpted from howood. After Gani bought a couple of pieces, she divulged that the howood was carved by her nephew, a farmer named Baraatsa, who lived nearby. She gave them directions to his farm. After spending a night in town and getting permits for explosives and renting an animal-drawn wagon, the crew headed for Baraatsa's farm. The farmer was friendly and gave them directions to a nearby howood grove, asking that they scatter the seed pods and bring him back a few pieces for carving.
The crew took their wagons toward a hilly, wooded area where howood could be found. Gvoudzon took off his filter mask to briefly sniff for howood, but didn't find any. Gani, however, managed to sniff some howood despite having a less sensitive human nose. The group headed toward the grove, then spent a long time trying to find a path wide enough for the wagon to get near the trees. They then placed some explosives and managed to knock down a tree without killing themselves. Emboldened by success, they then continued breaking cracks in the tree with Gani's (illegal on Pysadi but not detected) morph-axe and inserting explosives in the cracks and breaking up the wood into smaller and smaller chunks.
While they were harvesting the howood, the crew noticed a small monkey-like creature watching. When there hadn't been an explosion for a while, the monkey approached the begged for food. When this worked, four more monkeys appeared. The display of cute begging was rudely interrupted by a panther-sized carnivore that pounced on Gvoudzon, ripping a large chunk out of his side. Fortunately for Gvoudzon, Gani had his axe handy and whacked the carnivore, badly wounding it. It fled, slowly because of its wounds, but Gani followed up with a second attack and killed it. Everett performed first aid on Gvoudzon, and then the rest of the crew continued loading howood into the wagon. They also took the dead carnivore. Gvoudzon was too injured to work much so he played with the monkeys.
The group headed back to Baraatsa's farm with the howood, the dead carnivore, and the monkeys. Baraatsa initially greeted them warmly, then his expression changed and he told them to get off his land. The crew assumed that killing the carnivore, even in self-defense, was some kind of offense, and decided to hide the evidence. They left some howood chunks on Baraatsa's porch and headed back to town. On the way, they saw a kid on a fast riding beast giving them a wide berth and reaching town in front of them.
The crew went back to the local church to get their visa back to the starport. The church official was initially friendly, but once the whole group was inside his office, several more church officials appeared, some brandishing revolvers. They herded the group into a detention cell, mentioning an affront against the Mother Church. Apparently the monkeys were called anolas and they were holy animals and not to be touched except by designated priests. Surprisingly, the anolas were left in the cell with the group. The priest indicated that he would be contacting the local high priest to deal with the problem, and the crew spent a night in the cell. They tried reaching the March Harrier on their communcators, but did not have any radios powerful enough to reach it on a primitive world with no datanet or cell towers to assist.
The next morning, the high priest appeared and indicated that the local elders had made their decision. Because the group were offworld heathens and had no idea what they were doing and had not actually harmed the anolas, most of them would merely be exiled from Pysadi and not allowed back. Gvoudzon, however, as the one who the anolas seemed to like the most, clearly had been chosen by Mother Pysadi's holy family and would be joining the church to serve as a caretaker priest. Gvoudzon didn't like this idea, but did not appear to have any choice in the matter. Gani slipped Gvoudzon a small homing beacon, hoping this would help the others find him if he was moved. The rest of the crew then boarded the train back to Sadi, which already had their howood on board.
When they reached the starport, the crew contacted the captain and told him of Gvoudzon's fate. The captain wrestled with the decision between breaking local law and letting one of his crew members be kidnapped, and decided to allow a rescue mission. They would launch the March Harrier into orbit normally, then he would stay on the ship while the rest of the crew took the launch and attempted to find and recover Gvoudzon. First Officer Randall piloted the launch, while the rest of the crew loaded up their (totally illegal on Pysadi) weapons and armor. They swooped down over Itzeny at night. The group attempted to contact Gvoudzon over short-range communicator, and he answered; the church hadn't bothered to confiscate his phone. He said that he was still in the same cell, with the anolas and an primer on the Mother Church. His cell had a window, though it had very thick multi-pane glass to keep out the tainted atmosphere.
The rescue tactic was straightforward: figure out which window Gvoudzon was behind, land the launch as close as possible, break the window, grab Gvoudzon, and get out. Randal landed the launch quickly and everyone piled out. Gani broke the window cleanly with his morph axe. Gvoudzon dove out, cutting himself on the sharp glass. Someone handed Gvoudzon a filter mask, and everyone ran for the launch. The anolas followed Gvoudzon and were taken along. A salvor appeared, saw the launch, and ran for help, but the launch door was closing before the priests found a gun and got a shot off, and they didn't seem to have anything large enough to affect the launch. Randall flew the launch back to the March Harrier, which jumped out of the system.
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