Trail of the Sky Raiders session #1: Leaving the railroad

We’ve started session #1 of the 1982 FASA adventure for Traveller, Trail of the Sky Raiders, and the players have already taken us in a direction the adventure didn’t expect!  (Or session #7 of our overall Sky Raiders campaign.)

Click here to read my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders. (Or if you want to start from the very beginning, here’s my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders.)

Oh yes, there will be spoilers. A lot of them.

The Travellers

Our players and their characters are Jon (playing ex-Scout Timo Sosak), Terry (playing ex-space pirate Sir Sidderon Dubois), Thomas (playing drifter Felix "Dusty" Pygrin) and Tom (playing Zhodani prole Mustafa Lama Doka).

We’re starting with three players this week, as Jon, who plays Timo, couldn’t be with us as he was stranded in Shropshire.

A bar on Nomael

Trail of the Sky Raiders starts on Nomael, where the PCs spot a familiar-looking artefact in a bar – it is a Sky Raider’s artefact!

So that’s where we started, eight months after the last session. The Travellers had been paid for their adventure on Mirayn, were reunited with Timo’s Type S scout ship and were now on Nomael for some reason or other.

In the bar, they saw the artefact, realised it might be Sky Raiders' treasure, and bought it from the barman. The barman told them that an ex-Scout called Dumael had sold it to him. He didn’t know where Dumael had got it from.

First mistake

I made my first mistake in this scene.

The idea in Trail is that the players spot the Sky Raiders trinket, buy it, and then go to Alzenai to show it to Lorain Messandi. I thought that that would be enough, but Tom asked what his character’s motivation might be. So I mentioned that the similar-looking piece they saw back on Mirayn had been valued at Cr: 500,000. “Ahah, that’s my motivation,” said Tom. I should have led with that…

Chasing Dumael

Before leaving Nomael for Alzenei, the PCs decided to see what they could find out about Dumael, the mysterious scout who had sold the Sky Raiders trinket to the barman. They quickly learned that Dumael hasn’t been seen for a while, that he is based out of Alzenei, and that his ship is a Type-S called the Blue Viper.

The PCs also learned of the connection between Kalamanaru and the Descarothe Hegemony. It turns out that I find “hegemony” really hard to pronounce, which is unfortunate as I know it’s going to come up a lot…

(At this point, I’m already dipping into the Trail’s clues. Trail states that the barman remembers the name of the person who sold him the artefact, but it feels very early for this information to be coming out. Never mind, I’m sure it won’t be a problem…)

Alzenei City and TL 12 wonders

Trail describes Alzenei City in slightly pedestrian terms: “With ground transport obsolete, buildings are separated by wide, parklike malls; transportation is now largely tied to the network of subshuttle lines that apply grav technology to an underground mass transit system with great economy, efficiency and pleasing aesthetic effects.”

I wanted something a little more futuristic and different, so with my player’s help, we fleshed out Alzenei City:

• A beanstalk connects the ground and orbital elements of Alzenei’s starport.
• Alzenei City is partly submerged, and a kind of coral is a common building material.
• Genetic gill modifications are common (although Felix, who comes from Alzenei, could never afford them).
• A common form of transport is the personal G-tube, a two-person anti-grav sphere.
• Felix owns a small bungalow, which is probably a bit cramped with all four of them.
• Felix’s ex-wife and 12-year-old daughter live in Alzenei City, somewhere.
• Aquaria are popular on Alzenei.

And with that little bit of world-building done…

Chasing Dumael (again)

Rather than tell Lorain about the Sky Raiders artefact (as Trail expects), my group decided to learn more about Dumael first.

At the Scout base, they learned that he hired himself out for various unnamed duties, but that he had turned up dead in an alley three months ago. He did, however, have a girlfriend, Margayle Sharnon, in startown.

Felix knew of Margayle's, and led the PCs to it. There, they found a run-down lounge bar that had clearly seen better days (the aquarium had guppy-blight).

Margayle was out when they arrived, but told the PCs about Dumaer when she turned up. She told them that he vanished after arranging a meeting with Lorain’s office. He had seen her broadcast about the Sky Raiders, and had got excited about some artefacts she had. Then he died.

Margayle gave the PCs a map that she thought was linked, but didn’t know exactly where it was of.

(All this seems to be coming out extremely early. The players are already suspicious of someone in Lorain’s office, despite me trying not to signal that too hard.)

My other mistake

I wish I had played up Margayle’s grief more than I did. My defence is that the players had gone off piste and I hadn’t prepared Margayle in as much depth as I might normally have done. (Arguably, Trail itself pays lip service to her grief as well. She’s not even included in the NPC list.)

Next time

My top tip for anyone running a continuing ttrpg is, at the end of a session, ask the players what they plan to do next. So that’s what I did, and this is what they’ve told me they want to do.

• Work out where the map comes from. Scan it and let a computer match it with existing features (like giving it to a LLM).
• Talk to Lorain (at last!)
• Ask the police about Dumaer’s murder
• See Josine (nice – a bit of character stuff)

We’re taking a week off (because I will be recovering from Consequences), but we’re playing again at the start of December.

Coming soon: Session #2: Alzenei City

Previously: Session #6: Tomb of the Sky Raiders or start right back at the beginning with my review of Legend of the Sky Raiders (or my review of Trail of the Sky Raiders).