I’m running FASA's 1981 adventure, Legend of the Sky Raiders, for my regular group. Last time was session #5; this is session #6, where we finish the adventure.
The Travellers
Our players and their characters:
Jon is playing ex-Scout Timo Sosak 8A9B84 Age 38.
Terry is playing ex-space pirate Sir Sidderon Dubois 775ACC Age 34.
Thomas is playing drifter Felix "Dusty" Pygrin 478CB7 Age 34.
Tom is playing Zhodani prole Mustafa Lama Doka 586333 Age 38.
Alongside our heroes, I have nine NPCs who are part of the party: Lorain Messandi (their patron), Jothan Messandi (Lorain’s father, who the PCs rescued last session), Drew Kensing (who fancies Lorain and whose dad financed the expedition), Tallia McKenzie (Lorain’s friend), Hal Lewis (a guide), the hovercraft drivers Dan and Kelli, and two unnamed support chaps. Phew.
This week, Jon can’t make it, so Timo takes a bit of a back seat in terms of decision-making. (With four players, I have told everyone that if someone can’t make it, we will continue playing. When I only had three players, I didn’t want to do that, but with four, I’m more ruthless.)
Another broken hovercraft
We started the session at the end of a long night – it is day 10. The Travellers had rescued Jothan Messandi, but their stolen hovercraft was damaged as they fled. It had a ruptured fuel tank, and they had no fuel. They were on a beach, about an hour’s walk from their camp.
Oddly, they couldn’t raise anyone from camp on their radio.
As they’d been on the go for about 24 hours with no sleep, I told them that all their rolls were harder than usual. So they camouflaged their hovercraft and settled down to rest before hiking over to their camp.
(Their camouflage roll wasn’t great, with an effect of -1. I ruled that while they thought it was okay, it wasn’t great, and anyone searching for them would get a +1DM on their roll. What I knew was that nobody was looking for them – the bad guys in the city didn’t have another hovercraft and would soon have bigger problems as the off-screen government forces would soon find them.)
While they were doing this, Jothan explained that Kalamanaru sent a ship every few months to pick up the artefacts and drop off supplies. He thought that it was due. (This is a potential way for the PCs to escape and is set up in Legend of the Sky Raiders.)
Camp attack
At the camp, the players discover why they couldn’t raise anyone on the radio: the camp has been attacked by natives. They find their guide, Hal Lewis, lying unconscious with two arrows in him. (There is another body, nearby.)
The PCs stabilised Hal’s wounds, and Hal told them that the natives ambushed them. Dan (the government spy) and one of the unnamed NPCs fled in the hovercraft, while the natives captured Drew, Tallia and Kelli.
The camp was trashed, but rather than track the natives on foot, the PCs decided to repair the stolen hovercraft and then take that into the jungle. But did they have parts and fuel?
I knew that the natives had stolen some things, and that some things were still in the old hovercraft and hadn’t been unpacked. So I planned to roll the dice to decide whether they still had what they needed. Tom, however, argued that this was a good use of Steward – for packing, unpacking, and organising. So he rolled.
It turned out that they had three days of fuel left, more than enough to mount a rescue. They struggled with parts, however, and the natives had raided the mechanical tool kit for all the shiny metal.
The kidnapping of NPCs and the players mounting a rescue is one of Legend of the Sky Raider’s railroady bits. Canonically, it happens in a specific hex on the map, but it really doesn’t matter where it happens – the tomb of the Sky Raiders could be almost anywhere. Importantly, it was the players’ choice whether to mount a rescue. I didn’t think they wouldn’t rescue their colleagues, but I didn’t force them to. (I don’t know what I would have done if they hadn’t attempted the rescue, though. It might have been a difficult conversation between the PCs and their patron, Lorain.)
Repair then rescue
So they stabilised the wounded Hal, grabbed fuel and bits for repairing the hovercraft, and headed back to the hovercraft. Their initial estimate was that it would take about six hours to repair the fuel tank (the tank was more damaged than originally estimated), but Sir Sidderon rolled so well that I halved that.
Then they set off to rescue their comrades.
I told them that the trail was fairly easy to follow. While it would be harder to track the natives, it was much easier to track the three humans, in their human boots, stumbling along, breaking vegetation.
With another task chain (Sir Sidderon’s Recon roll supported by Dusty’s woeful hovercraft driving and Mustafa’s much better drone piloting), the Travellers arrived at a clifftop clearing with what looked like a stone altar and two statues: the Tomb of the Sky Raiders. They arrived after dark, to find their colleagues being pulled towards the altar…
The natives planned to sacrifice the NPCs to the “Strangers from Beyond” (as the natives call the Sky Raiders), and this was hinted at a couple of sessions ago. (Arguably, the PCs had wasted so much time resting, hiking back and forth, and fixing the hovercraft that it might have been too late and the poor NPCs might already have been sacrificed. But I didn’t have the heart for that.)
Tomb of the Sky Raiders
Using noise and fireworks, the Travellers scared the natives away and rescued Tallia, Drew and Kelli. They then investigated the statues and opened the tomb of the Sky Raiders, where they found human skeletons and treasure.
Lorain, of course, wanted all this to be properly recorded and lodged with the authorities. To my pleasant surprise, the PCs agreed – with only Sir Sidderon pocketing a few trinkets.
Outside, the natives had started to overcome their fear (the players had put Timo on watch outside), so the Travellers piled back into the hovercraft and, after a tricky clifftop descent (Drive Hovercraft supported by a Recon roll to spot a path, followed by Demolitions to clear the way), they sped off into the night.
They didn’t have enough fuel to get back home, but the players remembered their old abandoned hovercraft, which, fortunately, still had fuel. That gave them enough fuel to get back to Val Prezsar and safety.
At which point we wrapped.
Aftermath
I told them I would work out what happens next, but in essence:
- Lorain reported the find to the Mirayn government. They then approved a dig site at the tomb of the Sky Raiders to catalogue and record everything.
- Kalamanaru’s men were captured by the government forces that were tracking the PCs. The government then moves on to Kalamanaru’s illegal base, seizing and impounding everything. Kalamanaru withdraws from operating on Mirayn.
- Jothan Messandi is also charged, but escapes a prison sentence. He is deported from Mirayn, forbidden to return.
- The players have their reward (about Cr100,000) and are reunited with their Scout ship on Alzenei.
Overall
I enjoyed running Legend of the Sky Raiders, and from what I could tell, my players were enjoying it as well. Excluding character creation, we took six sessions (about 11 hours, give or take a few irrelevant tangents and diversions) to play through it.
The main issues I found were:
- Removing the railroad and giving the players more agency, which was fairly easy to do.
- Extracting the key information for the adventure, which was buried in the text. Were I doing it, I’d reformat much of the adventure to make it easier to use at the gable.
- Inventing more details than I initially thought I would have to - especially the natives and maps.
Overall, Legend of the Sky Raiders is pretty solid, and we enjoyed the Traveller rules, especially task chains, which get everyone working together.
Next time
We will start Trail of the Sky Raiders, the second part of the trilogy. But first, I need a short break to prepare, so we’re skipping a week.
Coming soon: Trail of the Sky Raiders
Previously: Session #5: City of the Golden Walls or start here with my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders.
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