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An adventure for Classic Traveller Little Black Books set in the Elysium system. (Return to the Traveller Adventure Cover Page.)
Summary
How many job offers have you had in the middle of a ship-to-ship battle? Would you care for 2 of them?
Background
This adventure continues the action started in The Chase Is Joined.
Adventure
Just after the Yacht hails the characters' ship, a custom-built 400 ton Warship jumps in not far away. Anyone with Navigation or Pilot skills knows that jumping this close to any large gravity well usually means a misjump or destruction of the ship, so whoever pilots that ship has enviable navigation skills and/or a death wish. Use statistics for a Patrol Cruiser when it opens fire.
The Warship hails the characters' ship also. Both use a private channel to keep anyone else from hearing the conversation. Both want to speak with Dr. Falken about the possibility of employment.
The Yacht offers employment by Calleigh MacRae, a brilliant entrepreneur with a well-known fascination for native planetary cultures and artifacts who owns two planets in nearby systems. She often trades for indigenous specimens and needs help to develop new ways to detect and prevent infestation by alien microbes, diseases, and other contaminants. She offers to make a custom lab ship to Dr. Falken's specifications, and if the characters want jobs as special agents or couriers of MacRae Interstellar, that can be arranged. She says if the position doesn't work out, she'll let everyone walk away with no hard feelings.
Her ship is unarmed except for three Sandcasters, which she will use to defend the characters' ship. She also has a fighter on board armed with a single laser, which she will deploy to help out if needed. Calleigh seems reasonable and shrewdly business-minded, so she's willing to offer a great amount to have one of the best Xenobiologists in the sector on his payroll. She will probably be able to get the MediShield ships to back off through force of personality and the threat of altering the business deal she has with MediShield.
The Warship holds Baron Von Wulgalash, the Pirate Lord of Dominia, a Jump-4 away from Elysium. He wants Dr. Falken to develop vaccines to defend against alien agents of infection. The characters are welcome to join his cause of removing corruption from the sector and uniting it under his rule. Unfortunately, he's gone a bit power-mad in trying to set up a new empire of his own, and he tends to destroy what he can't have. His navigators can do some amazing things, and many colonies and ships never see the attack coming.
Baron Von Wulgalash has a reputation as an unforgiving leader who rules with an iron fist, force of personality, superior skills, and willingness to risk everything for whatever he wants. An in-system landing on a Jump-4 should be evidence enough of that. He will destroy every other ship in the area if Dr. Falken agrees to work for him. If Dr. Falken refuses, he will try to disable or destroy the characters' ship.
The MediShield ships will attack the Wulgalash Warship as soon as they open fire on the characters' ship, especially once MacRae starts talking to them. They'll grudgingly respect MacRae's authority when she requests that they protect the characters, but they'll follow closely and start legal proceedings immediately when this situation resolves.
Further Hooks
We'll explore how having Calleigh MacRae as a patron could open up new avenues of alien exploration for the characters in a future installment. Working for Von Wulgalash ends up being nasty, brutish, and short. Eventually Navy capital ships will come to put down the rebellion. the battle will be glorious, but one-sided. If the characters survive, they will end up in jail or "rehabilitated" as part of a work detail in hazardous conditions. That may open up a fugitive-flavored campaign if the characters can steal a ship.
Return to the Traveller Adventure Cover Page.
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