New Neptune (c/o nationstates.net)

The Folly landed on New Neptune, a once thriving industrial world, covered from pole to pole in automated manufactories, that was now sparsely populated. Returning to civilized space, the Folly received a bunch of backlogged messages from the Flotilla, since they were about six weeks behind schedule. The final message came from a new contact, Saihong Oo, not the person who’d hired them. Doc Kovacs sent his apologies and asked for delivery coordinates.

Cpl. Cho looked for a place to stow the “Chosen” evacuees from Sirrus. An old buddy, Asaf Biton, said that he needed some unskilled labor to reactivate an abandoned manufactory – but a shipful of Carnac’s Corsairs were squatting there. Cho volunteered to clear the place out. Elsewhere, Doc Kovacs traded in the server carts from Sirrus for some high-quality maintenance drones.

Kovacs brewed a low-density neurotoxin that they could pump into the manufactory’s air vents to knock the Corsairs out. They went to the manufactory and climbed up forty flights of stairs to where the Corsairs had docked their ship. Kovacs triggered a fire alarm to distract a hovering security drone, then loaded the toxin to take out the Corsairs one story up.

Kovacs and Cho loaded the unconscious Corsairs into an abandoned office, pausing only to round up a last few Corsairs who hadn’t been around at the time. They balked at the idea of murdering the Corsairs en masse, so they made a call to the Ariel Mutual Prosperity Sphere. Ariel was more than willing to send a local factotum – Charvin Kised, economic enforcement officer – to pick up the wanted pirates.

While he had the crew handy, Kised grilled Kovacs on their wild jump from Carthage. Kovacs admitted to firing on the Dusters but denied any involvement with the tank theft. This satisfied Kised, especially when Kovacs agreed to take on a job for Ariel: transporting a prisoner, Mason Brooks, to Persephone. Mason Brooks was the Flotilla resident whose whereabouts were being tracked heavily by the last occupant of the tank Kovacs had just stolen, but Kovacs didn’t mention having heard the name before.

Having taken two irreconcilable jobs – deliver a tank to the Flotilla, keep Mason Brooks away from the Flotilla – the party split up. Cho and Brooks chartered a flight to Argus Station, an asteroid mining station. They stayed over for a couple of days, with Cho begrudgingly paying off some AFFM thugs in an extortion racket.

Meanwhile, Kovacs rendesvouzed with the Flotilla itself in the Hieronymus system. He met his new contact, Saihong Oo, aboard the Arc of Descent. While they inspected the tank, Oo offered him another job – retrieving a ship that had been separated from the Flotilla on a prior jump, the Instant Gratification. Kovacs accepted. His attempt to sell the maintenance droids from New Neptune fell through, though – there was a tempting new cargo to trade, but it was on the other side of the Flotilla, and Kovacs didn’t have the two days to wait.

Persephone (c/o starwars.wikia.com)

Kovacs picked Cho and Brooks up at Argus and continued on to Persephone, a water-covered planet known for manufacturing pharmaceuticals. The starport was jammed with people trying to evacuate: news had broken that Carnac’s Corsairs were one jump out of system. Brooks spotted some Flotilla heavies tailing them from the airport. The crew reached their destination, but got pinned down on a skybridge by automatic weapons fire. Both Kovacs and Cho took severe wounds, but got Brooks to safety and dispersed the goons chasing them.

EPISODE 02

The Folly docked at a mining camp on the stripmined world of Carthage, in search of Chobara Entresi and her impervious survey tank*. The crew split up to gather information in various ways: Corporal Cho checking in with a mining recruitment officer, Dr. Kovacs scanning SectorNet for logs of mining crew activity, and Zeke jury-rigging a surveillance drone to hover through the camp and eavesdrop.

They uncovered the following:

• Carthage was divvied up almost entirely between member worlds of the Ariel Mutual Prosperity Sphere: Persephone, Ariadne, and others.
• However, there was a sizable patch at the south pole that no one had laid claim to yet, occupied by wildcat miners. Entresi and her crew were last logged as exploring a claim there.
• To disperse the miners, Ariel had called in Captain Reynolds and the Dusters**, a cold-blooded crew of mercenaries. They were loading up for the south pole.

Carthage

The crew promptly returned to orbit and relocated the Folly to the south pole. They fast-talked their way past Ariel Orbital Control, claiming they’d suffered a major hull breach. Orbital Control graciously offered to send some techs to help them fix it, forcing Zeke to create an actual hull breach after they landed.

