Normal account service is, so I'm back on GJD instead of GJD2 now.
We had our first session of the Ashes of Earth campaign at the weekend (using Fuzion for the rules - I'm afraid I'm just not sold on T20).
The PC's were the day watch of a battered Thorez courier hired to head into Sol space to recover the data from a surveilance satelite for the diminished Royal Navy. I kept the players mostly in the dark about what happened before "the fall", since information is supposed to be hard to come by. They knew of recent events in the American arm, and rumors about Earth and the Sol system, but few hard facts.
The players headed in and coasted to the surveilance satelites position, fearful of Kafer attacks. An EVA got the satelite into the cargo bay and the night shift started to take it to bits to get at the data storage module.
Unfortunatly things took a turn for the worse, and an accident in the cargo bay resulted in an explosion, killing most of the night shift and badly damaging the stutterwarp. The players had some fun putting out fires and running around with hull patches and then investigated the damage. They discovered that they needed a McGuffin... oops, I mean a calibration key to re-set the stutterwarp. They could find one of these at most large star ports as part of the ground equipment. The stutterwarp would work in the meantime, but would only do so at a much reduced rate - too slow to get anywhere outsystem.
They jury rigged the stutterwarp as best they could and limped to Earth to try and find a starport to use the calibration key. A quick orbital survey and they discovered the devastation down below. Large areas of nuke damage, multiple large impact craters and very low levels of life, in small pockets here and there. They picked a starport near Odessa on the the black sea (one was former Ukranian Space Navy) and had a bumpy flight down.
Upon arrival they asked if they could keep the ship "warmed up" in case they had to make a run for it and we had a brief discussion of how this was a hard sci-fi space craft and not Buck Rogers rocket ship and that it would need a full 6 hour turn around and a thorough maintenance cycle and by the way does anybody remember that a satelite just exploded in the cargo bay?
They then decided to let the engineering NPC's do the scut work whilst they went to look for the calibration key in the terminal buildings.
After a bit of exploration they found a few bits of useful gear and an automated fuel cracking station that was happily churning out H2 for them to re-fill the ship with. They then looked for a way inro the passenger terminal propper and were distressed to find it full of skeletons, all having apparently died quickly - some still in their seats and so on. The players deduced that some sort of nerve gas or bio-weapon had been used and they all fumbled about for respirators, until one of them pointed out that if it was still active, they'd be dead by now. They explored some more and tried to bring the central computers back on-line. After perusing the available systems they got the central database up then asked to see if traffic control could be brought on-line.
I asked the two space military guys to make a roll here, since activating the traffic control would start up the radar and they would know that they might want to be keeping a low profile. They BOTH flubbed it badly. One of the other PC's, the passenger liasion/fixer/fast talker of the group actually then asked out of the blue if it would switch the radars on and would that be a good idea? The sound of both the hard-core sci-fi space navy types slapping their foreheads in near unison was quite satisfying.
After mucking about with the computers for a bit they decided to see if there were any other ships at the starport. I'd already decided that there would be another Thorez - a source of spares if they'd flubbed the damage control rolls, and a couple of space planes including a military liasion.
they headed over to the Thorez after checking in with the hard working engineers back on the ship and picked up a few bits and bobs and salivated over the other Thorez's combat module ("Can't we get a crane and just lift it out?" "No, it's three weeks in drydock to fit one and am I the only one that remembers the exploding satelite in the cargo bay?"). They also found the calibration key here and took the doo-hickey with them on a hand cart. They'd been out for about two hors now, so I had them roll for a random encounter and they had a brief encounter with a mixed pack of wolves and dogs, which they made short, but noisy, work of.
They then headed over to the space planes and spent ages trying to find some sort of secret, hidden cargo on the military liasion ship. They did find some ration packs, but that didn't seem to satisfy them....
Anyway, they then headed back to the ship and were ambushed en route by a group of local refugees, come to investigate the earlier fight with the dogs. To their credit, they did try to talk the refugees down, even though they were being held at gunpoint, but their curse of bad dice rolling resulted in three fumbled persuasion rolls. Whatever they seemed to say seemed to enrage the refugees further and a gunfight ensued. Since they had pissed off and the blown away my handy source for local information, I improvised and quickly came up with an encounter with a scavenger for later in the day, but i had to get them into a position where they'd be able to and want to talk to him, so I had ne of the NPC engineers radio them and advise that they needed to find a replacment door seal for the cargo hatch.
The PC's turned around again and headed back to the other Thorez. I realised that with my oh-so-clever quick thinking I'd actually shot myself in the foot here since one of the players mentioned that I'd already told them that fitting the combat module in the other Thorez resulted in the upper cargo doors being welded shut. Doh! They went back anyway and after a few frantic moments of stalling I told them that the combat module had just been fitted and that the old cargo hatch and seals were actually already removed (hurrah!).
With seals, spares and calibration key laoded into a small cart the players set off. At which point I remembered the whole point of them going back to the other Thorez was to meet the scavenger, who had been strangely silent the whole time they'd been there. And invisible. Almost as if I'd forgotten to mention him. Doh!
Anyway, fed up with the stupid scavenger now, I had him waiting at the ship chatting to one of the engineers when th PC's got back. Not the chance encounter I wanted, but nobody to blame but myself. The PC's had a chat with him and got a general idea of the crappy conditions hereabouts and what had been happeining since The Fall. I had the scavenger asking if they were a scouting element for a larger force and when were they comming back to kick the Kafers out of the system. The players responded quite well to this, and to the general crappy state of life on Earth and gave the scavenger quite a bit of kit and medical supplies, on the promise that he would share it with local communities. This suprised me, as my lot are usually quite mercenary and I expected them to be asking me what size boots he was wearing. I was so impressed by their altruism, and by the vast quantity of chinese food that we had just ordered, that i decided to skip the last planned encounter (mob trying to storm the ship) and instead they made the final repairs, topped off the tanks ("OK, I'll fill her up" "This is cryogenically cooled liquid hydrogent... It's not like filling up with unleaded" "OK, I'll fill her up CAREFULLY") calibrated the stutterwarp (after a few duff rolls - "I hit it with a hammer until it works") and lifted off. Here endeth the session.
G.
