Shiny! - Traveller in the Firefly Verse

So it is finally underway. I got my first session behind the screen with the weekly gaming group. My brief story arc will be played out using the Mongoose Traveller rules in the Firefly and Serenity Verse.

For the first session not a whole lot happened beyond character generation. Five of the eight players were in attendance and pre-rolled 3 spare characters for the other players to pick up and run with so that we can just jump right into the thick of things next time.

Character generation was a blast, as it always seems to be with Traveller. I remember whole afternoons and evenings of the old group 3 decades ago just sitting around rolling character after character for the fun of it.

The players present ended up with some funny outcomes due to the die rolls. The 5 PCs already involved in the action include a SOC 11 Lord (with possible Companion training?), slumming with the likes of a mad scientist, a gutter rat of a former soldier, a former intelligence agent, and a scout (with an enemies and contacts list as long as the rest of the group put together) who trashed a scout ship early in her career.

After completing the character generation we had time left to move into the beginnings of the story. The players had received the following info via email to give them a sense of where things are headed.

 - You sent waives to your normal list of contacts on your approach to Persephone. The trip in-system took about a day during which you heard back about available work. Mostly small jobs or nearly worthless cargo runs were all that seemed to be up for grabs.

You had to land anyway since you were running short of fuel. Having used 48 of your 52 tons, left you with at best a couple more days of operation.

Worse yet, a month of laying low after the last job has left you nearly broke. Despite making enough from that single job to pay two months of overdue ship mortgage bills, you're wondering if helping those siblings get from a Fed facility on Sihnon to Persephone was such a great idea.

Sure, you have confidence that your cover story will pass muster, and the stolen shuttle you ditched had nothing on it that could lead to your involvement, but curious Feds poking around tends to interfere with finding the better paying, less legal, work.

You didn't figure on getting a meeting request from Cricket. A former Companion, she runs in High Society circles and no job coming from that crowd can be called "small".

The meeting is scheduled for 11:00am tomorrow at the loading dock of Pearl of Heaven Industries. Can't hurt to hear what she has to say.

Funny thing about Cricket. Rumor says she is over 60 years old, but she doesn't look a day over 23. Suspicion is that she's big into use of anagathics, anti-aging drugs. If true, that is a very expensive and dangerous habit.

Nothing's ever what it seems.

The players decided to take care of some items of immediate necessity such as getting at least a little fuel. Nessa Black (the aforementioned scout) was taking care of buying 10 tons of fuel, not enough to jump, but enough to make sure they had over a week of operation otherwise. At 500 credits per ton, that 5,000 credits felt like a kick in the gut to some on the crew.

(note: I do not have my notes so some names will be edited back in later)

Lazlo Jenn, ever curious, put his intel gathering skills to work and began researching viea the cortex what he could about Pearl of Heaven Industries and Cricket. Cricket is the public face of the corporation some of the time. The company is currently pushing a new cosmetics line "Touch of Eternity" with lots of Eqyptian design stylings, and marketed as helping hide signs of aging, etc, yadda, yadda.

Cricket is also a broker for "work" of a less legitimate sort, though that is not public knowledge except to some in high places with more money than god.

Meanwhile, Morgan Cahill (aka Lord Morgan) and Dr. Zarkhov decided to wander over to the high side of the city and reconoiter the meeting space get a feel for what they might expect. They already knew there would be tighter Federal, corporate, and personal security in place, and that their own hardware would not be welcome, but they were more interested in the layout and possible exits should things turn ugly.

While making their way high-side, Morgan discovered that they were being followed, almost from the time they stepped off the ship. The tail stuck with them until somewhere near the upscale area, then they managed to shake whoever the two goons were and made their way to just outside Pearl of Heaven HQ.

The building was a construction involving three high-rise towers, the center one the tallest at over 20 stories, and the loading dock appeared to be a landing pad for shuttle sized vessels, placed well above the ground between the right and center spires, 12 stories up.

Lord Morgan decided to have a drink or three at a nearby upscale restaurant. Dr. Zarkhov however would not be able to get in the front door so bribery at the rear of the building would have to make due.

While inside Zarkhov's lack of social graces managed to endear his face to the fist of one of the kitchen staff. This resulted in a call to the local fed patrol and the doctor being booted out of the building.

Lord Morgan had a much more pleasant experience and after finding that he was under observation, began sending drinks to the table of the curious duo before eventually joining them for conversation. Before the two tall, thin gentlemen in dark suits and sunglasses departed they remarked that they might see his Lordship tomorrow.

Zarkhov, alone and annoyed had tried returning to the ship without the company of Morgan Cahill. He was about halfway back when he was jumped. (to be continued).

It is funny that most of the crew seem to have some former ties to the Alliance. I am really looking forward to continuing this in about eleven days with session 2. Hopefully we'll have a full house of players.