They snuck up on Entresi’s crew at the base of a massive strip mine crater. Zeke rigged an explosive and snuck it next to some industrial waste stored at the far edge of camp. Dr. Kovacs hacked into the survey tank using the computer in his suit and climbed inside. The industrial waste exploded, causing a distraction, and Kovacs drove the tank off, ignoring the miners’ small arms fire.

Unfortunately, the Dusters were inbound to scatter Entresi’s camp. Zeke opened fire on them from his spider-tank, drawing the attention of a few tanks and APCs. Kovacs charged them in his invulnerable tank, opening a wedge for Zeke (with Cho riding on the back) to follow behind.

The crew made it back to the Folly and sped through the repairs, which Ariel’s techs hadn’t been able to finish. While Zeke patched the ship, Kovacs cracked the encrypted datastore within the tank. Someone had recently used the tank to surveill Mason Brooks, a ranking Flotilla arbiter, on the industrial planet Hephaestus. As the Dusters appeared on the horizon, the crew quickly lifted off.

Orbital Control was waiting to intercept them, given their unauthorized landing at the south pole. Unwilling to wait for a customs team to inspect their ship, Cho punched in a wild jump. The Folly fell out of the galactic disc, spiraling into a realm of impossible perspective, before slamming back into real space at unknown coordinates. Some diligent searching of star charts revealed the nearest known system – Sirrus 2160-A20, populated only by a research station around a gas giant that had been abandoned over a century earlier.

Exploring the research station for some needed deuterium fuel, the crew found the feral descendents of the station’s last inhabitants. Cho got shot with a nailgun trying to parlay with them. He retreated to the ship and studied a fragment of their recorded warnings, deducing the ancient language it had derived from. Returning to the station, he worked out a trade: the Folly could take as much deuterium as they needed, but they’d have to bring six “Chosen” members of the tribe with them. Six volunteers were escorted aboard, while Zeke left them a laser-light show “Captivator.”

* which I stole from a G+ thread; wink wink.
** I watched Firefly once, over a decade ago, but this didn’t click with me until after we’d cemented it into the setting. Ah, well.

Dr. Kovacs was waiting in a boarding queue at the Symbaroum* starport, a vial of smuggled mutagen tucked inside his coat. Security guards conducted spot checks along the line. Kovacs tucked the vial into the bag of the woman ahead of him, foiling the guards. The woman sat in first class on the shuttle from the starport to the docking satellite, but Kovacs managed to “stumble” into her later and retrieve the vial.

Aboard the satellite, Zeke Pendergast was attempting to load the legit cargo – three giant stone tablets of dubious cultural relevance – onto the Faraday’s Folly. A steward representing the AFMM hit him up for a bribe. The guileless Pendergast fetched his remote-controlled spidertank to load the tablets himself. In retaliation, the Movers suited up into half a dozen heavy loaders (think Aliens) and flanked the Folly.

In the city, Jason Cho bailed out a former comrade, Specialist Yamato, from a night in the drunk tank. Leaving the Hall of Justice, they were surrounded by the thugs Yamato had offended the night before. Cho made short work of a couple, but the remainder ganged up on Yamato and beat him down pretty hard. Cho hustled Yamato to the starport and fast-talked him aboard the shuttle to avoid further complications with law enforcement.

Aboard the satellite, Cho spotted an old friend among the Movers, and sweet-talked her into letting the crew bribe their way off-system at a reasonable price. The Folly debarked to meet their buyer.

On Caliban Station, Kovacs handed off the vial to Mirada Kith, an arbitrator with the Flotilla. Impressed by his capability, Kith asked a favor of Kovacs: retrieving a highly secure exploratory land vehicle from Chobara Entresi, who’d borrowed it from the Flotilla and run off. So long as the tank was retrieved intact, Kith didn’t care whether subterfuge, persuasion, or force were used. Kovacs agreed.

Pendergast’s attempts to unload the tablets were not as successful. His local buyer pretended to offer him some assets of similar quality, but secretly went to call Tomahna Tomar, a ranking lieutenant in Carnak’s Corsairs who specialized in fine art. When her goons took the tablets without paying, Pendergast attempted to bluff a trade, then tried pulling the pins on two goons’ flash-bang grenades. The net result: Pendergast waking up, concussed, in Tomar’s shuttle.

