Not complete yet but here's my early draft. Hopefully I can finish this before Tuesday. Tranquillity Dawin October 1, 2019 Travellers: Thea (Victor) [Dylan] Vickey [Chris] Doctor Frederick [Garret] Coil [Cory] Cam [Mike] “Oops” y295.52.1 In Quartermark Down, Victor “Cam” Camden the 6th, Baron Emeritus of Mensah had just won CR 100,000 by successfully betting on the outcome of a gladiatorial competition. Cam, being a rather weak and timid individual, was greatly impressed with the winning fighter, a man named Coil. Cam immediately hired Coil as a bodyguard as soon as he learned the fighter was also from Mensah. While leaving the Quartermark Arena Cam and Coil ran into a young woman named Peter Dameon, whom Cam has previously known as a friend of his from his youth. She was accompanied by a young man wearing brown robes and having an electronic collar around his neck. She pleaded with Cam to help her get in contact with a woman named Theadora Erythrokyanos. Peter claimed it was of utmost importance that she and the young man with her see Thea as quickly as possible. Cam does a quick search of local news and discovers that Thea is actually a minor celebrity, and that she is a member of TAS. So the found visit the Quartermark TAS hotel and learn that Thea, while often a quest, is not currently registered. Coil suggests that if Thea used to hang out with Churchgate, maybe the Chruchgate’s restaurant would know where she is. The four visit the restaurant and are at first rebuffed by Mwinyi, the Efray Majordomo. But the moment he learned that the Baron was from Mensah he offered to contact Thea. He had the four taken to a table where they ordered a meal while waiting. Very shortly Thea, Vickey, Dr Fredrick and a young man in a mask arrived at the restaurant. Taking everyone into the kitchen Peter, and her friend Lytic Baranbas, explained that they had discovered a backdoor in the code that controlled the gravity assist stabilizers on the Timaeus project. This backdoor would allow the stabilizers to be turned off from a distance. It wasn’t very hard to guess that it was Count Oswald Mosley’s finger on the button. Barnabas offered a data drive that he claimed contained a patch that would close the backdoor, but that it could only be uploaded by inserting the drive into a socket on the control panel in one of the control rooms associated with the project. With assurances from Thea that they will deal with the backdoor, Peter and Barnabas took their leave. Cam and Coil decided to join Thea as it was their planet of origin that was at great risk. Now the problem was how to quickly get back to Mensah without access to the Adam’s Moon wormhole. As luck would have it Dame Noel Godwin and Bishop were at Churchgates. (Thea had meet Noel at the Adam’s Port earlier that day and invited her to have a meal at Churchgates so not that much luck.) Thea appoarched Noel stated that they wished to hire the Niven, Noel’s Far Trader. The Traveller’s initial plan was to use the Niven to carry fuel and with the Star Lance jump into the empty hex near Crowler. After refueling the Star Lance would then continue on to Mensah while the Niven could continue to Crowler. Noel suggested that Thea must be mad. She demanded to know why Thea would want to travel into what is clearly going to be a war zone. In jest she asked if Thea was planning to fly the Duchess of Mensah back home? It was at this point that Landon removed his mask and revealed that indeed Thea was planning to fly the legitimate Duke of Mensah back home. After a brief moment of stunned silence Noel could be heard muttering something about the Adam’s and fornication. She quickly grasped the situation, that maybe if Landon could be brought before the Moor he might be able to resolve the current situation without a war. She offered her services but still rejected the Traveller’s initial plan. She did however accept their backup plan, which was similar but required a jump to the empty hex next to the Song system. This allowed the Star Lance to continue onto Mensah but the Niven could go on to Song and never have to enter a Mensah Controlled system. Cam, seeing this as a quick means of returning to Mensah volunteered to join the Travellers. And Coil, also being from Mensah agreed as well. Noel contacted her crew and had them removed their existing cargo and buy and fill 50 tons worth of fuel canisters. No mention was made of payment but this did not seem to deter Noel as she pushed her crew to complete preparations for a departure later in the day. Noel’s navigator, an older woman named Madsyn, developed the jump profiles to be used by the two ships. Vickey, the Traveller’s navigator, reviewed the worked and gave her approval for its use by the Star Lance. In relatively short order the two ships were ready to lift off. Leaving the atmosphere of Quartermark Leon, at the controls of the Star Lance received a communication from Quartermark Navy Command which granted permission for both ships to leave Quartermark space and provided a cleared vector to follow that would avoid the large number of warships in high orbit. Leon noticed that even following the provided course the Star Lance would come within half a light second of a large gathering of Quartermark Patrol Cruisers. As the Star Lance reached the halfway mark to the safe jump point the ship started to receive transmissions from the Patrol Cruisers. Thea was well known to