Starship Fantasies Playtest (Inactive)

Game Master Brian Minhinnick

Nodding at Botarr recognising his greetings Leo turn his attention to Auriel and answers: "We had a nasty run in with the pirates, which unfortunately costs the life of one of the crew and injured several, but we pulled through." He gestures with his hand and adds: "Shall we." indicating he's ready to go.

"Certainly." Botarr replies to Leo with a self effacing bow and smile. "I offer our humblest apologies that you suffered losses coming the aid of our insignificant world, but we hope to show you how grateful we are." He begins to walk up the sidewalk towards the spire. "If you all will come this way, I'll show you the quarters we've prepared for you, then take you to see the Headman."

Auriel falls into line behind Botarr, nodding to Leo and crew. He clasps his hands behind his back as he walks, in a disciplined looking fashion. The four guards also follow, keeping their eyes outward at the desert and the roofs of lower sections of the massive base.

Grunk you notice at least one of the guards is a half-orc. Another one could be, but it's hard to tell just by looking at him.

Grunk growls as he sees the guards fan out, before he realises that they were not trying to show a display of force. Then he notices the Half-Orc guard, unlike his kin he harbours no hatred towards the race.

He hangs back slightly and says in Orcish "ما هو عليه مثل رعاية هؤلاء الضعفاء؟ كيف سيئة واعتداءات من قبل قطاع الطرق كانت شركة مصفاة نفط عمان حثالة؟"

Horus falls in to line and follows taking keen interest in the surroundings.

Perception:1d20 + 8 ⇒ (20) + 8 = 28

The guard looks at Grunk for a moment before saying, "هؤلاء الضعفاء هم أصدقائي وزملائي. جعلت من القراصنة فقط الهجمات الفضاء حتى الآن. هناك الكثير من أبناء شعبنا الذين يعيشون على هذا الكوكب رغم ذلك، والعلاقات ليست دائما أفضل بين الجلود الخضراء والخناصر و."

Horus you notice that the base is well engineered to be both aerodynamic and well defendable. It looks old though, as if most of it was built right after the war and it hasn't changed much since. The exception to this is the large secondary dome, which appears to be an a-crystal (the raw unprocessed form of arcanicite) processing center. It looks brand new, as do all the sand crawlers constantly streaming in and out of it on their way out to the desert mines.

The greeting party leads you into the spire structure itself and out of the brutally hot Cygnuss sun, which hangs huge and white in the cloudless sky. Though the blast doors out to the landing pad are open, there is a slightly visible shimmering field covering the opening. As you pass through it, the air temperature changes dramatically and you feel a cool breeze blowing onto the back of your necks. The interior floor is lavish polished stone rich with geometric designs, and the walls are painted in cream and gold. The space along the ceiling is molded with gold filigree, and small potted palm trees line the walls. After a walk down a short passage, the hallway opens up into a massive multilevel dectagonal atrium busy with white desert robed humanoids going about their business.

Botarr bows and smiles, before motioning off to one side of the atrium and walking quickly that way. The four guards peel off, but Auriel continues to follow along. They lead you to a lift, which carries you up to the fourth floor of the spire. "Your rooms are just this way." Botarr says, leading the Excelsior crew partway around the curve of the atrium and stopping before a pair of white double doors. "I will leave you here to prepare. If you need anything there is a servant inside who has been instructed to see to all your needs. When you are ready he will bring you to the headman." Once again he bows low, awaiting any response.

Auriel simply nods and says, "I too must go, I am a busy man. However, I will be available to meet with you after you are finished talking with the headman. Pleasure to meet you. Until then." He turns crisply on a heel, and walks off in his rigid manner.

Leo waits until the officers are alone and says "All right give me your first impressions."

Walter looks at Leo, "Too early to tell really, but I have an uneasy feeling about this"

Looking at Walter, Leo nods as he responds "My gut is telling me the same. I'm not sure if we can trust either the Headsman or the guild representative. Tungsten, what was your assessment of the airdefences and our possible escape on the approach?"

"I'm more worried about getting back to the shuttle if things get rough"

"Getting to the shuttle would definitely be the hardest part--once we're in it we have the advantage of the shields and weapons of the ship. Although we will need to beware of sabotage or planted explosives. Perhaps it would be possible to bring down a few more of the crew to keep watch on it."

"Hmmm that Half-Orc back there mentioned bad relations between the Green Skins and pinkies...Maybe these ain't pirates in the looting ships kinda sense maybe these are vengeance attacks?"

"It might be a little early to make any snap judgements. Let's see what this Headman and the astro guild representative have to say first."

Still here, looking for a good point to enterject
"I have to agree with walter, to early to tell..." I reply to leo's first question, after waiting a few thoughtful moments.

Since you guys are wanting this conversation to occur in private I'll assume that you went into the suite and left Botarr behind.

The double doors open into a square shaped room with a fountain in the center. The ceiling is covered with an illusion of a blue sky, with clouds occasionally drifting past. There are comfortable benches around the fountain, and six doors leading off into smaller rooms. The smaller rooms have beds and bathrooms, everything consistently nice as you have seen so far.

