Trail of the Sky Raiders session #5: Rescuing Lorain

I’m running FASA’s 1982 Trail of the Sky Raiders, and this is my report of session #5 of Trail, or session #11 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, spoilers ahoy!

The Travellers

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

(Jon has bowed out of the game for the time being.)

Standoff at the starport

We started the session with the Travellers in their G-Carrier after successfully finding an old Sky Raiders ship. As they approached the League of Suns starport, they saw on their sensors a Descarothe Hegemony Navy cutter. Luckily, they picked it up on their sensors before it saw them, so the PCs landed out of sight.

From their hiding place, they contacted Timo, who was aboard the Tyrant’s Fate (his Type-S scout ship). Timo told them the Hegemony wanted to arrest the Travellers for violating their airspace. The League were complying because they didn’t want to start a diplomatic incident (and they are outnumbered on Qarant).

The PCs decided to deceive the Hegemony into thinking they were aboard the Tyrant’s Fate, and once they’d done that, Timo took it into orbit. Whether it was successful or not, the PCs then turned back towards the archaeological dig to rescue Lorain.

First, though, they had to find her.

Finding Lorain

The Travellers identified four potential locations for Lorain: any one of three digging camps, or the command post.

Starting with the digging camps, they put the G-Carrier down nearby, then used their drones to try to spot Lorain. (We did this as a task chain using Stealth,  Electronics (remote ops), and Recon.) They eventually found Lorain at the command post.

(An aside. These drones are really useful. The players are making a lot of use of them, and they’re so useful I should probably give them to the bad guys as well. Maybe in a later game.)

So, how to rescue Lorain?

Rescuing Lorain

Under the cover of darkness, the PCs took out three sentries with their stunners, tied them up, and took their uniforms. (And aren’t stun guns good?)

They scouted around the command post, but failed to find Lorain.

I reminded them that their stunned sentries might know something, and a little while later the PCs learned the layout of the command post (which I had to invent – why wasn’t there a map?) and where Lorain was being held.

Felix and Sir Sidderon went into the command post, while Mustafa prepared to steal one of the Hegemony’s air/rafts and disabled the other. (I had nudged them to think about their escape – the plan is to leave via the balcony.)

Inside the command post, Felix and Sir Sidderon got the drop on the guards outside Lorain’s room and stunned them both. They entered the room, found Lorain, and started to escape when another door opened – it was Kalamanaru himself. Kalamanaru hit the alarm button, and Sir Sidderon stunned him, dropping him like a sack of potatoes.

Yeah, not quite like this.

With the alarms raised, Lorain and her rescuers climbed aboard Mustafa’s stolen air/raft, but a bullet hit the air/raft, causing it to crash halfway between the command post and where the PCs had stashed their G-Carrier.

(I can’t remember now exactly what happened, but I think Mustafa failed his air/raft roll. We hadn’t discussed failure before the roll (I really should remember to do that), so I asked Tom to roll a D6, with 1 being the worst case and 6 being best. Tom rolled a four, so I decided that the air/raft made it some of the way.)

So with the Hegemony troops closing in, Sir Sidderon laid down suppressing fire while Felix remotely patched into the G-Carrier. With the G-Carrier running, Mustafa remotely piloted it to rescue them, and then they took it straight up into orbit to dock with the Tyrant’s Fate, and into jump.

Safe at last!

And that was pretty much the end of the adventure—the rest was exposition and setting up Fate of the Sky Raiders.

Lorain was pleased to be rescued, disappointed she didn’t get to see the Sky Raiders ship, but pleased with everything the PCs had recorded and taken.

At the university, she analysed the data crystals (Tom complained that she didn’t have to make a roll…) and I told them the history of the Sky Raiders and their asteroid ship. (Terry immediately picked up on the asteroid ship – perhaps it’s still out there! I assured him it was.)

I also explained that they are invited to accompany Lorain aboard the Inquisitor to find the missing asteroid ship. The asteroid ship is found, and it’s massive. But when Lorain, her team and the PCs go to board the asteroid ship, the Inquisitor backs off and jumps away, stranding them…

Which is how Fate of the Sky Raiders starts. We’re not playing next week, partly because Tom and I are both at a weekend-long freeform and I expect to be tired, but also because, having read Fate of the Sky Raiders, I need to work out how to run it. But more of that later.

Next time

I imagine the next couple of posts will be freeform larp-related, but after that, I’ll return to Traveller with my review of Fate of the Sky Raiders, followed by my session reports. (And after that, I think I’d like to be a player for a while.)

Coming soon: My review of Fate of the Sky Raiders.

Previously: Session #4 Island hopping on Qarant: 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).