As ever a bit steam of consciousness, but here it is FWIW.

The Traveller Adventure - part XIX

A quick recap for those just dropping in; or for regular readers who find the two month intervals a stretch of the memory: I’m running The Traveller Adventure for a group of players in Portsmouth made up of (currently), two library work colleagues, one former university lecturer and one long time Traveller fan who lives locally and has shared TravCon experiences with me for a decade.

We meet every other month in a Portsmouth pub for a meal, drinks and as much fun as we can pack into three or four hours. If we’re lucky, we use an upstairs function room if no one else is in it, otherwise we gather round at table in a traditional English navy port pub which varies from quiet to rambunctious.

When I say we’re going through The Traveller Adventure, mostly that’s true. But a fair while back – we’ve been going for something like three years now – we had a ‘side’ adventure when the March Harrier stopped over on Carsten for a couple days (see Two Days on Carsten) and for a couple of reasons took another side trip in the last session.

This second side trip came about because a) I realized we were only three chapters from the end of TTA and I wasn’t quite sure I wanted it to finish just yet (although I’m also not keen for it to go on indefinitely), and b) a new university lecturer had hoped to join us for the first time and I thought it would easier to introduce her to a complete little story by itself rather than the ongoing complexity of the TTA. Not that we stress too much about the larger overarching plot! There was also a bit of c) I’ve still not formally run any starship combat and didn’t quite feel ready to run that. It looks as if it will be required for Trade War, our next chapter of TTA.

In the end, the new player didn’t make it last time but we got on with the patron’s mission anyway. My Dandelion NPC just seemed to too much fun to throw away as ‘merely’ a passenger that barely saw any screen time.

For those with really good memories you may recall that Two Days on Carsten had originally just been a bit of fun for one evening as the March Harrier made its stopover on a fairly dull world where the text of TTA specifically says not much happens. I wondered just how interesting I could make really boring points of interest. A museum of geology, a plaque marking the birthplace of the first colonist, the respirator collection of a somewhat obsessive ex-miner and the highlight of that evening (both player and PC) – the Townswoman’s Guild dinner. Well, it turned out that not only did those ‘bits of colour’ fill a whole evening’s play once my players got loose with them (see TTA reports passim), when we got to the end of the dinner and I wrapped up saying that the rest of the fuelling and refining had gone well, so next time we met we’d move onto Aramanx, a cry went up round the table, what about Day 2?

Well, I had two months to prepare the tour of the mine that they’d expressed some interest in and you may have seen the result on DriveThru or perhaps just read my report here on TML. Perhaps one of my favourite NPCs of the whole affair so far has been the miner acting as tour guide, a nice bit of diversion as to where the actual adventure was, and leading to one of our rare bits of combat as the PCs face some bat-like creatures that have been affected by radiation.

In our last session, our Dandelion Patron, Llinos (with a Welsh accent and the fabulous hats) had employed the crew to help her crew her sailing ship out to some islands where she had some cargo runs to make or forfeit contracts. Her regular crew had done much better in an amateur singing competition than she’d expected so she was a bit desperate. Plus, she’d just spent a week in Jump with the March Harrier crew and knew them to be honest and, remarkably for humans, never condescending or rude about her as a Dandy. At least, not in her hearing.

Anyway, while they struggled to find their own cargoes for the March Harrier, they might as well make some money on the side and off they went. After tooling up in Bing’s Chandlery in a spaceport/seaport. Whilst there, they’d also heard some rumours about metal dolphins and vast sea monsters called chagic.

If you read last time’s report you’ll know that they had some small adventures on the three day voyage including being saved from sinking after hitting a semi-submerged shipping container by some squidlike creatures they initially thought were attacking them in true kraken style. They hobbled into a tiny port on a small island inhabited by Dandies and connected the dots regarding the Kutear company they knew had a presence back in the seaport and the ‘metal dolphins’ (aka submarines) that an old Dandy fisherman told them had a dragon on the side – the Kutear logo.

Now I had intended for this just to be a one evening diversion of little more consequence than that – introduce our newbie to some of the facets of Traveller (skills, characteristics and tasks) and explain in a wrap up that Kutear were using subs to test out the possibility of using the large ‘sea monsters’ (huge whales) as a possible transoceanic shipping beast of burden.

But when I began to say this, in an echo of Two Days, the cry went up “hang on, it sounds as if there’s something here to investigate…” and I was promptly banned from moving on until they’d had a chance to explore further – i.e. another evening in a couple of months.

So last night, we gathered once again to find out what was going on. (Fortunately I hadn’t got into my wrap up so the PCs just knew there were rumours of sea monsters, there were giant squid which they’d encountered, there were ‘metal dolphins’ that must be submarines connected to Kutear and the Dandies were very hospitable).

