(3) [Traveller] Voyages of the R.e.d. Dusk

Game Master mdt

I agree with Scandalous's assessment. If we find fissionable materials we can switch priorities.

"Agreeable...perhaps now that we have fuel, the first priority should be orbital survey to search for fissionable materials. I would prefer to avoid repairs on one ship just to switch to another."

"Any suit for me is a lost cause, I think, unless there is a Droyne wreck in orbit...which seems quite unlikely. Once we get back to civilization, I'll make replacement a first priority."

Then let us search for some fuel in orbit, once secured, we can move the spare parts we need to EAVE's island. In the mean time, we should at least board the tools that we need to salvage from the ring. The repair bots might help with the same. At least they can move the radioactive material more safely than us. At the most they can help us dismantle what we need.

"I suggest that after we take on the tools and repair drones, Dev, EAVE & I immediately head into orbit. Dev is our most skilled pilot, and can run sensor sweeps with EAVE's help until we find something useful."

"Once we locate potential salvage, EAVE can run the drones to bring it aboard, and I can work on stripping operations once items are in the hold. We secure anything useful and eject the dross, then repeat until we are full or satisfied."

"As we are searching for fissile material, we should also take with us any appropriately shielded storage containers available, so we don't end up with a radioactive hold."

Dev works on the numerous systems, with the help of Scandalous. He shows her the basics of mechanics and as the week progresses, she gets better and better. As they start ferrying the supplies back to EAVE's island, he also begins her training to pilot the pinnace.

"I suggest that after we take on the tools and repair drones, Dev, EAVE & I immediately head into orbit. Dev is our most skilled pilot, and can run sensor sweeps with EAVE's help until we find something useful."

"Once we locate potential salvage, EAVE can run the drones to bring it aboard, and I can work on stripping operations once items are in the hold. We secure anything useful and eject the dross, then repeat until we are full or satisfied."

"As we are searching for fissile material, we should also take with us any appropriately shielded storage containers available, so we don't end up with a radioactive hold."

I see no flaw in your planning Cap...Malt She says almost calling him Captain. I suggest also Take Tam, She has proven herself most capable in an emergency. And would be a valuable asset should something go wrong.

Tam's Jack of all trades could be crucial given mdt's curve balls :P

"EAVE isn't sure crew should use Symbiote Drones for anything besides repair in a safe location. Symbiote Drones likely are not equipped for performing other tasks well, or surviving harsh environments like NEBULA. It stings and it burns. EAVE is rated for Harsh Environs."

A flash of worry crosses Scandalous' angelic face. It was possible the little bot saw the repair drones more as kin than tools. EAVE could just refuse to utilize the repair drones based on that logic alone. While the aristocrat had studied psychology, she wasn't sure how much of that knowledge would help in convincing the little bot to risk damage to the drones.

She considered explaining that risking a non sentient 'life form' over a sentient biological life form was morally correct, and then quickly dismissed it. If she were in EAVE's place, she would find it condescending and racist. Scandalous instead decides to appeal to EAVE's drive to serve her crew's best interests.

You may be right about the nebula negatively impacting the Symbiote Drones, and risking all of them at once would be unwise. However, You know how fragile your biologic crew is in comparison. The lack of adequate medical facilities and the risk of radiation poisoning is a real concern. If we all go on the Pinnace... After all, if the Pinnace is lost, she'd rather be on board than live the remainder of her life on their prison of a planet. ...and we all share the risk. Would you consider using at least some to collect the fuel and parts we need?

Tam agreed with Scandalous' suggestion not because she had any misconceptions about her ability to help. Rather she didn't trust anyone else with ther only means of transportation,"I'm willing to go."

EAVE's 'eyes' flicker off then back on almost immediately, something she's been doing more and more lately. "Affirmative, Civilian Scandalous. EAVE had intended for EAVE to perform the difficult tasks for crew, but time is important for crew as well. Giant death tops could finish combat at any time!"

Ok, seems like the agreement is to go into orbit for now

Loading the tools and some of the bots onto the pinnace is easy enough. Activating 10 of the repair bots is also easy enough, although they need to be reprogrammed to accept EAVE as a 'coordination unit' so it can give orders to them.