There is a dark skinned human man waiting in the atrium, but he will wait outside if asked. He's the servant previously mentioned.

Grunk looks about the room quickly and directs his question at the dark skinned human Those rooms for us? he motions to the bedrooms.

Well that should be enough time, we better get a move on. Observations weren't half bad Leo thinks as he nods to what his colleagues have to say. "All right lets move. We'll meet with the headsman first. As always stay sharp." He walks to the servant, who waits outside the door after Grunk spoke to him. "Let the Headsman know we're ready to see him." Leo says in a firm tone.

"Yes sir. These rooms are yours. Do you need anything else at this time?" The servant replies to Grunk. But then Leo speaks up, so he turns towards him. "Of course, right this way please."

The servant leads you back down the hall and into a lift. He places his palm against the reader and says "Headman's office please." The lift whirs to life, propelling itself quickly upwards. After about forty five seconds of the rising sensation the doors open back up to reveal a lavish office. It sports a three hundred and sixty degree view of the surrounding desert through the tall windows it has instead of walls. You are clearly at the top of the spire, and the view is excellent. The floor here is lavishly carpeted, and you see a shoe rack immediately as you walk in. There are house slippers waiting for all of you. Beyond the carpeting the room is furnished with several low divans piled high with pillows, and a single large desk about three meters in from the elevator doors. Standing behind the desk is a tall red haired Caucasian man. He has a cropped auburn beard and jaw length curly hair. He is dressed in a white silk robe with extensive gold embroidery along the lapels. Botarr is standing behind him and a little to the right. He nods in recognition. The human man smiles as you walk in and he says, "Greetings! Welcome to Cygnuss Base. My name's Isaac Wrathvine and I'm headman here. Please, be seated we have much to discuss." He walks over to one of the groups of divans set up around a low circular table. Once everyone is seated he continues, "I'm very pleased that the Federation and the Guild have seen fit to keep their promise of protection. I heard that you've already had a run in with our problem. Did you learn anything?" As he is waiting for your reply the servant comes over with a tray covered in small steaming ceramic cups. They are accompanied by the wonderful aroma of cloves, cinnamon, molasses and other spices. The man offers you each a cup silently, holding out the tray.

Grunk walks into the office and scowls when he see's the slippers, he reluctantly puts them on and takes a seat. Grunk smiles at the Headman's words "Just that they are Orc scum. Like to think their better than the rest who actually work. Still gotta admire them, attacking a Federation vessel an' all." He perks up a bit when the gets offered a cup, he tips it to his lips and downs it in one. "Good enough. What is it?"

A bit puzzled by the Headsman's quarters and amazed at the same time Leo politely takes of his boot and puts on the house slippers. It's a sight for sore eyes, an overweight soldier in the standard fleet uniform wearing slippers. If anyone leaks a picture of this I'm going to have their hide he thinks as he moves towards the Headsman. "Thank you for seeing us Headsman." Leo says as he walks over to the divans. After sitting down he continues "We're glad to be of service. On behalf of the Federation I would like to say I hope for a long and mutual beneficial cooperation in the time to come. And you're quite right, we were attacked by orcs and goblins, pirates I believe. I think it's to early for us to have an informed oppinion, but we'll share what we learn. Do you have any informations that might help us?" After accepting a cup of the strange brew and having tasted it Leo adds "A wonderful taste, is it some sort of tea?".

Horus takes a cup of tea with thanks, but is content to watch and listen, letting senior officer run the show.

"Yes, it's a spiced tea. One of the few useful plants that grows on this world. Even then it only occurs naturally in one valley that we know of. I can't get enough of the stuff personally." He says with a chuckle, taking one cup for himself. "Let me just lay out the situation from the beginning since I don't know how well informed you are. Six years ago this base was a barely functioning backwater with little industry. Then the guild discovered the mother load vein of A-Crystal out in the desert. At that time Auriel was a prospector, it was his find. As hereditary ruler of Cygnuss IV he drafted an agreement between me and the guild. In exchange for developing our world, and building the infrastructure necessary to extract and process the A-Crystal we would provide the raw A at a premium directly to the guild." He pauses to sip his tea. "They also promised us guild protection. Everything went smoothly at first, but about six months ago the work was finally finished and the new plant came online at full capacity. Before they repaired the gate it was a ten month trip sublight to the nearest occupied planet. Our isolation was our shield. Ever since then we haven't had a single shipment make it through the gate. The guild has lost several escort ships trying to keep up their end of the deal. I'm guessing that's why you're here. They spent a lot of credits to make Cygnuss what it is today, but it aint nothing next to the value of what's buried out there under that sand. Desperate as they are for 'Cite they can't afford to lose here. I feel the same way, if we can't move the product off world it's value diminishes exponentially. Now that the gate's open we're sitting ducks until we can get enough revenue flow to build up a defense fleet of our own. We need to find out who's behind these attacks, and one way or another take care of them."