After Pendergast wrecked Tomar’s shuttle in the process of trying to escape – rigging his pocket torch with a plasma battery – she ordered her goons to drag him off to some alley and execute him. Dr. Kovacs, thankfully, spotted Pendergast and ambushed the goons. The doctor got gutshot in the ensuing firefight, but Pendergast tripped an old fire suppression vent to give them some cover to escape. Cho covered their retreat to the ship with his heavy breaching armor, and the crew made it to the Folly safe, if not intact.

* no relation to the Swedish fantasy RPG of the same name. I knew I was stealing this from somewhere, but couldn’t recall where.

This is a recap for our Uncharted Worlds series. It follows the crew of the Faraday’s Folly, a light unsanctioned freighter, as it trades cargo and favors between all corners of the civilized galaxy.

The Folly is crewed by:

• Zeke Pendergast (Colonial Industrial Explorer): an ambitious engineer who dreams of uncovering the secrets of the cosmos;
• Dr. Lukas Kovacs (Advanced Clandestine Academic): a “special investigator” who’s retired or fled from the covert service;
• Cpl. Jason Cho (Crowded Military Starfarer): a veteran space marine, specialized in retrieving spacecraft and the persons on them

They do their best to survive in a galaxy dominated by the following factions:

• The Ariel Mutual Prosperity Sphere (Popular Political Network): a loose alliance of worlds bound by treaties enforcing their joint economic interests;
• The Flotilla (Brutal Anarchist Society): a lashed-together mass of ships, drifting from system to system, where the strongest hold sway;
• Carnac’s Korsairs (Violent Starfaring Fleet): the most feared pirate fleet, operating with no code of ethics, ruled with an iron fist by Victor Carnac;
• Alliance for the Free Movement of Materials (Controlling Criminal Society): a/k/a “the Movers”, a star-spanning union of teamsters who’ve insinuated their influence into countless governments.

The Straylight landed at the Isfahan spaceport on Criticorum. They were greeted by an armed escort and Amir-Ali Cadizza, a local customs official. While Captain Manx met with TK in his office, two of the armed guards prowled through the ship!

Fannagus fenced off the guards by locking off certain bulkheads, pretending a computer malfunction had messed with the doors. Meanwhile, Cadizza made clear his (regretted but necessary) plans to seize the ship to ferry off VIPs from the troubled planet. Manx tried to counter with cajoling, blandishments, and veiled threats, but settled for punching Cadizza in the throat and yelling at him.

Freed of their entanglements, Manx, Avracek, Fannagus, and Ferizio set off into the city. Manx and Avracek got some more details on the guild summit happening in the coastal city of Ostgard. Manx’s former mentor, the “Old Man”, was in attendance, as was Lt. (once Maj.) Lexa Cassardi. Yori Jaehar, whom the pilgrims had ridden with to Kish, was representing the Scravers.

Fannagus and Ferizio found a pilot willing to take them to Achaeon. Since they were low on firebirds, they worked out a trade that required them to reactivate an AI-capable think machine for some home rule revolutionaries. Fannagus did so, but introduced a bug that would reboot the system every 37 minutes, making it useless.

Arriving in Ostgard, Manx and Avracek split up: Avracek to check out the Muster contingent, Manx to reintroduce himself to Captain Jaehar. He found the captain at a flashy nightclub that the Scravers had taken over. While exchanging insults and banter with the Scraver, Manx noticed a ring on the man’s hand, bearing the same device he’d found on Brother Sand’s ring!

The Engineers arrived at Achaeon, now a vast and lightless cityscape, at night. They crept through an abandoned shopping arcade, decorated with four-color revolutionary posters of Ibrahim Amarjah, Sir Victor (!), and other heroes of home rule. After several hours, they came to an open-air plaza at the crossroads of two skyways. They started across the plaza before noticing the approach of others: a party of Istakhr loyalists approaching the plaza from one direction, with a party of home rule revolutionaries lying in ambush!

Manx produced his own copy of the ring, prompting Jaehar to dismiss his entourage and produce a blaster. Despite the apparent weakness of his position, Manx bluffed Jaehar into letting him go, and dropping a few unsubtle clues as to the nature of the mysterious organization that employed Sand and Jaehar, in exchange for the ring and Brother Sand’s message strip. Manx slipped away to his rendezvous with Avracek, only to be ambushed by a party of armed goons! They dropped a hood over his head, whisked him through a series of blind turns, and loaded him into a flitcar for Yintrai.

