Trail of the Sky Raiders session #3: Not breaking in

I’m running FASA’s 1982 Trail of the Sky Raiders, and this is my report of session #3 of Trail, or session #9 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 Day 6: Lokhav’s apartment

The Travellers suspect Lokhav of kidnapping Lorain Messandi and have decided to break into Lokhav’s 17th-floor apartment using their air/raft. (We left it last session with them outside the apartment block.)

Between sessions, I decided that Lokhav lived with his girlfriend, Ket, and that she would be at home. But the players didn’t know that yet.

So, as we started, I wondered aloud what sort of measures a typical TL 12 apartment block might take to prevent ne’er-do-wells from using air/rafts to break in. And Tom suggested a 3m-wide anti-antigravity field to repel air/rafts. Plus, there are air/raft garages on the roof and a reception with a concierge-bot on the ground floor. (And they are structurally designed with air/raft impacts in mind. It’s not often I call for a civil engineering roll!)

(In hindsight, I should have said that Alzenei’s air/rafts were all autonomous vehicles – so there would be no garage as people would just rent one when they needed it. Maybe I’ll save that for the next TL12 city .)

While the Travellers are dithering in the air/raft, working out a plan, one of the apartment windows closes. There’s someone inside! Is it Lokhav? (The windows are TL 12 privacy screens, so they can’t see inside.)

The robo-concierge

Felix decides to bluff his way past the robo-concierge, so I channel Total Recall’s Johnny Cab. The robo-concierge is extremely helpful, but won’t let just anyone in – and eventually puts Felix through the Lokhav’s apartment.

Felix then has a slightly awkward conversation with Ket, Lokhav’s girlfriend. I rolled really low on her reaction roll (3), so she was extremely suspicious of Felix and his frankly sketchy reasons for wanting to come up. Felix made a great Deception roll, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Ket’s hostility. (Which is a shame, as Ket would have told him that Lokhav was home and had called to tell her he was going off-planet with work for about a month.)

So Felix then hacks the robo-concierge and gets up to the 17th-floor hallway, with doors to three different apartments. There’s nowhere to hide, but there are cameras, so Felix listens at the door. It sounds like Ket is talking on a vidphone (she is!), but Felix can’t make out the words.

After scrubbing the robo-concierge and camera files, Felix leaves, and the players decide to call it a night.

Alzenei City: Day 7

Alzenei starport

After failing to get very far with Lokhav’s apartment, the players are a little despondent, so I reminded them that at the end of the last session, they said they wanted to investigate the starport, talk to the police and translate the inscriptions on the mysterious plate.

(I’m not sure whether this is a function of my GMing or Trail’s design, but the players' despondency surprised me, given how much more Trail had for them to find out. Trail has loads more information they can learn, albeit not all relevant at this point.)

So the PCs headed to the starport, which (as established before) consists of a highport and downport, connected by a beanstalk. There, the PCs learn that there are two ships in port - theirs, and an A2 Far Trader called the Diamond.

However, another ship, the Type A Free Trader Golden Dreamer (operated by Kalaman Enterprises) had left earlier this morning. It filed a flight plan for Desaekhe via Qarant. Most suspiciously, a family of four was bumped from the Golden Dreamer just before it left, replaced by some Kalaman Enterprises operatives. 

The Travellers hack into the starport’s CCTV systems (using a skill chain) and see Lorain, Lokhav and a couple of thugs boarding the Golden Dreamer. Lorain looks under duress – she’s not going by choice.

All the signs are pointing to Qarant…

And I still can’t say “hegemony.”

The Institute

The players are all for jumping into their ship and heading straight to Qarant, but I suggest they do a bit of research first to learn more about the situation they are getting into. A quick check of the library data reveals that Qarant is jointly administered by the League of Suns (who have an E-class starport and a dig run by the Institute for System Studies) and the Descarothe Hegemony (who have another E-class starport next to their archaeological dig). Qarant’s entire population consists of the archaeologists and their support teams, and we have a short discussion about tech levels (which I’ve mentioned here before).

So the Travellers head to the Institute for System Studies for a letter of introduction, and bump into Drew Kensing, the useless noble who is in love with Lorain. Felix rescued Drew from a snikersnak on Mirayn, so I’m sure that will come up again. Anyway, it is agreed that Drew will accompany the PCs to Qarant and get in the way make introductions at the Institute dig site on Qarant.

Then the PCs go shopping and load up with TL12 goodies.

Jump

Finally, en route to Qarant, Sir Sidderon translates the text on the plate. Will the players spot the clue in the text, or will I need to use Lorain? We’ll find out next week.

And there we leave it. I think we have maybe one or two sessions left – and then onto the finale, Fate of the Sky Raiders.

Coming soon: Session #4: Island hunting on Qarant

Previously: Session #2: Alzenei City,  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).