Actual Play(test): Arathi Sector

I’m having a really good time diving into scifi art.

Alright so Classic Traveller might not have had me as its target demographic.

Super cool game but I’m a bit more hack and slash, Simon Bisley meets Moebius and has a love child with Dejah Thoris. However that works.

Anyhow. Messing around with Traveller convinced me to dive back into last years notes when one of my pals suggested a reskin of Kal-Arath as a simple hex crawler in space.

“Like a DOS game with paper,” was how he put it.

Things, as they do, escalated from there rapidly.

Furious sketching:

Obsessive table building while on company time.

Lots of “Appendix N” material straight into the earholes and eyeballs.

The result:

A maniacally rapid rough draft of my own “Arathi Sector,” which is, yes, Kal-Arath…IN SPACE.

Think IBM computers phosphor green bulky monitors running hulking ships as keys are punched to align coordinates for interstellar travel on approved routes.

Think psionic monasteries on asteroid belts, and nomad trader enclaves set up in ruined orbital fortress installations.

Think barbaric clans with jump drives and battle lust, and beautiful women manning turrets on gunships, brass raining to the hard deck like hot rain.

Space Barbarian was almost the name of this project in homage to the Piper book “Space Viking.”

Anyhow. I got to work, and got a rough (very rough) but functional draft together in record time and have been testing it out piecemeal.

Tonight was my first “build some PCs and go on an adventure to feel how everything works together” type thing.

I created a system (a few of them) with the dice drop tools I’m working on. Tweaked as I went.

Made three PCs (it takes about 60 seconds to make a character in the “Grief Engine” rules.

(There’s now a super brief lifepath that may add a mechanical advantage or two - and probably will include one roll that can kill you as a tip of that hat to Traveller!)

Everything went shockingly well.

A few things like “oh I have cover discussed here but not explicitly stated” and “oh I hate this table that I made thinking it was good at the time,” and things like that, but all in all a good time was had.

Here’s the play report, in narrative style. Everything was decided with oracles and tables or my basic “yes die Vs no die” d6 Oracle.

I hope to have Arathi Sector fleshed out and tightened up in the next couple weeks.

KESTREL - Session One

Been in SAFETY, maxsec lockup/work-op in TARIS system for 2 years following a big misunderstanding over some stolen “forked” seq.

With me at the time, TERA, who I’ve known since my days working recon in the service - when we were both in the shit a system to the left.

Met here, a “weirdo” as they call em, EOS. Moves shit with his mind. Strange guy - useful in a pinch. Looked out for him a few times. He’s with it.

Approached by Concord rep. Seems there’s a derelict out there in the system, four or five clocks of THIR, a wilderness planet with one rundown spaceport to its name.

Job offer: courier missing. Important data. Assumed dead or missing from the derelict freighter. Find him or the data block, or whoever has it now.

Easy enough. The pay: full gear load out and then a J1 trip off this shattered hellhole.

Consider it done, machine-man.

The boost us up, outfitted in the height of recon style. Little ship. Not enough fuel cap to make it out where they’ve got us going. Little stopover in THIR - starport there is LARO. Never been. They say the weather’s nice.

First click out. Pull in a big bit of floating cargo. Big crate, looks old. Who knows how long it’s been floating. Stowed it. Will check it out later.

THIR - some 12 hours later.

Massive sandstorm on entry into atmos. Blows us all over. Lost as can be, signal all mixed up. Runs us at least 5 nodes out says the coordinates when our systems come back online. Great.

Signal interference. Some kind of mobilized scavenger gang or other with Artifexers doing that thing to our systems.

We haul around. Storms quit so a display of carbines and auto guns and one look at Tera does the trick. FAFO.

We camp in the dunes after a long day of running the boat over rough terrain. Locals are friendly. Camp with some hunters who put us straight about a few landmarks. Coordinates systems jam easy here.

Give em some off world rations and things.

Move on - a black market is underway outside the walls of Laro. Can’t afford the combat drugs and medipaks we want but the trader says if we haul him to the port on Safety on the way back through it’s on him. Deal.

Fuel up on credit from Concord rep.

Space out.

The derelict is there, alright. But there’s another ship still stuck to it like a parasite. We enter on the far side. Figure they know we are here already.

Big breach in the side. Missile battery. Sizable.

A few hazards and security systems sidestepped and we get near enough to the raiders (that’s what they are or at least look like) to hear their dilemma.

Onboard autoguns are keeping them from the datacase that’s near enough to get a look at but any closer and the systems light up. They’ve lost a few already. Problem is, there’s still a lot more of them than us.

Parlay.

They’re amenable.

EOS gets near enough to do his weirdo thing and here comes the case through midair. Pirates marvel - they say it’s junk. Some trouble to go through for some junk says I.

Don’t fuckabout says them and there’s nine of them with big guns.

Wouldn’t dream of says I, under my breath tell Eos to tag the ship or get its info or whatever he can.

They say to help ourselves and we pick through the scraps and take a nice little haul for ourselves of antique coin, medkits, a few other odds and ends. Mostly everything’s too big for the little bug we’re buzzing around in. Shame to leave it.

We watch them fire their thrusters and blast away from the breach, our recon helmet visors reflecting cold starlight and the wash from their engines.

We have enough fuel to make it six clicks and that’s all - so the course is back to THIR and then to SAFETY and hope we did well enough tagging their ship that we can still get that J1 ride or that they’ll want us to finish the jay oh bee.

Working for the interstellar banking cartel beats the brakes off avoiding shanks and death in the mines.

We fire it up and set the coordinates for THIR.

Nothing but time on our hands.