Damaged Goods: A Journal of our Campaign

[GM_SteMac]

Episode 2

Session 4 or 5

[Where we land on Daalang. Cue more rubbish GM prose, and my big opening panning shot of the planet]

Daalang – Best described as an agricultural world, Daalang’s climate is temperate, and very wet. From space it appears as nothing but a ball of rolling clouds, below the clouds, perpetual rainfall drenches its vast planes, and rolling hills.

Daalang’s population of merely 5 million almost exclusively either work the land or in one of the massive processing plants or abattoirs. Gargantuan mechanical Harvesters crawl across the planes of the main continent, chopping and processing the monoculture crops, and spraying tons of sticky waste materials high into the atmosphere. [Dan Abnett/40k fans, my realise I completely ripped off this idea from one of the Eisenhorn books]

Daalang’s hills are home to megaherds of nerf that roam constantly, stripping the landscape bare of vegetation.

Other than the numerous small population areas scattered across its surface the only places of note are a handful of massive distribution warehouses with landing facilities for huge bulk freighters, and a small auction town where produce is sold to off world buyers. The town is also home to a distillery famed for making a particularly strong liquor.

Our crew land the Helia at what can only be described as field, little more than a large mud clearing, which serves the auction town’s only public mooring, and has only an elderly man in booth manning it.

It’s late evening, and raining heavily.

[So this was a wierd stop off for me as a GM. Still early in the campaign, I lacked the confidence to just have them quickly hop off elsewhere, and really having no clue what to put in here for them, I scoured my books for a couple of quick encounters I could adapt. In retrospect they seem quite random (cos they are), but the fall out from one of them, did give me an interesting thread to lead them to an NPC who has now become a permanent fixture, and a personal favourite of mine.
Anyhoo, this is also chronologically where we get the pleasure of Atelia’s first (of many) blue book.]

[GM_SteMac]

[A treat for you all now, a peak into the fractured mind of Atelia, with the first of many blue books]

The Loreley. My ship. Scrapped like she was nothing.

Gone.

The one thing from my life I thought I might be able to recover. She had been our ticket off Tieos. The only thing I had taken off that skugg hole planet that wasn’t somehow tainted by what had happened there. I poured my heart and soul into her. She let me run. She let me fly. And now she was gone. No, not gone, taken. Taken, and destroyed, like everything else. Everything I worked for, everything I loved, everyone I loved… and now there was nothing left to save.

I should have killed him; Fildran.

Stars, how I hated him. Him and all the rest. That feeling when I had… done what I did. How I hated him. Wanted to hurt him the way he did me… but now? Now, I didn’t feel any different, in fact, I felt worse. It didn’t go anything like how I had imagined. Only… it did. Because I had imagined it over and over again. Imagined him trying to bargain with me, trying to barter for his life. Imagined him begging me for mercy. Imagined him telling me how much he had come to despise me, how much he had wanted me dead.
But there was none of that; only shock, and the babbling nonsense of a spice-addict. It didn’t go the way I had thought at all. I had expected more answers…

You should have killed him.

Sure, he was scared and surprised to see me, but I had expected him to understand why I was there, to realise the gravity of the situation; to confess. To apologise. I wanted more.

You should have killed him. It’s not too late, you know where he is… you can go back. Finish it.

But there was just panic, and excuses. Always excuses with him, nothing was ever his fault, ever since we were kids, he’d been a victim of circumstance, never taking ownership for his frack-ups. And I? I had always felt sorry for him, covered for him, taken the fall for him so many times. Because for all his flaws, he was still my friend; my family. I still believed there was more to him. And that I could always count on him when it mattered.

Pathetic.

But he continued to let me down in the most stupid of ways. He owed me everything. I took him with me when we left Tieos. I gave him a home, a job, more credits than he would have ever earnt on the farm. I gave him everything, and what did I get in return? He tried. He tried to persuade the others. Tried to defended me to Trask… All talk, no action. Typical Fildran. Always putting in half the effort he should.

Like you! You had your chance and didn’t take it!

I should have killed him and damn the consequences. But in the moment, it hadn’t been that easy. As though I didn’t really want it. Maybe it was Nawara being there. Yes, that was it. It was Nawara. That noise he made when I… when I had… and the look on his face. Plus, we were in the middle of a precinct. Yeah, it was too risky, too dangerous. And I didn’t wanna get blown away for Fildran. I was only getting started; plenty of traitors and scum to wade through before I was done. There… there wasn’t time. And that’s what I had wanted. To take my time… to make him suffer…

Now who’s offering up excuses…?

I didn’t know where it came from, or when it started. It was like having a conversation with a different version of myself. The woman I now saw in every reflective surface. The one who snarled and curled her lip at every conversation. The one who reached for her weapon at the slightest provocation. The one who had survived that crash. The one who had lived in that desert. The one who took that blind jump. The one who limped and clanked and hurt. The one who could… maim… and kill and not feel a thing… the one who could never go back… the one who… the one who…
Oh no…

Fire. Heat. Oppressive and urgent. My heart in my throat. Blood on my hands. Someone calling my name. Fildran? But I don’t even have my com anymore, because I’m THERE, I’m back THERE…the sirens wailing as the ship screams like a dying beast, falling and thrashing madly in its death throes, taking me with it, shredding me to pieces in its broken guts.
Fire, and heat, and raw metal all around me… bulkheads that all look the same, and that smell of burning skin that I can’t seem to get rid of… because it’s me! It’s me that’s burning… and… and that voice… that voice. Trask…!
‘It’s nothing personal.’
The sound of the blast door closing… I’m going to die. The world spins as my vision tunnels… I’m going to die here and I… Trask…
TRASK!