Fannagus and Ferizio took cover behind some outdoor furniture while the ambush kicked off, then exploited or created a few distractions—including a rigged machine pistol to simulate a second ambuscade, and hacking the assailants’ think machines to get them to overheat—to get past them. In the confusion, Ferizio took a bullet to the gut. Fannagus dragged him to safety, sterilized the wound with some scavenged liquor, then stole some first aid supplies from the abandoned corpse of one of the ambush party. Though he wanted to bring Ferizio with him, the plucky apprentice insisted that Fannagus continue on alone.

Manx woke in an opulent study in Yintrai, an abandoned, plague-ridden city on the southern coast of the continent. He was interrogated by the Iconoclast from behind, who pretended or claimed not to recognize him. Manx caught only a glimpse of his son’s face—burned in some accident, his right eye replaced by a cybernetic—during the conversation. However, before he was hooded again and dragged off, he caught a glimpse of something on the study desk that could provide an insight into his son’s crusade.

Captain Manx, still wounded from his encounter with the Black Service, tracked down Rathko, an information broker of his acquaintance who hung out in the krill fighting pits beneath Kesparate. With some reluctance, Rathko coughed up a hot rumor: the Guilds were convening on Criticorum to aid in the rebuilding efforts, and that sort of turnout was bound to draw the Iconoclast’s attention. Manx then realized that Rathko was stalling him so two goons could circle around and snatch him up!

Aboard the Straylight, Fannagus set to work encoding a new algorithm to make Arcos capable of questioning itself. After countless hours, he came up with a solution he was happy with. Now, to implement it!

Manx tried to evade the two goons, but ended up starting a firefight, shooting them dead, and fleeing in the chaos. In the dock at Kesperate Orbital Control, he found two “allies” waiting for him: Mohaim Avracek, the Muster functionary he’d impressed into his cause upon first arriving on Leagueheim, and Alok Tmnegar, burned-out Charioteer.

Mohaim Avracek and Alok Tmnegar

Reunited on the Straylight, Manx learned that Sir Victor Swindon had departed in the night, returning to Ravenna to save Lady Maryam. The pilgrims also realized that Ferizio had not yet returned, so Manx dispatched Avracek to go fetch him. In discussing what to do with Arcos, the pilgrims learned that Arcos had “partitioned” the humans like Fannagus had “partitioned” it, by releasing the dormant Symbiots to roam free through certain sections of the ship.

Fannagus uploaded his new specs to Arcos. After a prolonged round of programming and interrogation, Arcos accepted its new framework. It admitted that it might be able to find a new solution on Criticorum. Shortly after this, Avracek returned with Ferizio in tow, and the crew made ready to depart.

Having learned that the Straylight could make the jump from Leagueheim to Criticorum directly, the pilgrims filed a false flight plan to Madoc. Manx used the ship’s automated medic to tend to his injury, then rigged the ship’s fire suppression system to spray the free-roaming Symbiots with the solution that put them in stasis. Fannagus made up with Ferizio, apologizing for having ignored his friend’s concerns, and the two came to a truce.

The Straylight made the jump to Criticorum and was greeted by two ships, apparently from rival factions. Manx tried to pit the two of them against each other, but couldn’t prevent one of the ships from grappling on and sending a boarding party. The pilgrims repelled the boarders by trapping them in a killing jar and getting some help from Arcos. The enemy ships withdrew, leaving the pilgrims to proceed to Criticorum.

As the pilgrims approached the unknown planet, a series of unknown vessels appeared, bombarding the Straylight with unidentified energy. Quick diagnosis on Engineer Fannagus’s part revealed that it was radio waves—too analog for the Second Republic vessel to recognize as communication. Fannagus jury-rigged a radio transceiver and Manx replied to their hails. They identified themselves as Charioteers and escorted the starliner to Leagueheim.

Leagueheim (c/o deviantart)

Manx and Swindon dressed up Brother Sand’s corpse in a steward’s uniform and passed him off as their dead Charioteer pilot. However, their itinerary still had enough gaps in it—there is no known jumproute between Nowhere and Leagueheim—that the Straylight was remanded to a council of Guild functionaries for potential salvage. Manx and Fannagus talked down the Scraver and Muster representatives with little difficulty. The Engineers proved amenable to sharing the credit for any findings aboard the Second Republic vessel; the Charioteers ceded their claim once Manx convinced them the Straylight wasn’t a threat to their monopoly; and the Reeves settled for a bribe – thirty “contracts” for skilled ship’s stewards (the Symbiotes in stasis in the pool).