personal in the Quartermark navy and hints and rumors of her mission were certainly circulating. The transmission were as follows: QPC “Calming virtual set before the raging onslaught of unreasoned fury” TO MSC Star Lance . B’Swords! We’ve got your back! QPC “Unrestricted vision of victory against the unwise that would be cast upon sadness” TO MSC Star Lance . Broadswords. We’ll be seeing you soon. QPC “Kiamia Ashon” TO MSC Star Lance. Our claws are sharpened and our tails twitch. Good hunting! QPC “ Steady and sure in the face of serious and determined foes that face mortal justice” TO MSC Star Lance. Kick em hard Broadswords but leave some for us. QPC “Testament to unimpared judgement dispensed with righteousness and valor.” TO MSC Star Lance . My BMs are harder than those so called Mensah ships! QPC “Testament to unimpared judgement dispensed with righteousness and valor.” TO MSC Star Lance . Present ships excluded Star Lance. Unknown TO MSC Star Lance Page to Thea. Succeed Thea succeed. The lives of too many good people depend on it. Thea understood that the captains of ships making such transmissions under these circumstances faced being relieved of command. With these comments upper most on their minds the Travellers enter jump. y296.01.0I The Star Lance leaves jump deep in the drifts of empty space. It takes six hours to locate and close with the Niven. Which even Vickey admits is a very tricky bit of navigation to pull off. She happily allows Madsyn to program the Star Lance’s next jump into the Mensah system while Leon, Bishop and Thea handle refueling from the canisters stored in the Niven’s cargo bay. Within four hours the Star Lance is ready to jump. With a final thank you to Noel and the Niven the Travellers disappear from the normal universe. y296.02.01 Seven days after jumping from the void of deep space the Star Lance pops into normal space only a few hours travel time from the planet Mensah. Leon switches on the ‘alternative’ transponder. Bad luck plagues the Travellers as they are ordered to match vectors with a Mensah Cruiser MPC Mawl and prepare to be boarded. Hiding the Jinsu document inside the mysterious Adam’s tech ring the Travellers wait for the worst. It may have been because the Mawl is a ship of the Mensah Navy and not from Tantry that the marines only performed a cursory inspection of the Star Lance. Landon had his face wrapped in healing gauss and produced amazingly forged identification documents. (A gift from Kandel Taper) Being a noble who is used to getting her way Vickey was able to convince the Mensah marines that the Star Lance was on important duties for Tantry (due to the fake encrypted Tantry transponder). And the ship was allowed to continue to Mensah. Landing at the Adam’s Port, Leon paid for refueling on the off chance they would need to make a quick dash. The other Travellers made plans. They would split into two groups. One, with Thea and Cam would meet with Marquis Raj and his personal aid Sir Paris. They would lock Thea’s combat armor and weapons in the back compartment of the Raj’s ground car. Then trust to his noble status to avoid intrusive searches. To get Landon past the extensive city wide security patrols and into the parliamentary building, Thea suggested that he use the last dose of the teleport drug. He assured her that he studied at that building when he was a boy and that he has clear memories of a certain floor tile that had an interesting pattern of cracks which he had traced for fun while hiding from his instructors. Confident or not he agreed this was the safest means of making an entrance. The second group would be Vickey, Vance, Dr Fredrick and Coil. They would blackmail Mondo Bits into providing a stealth submarine and weapons. They would then assault the lower control center of the Timaeus project and upload the patch. Hopefully before Count Mosely decided to detonate the artificial volcano. Baron Lemmon was able to provide additional support in the form of a submarine pilot, Kevin Loren. Thea and Cam meet with the Marquis and travelled to the parliamentarian building. Just before they stepped through the security check Thea transmitted a prearranged signal to Landon so that he knew they had safely arrived. Once through security Thea was surprised to meet Janet Castro, the reporter who flew with Thea onboard the ill fated Liner Daphne. Castro’s reaction to meeting Thea was one of high anxiety. She was convinced that Thea’s presents foretold of many deaths. She referred to Thea as “Mistress of Death”. Thea reassured her that there was no cause for concern, that she had no plans to hurt anyone and that she was only here to observe the formal proceedings of the Moor. Thea then invited Castro to join them in the spectators balcony overlooking the proceedings. Meanwhile, the second team traveled to the city of Gorham, the home of Mondo Bits. Vickey took charge of the meeting with Bits’s lackey, a man named Thompson. Perhaps she assumed more than she should have when, tired of her strangely belligerent attitude, Thompson came with in a split second of simply killing the group and sinking their bodies. But at the last moment Vickey produced several records of crimes that Thompson had committed in service to Bits. Much to his surprise, Thompson received instructions from Bits, apparently through a discreet earpiece, to provide the group with a stealth submarine and a few SMGs plus one rifle.