With two months to prepare you’d think I’d have a mass of opportunity to write pages of adventure material and be hugely prepared. Hah! Despite thinking about it frequently, and despite occasionally scribbling down an idea or two, nothing seemed to have really gelled and a whole lot of other life had been crowding in as well. A week before we were due to meet I still had little more than I’d had last time and the day before, thinking I would finally devote time to it, rather got away from as other unexpected demands intruded.

All this was not helped by the fact that the little preparation I had done consisted of spending way way too much preparing an island map that although I was very pleased with and looks great (given my fairly limited ability and given that I was only using PowerPoint), might well occupy only a few seconds of game time. I didn’t really have a plan for how on earth it might have anything to do with the adventure except be a “this is where you are now” prop.

Secondly, I’d met the new young lecturer a week ago and she’d said she was still keen to join us and was expecting to be able to make the evening. So I’d spent a fair bit of time thinking about how we might introduce whatever character she wanted to play into the adventure. Of course, last session that would have been a doddle. Populated planet, big seaport/spaceport, just about anything would have been fairly simple.

Now we’re out in the boonies on an island inhabited by a few hundred Dandelions and well off the beaten track. Not quite so easy just to introduce any old character. But possibilities had occurred to me. Easiest would be if she just took one of our NPCs – currently Gvoudzon, Egon, Kunal and Lily. But maybe she’d want to be her own person as it were. Well I suppose she could play one of the Dandies on the island, or even Llinos herself but I’m not sure they really make great PCs. I knocked up some char gen rules just in case, however. (I could have sworn that such already existed in JTAS or somewhere, but if it does, I can’t find it.) (Perhaps everyone else including Marc has also decided Dandies wouldn’t be great PCs).

Another alternative might be to have some human parachuted in: maybe an anthropologist or a doctor also on the island studying/healing(?) the Dandies; maybe someone from the Psionic Institute (session before last) chasing after the March Harrier crew because they’ve found something in their test results (or are the squid actually psionic – hence their rescue last time) and the Psi Institute have got wind of this and want further info; or maybe there’s a trader/smuggler/Kutear employee who is in the area.

As it happened, for all the energy I put into this, it didn’t matter as said player didn’t show up. Ah well. Maybe next time. Moving on.

Having cobbled together at least some semblance of a note or two far too late the night before, I decided the best I could hope for was that with my nice map, a bit of detail on the Dandies, a bit of ‘in the background’ stuff about Kutear that only I knew, perhaps this would be what I believe Marc M. calls a ‘rich decision making environment’ and that the players would have enough to do off their own bat.

As it happens, that was exactly right. I mean, I’d spent a couple of months trying to decide what might be in the container they’ve salvaged. (And my thanks to those TMLers who kindly contributed ideas when I asked). A vehicle or two might be nice; weapons and/or drugs seemed an obvious thought (if maybe a bit cliched); something fairly tediously dull selected off the standard Core Rulebook cargo table; nothing quite seemed to fit. Until I remembered a story about a cargo of plastic bath toy ducks getting loose overboard from a ship/container several years ago and making the news because after year or two (or more?), oceanographers were doing some great science on the subject of ocean currents due to where these ducks were turning up (and when).

Well, given the somewhat humorous, light-hearted approach to our evenings, this seemed to fit the bill perfectly. I just hoped it would be fun and not too much of a disappointment after a two month wait to reveal the contents. I threw in some cartons of wind up frog and wind up terrapin bath toys just for variety. In the end, I also discarded the idea that one carton of ducks would be stuffed with drugs which had tempted me for a bit.

I had thought the opening of the container and the investigation of the contents would be no more than five minutes of game time. Instead it must have been at least half an hour if not more while they a) landed the container on a small wooden jetty very badly (3 on the dice IIRC), b) were extremely cautious despite the growing crowd of Dandelions who are both as curious about the contents as they are and short on much of the way in entertainment so this is all proving very amusing. No prizes for guessing that the PCs were fully expecting the container to be waterlogged, booby-trapped or full of drugs. (Or maybe all three).

Once they’d opened the container and bath toys were circulating amongst the fascinated locals – with so many ‘arms’ available, 5 per Dandy remember!, unloading the container was made short work of – we spent some time with the Dandies themselves. Firstly, as the day neared sunset there was a bit of a stir in the crowd and they began filing off up to the top of the Levels to the small woodlands above, through the trees and out to the only semi-flat bit of the island where there were fields of wennit. Surrounding the fields were rough looking plants with large metre long leaves.

