Log from Session 29

Session 29 Log We land at Old Dome. Got into aircar and transport Alice to University dome. After pushing a Yazirian out of the elevator. We run into a gang with a gambling motif on the train over to Dorm Warrens. A Vrusk (Card Sharp inquires what we’re about. He offers their resources, we get his chrono number and the gang leaves us alone. We head down the Dorm Warren elevator. We arrive at Galilea’s. Rodworth offers 500 Cr to each of the six clients to leave. Gal insists on treating one human who can’t be moved. We turn off the holo so Gal can see that Alice is the patient. Gal diagnoses that Alice is on a cocktail of addictive drugs. It’ll take a day for her to get Strygi able to move and reason properly. Gal agrees to come with us to our base. We put a surgeon’s robe and mask on Alice, wheeling Eusyl to our base. Scooney flags us down when we pass the saloon. He says that an animal escaped from a traveling zoo. It’s scary looking with tentacles and teeth. It may be poisonous. The zoo has left and there’s no bounty on it. He gives a location where he saw it – behind his saloon. We agree to look into it and head to the base. We arrive safely. We contact Artemis to bring Lisa. She mentions a breaking news story. The Malthar is announcing that he is suspending his campaign. Beadle is sitting in a seat near him. He endorses Alice Styrigi for the presidency. Asked who his second choice is, he mentions Mr. Beadle, who he reveals as his son. But he endorses Joseph Sammelwiess. Artemis mentions that Malthar had admitted to releasing Alice. Lisa has a cool reaction to seeing her mother and offers us a credit stick. Lisa recognizes that Alice may be damaged beyond her ability to recover to lead. She mentions possible surgical alteration and explosives. We see that a chronocom has been implanted in her head. Eusyl starts building a faraday cage around Alice’s room. We ask Lisa what her plans are. She’s not sure. She doesn’t want her brother to get elected. Rodworth suggests a council to run Outer Reach. We head to the university to find that node we’d found previously through the brain bot. We run into some Family of One yazirians. Artemis alerts us that the news is acting up. Again. The news reports that no sign of Alice since the announcement of her release. The reporter gets it out that our ship landed after the release. We jump out and head back down to our base. Artemis offers some backup. We use the unseen to spread a rumor that Alice is with Justin White in the Harbor. They’ll use the holoscreen to have “Alice” appear around the city. Dr. Eye offers to help out. The doorbell rings and the reporter from the Sathar crisis. Rodworth goes down with a combat bot. He is thrilled to be the first one and reminds us we promised an exclusive interview. Rodworth denies any involvement with Alice. We show the reporter the sonic weapons disguised as cameras. Rod admits that we’d hoped to rescue Alice but implies that he may have never had her. The reporter is suspicious about our connection to Beadle, Alice and the Malthar. Rodworth mentions a ship in orbit that was heading to matterling, full of mercenaries. He mentions the space battle and implies that Alice may have been involved. Rodworth announces a meeting at Pinnacle Station with all interested parties in a month. Rodworth says in five minutes, he will release the hounds. The hounds chase the reporter but between the crew and the bots we get them back with no casualties. The pundits on news feeds discuss Rodworth. They don’t believe him but can’t find any holes in his story. Someone autotunes Rodworth. The Unseen start spreading the rumors about Alice sightings. We head to the tech building. A pair of Dralasites discuss survival in a space ship. One says he’d grow a tumor. One recognizes us. We take the monorail to the tech center. We go to the computer center. Rodworth pings the chronocom with Eusyl and Kyle trying to triangulate. A squirt of computer noise comes out. We recognize it as a complex computer language. Eusyl figures out a simple communications response. The source is behind a wall. We go through the nearest door, trying to triangulate. We get to the door marked Main Server. In it, lays a level six computer, taking up two floors. We look for the director, who is an older human. We bluff him about planetary security and ask for access to the computer. The director runs a diagnostic but we realize that the spy might detect it. So we do it the old fashioned way, inspecting individual areas. Kyle spots the right board light up. We inspect it. Yaz is able to access it. It appears to be a simple relay, sending it randomly to 100 chronocom numbers. The director will check the rest of the computer. We head back to the base and contact agent Mamba. We let him know what’s going on. We give him the numbers to check out. They are all over the planet. But they are all close to a level six computer. We want to focus on Pan Galactic offices. He gives us a list of names tied to the chronocoms, including Glizz’s (the receptionist) husband. We contact her. She calls us back. We explain the Rabbit’s involvement with her husband’s death. Rodworth asks if he brought work home. She says yes and we arrange to meet in Glitter Dome and pick any stuff he had at home. We head home and have Galatea take out the chronocom out of Alice. We give 10k as an advance on. We get her Gold Card service as an REO Meatwagon combat med support. We got to Glitter Dome and meet Glizz. She slips us the stuff surreptitiously. It’s computer discs, a piece of a larger computer (a communications program). It’s nearly identical to the board in the Tech Center computer. His notes indicate that he was going to report it to someone named Hiru Yariya. (frowny face) It notes something called “Project X”. The discs are series of calls to areas in the computer system. We contact the UPF. We explain about the robbery and the explosion at Pan Galactic. We seek to see if his schedule would tie him to the other level six computers. It’s not clear if he does. We agree that Hiru should be taken into custody. We agree to head out in one hour. As we wait in the lobby the UPF shows up with two aircars and talk to a senior VP. Another aircar lands with the Admiral of the fleet. He presents a warrant and heads into the offices. We go to the computer area, which is beyond next generation. We hear that it’d be Dadma who would hear about a computer intrusion. We inquire about Project X; no one knows about it. We access the computer and it starts acting funny. A UPF tech stops the computer from whatever it was doing. We find the communications program, including deleted versions. It sends it on to another part of the computer, a Bureaucracy program. When it receives an offer, it analyzes if it can make money. If it cannot decide, it sends to a Communications program, named Project X. It is a communications program that sends a message to Prenglar system. It’s at Pan Galactic Headquarters. We agree that they should send a group of agents to find out what’s going on. We get a 100K credit stick for information leading to the Rabbit.