In the course of their negotiations, the pilgrims learned that they had been “out” for thirteen months.

Fannagus went to the Engineers’ library to begin work on the new AI logic that would stop Criticorum from being culled. When Ferizio nearly spilled the details on what Fannagus was working on to other engineers, Fannagus blew up at his young friend. The two went their separate ways in anger.

While tracking down a bent Charioteer to “pilot” the Straylight, Manx was found by some Scraver flunkies. They escorted him to Dean Toth, who furiously demanded where Manx’s son was. Manx insisted he didn’t know—that he’d been hoping to get that tidbit from the Scravers, in fact—and a few hours of heavy interrogation by some Scraver heavies convinced Toth that Manx was telling the truth.

Fannagus passed Sir Swindon while returning to the Straylight. Swindon bid his good-byes, insisting that he had to get to Ravenna to save Lady Maryam from the mental alterations that Countess Adorna had put on her. Fannagus saw him off, then powered up the bridge to continue researching the AI he carried with him. However, when he drew the familiar transparent cube from his robes, it was already glowing brilliant white. The Second Republic quantum core was communicating aerially with the Second Republic starliner and had already begun taking over its systems.

Toth brought Manx up to speed on the last year: a person or persons known as “the Iconoclast” had been striking at Guild centers throughout the Known Worlds. He believed that the Iconoclast was Manx’s son, and that Manx’s son knew the whereabouts of Caspar Chauki. That knowledge gave the Iconoclast leverage which hindered Toth’s efforts to move against him, and so he asked Manx to bring his son in. Toth was just about to offer some aid when the sound of blaster fire interrupted them.

Fannagus partitioned the database that “Arcos” was studying, trapping it. Arcos retaliated by shutting off the oxygen scrubbers. In exploring the database, Arcos had found a whole new list of worlds in need of the same “optimization” that it had started on Criticorum. Fannagus convinced the AI that it would have better luck with his help than without it, and Arcos eventually turned the air back on.

Manx recognized the commandos attacking the Scraver headquarters as the Black Service, the Muster’s off-books elite unit. He fled out the side of the building and hijacked a magnetic maintenance lifter, riding it down the outside of the two-mile skyscraper like a sled. Re-entering the building a hundred stories later, he fled through a security office, blending with the crowd until guards could engage one of the pursuing soldiers. The last soldier, Manx overpowered and drowned in an office fountain, though not before suffering a severe blaster burn.

The Black Service (c/o deviantart)

The pilgrims regained consciousness in the plush lounge of a cruise liner, adrift somewhere in space. They found that Brother Sand had somehow come with them, and that he’d been shot in the gut. He made delirious references to the snipers he’d hired shooting him to keep him out of the Gargoyle, to “serving an Empire that didn’t exist”, and to the pilgrimage being a front to get one agent (himself?) to Nowhere. Sand pressed a ring into Captain Manx’s hand, a ring that bore the same sigil that Manx had spotted on Sand’s documents on Shaprut, and died.

Fannagus and Ferizio explored the ship like children on holiday, recognizing it as Second Republic tech. They eventually figured out how to call up maps and communicate through the intercom. They made their way to the bridge and identified their current course: in orbit around an unrecognized star. Since the readouts were all in proto-Urthish and referenced planet names that had been out of vogue for a thousand years or more, the Engineers had no idea where they were. The best they could manage was the ship’s name: the Straylight.

The Straylight, out of Palimpsest
(img c/o deviantart)

Manx searched Sand’s body and found a small arsenal, vials of chemicals, and a strip of blank, striated paper. He and Sir Victor carried the body down to the banquet hall and stored it in the freezer. Throughout the ship, they found no other passengers, but evidence of a ship in use: well-maintained, stocked for guests, free of dust and wear.

Reconvening on the bridge, the pilgrims set a course for the second world orbiting the unknown star. The Engineers set about examining the ship’s logs, determining that it had been in operation 1,130 years ago, but that it hadn’t been doing anything since.