As the light began to fade suddenly the air was alive with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of gloyen, thumbnail sized flying insects that looked almost like confetti. But these were bio-luminescent and in the multitude of radiant colours looked absolutely stunning. Llinos explained that at this time of the year they arrive in huge numbers and settle on the fields at this time of day. Even the PCs are impressed. The light show is soon over – and as the colours fade in the darkness leaving ‘just’ a dim glowing light, the spectacle is clearly over – attractive though the fluttering flickering luminescence is.

The Dandies invite the PCs to eat with them and they are ushered into a large home-cum-hall on the top Level back overlooking the small harbour. The elder welcomes them and the room soon fills with other Dandelions. Llinos does introductions being very careful to precisely delineate the crew’s respective ranks and positions starting with the Captain. In return, the PCs can learn just who it is they’re eating with. Clearly the upper echelons of the local community. Given this small fishing/farming hamlet’s design, ‘upper echelons’ can be read quite literally.

There is food – mostly fish based with sea streamers as vegetable portions. Accompanied by flat pancake like bread analogues that is unimaginatively called wennit as well. No prizes for guessing what it’s made from. Fred and Adma (rolling 10+) are able to identify the odd taste in the wennit as burdock. Fred looks it up in Library data and discovers that the larva of the gloyen feed on the taproots of the tubers of burdock. I loved the slowly dawning realisation by the players of why it was burdock… J

There is singing and poetry – Llinos translates a bit for them – clearly she rolls high on a ‘simultaneous translation’ skill roll as she manages to convey both metre and rhyme in Galanglic as the Dandies deliver their material. This particular piece is somewhat melancholic and at a line that refers to a piper, a Dandy in the corner starts playing a rather haunting instrument like a flute as an accompaniment to the poem which goes on a bit. [Aside: I’ve just started reading The History of Middle Earth, vol 1 and in haste nicked a half dozen lines from Tolkien’s The Cottage of Lost Play that seemed to work for my low tech island setting. I suppose if I ever publish this adventure I’ll have to rewrite my own thing. Won’t be a tenth as good or atmospheric as the good Professor].

We must have been a long way into the island life when finally Tess, the player, remembers that there might actually be some plot somewhere around here and thinks to ask about the metal dolphins that the old fisherdandy on the first island said he’d seen. Llinos translates the question and cue an animated discussion amongst all of the Dandies present. Eventually, she’s able to report that several of them have seen something of that nature on odd occasions.

Classic question: “Did you see them close up?” Lots more discussion. Then I had the dandies say “What do you mean by close?” (I was riffing on a time in Brazil as a young man when I was a long way from anyone I knew and trying to get to a family I was staying with in Rio. At the coach station where I’d arrived I tried asking a kiosk vendor I’d struck a connection with – a long story – about how far away the address I had might be. He had no English, I had pretty much zero Portuguese. But I did have a phrasebook and a dictionary. So I pointed out the address and asked whether it was “near” or “far”. I hadn’t thought it through – near or far compared to what?!) Anyway, after some more back and forth like this the PCs worked out that no one had seem them very close up but out in the water at least a half mile away.

As things wind down the Dandies offered the PCs beds for the nights so they didn’t have to return to their ship. Either ship. Llinos’ Astrid on one side of the jetty and the March Harrier now floating on the other side. Tess, Adma and Gvoudzon (“it’s ok, but it smells a bit” he reported with a wrinkled snout) opted to return to the March Harrier. Tess offers an excuse of all the chores she has to do. All the others, particularly Lily, decided they’d prefer to have a change of scene. They were shown down to a home three or four levels lower and as they’re settling in and it’s a bit late to change their minds, work out that clearly the place has just been vacated to make room for them. But the Dandelions really are welcoming and there seems to be no fuss being made about it.

Next morning Tess is tackling some of her engineering faults (thank you: What’s Wrong With the Ship from last time if you recall) and although she’s fixed some flickering lights isn’t having so much joy with the fluctuating M-Drive power levels she’s identified.

Fred, IIRC, serves up breakfast for those on the ship, glad to have his full galley to hand once more rather than the more limited options on the sailing ship Astrid.

Meanwhile, Loyd has negotiated buying a cargo (10 dtons) of salted fish and some boxes of sea streamers which he’s promised not to sell back in Llinos’ markets but will take off world. So he is taken by a female Dandy who, as it happens is rather taken with him (rolled 11 for a reaction), and walked up and across a couple of kilometres of island to some caves on the south shore.

