The Foot of Blue Mountain

Intro

I had the privilege of playing in Hawkeyes's Frydheld Sector game and wanted to write up a quick session report!

Dramatis Personae

The Sesh

Our story starts out on the planet of Rapplrook, UWP C57868D-8, where (soon to be) Baron Gunnar Gunnarson meets Zoe Fernandez and Plunk Skimmer. The Travellers set out to find work to pay for a refueling aboard Zoe's Scout Ship (thanks to a lucky series of rolls, Zoe has a personal ship). This search for a patron is largely unsuccesful, leading us unfortunately to the door of some masked men in Combat Armor. They nab Zoe and Gunnar off the doorstep of the tenement they're squatting in (Plunk, the only character with good sense, stayed in the street proper). Zoe and Gunnar are told, with the persuasive tongue of sudden violence wagging in their ear, that they need to drive a large military vehicle to the starport and call the masked men when the vehicle arrives at the starport.

The vehicle, the Traveller equivalent of an APC, rolls up. Power readings in the interior show immense power usage, far higher than would normally be used by an idling vehicle. Some quick examination of the interior of the vehicle reveals a very large improvised explosive device in the personnel carrier part of the vehicle. Yikes

Outside (remember, Plunk was not caught by these black operatives) our correspondent on the street Wek Pibb is handing out free beers and talking about pay day. "I make the handles for rifles!" he says, and goes on to explain to Plunk that "those guys in the house are bad news. My boss told me to just pretend like they don't exist." Full of the kind of advice that's good to have before you knock on their door, Plunk steals a hovercar and pursues the Oklahoma City Special.

The drive through the city is slow, thanks in part due to the incredible power consumption of the bomb, and the duo inside the car debates their options. They decide eventually to radio ahead to the starport, suspecting a terror attack, and Plunk in the faster hover car is able to make it to the starport long before the APC does.

Plunk's efforts proceed in a bureaucratically consistent manner. Plunk approaches the receptionist, a library phenotype older woman named Charlotte, who bursts into panicked tears as Plunk tells her about the terror attack. She calls Claus, the head of security, who promptly leaps from his bed (in a home, far from the starport) and begins putting on his long johns. So much for help from the Starport.

Cutting their losses, the group decides to escape through the bottom of the APC and into the hovercar of their friend Plunk, who returns from the starport. As they plan this endeavor, a hovercraft (not unlike a helicopter in our time) with a large magneet approaches the vehicle. Our debate and eventual flight from the vehicle causes the hovercraft to overshoot the APC with the magnet, which keeps it firmly on the ground.

As the Travllers pile into Plunk's hovercar and fly towards the starport, they watch some armored men get into the APC from the hovercraft, which turns its sights on us and begins pursuit. A chase begins, us ducking and diving between the high-rises of the city and the hovercraft in hot pursuit. Each of the vehicles exchange a volley of arms fire, the hovercar beginning the exchange with some small arms and the hovercraft ending it with laser weaponry. The hovercar is damaged (repaired a bit by some quick actions by Zoe), but largely functional. There are 6km to the spaceport and, unless evasive manuevers are taken, dozens of laser volleys to tank.

To avoid the hovercraft, the Travellers decide to crash the hovercar through an office floor of a nearby skyscraper. Miraculously, the hovercraft does not pursue, and with some more spot repairs from Zoe they make it to the starport long before the APC. They manage to get aboard the Scout Ship and take to the skies before the hovercraft can catch up, bringing along the receptionist Charlotte and the now-present Head of Security Claus to save them from the destruction.

As the Travellers fly away the entire planet glows, metamorphozing from the mottled grey it was into the deep azure it is now. The blast of the bomb at the starport spreads like food coloring in water. During the war which wracked the Frydheld Sector, large terraforming bombs were occasionally used to eliminate planetary threats. This must have been one such bomb. The group jumps with the silent glow of millions of dead or dying people behind them. The week spent in jump is a quiet one. Claus goes into a state of shock, refusing to bathe or acknowledge any of the passengers except Gunnar, who outranked him during their days in the military.

The Travellers jump for Hulnal Rock, UWP C856A89-7 a deeply conservative planet with an incredibly high law level and strong government. Stowing their weapons aboard the scout ship, they inform the Starport attendant of the news of Hulnal Rock and dock, taking a shuttle to the surface world at the invitation of the Hulnal Rock diplomats. The diplomats are patronizing, fretting at the loss of Rapplrook and opining that "it's a shame, but what do you expect to happen in such a lawless place?" They offer the Travllers some (sour) milk and invite them to dinner, which they initially decline but are browbeaten into attending. They offer them a change of clothes and a bath, which the filthy Claus (filthy drunk as well, since the starport had lots of alcohol and Hulnak Rock proper is a dry planet) takes advantage of. The attendants look malnourished and report through strained mechanically-modified voiceboxes that "Hulnal Rock is a wonderful place to live and we love it here!" The tears streaming out of their face as they say this are surly incidental. They must have been cutting onions before they dressed the Travellers. Suspecting skullduggery, Plunk and Gunnar arm themselves with candelabras stolen from the dressing room. Dressed in the milky togas of Hulnal Rock, the Travellers head to dinner.

The dinner is ostentatious, large chalices of milk sit at regular intervals at a long table and the food is imported at great expense. Also attending the dinner are a pair of belters, who seem to be annoyed at not getting paid for a scavenging job they were hired for, and four other high-ranking military veterans and officials. Gunnar rubs elbows with Brigadier Errol Clappe, a renknowned Marine known for his brutality, who warns Gunnar about a scheme and hands him a smuggled revolver. "When the music stops, run!"

The inestimable Commander Wei, known for negotiating the Frydheld armistice, is present, hearing out Hulnal Rock's petition to be added to the subsector's trade routes. "The universe is a dangerous place these days, if the events at Rapplrook are any indication" the diplomats say. Commander Wei scoffs at this, saying she has no data, and Zoe offers the scans from her scout ship as proof of what happened. This displeases the diplomats.

Soon, after the Travellers finish warning their fellow guests through eye contact and whispers, the music stops and the seats containing the Travellers and the two belters tilt backwards and shoot their occupants through an open window and towards a lawn. Thankfully, everyone in the seats except Claus and trauma-ditsy Charlotte is able to leap away in time. In the ensuing violence, Gunnar caves the skull of a diplomat in, Zoe guts a diplomat with a dinner knife, and one of the belters throws a grenade that pulps the remaining diplomats. Large mantis creatures with vine-like appendages hanging beneath them pick up the dazed bodies of Claus and Charlotte and carry them away, and others start to stick their heads into the dining room through the open window to get at the dead diplomats. Commander Wei calls her private shuttle and the group make to the roof to await it.

The ensuing flight is straightforward, a chase up the steps to the roof of the villa and a barricaded door serving as the key points of tension. Everyone makes it aboard the shuttle without incident except Plunk, who gets plugged full of SMG fire just as they make the leap aboard. This time, it wasn't lethal.

The shuttle escapes, though not after suffering a volley of small arms fire that punctures the craft and causes a loss of pressure. Thankfully, they have enough Vacc-suits to make it to the Starport, where we leave our Travellers until next time!

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