Manx and Victor discovered rows of floating bodies in the deep end of a pool in the Straylight‘s sauna. Confused at their lack of decay over so much time, they recruited the Engineers to help them examine the bodies. When Ferizio began draining the pool, the bodies sprung to life. Despite Manx’s remonstrations with a shotgun, the “bodies” clambered out of the pool and advanced on them! Manx peppered them with shotgun blasts while Fannagus ran to evade them. Ferizio got the pool refilling again with the solution that had been stabilizing the bodies. Fannagus had a close call, dragging one of the assailants into the deep end with him, but held out long enough for the weird human-like creatures to return to torpor.

(We’re missing Chapters Nine and Ten, I know. REAL QUICK: Chapter Nine got our heroes to the Stigmata garrison, where Acolyte Gwinn turned on the heroes and abandoned the party. They made it to Nowhere, but lost their native guide and got their flitcar shot up in the dusty wastes by snipers)

Captain Manx got an entrenching tool from the repair kit strapped to the side of the flitcar and slowly dug and levered the car around, until Engineer Fannagus could pop the hood and work on the engine behind its cover. The snipers continued to pepper the car with rifle fire before going mysteriously silent. Manx dug some impromptu barricades while Fannagus jury-rigged the engine to redline to its highest gear once he got it working again. With moments to spare, the engine ground to life, and the pilgrims sped off—just as the masked snipers, led by Brother Sand, drew near.

This was the first session where we used Fate Accelerated Edition instead of my clunky homebrew. The players seemed to get the hang of invoking aspects and creating advantages pretty well.

The pilgrims rode the flitcar until the engine died, then trudged in the direction of the Gargoyle on foot. They found the titanic monument in the center of a vast dust bowl. Approaching it, they spotted an opening in the massive plinth on which the statue crouched, and cleared away the centuries of drifted dust to wade inside. Once within, Fannagus set to work puzzling out the alien markings on the walls that directed them to the Gargoyle itself, while Manx covered their tracks and left some false trail signs to steer their pursuers the wrong way.

Eventually, Manx, Fannagus, Victor, and Ferizio reached the top of the plinth, though its dimensions seemed vastly larger than what they’d perceived from the outside. Viewing the Gargoyle from below, they felt as if they were drawn into its vast, abyssal mouth. With their questions foremost in their minds, they passed into darkness.

Fannagus found himself driving down a dirt road in a pre-Republican combustion engine truck. A map on the seat next to him indicated six different stops, connected by a variety of roads. He picked what he thought was the shortest route and set off for his first stop: a small, pre-space-flight farm that nonetheless had an artificially intelligent “farm regulator” maintaining it. Rain had grown unpredictable, crops were mutating, and the cows had formed a parliament, so Fannagus got out his repair kit and fiddled with the machine’s innards to restore its settings.

Continuing to his next stop, he met a pair of salespeople from the company that installed the farm regulators, stranded by a broken-down truck: Tamara Japrisot and Alan Turing. The three of them talked shop, comparing their difficulties with various forms of AI, on the way to Fannagus’s next repair call. This next stop was much more serious than the last, however: the three found the basement of the farmhouse packed to the walls with corpses. The regulator’s AI had interpreted its mandate to supply enough food to maintain the farm’s population too literally. As the food reached zero, it corrected the population to zero.

Dr. Tamara Japrisot, lead researcher on the Suprema AI language. The researcher whose notes Fannagus was sent to find.

Realizing the regulator would continue culling the population, Fannagus sat down with Alan to figure out a way to fix its process. Alan revealed that (somehow) Fannagus had published a paper on how to overcome procedural dead ends in Suprema machines. Through conversation and strenuous theorizing, Fannagus realized that he could get an AI to correct a “satisfactory” (but monstrous) solution by forcing it to constantly re-evaluate “satisfactory” solutions—making it neurotic, and therefore more human. Fannagus coded the new logic cycle into the machine in the basement and rebooted it … to success! It dawned on Fannagus that a similar process could stop the quantum cube from culling six hundred million people on Criticorum. Then the world vanished.

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS, was a British pioneering computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, mathematical biologist, and marathon and ultra distance runner.

Manx awoke as his son, Hal Jr., sneaking off to Criticorum on leave from his temporary job with the Muster. His pal Gobi, a Charioteer, steered him through the urban megaplex to a secret club in the depths of the arcology. They paid a steep cover to drink some local swill and be “introduced” to some local girls. Hal’s girl was an Ukari named Zahra, possessed of an attitude and a mind unlike anyone he’d ever met before. Normally a player on Aragon, he found himself at a loss.