The map of the island really had started out as just eye-candy and I fully expected the PCs to take a look and move onto the next island or whatever without really paying it much attention. However, ideas had been brewing in my head about what might be happening and the map – with all its rocky outcrops and cliffs and so on – had several spots where I’d marked “Caves”. So this seemed like a good way of drawing attention to them.

Arriving at the top of a 30m or so cliff, Loyd’s companion called Flow (pronounced Flo with a short ‘o’ which I think held us up for several minutes while we decided how it was spelled! I’d invited the player Carl to give me a name as I didn’t have one handy. Well, I did but I’d forgotten.), anyway Flo disappears over the edge and down a path to the caves below. When I say path…. Loyd arrives at the spot and looks aghast at a path that would make a mountain goat think twice. Flo, with her five arms/legs has a considerable advantage and waits for him to follow her down. Good job she does. I demanded a DEX roll from Carl and Loyd manages a 3 I think it was. I decide to go for it and describe how he loses his footing, slips over and begins to slide down the cliff face to the rocks below. Fortunately, Flo still has a limb free and grabs him as he passes. She watches him much more closely after that and they make it safely to the caves to find boxes of drying sea streamers. She hefts two boxes – an arm apiece – and Loyd picks up one to impress Flo. Starts heading back up the path and again rolls really low on a DEX throw. So, I decide that he falls again but this time from near sea level into the not overly warm water. Not too much damage done but does but lose his box of streamers and cuts his shoulder rather badly on a rock in the water. 1D6+3 damage I think I decided. rather arbitrarily. He rolled a 1. Flo binds up his gashed upper arm in sea streamer, insists despite the lack of language between them on carrying a third (fresh) box for Loyd by tying two together and at that point Loyd, now dripping wet, gets the idea of roping himself up to Flo for the rewewed attempt at an ascent. He ties the rope to himself and then moves to tie the other end to Flo but she was having none of it and merely points him to go first and keeps him very near as he squelches back up to the flatter land rather cautiously but without further incident.

As Loyd pauses for breath at the top and before they head back to The Levels, The Captain looks out to sea and catches – for maybe half a minute – a glimpse of what looks like a wake in the water. It doesn’t look natural. He’s very quick and manages to take a brief video as well as a careful note of direction of movement, time and speed etc.

Meanwhile back at The Levels, Adma has had the bright idea of asking if there’s someone who can show him what medicinal plants they use and could he take some back for further study and possible use. An elderly Dandy is fetched to help him with this. Again, I get the player, David to give me a name for her. I caught him on the hop rather so she was named Fleur. Hah! I could see disaster looming in trying to keep this lot straight. Not to mention that we were all still trying to remember how to pronounce Flo. No. Not with an O. It’s a very short ‘oh’ sound. Maybe it should be spelt Floh. Whose bright idea was this?!

Anway, elderly or not, Fleur takes Adma directly inland and on the flat nearly outpaces him as she cartwheels along but as they hit the slopes, clearly Adma’s not been working out in Jump and is really struggling to keep up. Not to mention that once again they don’t share a language so he can’t really ask her to slow down very easily. Still, by being well-behind and finally having to stop for a breather well before they reach her destination, panting like a dog at the height of summer, he gets the message across. Now Fleur hasn’t rolled as well on a reaction table and gives him a rather despairing look – in as much as any of them have learned to read Dandelion expressions following a week in Jump with Llinos and a few days on her boat with her. Eventually they near the summit of the island – some 550m up and Fleur is rapidly filling half a dozen small sacks she’s brought with a variety of plants that she carefully shows Adma and names but there’s way too much to take in at such a speed. He does note however that one plant she very carefully puts in a smaller pouch by itself and then puts it in a sack after making it abundantly clear not to touch it.

None of the above two little outings were in any notes I’d written myself – save perhaps the wake as an idea – so I guess the Rich Decision Making Environment was working. We certainly seemed to be having fun with the island in any case and the map was actually proving useful as a central focus.

Back at The Levels there’s a bit of a pow-wow and the video is reviewed and shown to the Dandies who agree that it’s not something they can explain but one or two of them recognize. Others disagree and say they’ve seen metal dolphins.

A line is drawn on the short bit of track The Captain has noted and it seems to be heading in a direction which doesn’t hit land for at least 1000km. On the other hand, extending the track in the other direction hits a bit of the island’s southern coast where there’s a tiny inlet and there are more markings of ‘Caves’.

They decide to take the March Harrier and fly her over for a look. Several sensor sweeps in the vicinity of the track Loyd has seen don’t result in very much. Although there’s some uncertainty they might be missing something as their rolls are so mediocre.