Not a bad days work. So how much was on the credit stick from Lisa? What's our finances at now? 1. How much are we making on transportation, which is being done by hirelings now? 2. How much have we collected recently? 1M credits for Beadle 100K from UPF with the promise of more if they catch the White Rabbit ??? from Lisa for returning Alice I figure Yaz only has what he has in his pockets as his share of credits are going to supporting the Unseen. Regarding that, Scott I still need to create my Unseen leader. Any ideas?

Lisa's credstick had 100K credits as well. The transport business is going well, making steady income.  However, this whole session took place in less than a day, much like the session before and so on back.  Pretty much the only time your going to get a chunk of money is if/when we push the fast-forward button.

Carlos, you are entitle to 1/5 of 590,000 credits (-10,000 we gave for Alice medical treatment) but the general input from the rest of the group is that we would like to bank that for a bigger ship..As it stands the tax on the what we earn should handle any daily needs, even the eating of raw Sathar eggs off the naked body of females of the species of your choice 3 times a day with washing it down with liquid gold. My tastes are a little simpler..

I'll price out a ship via civilian rules. I'm thinking size 4? Size 5 is a full Frigate in the military sense. I think that small would better suit our style.

Keep in mind that although you can build a ship that you design (and there are rules for that), finding it already built to spec is harder... and it will come with some "miles" on it. Along those lines, if you want to build your own, I'd recommend relocating (at least temporarily) to one of the systems with Class I Shipyard.  That would be Cassidine (Triad) or Prenglar (Gran Quivera).  Alternately, you could send a build order (with money attached) and hire a trustworthy crew to bring it to you.

The baseline for a size 4 ship and atomic engine (at a class I shop) is 400,000k. If we do make a freighter, it only needs a crew of 1 per size so we could get up to a size 5 ship and run it decently well. Regardless, we should be able to ship some stuff and make some real money to keep us in pellets. At present, that leaves us 200k (roughly) for any doo-dads like cameras and sub-space radios and weapons. The real question is what would we get for our own two ships, which would be redundant at this point.

I thought we were going Ion Drives? That saves us a TON of cash.

The shuttle (the Durga?) is larger, but it's seen some pretty nasty wear and tear.  It's about 10 years old (an important number since it means a 2% breakdown chance per voyage), plus it's had firefights, refits, an extended depressurization, and tacked on construction.  Selling it here in Styrigia could net you around 300k with some modifiers for personality rolls or strategies.   The smuggler is smaller and much older.  It's about 50 years old (meaning a 10% breakdown chance per voyage) and the reason it couldn't take off again is b/c it had taken damage to one of its engines.  On the other hand, it's been stored in a sealed vault, so it's generally in better condition. Selling it here in Styrigia could net you around 200k with similar modifiers for personality rolls or strategies. In both cases, this assumes you take your time, if you try to sell it quickly, the price would likely be lowered. Oh, and XP: +1 everyone that was expected to be on time was on time +1 log +5 Minor goal: track the trail of the rabbit back to PGC headquarters (but is that the endpoint?) The new total: 227 + 7 = 234 xp