Gobi, Charioteer

Hal spent the entire trip with her, enchanted and yet resistant in the way that teenage boys can be. They spent as many hours discussing their differing views of the universe—Hal believing that fate and commerce had assigned everyone their proper place in society, Zahra taking a more existentialist view—as they did in carnal pursuits. Finally, Gobi came to pry Hal free and get him on a ship back to Aragon. On the way out, Hal passed a Muster squad rousting apartments for warm bodies; they raided Zahra’s tiny flat shortly after he passed. On the jump back to Aragon, Hal fell deep in reflection, realizing he wasn’t satisfied with a galaxy that could turn someone as bright as Zahra into mere chattel. Gobi offered to introduce him to a “friend” who could advance him the cash he’d need to buy out Zahra’s contract. As Hal stared into the vast abyss of stars, he was given a brief vision of a vast network of credit and debt pulsing between the populated worlds. Then, the world vanished.

Zahra

(This is a recap of a recent game of Star Wars, using a slight retooling of John Harper’s Danger Patrol system)

Our adventure begins in an engineer barracks ship in low orbit over Ord Mantell, scrapheap to the Empire. Three members of Renegade Squadron – cocky soldier DG-834, a reject clone trooper; Jedi diplomat Flail Envar-Shun; and droid pilot 34CC – were in the mess hall, hunting down one Cond Zendu, a traitor to the Rebel Alliance. Zendu was suspected to be selling secrets to the Empire, and Renegade Squadron had been assigned to “confirm his status” (that is to say, kill him).

Ord Mantell (c/o starwars.wikia.com)

DG-834 was deep in a game of sabacc against a variety of aliens, including a foul-tempered Gungan. Flail was undercover as an engineer, replete in dusty overalls and scratchy beard. 34CC was innocuously maintaining some equipment. 34CC was the first to spot Zendu, migrating for the exit in the midst of a crowd of engineers. However, just as CC radioed in to the team, CC was spotted by Noval Dana, a trader to whom CC owed some money. Flail was picked up by a senior officer, who needed the “engineer’s” help fixing a busted hyperdrive. And DG’s game was broken up over an accusation of cheating.

Cond Zendu (c/o starwars.wikia.com)

DG shouldered his way toward Flail, ruining the hyperdrive beyond repair by spilling a drink into its cyclonic tubes. He was then assaulted by the Gungan, grabbed from behind and tossed about bodily. Flail slipped away in the chaos, tagging Zendu with a bugging device. CC ducked Dana by stealing a robe from a Jawa taking an air shower.

Realizing that Zendu was going to get away unless they took drastic action, DG pegged Zendu in the head with a blaster shot at long range – while still being grappled! Flail wasn’t exactly thrilled at Zendu’s brains splattering all over his stolen engineer’s uniform, but couldn’t complain at the mission being successfully completed. CC returned the favor by pegging the Gungan with its holdout blaster, an equally tricky shot. The three Rebels then booked it for their transport.

In orbit around Ord Mantell, they rendezvoused with their commanding officer, Tymos Jax. He thanked them for killing Zendu, but expressed concern that Zendu might have found a way to get word to his Imperial contact regardless. Jax dispatched the team to Mon Calamari, aquatic planet and Imperial shipyard. They were to find Zendu’s contact, retrieve the data, and ensure that it didn’t get uploaded to the Empire’s data network.

Tymos Jax, Renegade Squadron (c/o starwars.wikia.com)

The team arrived on Mon Calamari and split up to sniff out leads. DG-834 jacked a stormtrooper in an alley, swiped his uniform, and snuck into base, relying on his knowledge of relevant stormtrooper protocols to carry him through. Flail passed himself off as an Imperial officer, infiltrating the cadet academy on Mon Calamari to learn what he could that way. CC sliced into a data terminal around the docks, hoping that a pilot droid would fit in without raising eyebrows.

This is one of the few ways I diverged from Danger Patrol, and I think it works well. A Hook Scene – a scene in which the heroes gather leads and build up tension for the next action scene – works the same as an Action Scene: players gather dice based on abilities, roll, and look for hits. The only difference is that no Threats are in play. Instead, every hit allows the player to narrate one true fact about what they’re searching for. Every Danger result allows the GM to narrate one complication. The subsequent Action Scene is usually about playing out these complications.