3 Difficult reprogramming checks, takes 4 hours work per check

The repair drones are not sophisticated though, and have a CAP of 1, and Engineering of 1, and require a Drone Coordinator to function. EAVE will have to dedicate one of it's two personality matrices to Coordination whenever it they are in use.

Dev needs two piloting checks, one routine and one average to take the ship to the debris field

Once at the debris field, the group decides how long they search. Each four hours of searching gives one Sensors check to find something useful. The ship can stay out up to 10 days on recon, although you'll use up 60 days of food doing so! You have about 100 days left

Well the reprogramming checks should eat up at least a day. How much fresh food can be processed in that time? I'm sure anyone not reprograming can work on collecting and processing

Depends on how well Warren does with the tests of the food

Well, I'll use fru fru to identify human edible food right? I'll check the fruit/fungi we've seen cultivated so far. do I need to roll anything?

Reprogramming is Computers and Int, right?

@Jenni - Yes, because they are not the kind you trained on. Eventually it will switch to EDU once you are familiar enough with them

When given samples of the fruits, Scandalous's little pet nibbles on the pulp of the leafy globes, and also the leaves, indicating it's edible by humans. It licks the small red cubes, and then immediately turns black and spits, recoiling from the cubes, indicating they are not safe for Scandalous to eat. It nibbles at the orange fruit, but doesn't eat much of it, indicating it's edible but just. The red fruit it nibbles on, but the yellow fruit it shoves it's face into and begins to pig out, it's coat turning a rosy pink.

As Warren sorts through the fruit for consumption using color coded bins they found on the ship. It appeared the yellow spiked fruit and leafy globes were the best to start with. At least they will not have to worry about someone eating the wrong MRE. The Red spiked fruit can be used to as the secondary choice, once they run out of the other bounty.

how many MRE's can we produce starting with Yellow Spiked, Leafy Globe, then Red spiked? How much can we produce in a day?

Depends on how many people are working on it. The machine can process a variable amount of food a day, depending on the type. 250 kgs of heavy water food (fruits, etc), 100 kgs of high density protein (meat), and 150 kgs of fiber heavy plant matter (tubers, legumes, squashes). A single person might be able to gather a 25 to 40 kgs of yellow spiked fruit (half that for Orange or Red), or 40 to 60 kgs of leafy globes (orange/red spiked are high up on the tree, yellow spiked toward the bottom, globes at head height). A single person could gather up about 10 kgs of the cubed fruit in a day (if you find a use for them). Note that Fru Fru only understands Human food safety, not Darrian or Droyne. Warren will need to test them all for information on Darrians or Droyne

then we'll wait for Warren to post

After helping set up the processing equipment, Warren looks at the work they've done. "All we need now is something to process. I'll collect some of each of the plants and see how good it is for each species here. I'll also sample some of the fish and see what we can do with it. I would think all would be good for us to eat if they were cultivating it but better safe than sorry."

Warren, need one EDU or INT Biology check for each thing (Globe fruit, globe fruit leaves, dice fruit, orange, red, and yellow spike fruit

After collecting the plant parts Warren analyzes the specimens.

Biology Int Globe Fruit: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (3, 3) + 2 = 8
Biology Int Leaves: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (1, 6) + 2 = 9
Biology Int Dice fruit: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (5, 2) + 2 = 9
Biology Int Orange: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (5, 4) + 2 = 11
Biology Int Red: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (2, 4) + 2 = 8
Biology Int Yellow: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (5, 5) + 2 = 12

leafy globes that might be fruit (Globes)
Human, Edible by Humans (average nutrition)
Darrian, Edible by Darrians (superior nutrition)
Droyne, Edible by Droyne (inferior nutrition)

leafy globes that might be fruit (Leaves)
Human, Edible by Humans (average nutrition)
Darrian, Extremely toxic to Darrians
Droyne, Edible by Droyne (average nutrition)

small square red fruits that glow in the dark
Human, Extremely Toxic to Humans
Darrian, Edible by Darrians (Highly nutritious)
Droyne, Edible by Droyne (inferior nutrition)

Spiked Fruit : Orange, Red, Yellow
Human, Orange: Edible by Humans (Mildly toxic)
Darrian, Orange: Edible by Darrian (Average Nutrition)
Droyne, Orange: Highly Toxic to Droyne

