The Shaded Grove's page

As the game carries on, Shade appears from the galley carrying several dishes in their stubby arms, and a few more floating along behind them with a bit of magic keeping the dishes aloft.

"Alright folks dinner is served. Roast rytvik from Vesk-8, not exactly gourmet but I hope it'll do."

It's no delicate fillet, that much is certain. A large slab of medium-cooked red meat occupies most of each of the plates, with a small side of roasted root vegetables to go with it.

"I'm used to cooking for Vesk but hopefully this will do," they say just a little nervously, and they waits a few moments before adding: "Pretty sure I got all the toxin sacs out."

You're not entirely sure if Shade is kidding or not.

Bluff: 1d20 + 1 ⇒ (20) + 1 = 21

I just realized the rather horrendeus omission in my previous post.

I AM NOT GRILLING VESK!

I meant to write Vesk seasonings.

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Everyone alright with lizard meat though?

Hey man I just work here!

In all seriousness, I like that there's a bunch of different names and history to go with the ship. Hunter's Bounty as the current name is great. :)

As the ship's AI announces over the loudspeakers that Steve is about to potentially blow themselves all up, Shade looks down at the salad he was preparing, and wonders to himself why he was serving something that would just make himself look more palatable.

He throws the salad away and instead begins grilling a few choice slabs of meat, putting some of the Vesk he still had on before doing so.

In short order, the smell of grilling meat fills the ship. The air recyclers can only do so much after all.

While Steve is threatening the ship and it's inhabitants with horrifying death, Shade is taking his turn on the dinner rotation, preparing a simple salad with nuts and cheese.

Hopefully the ship is still here when he's done making the salad...

I think starting in the Drift is the best option for everyone. Less pressure on the GM, and if we decide we're done RPing for the moment, we can simply break there rather than, as you said, in the middle of an encounter.

We could downgrade the twinlinks to a single and upgrade the thrusters to M10, if our pilot thinks he can handle that much ship ;)

After having a quick gander, it's basically impossible to have a Tier 1 large ship anyway. Both Large frames cost 40BP each, and the cheapest Large Powercore is 15 BP... so you'd have to not have engines, nor any sort of armaments/upgrades, to fit within the 55 BP limit.

(Almost seems intentionally prohibitive to force PCs into Medium ships, which are the size of the Falcon, Serenity, or similar "adventuring" ships.)

Personally, my go-to is the Transport. Only 3 BP more than the Explorer, gets an extra turret, a forward heavy weapon, an extra expansion bay, more HP and more CT. It is less maneuverable (Turn 2 instead of turn 1), but I think it's worth it.

So my proposal is something like this:
Transport Frame - 15BP
Pulse Gray Power Core - 10BP - +100PCU
Signal Basic Drift Engine - 6BP
M6 Thrusters - 3BP - -50PCU
Good Crew Quarters - 2BP
Basic Shields 30 - 4BP - -15PCU
Budget Short-range Sensors - 2BP
Basic Computer - 0BP
Twin-Linked Light Laser Cannon (Turret) - 5 BP - -10PCU
Heavy Laser Cannon (Front) - 8 BP - -10PCU

Total BP: 55/55, Total PCU: 85/100

I made it so we had 2 guns, since I forsee having 2 gunners. It's pretty light on AC/TL boosts, but the shields are pretty tough, and the armament is nothing to sneeze at. The turret gun could be dropped down to single-light laser to save 3 BP to put elsewhere (Better engines, for example).

Thoughts?

I love this sorta stuff so I can whip up something. The frames that the SFS uses and generally designed as the PC ships (Medium Transport or Explorer), or we could go with something with a little more chonk (Large Freighter) but we would likely not be as heavily armed.

Seems as though everthing is in order so far. On to ship building or do folks still have some stuff to work out?

"You guys won't believe this is real, but I got a goblin with the ship! Most liked comment gets to choose his name!"

Ahahaha. This is fantastic.

I think I will still keep the Veskarium deserter part of my character. He's definitely got a bounty on his head in the Veskarium, but probably not enough to interest Haro.

Easy way to fit Cedona in with that idea: Cedona (or the colony she's on) owns a majority share of the ship and got all of us a bearth aboard either to work or to Haro because she's a fan of his?

You're probably right about that, especially since we are supposed to all know Cedona beforehand.

I don't see many people jump at the opportuity to be the "owner" of the ship, so I guess I'll toss in a competing theory to Haros and we can go with whichever we like more:

Leaving the service of the Veskarium is not something to be done lightly, or easily. Shade was done though, and he needed an out. He couldn't just hop the next transport out though. He'd be branded a deserter before the ship reached the first checkpoint. So he stole a small escort ship and made a break for it, barely escaping.

This would make Shade wanted in the Veskarium, and our pair of bounty hunters signed on as crew to bring Shade in?

Alright here is Shade! Decided to try the thrown weapon route and see how it works out.

I was also thinking that Shade might be a little bit of moral compass as well. They spent most of they're early years among the vesk since some other Ghoran told them that the Pact World races thought Ghoran were a tasty delicacy. So Shade is kinda used to dealing with... ah... not very nice types, and trying to do good anyway. If Valen's lawman ends up being Lawful, he and Shade could argue about the how, but not the what. (Shade is Chaotic). Could be some nice interplay.

Anyone want to volunteer to be the "owner" of the ship that brought these disparate elements together? Shade could (since he has the Spacefarer theme), but he's not going to fit either Captain or Pilot roles, so it seems a bit strange to me. But hey, that's why the crew was hired.

@Haro: I'm thinking the whole social media deal isn't a huge thing in the Veskarium, so I imagine Shade only found out about it through his first interaction with Haro. "You do what for a living?" :D