What follows – what Renegade Squadron uncovered – is a joint narrative effort: partly made up by the players, partly by me. I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Mon Calamari (c/o starwars.wikia.com)

By hacking Imperial data logs, CC determined the name of Zendu’s contact, Lieutenant Melina Keosine. CC also confirmed that Keosine was on planet, and that Keosine had not received Zendu’s message yet. However, while disengaging from the data terminal, CC realized that it was being tailed: a shadowy, robed figure ducked behind a corner across the hangar bay.

Lt. Melinda Keosine (c/o amctv.com)

DG blended into an Imperial barracks, falling back into his old routine as a stormtrooper. By spending a day overhearing the right gossip, he learned that the data was being transported via droid, and that this wasn’t just any droid, but a heavily armored droideka. The exchange would take place in an illegal arms depot deep underwater. He had just radioed this data back to the team when he was recruited for a special assignment: Lieutenant Keosine was taking 7th Company, his company, to pick up the data!

With some forged papers and a little Jedi handwaving, Flail passed himself off as a visiting Imperial officer. He learned from some front desk gossip that Lieutenant Keosine was in hot water with her commanders, and that she “needed the win” that this data would provide. However, due to the high rank and excellent qualifications he’d forged for himself, he was sent off on a very sensitive assignment: tracking down a rogue pilot droid, 34CC, and delivering it to the visiting Captain Piett!

Placed in command of a detachment of stormtroopers, Flail substituted another droid’s description with that of CC’s. He then ordered the stormtroopers to disperse and secure all the hangar’s conventional exits. This left him alone with the commanding sergeant, whom he reluctantly Force-choked in an abandoned corner of the station.

Sneaking through the hangar, CC found a low-orbit pleasure yacht suitable to take down to planetside. However, the shadowy figure snuck up on CC at this point and fired a stunning charge at the pilot droid. CC realized the stalker was a bounty hunter droid, aiming to put a restraining bolt on CC! CC blasted the bounty hunter with its holdout, stormed the yacht, elbowed aside the elderly couple who owned it, and took off. So focused was CC on evading Imperial monitors and flying the yacht that it didn’t notice the hunter droid clinging to the outside of the craft, crawling toward the rear hatch …

DG bluffed his newfound comrades and followed the increasingly nervous Lieutenant Keosine to the aquatic hideout of Faid Santorini, Quarren arms dealer. Santorini met them in a steam-soaked tunnel within his base, asking if Keosine had his payment. When she confirmed that she did, the tunnel was filled with glowing red sensors: the eyes of assassin droids!

Faid Santorini (c/o starwars.wikia.com)

As the rear hatch of the yacht was forced open by the bounty hunter droid, CC plunged toward Mon Calamari’s oceanic surface, yanking up on the throttle at the last second. The yacht skipped across the surface, and the bounty hunter was scraped off like gum from a shoe. CC then activated the yacht’s amphibious mode and submerged for Santorini’s base.

DG laid down a hail of fire, taking out the assassin droids with suspicious accuracy. He and Keosine were the only two left alive. Keosine then charged down the corridor from which the Quarren had come, only to be cut down in a hail of blaster fire: the courier droideka was active and defending itself.

Flail arrived at the aquatic base to find DG pinned down by automatic blasters. An explosion buckled the tunnel, threatening to flood it with seawater. Flail used his Jedi powers to keep the structure intact, though he couldn’t say for how long …

Fortunately, CC charged to the rescue, piloting a flatbed cargo mover down the narrow tunnel. CC knocked the droideka off its legs, pinning it on its back. Flail and DG held off Santorini’s fleeing thugs, desperate to escape, while CC jury-rigged an escape capsule in the underwater hangar. DG ran back to get the data chip from the disabled droideka, barely making it back to the capsule in time.

Aboard their operations vessel, Renegade Squadron debriefed Commander Jax. DG reported that the droid’s data had been destroyed in the explosion. Later, in his quarters, DG examined the purloined chip on his data slate – leverage in case he wanted bigger or better things from the Alliance. CC, piloting the Renegade ship, viewed DG’s data terminal in turn, keeping tabs on the crafty clone trooper. And Flail Envar-Shun meditated in his cabin, brow heavy with the implications of his brief trip to the Dark Side.