Human, Red: Edible by Humans (inferior nutrition)
Darrian, Red: Edible by Darrian (average nutrition)
Droyne, Red: Edible by Droyne (inferior nutrition)

Human, Yellow: Edible by humans (Highly Nutritious)
Darrian, Yellow: Edible by Darrians (Superior Nutrition)
Droyne, Yellow: Edible by Droyne (average nutrition)

Computer: 2d6 + 1 + 1 - 2 ⇒ (2, 3) + 1 + 1 - 2 = 5
Computer: 2d6 + 1 + 1 - 2 ⇒ (1, 6) + 1 + 1 - 2 = 7
Computer: 2d6 + 1 + 1 - 2 ⇒ (1, 2) + 1 + 1 - 2 = 3

Jenni spends several hours attempting to reprogram the bots, but to no avail.

Computer: 2d6 + 1 + 1 - 2 ⇒ (5, 6) + 1 + 1 - 2 = 11
Computer: 2d6 + 1 + 1 - 2 ⇒ (6, 4) + 1 + 1 - 2 = 10
Computer: 2d6 + 1 + 1 - 2 ⇒ (4, 5) + 1 + 1 - 2 = 9

Looks like the second day is the lucky one. By the late evening of day 2, Jenni has completed the reprogramming.

Looks like I'm going to have a healthy diet as long as I avoid the leaves.

I mentioned collecting fish from the trees earlier but didn't roll for it.

Biology Int Fish: 2d6 + 2 ⇒ (5, 6) + 2 = 13

Tam happily helps where need becoming more confident that they are going to get off this planet.

Scandalous works the food processor as the others bring in the spiked fruit. It was miserably repetitive and back breaking packaging and boxing the tubes of paste, but not more so than the people collecting the fruit and bringing it to the Pinnace.

The pop star squeezes one of the tubes of edible paste into her mouth. The food was not unpleasant but more like baby food she had tasted before. It would certainly get old before too long. She helped store the food and tools. Scandalous was more than ready to be Dev's co-pilot as they flight prep for their venture out into the debris ring. Here's hoping for good luck. she says with a smile.

Dev needs two piloting checks, one routine and one average to take the ship to the debris field

Once at the debris field, the group decides how long they search. Each four hours of searching gives one Sensors check to find something useful. The ship can stay out up to 10 days on recon.

The fish are edible for humans and Darrians to eat, and toxic to droyne.

"Perhaps crew should gather more varied foods so that goop has more colors so they do not become boring? Then can pack a fish goop with a fruit goop with a cube goop with a lobster goop and get all the colors."

"Doctor Warren? Can Doctor Warren's toys aid him in finding alternate uses for plants? If primarily human population grows cubefruit and cannot eat cubefruit, it must have a purpose, yes? EAVE thinks that Doctor Warren's data says that we do not have a viable food source for Engineer Malt yet, is this correct?"

The yellow spiked fruit is average nutrition for Malt.

We could likely mix Globe and red spiked fruit in for a more comprehensive Universal paste that everyone can eat and won't eventually make people sick (a full coverage of micro/macro nutrients). However we have enough to get by for our search of the ring, and further our self rescue as a result. I personally am looking forward to a juicier part of the story

Which I take to mean 'potatoes and bread' levels of good for him. Can survive, but can't thrive. Need good strong lizard food. :)
Otherwise he's stuck eating food that's passable while everyone else has food that's actively good for them. :)

Which I take to mean 'potatoes and bread' levels of good for him. Can survive, but can't thrive. Need good strong lizard food. :)

Otherwise he's stuck eating food that's passable while everyone else has food that's actively good for them. :)

No I fully understand where you were going. And it may be incredibly selfish for me as a player, but I didn't want to get stuck in a grinding out card board flavored RP on food scavenging. I was hoping to intersperse it with cool space travel stuff and getting the repairs started first. Although killing dinosaur sized herbivores with the Pinnace does sound fun too.

[oc]Well load up and lets go hunting...lol!![/ooc]

Dev readies the pinnace to take into space once again in the hope of finding useful items to salvage.

Not going to hold up the game waiting for the rolls, I'll do the rolls for Dev

Dev Pilot, Routine: 2d6 + 2 + 1 + 2 ⇒ (6, 3) + 2 + 1 + 2 = 14
Dev Pilot, Average: 2d6 + 2 + 1 ⇒ (6, 6) + 2 + 1 = 15

The next day, Dev pilots the ship into orbit, and then begins to slowly scan through the debris field.