Oh frack, not again…

I felt the blood drain from my face, the cold night air suddenly shocking on my cheeks. Felt myself whimper in distress. I pulled my scarf up to my nose, hiding my face and brushing away the tears of panic. Well-practiced habits saved me as I mastered my breathing, clenching my fingernails hard into my palm and focussing on the pain and the feeling in my hand; the one that was still my own.

With all the rain and the Helia’s engines whining behind us the others might not have even noticed.

They walk at a distance. Keeping away from me. I can’t say I blame them.

They will betray you. Like before. Watch them; the droid and that Marshal.

The droid.

The droid I can handle. I don’t have to like him. But programming plays out in a predictable fashion.

But the Marshal.

Another washed-up spice-ridden nobody, who was probably somebody once. Like Fildran. Such a waste. Twitchy and unreliable…

Like us…

I almost laugh.

Reek-skugg. We’re nothing alike.

[Vaiuri]

This has been heavily censored ;) Atelia is a lot more sweary.

[GM_SteMac]

Atelia is sweary because you’re sweary.
But then, our whole game is a little NSFW to be honest, lol.

[GM_SteMac]

Episode 2b - The Continued Persuit of The Moebius

Session 1

Trudging through the thick muddy streets of the small auction town, our crew quickly find the only cantina.

The Sleeping Rontu is a seedy cantina near the holding pens for a large agro-herd cooperative on the edge of town. The cantina is owned by Duff “Stumpy” Caros, a human cyborg who flits around his establishment on the repulsorlift platform he has in place of legs. Operated almost entirely by droids and known for its watered-down drinks and shady clientele, the Sleeping Rontu’s proximity to the port makes it a convenient stop for most crews coming in and out of town.

The Cantina is tucked between a warehouse and a ronto pen full of sleeping rontos, appropriately. The smell of them is almost tangible, but in the short time since landing, Daalang has already subjected them to all to some of the most curious odours most of them have ever experienced. [any of you here particularly familiar with the contents of Suns of Fortune, will have a pretty good inkling of what was about to go down]

Not long after taking their seats at a table, the crew are approached by an apparently drunk man, trying to seem friendly, who bumps into Rex (and unbeknownst to him, slips a data spike into his pocket). Hot on the drunk’s heels, a Bothan who introduces himself as Bim Gizzo, apologises for his friend Brom’s behaviour, and offers to but a round drinks before sending his friend outside to cool off.
On his way out, Brom nearly bumps into 2 official looking chaps in uniform, accompanied by a small hound droid, bristling with antennas. Atelia, evere the suspicious one, decides to follow him at a subtle distance.

The hound droid leads the 2 officers straight to our crews table, they announce themselves as Industrial Agriculture Security agents, and demand the Immediate return of the stolen data.

Then all hell breaks loose…

[GM_SteMac]

[Hmmm… seems I’ve been neglecting this thread. What can I say, my creative energies are fickle, and I have been; making a PC for a WFRP game, prepping a sector gazetteer for my next EotE campaign, writing a Wrath & Glory one shot (that I didn’t even get to run), and fiddling with my post apoc Genesys setting. Anyhoo, back to it.]

Episode 2b - The Continued Persuit of The Moebius

Session 1 - continued

Outside in the poring rain, Atelia saw that the somewhat suspect Brom, had sped off down the alley between the cantina and the Rontu pen, but the slippery nature of Daalang’s streets [combined with a truly appalling Fail + Threat Athletics roll] caused her mismatched bionics to send he sprawling in the mud, while her quary slipped away.

Back inside, no sooner had our crew began their confused denials, claiming not to know what the Industrial Agricultural agents were talking about, than they were rudely interrupted by the sound of a blaster bolt somewhere outside, quickly followed by a sudden crashing noise as an enraged Rontu smashed through the back wall of the cantina, sending patrons and tables sprawling across the room.

Naiem was the first to spring into action, foolishly leaping in front of the beast, in an ill advised attempt to calm it. The young Twi’lek was rewarded with a kick from the Rontu that flung him across the cantina, incapacitated.

In the ensuing chaos, as Hican, Nawara, and the IA agents opened fire on the Rontu, Rex dives under the table, and sets upon the Hound droid, successfully slicing it’s controls and disabling it. He also miraculously maintains enough Vigilance to not only prevent Bimm from swiping back the previously planted dataspike, but also successfully pulling a switcheroo, leaving the Bothan thinking he’d succeeded, but in fact having nothing more than a blank stick.

While all this is happening, outside Atelia picks herself up out of the mud just in time to see Brom re-emerge from the alley, without hesitation she quickly fells him with a flurry of stun rounds.

With the Rontu felled and Bimm having fled the scene, Nawara’s silver tongue sends the AI agents off in persuit of the Bothan (without their hound droid). Our crew help Naiem up, and head back to The Helia to regroup, with mud caked Atelia dragging the unconscious form of Brom behind her.