I’m running FASA’s 1982 Trail of the Sky Raiders, and I’m already improvising wildly! This is session #2 of Trail, or session #8 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).
Jon can’t make it this week, so it’s just the four of us.
Alzenei City
The Travellers are in Alzenei City, and we started with some unfinished business from the last session.
The map and calling Lorain
We left the Travellers in possession of a map. At the end of the last session, Terry suggested running the map through an LLM-style AI to identify where it might be. Alzenei is TL12, so it seemed eminently feasible, and a successful roll later, I told them that the map showed an archaeological dig on Qarant, a nearby planet operated by both the friendly League of Suns and the hostile Descarothe Hegemony. Unfortunately, the dig is on the Hegemony side of the border
The PCs also called Lorain and arranged to meet her the day after tomorrow at their ship, the Tyrant’s Fate.
The call was interesting. At this point, the PCs already suspect that there is a mole in Lorain’s office, because Margayle told them that Ben Dumael died after calling Lorain’s office. So they were acting really cagy in arranging a meeting with Lorain. And despite all my attempts, they refused to show the plate during the call (which is what Trail needs).
So Lorain agreed to meet them on their ship in two days.
Killing time in Azenei City
With a day to kill, the PCs went their separate ways.
- Timo went into orbit and brought their ship, the Tyrant’s Fate, down to the lowport.
- Felix took his daughter, Josine, to the zoo. He pampered her with presents and promised to write more.
- Sir Sidderon had Lupin seen to (claws clipped, vaccinations updated, that sort of thing). He checked to see if they were being followed, but couldn’t see anyone.
- Mustafa failed to find cargo for Qarant, but learned that there is growing tension between the League of Suns and the Hegemony, which is bad for business.
Meeting Lorain
Finally, Lorain turned up at the Tyrant’s Fate, and the players had an incredibly awkward conversation with Lorain where they tried not to reveal too much, making Lorain suspicious. The conversation is awkward until the PCs open up and show Lorain the Sky Raider plate.
So the PCs explained to Lorain how they got the plate – and what happened to Dumaer. (Lorain had heard of Dumaer, but not seen him since before the Mirayn adventure. She certainly wasn’t aware that he’d tried to contact her recently.)
Lorain wanted to take the plate for study. She was interested in its origins, as it might justify her father’s theory that the extinct civilisation on Qarant was the victim of the Sky Raiders. (This is buried in library data, but luckily I remembered it.)
Lorain took a holo-recording of the plate and agreed to approach her sponsors and try to get funding for an expedition to Qarant for Cr: 500,000. She had a meeting with them in two days, at which point she would call the PCs. (I realise that any academics in the audience are laughing hysterically at this super-compressed funding timeline…)
Alzenei Day 5: The writing on the plate
With a day to kill, Sir Sidderon had the bright idea of fabricating 3D-printed copies of the Sky Raiders plate. (I have no doubt nobody considered this as a possibility in 1982…)
While cleaning it for copying, the fabricating facility discovered writing on the back. Without knowing what the writing said, the PCs instructed the fabricators NOT to copy it onto the replicas.
Trail of the Sky Raiders points the PCs to a learned NPC who can help them. However, between Felix’s Archaeology and Sir Sidderon’s Linguistics skills, they decide to have a crack at deciphering the writing. They roll well, but I decide it will take a couple of days of focused study.
Alzenei Day 6: Lorain kidnapped
Finally, I get to kidnap Lorain!
So Lorain failed to call the PCs, and doesn’t answer her phone. So the PCs headed to her workplace, and discovered that she had been kidnapped. Also, her assistant, Lokhav, is nowhere to be found.
Suspicious of Lokhav (and rightly so), the players decided to break into his 17th-floor apartment using their air/raft.
But as we are approaching the end of the session and I haven’t planned for this (and Trail of the Sky Raiders doesn’t even mention Lokhav’s apartment), we end the session there.
Coming soon: Session#3: Not breaking in
Previously: Session #1: Leaving the railroad 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).