They decide to check out the coastline and do another fruitless sensor sweep. But a brilliant bit of flying from pilot Kunal (the only double six of the game, not to mention her skill of 2 and DEX of +1), puts them in a hover just above the water level – currently an hour off low tide – and peering from the forward cargo ramp into a patch of darkness against the cliff edge. It looks as if there might be a way of getting down to the cave via another (not a) goat track but only at low tide. Fred volunteers to lead Gvoudzon and Lily on an expedition to take a closer look so Kunal puts them down on the cliff top armed with torches and rope.

For once they have little problem getting down to the cave mouth – perhaps Loyd was distracted by Flo – and make their way into the cave which rises above them. It’s not huge – maybe stretching back 30m but clearly it’s being used as a sort of dock for a smallish submarine. On the platform to one side are boxes and means for purifying water presumably to refuel the subs. There’s also a pile of leather strips. Leaving Gvoudzon to check out the boxes, Fred and Lily go further back into the cave there are a few steps up to a side cavern which has bunks for four and a table. In the table’s drawer is a handcomp/comm. All the signs are that the gear they’re looking at is at least TL12. Further up the steps they continue climbing until the stone turns to earth and after another few metres emerges as a hole in some bracken on the island’s shoulders above the coastline.

Back in the cave Gvoudzon has sniffed out the provisions in the boxes – mostly long lasting type food – and discovered that strips of leather are all connected. It’s a harness of some sort. They attempt to stretch it out across the full length of the cave and miserably fail, clearly it’s for something much larger. Larger even than the squid that saved them.

Grabbing the usual pictures etc they decide to put everything back as they’ve found it but not before they get Tess to look at the handcomp/comm and see if she can hack it to report back to them when it is turned on and monitor any conversations. Despite deciding this was a Formidable Task (possibly the first I’ve ever called for?!), Tess makes a spectacular roll of 11 and adds her skills and INT for a 15 and hey presto, the job is done.

With everyone back on the ship and the ship back at The Levels, they take stock and recall the overheard conversation in the chandlery about the chagic. (I think I may have had to prompt them on this as it was two months back in real time.) They ask Llinos about this and she doesn’t immediately have any clue what they’re talking about. (By now I felt my Welsh accent was really coming along!) A bit of further explanation and she connects it with forfilod. And as she says this there’s a buzz around the room and the PCs can hear forfilod being repeated multiple times, so it was.

Llinos briefs them on this very large animal that they know is very rare and very precious. Not on this island, but on other islands in the area where the conditions are more suitable (more shelving beaches I’d guess although she didn’t say) the forfilod come at certain times of the year to give birth to their young. No, she responds to a question, not this time of year, after the dark cold, half a year away. They come up on the beaches and deliver their young in a sac of precious, and she has to hunt for the word, juice, but doesn’t seem happy with her word selection. She gestures to a young Dandelion – who we’d established were a grey colour till they reached adulthood – and he brings over one of the lanterns that illuminate their dwellings. Forfilod, and again she searches for the word, juice – is very precious. We wouldn’t harm them ever or where would we get light from she translates the elder Dandy as saying.

The crew begin to put two and two together that clearly someone is using or attempting to use the chagic as a vehicle? Or some kind of riding creature or even a drug mule I think might have been suggested.

There was a whole bit about setting up some tourism for humans on Junidy to come and see the gloyen display although I’m not sure anything was actually arranged.

Having set up a couple of young Dandies to act as watchers on the cliff tops and arranged paying them (not a lot, but it could add up), I think they were entirely forgotten about – so I might have a bill arrive later.

Unloading the Astrid – short work with Dandy help. Loyd so impressed he’s thinking of employing Flo as a stevedore. In fact, I think we arranged this before we finished. Standard rates Cr1000 but she was canny enough to up him to Cr1500 because of all her arms and facility with such work.

We’d run out of time and Carl, the Captain, had departed, so I didn’t press them on what they were going to do with the information they’d uncovered.

- ignore it

- report to authorities that Kutear are up to something, possibly not legal?

- investigate further themselves?

- ?

In my head we’d kind of ‘done’ this adventure, but the more I think about it afterwards, the more I think that maybe there’s more to extract from this than I had originally anticipated. What I think I’ll do is a recap next session and see what they want to do. Maybe I’ll throw in a report of some thugs beating up on ‘their’ Dandies as they try to extract info from them on who was messing with their handcomp/comm etc.

As usual, I’m finding it quite hard to gauge and balance: my own interest, player interest, time taken, time away from the main book adventure etc to know what works best for everyone. I know you’ll tell me – and indeed Tess tells me as she drops me off at home after a session – that as long as they’re all enjoying it (and she says they are) then it’s not a problem. But it’s still hard to judge what’s for the “best” in terms of the entire experience.

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