Taking her cup of tea, Kimefe sips it slowly. But it is obvious that she is not thinking of the taste so much as she is considering the situation that brought them to the planet in the first place. She perks up slightly when the Headsman mentions plans fleet. "Do you have any ships at all yet that could be useful in combat?"

Walter thinks for a bit, "Could we shut the gate down till we find who is behind the attacks?"

"Only atmospheric vessels at the moment, sorry." He responds to Kimefe. "That's probably why there haven't been any attacks on planet. As for shutting down the gate, I'm not sure how that would help. No unauthorized vessels have used the gate since the attacks started. I just meant that our using it to try to ship the crystal off world drew them like flies. Before that all the crystal was on planet, and well protected." He stops to stroke his beard for a moment, and then points to Grunk and says, "You say that they were greenskins. We've heard that from other ships too before they were killed. You're the first people to actually survive long enough to report back. Lot of green folks come here in the last five years looking for work. What'd these ones you fought look like? Any markings? What kinda ships were they flying?"

"They were Blood Claws. Work mostly as a Merc group so probably someone bigger behind the whole thing. They have some major balls, working Federation Space." He nods at the Headman "You pinkskins know any more about them."

Would get me in deep s**t if I said my real thoughts in front of these guys. Get the feeling that the headman found a better price for that crystal.

"Are all ships comming and going through the gate attacked?"

Blood Claws eh? I've heard the name. If they're behind this, then it means somebody hired them." He turns to Walter and says, "No, only the ones with the crystal. But the ships used to transport it are easily identified, so that doesn't tell us too much." He stops and seems to be thinking. "My men are known quantities around town. If they went around asking questions they'd just be frozen out. You on the other hand are new faces. Maybe you could go icognito and see what you can rustle up? Somebody's bound to know something."

Walter turns round to the crew, "How much A crystal could we transport in The Excelcior?"

Grunk smiles "Whole disguise thing could work. Anywhere we could start."

Grunk thinks trying to remember the holding capacity of the ship. "You thinking of hiring us as a transport, Walter?"

I am assuming Grunk would know round about how much it could hold. Would you need a roll for it?

Wanting to encourage his colleagues to follow their reflections through he keep quite for now, just watching. That's some good thinking on all parts so far, not the worst officers I have seen. He articulates some gluteal sound as he nods.

Excelsior can hold 30,000 tons of cargo. It's in the ship stats on the campaign info tab. All that info is available to your PCs with no rolls.

"I don't even think you'd need to disguise yourselves. None of you have ever been here right? I mean, lose the uniforms yeah. But beyond that I think you'd blend in pretty easily. You'd wanna head down to the base proper, leave the Spire. You could ask around the general store, Fortune's Temple or Thog's Place, obviously you'd need to keep it on the downlow. If people suspect you're police or something you're not likely to get far." He pauses to consider the transport question. "What did you have in mind Mr. Tungsten?"

I can't imagine that the federation would want to turn their new high tech ship into a cargo transport.

"It might be worth sending one or two of us around to these places, but it might be suspicious if we all start poking about."

You are correct Horus.

"I'll leave the details up to you. That is why you're here, yes?" Says Wrathvine. Botarr speaks up for the first time to offer some information, "Much of the population here is transient. About half of them will be out mining at any one time, and many come and go. For most people this isn't a permanent home. So that should work in your favor."

"Disguises would still be a good idea. If someone with a good memory already saw us then chances are that they'll blow our cover if they think it might benefit them."

"I certainly won't stop you from playing dress up." He laughs heartily at his own joke. Botarr forces a few chuckles, before looking embarrassed.

A bit annoyed with the Headsman's last comment Leo says: "Thank you for your time Headsman. We'll leave you to governing for now and get back to you later." He turns to his colleagues: "Lets find somewhere to plan this and not take more of the Headsman's time."

"You're quite welcome. If you need anything please let me know." the Headman says, bowing his head slightly.

"Were could we find new clothes?" Walter intergects

Botarr answers Walter by saying, "Just let the servant back at your quarters know what you want, and he'll bring it to you."

Anything else for the Headman? If not, everyone can tell me how they want to be disguised and we can move on to asking around the base.

Not from Walter, he is going to get the servant find him some middle-class boring clothes and hit the bars of the place

Okay, there is Fortune's Palace which is like a giant casino/temple/bar/hotel. There's Thog's Place which is an orc owned watering hole. That's about it as far as entertainment venues go.

Walter will go to the Fortune's Palace then...

Did anyone want to talk to Auriel? Remember he said he would meet you after the headman if you wanted.

As the group exits the headsman's chambers Leo suggests: "I think we ought to pay the guild a visit to hear what they have to say. Properly before we head down from the tower, just so we have another view."

Grunk replies "Good idea Leo. Then I reckon I would head to Thog's Place sounds like I could fit nicely in there."

"Talking to the guild is a good idea. When we split up, however, I think we should go in groups of at least two; don't know how we'll be able to get someone with Grunk though."

"Ya, I agree we should see the guild representative before we start mucking about."

So who is going where right now?