Sensors, Malt, With Assist from EAVE: 2d6 + 2 + 1 + 1 ⇒ (3, 3) + 2 + 1 + 1 = 10
Sensors, Malt, With Assist from EAVE: 2d6 + 2 + 1 + 1 ⇒ (6, 3) + 2 + 1 + 1 = 13
Sensors, Malt, With Assist from EAVE: 2d6 + 2 + 1 + 1 ⇒ (4, 2) + 2 + 1 + 1 = 10
Sensors, Malt, With Assist from EAVE: 2d6 + 2 + 1 + 1 ⇒ (2, 1) + 2 + 1 + 1 = 7

"Well I can move us in closer to any of the three...which do you want? That second one interests me the most, as it is most recent. What do you think?

EAVE sits paradoxically quietly at the Scanner station, watching the little data feed. The suggestions she makes are few and far between. She seems mostly content to allow the others to work while she reads the data and comes to her own minor conclusions, which she then shares.

"EAVE thinks Pilot Dev is right. Less damage means less decay, probably. Second ship may also be a fighter ship. So may have weapons! EAVE thinks crew could use weapons. The trader likely has things of value but would be highly dangerous to investigate. The final ship could have anything, and crew should likely not ignore any as long as crew deems it likely there is value in the time spent. EAVE thinks the second one is also sleek, like EAVE. Very interesting ship."

Does EAVE's Circuit Protection guard her from the Radiation of the first ship? If so, would her repair swarm also be protected? Do they likewise have circuit protection or sufficient radiation shielding?

Yes, the circuit protection protects from radiation, and the swarm have rad shielding

"Well then let me get close enough for you to send your little friends over to check the ship out."

Dev maneuvers the pinnace close enough for the re-purposed repair bots to gain access to the derelict ship.

Pilot: 2d6 + 2 + 1 ⇒ (3, 3) + 2 + 1 = 9

Dev maneuver's close to the ship, and a couple of small bots are flushed out of the airlock toward the ship.

They land and use magnetics to move around the hull.

"Swarm cannot get in. EAVE should help?"

Scandalous watches Dev set the nav computer's trajectory to insert the Pinnace into orbit. She feels a little nervous as she looks around the co-pilot cockpit. The HUD pops up to overlay on the cockpit window. Thin lined light green octagons move on the HUD in time with the outside. They were a guide to fly through as they move into orbit. Dev offers the controls for Scandalous to practice. She take the controls with a deep guttural giggle, like some little girl doing something naughty.

It was the first time since the crash that she has felt giddy. She had tried to put forward a positive face, but the truth was, she felt like she was dying inside. The weeks of despair were erased in the moment. It seemed like forever and no time before Dev took control once more to execute the more complex maneuvers.

It has such sexy lines. Scandalous says of the second found ship.

At least we haven't triggered any automated defenses. The pop star says of the swarm failure to get access. Yes please EAVE, anything you could do would be appreciated.

EAVE pauses for a moment. "EAVE left her magnetic grapples in her other legs. EAVE will be unable to properly maneuver without them. EAVE will be happy to help once on the ship, but only has one arm. EAVE cannot both hang on and work. EAVE apologizes."

Just remembered selling stuff to become functional. Ugh!

Scandalous turns to Dev. Can we do a slow spiral pass around the ship? Maybe we can recognize a port or airlock that our little repair bots can't. Everybody keep your eyes open.

"well that's a little advanced and dangerous, but let me see what I can do."

Just using his maneuvering jets, Dev tries to get a good 360 of the wreck.

Pilot: 2d6 + 2 + 1 ⇒ (6, 3) + 2 + 1 = 12

I assume you retrieve the bots before pulling away

The ship is tumbling, making Dev's life harder, but he manages to complete a survey of the ship, and does find what looks like a landing deck. It's hard to tell though, as it appears to be a landing bay door, it could just be a landing bay, or a flight deck, without going in it's impossible to tell.

This will require a Very Difficult piloting check. He can get help from a copilot

How big is the other ship by comparison to ours?

Who is on the ship with Dev?