Trak and Jem hurriedly left Garrison and were jumping to the Kamiri system...
After a week in space and Garrison far back in their minds, Trak and Jem were relaxed as they landed at Kamiri spaceport. It was located next to Kamiri's largest city with half a billion inhabitants. Although that did not compare to Easan, Trak's home planet, where all five billion inhabitants lived in one large city. Trak felt at home in such a large metropolis while Jem was much used to a smaller scale - her home city only had a few million.
"Look at that!" Trak pointed to one of the multitude of custom statements. He read out, "If not residents, or temporary residents of not less than 180 days and not pre-registered for exceptions or pre-notified of a exception, nor an elected official then the following apply:" He paused and skipped to the relevant bit, "duties of Cr250 apply per vehicle arriving in system, either loaded, unloaded, attached, detached, working, broken or in other fit state and -" He broke off. "There is another few paragraphs defining vehicles but I'm basically up for Cr500. And this duties byline was only updated a week ago. I know our subsector has a bit of a rep for making up duties but when it happens to me..."
After getting through customs, Trak lost no time dragging Jem around looking for a buyer for the wood cargo. It should not be hard - Kamiri was known for its light industry. It was not hard. Jem used her negotiation skill (bribed her way) and the wood was all sold for Cr35,100. I really needed that. Trak thought. I was going backwards with credits.
On the journey from Garrison to Kamiri, Trak had discussed with Jem the idea of hiring a bodyguard, or at least a crew member who knew his way around fighting. Neither Trak or Jem were adverse to combat, but both knew their limitations. After selling the wood cargo, Trak went on the hiring trail. There were a lot of candidates, but surprisingly few that were willing to travel off world, and none that had spaceship skills. The one that interviewed the best was Hans Maglun. His resume was impressive.
"I have a feeling we may have to watch him a little." Trak said to Jem. "While his jobs are great and check out, I have been cross matching them with other searches for the city. Hans seems to either tread on the fine line of the law, or the wrong side of it."
"True, I'm forming the same opinion." Jem replied. "But he does seem very loyal to his employer. I guess you have to in his line of business. I'm happy to work with him for a while."
"Yeah, I can always give him passage back here if it doesn't work out."
Hans started with Trak the next day.
While coming back from finalising cargo negotiation for a few tons of blades (at a great discount), suddenly three air rafts vehicles swerved toward them.
"Look out!" Hans shouted.
Jem and Trak dived out of the way in time. One of the vehicles just clipped Hans's clothes before driving off.
"What the fuck was that?" questioned Trak.
Hans is very matter-of-fact. "Me. I know. I did a job a little while ago to 'obtain' a detailed research on how to increase the industrial efficiency of producing agricultural machinery. I recognise one of the researchers driving the air raft."
"There seems to be a few loose ends I need to tidy up." he continued. "May I have a few days to do so?"
Trak gave Jem a questioning look to which Jem answered. "Sure. Why not."
"Hans," Trak asked. "How about Jem and I coming along to lend a hand?"
Mechanisms
Things were getting out of hand with the tables and expense tracking. I spent the last few days organising the tables page better; still need to add combat. I also updated my spreadsheet that auto generates stuff (flowchart, encounters, patrons etc) to also include detection, potential employees, events, a first cut of CT cargo and expense tracking. While doing the expense tracking I noticed that two monthly maintenance tasks for the scoutship had not been done. I have assumed they were done while on Garrison, but now have a flag to remind me about it. Onwards to how it went:
Space travel
First thing is to roll for detection entering space, and then the spaceport.
Space: No detection
Spaceport: Customs event. This is one I have not written up yet so have done so (loosely based on Star Smuggler):
Ignore if you are not coming or going from off planet/station. Otherwise you are treated to a customs inspection. If you have a ship or vehicles, they will be searched. If there is any illegal or known stolen goods, they are found and confiscated. If any is wanted in this system, this is discovered (wanted in other systems is ignored) and the person is taken to jail and put through the justice system. Roll a 1d6 to see if duties need to be paid, determined by cargo type:
1 Any vehicles - d6*Cr100 per vehicle, including starships. Applicable to cargo and non-cargo.
2 Robots, electronic or mechanical parts (or 6x on the cargo table)- d6*Cr50 per robot and d6*Cr50 per ton
3 Any ores or minerals (2x on the cargo table) at d6*Cr10 per ton
4 Fruit and Animal products (mostly 3x on cargo table) at d6*Cr10 per ton.
5 The party is being picked on - pay 1d6*Cr100 in unspecified duties.
6 Cargo impounded for a week; if no cargo, then treat as 5.
If you wish to fight your way out then there are the same number of inspectors as your party +1d6, and armed.
You may try a Difficult Bribery task but if failed, duties are multiplied by 5!
Rolled a 1. Have a ship and an air raft for Cr500 in duties.
Following is what the weekly flowchart produced:
Sell cargo
Using Jem's bribery and DM+1 for selling wood on industrial gets 130% sell price. 27 tons of wood at Cr1000 * 1.3 = 35,100. Much needed.
Expenses
With the Not for Home maintenance, salaries, berthing fees etc, This is the current credit totals:
Trak: Cr189,300
Jem: Cr54,300
Buy one item of equipment
Not required.
Healing
not required.
Options
Need a another crew member and after the Garrison adventure a bodyguard (in Star Smuggler terms). I rolled for potentials and got a well skilled (there will be a skill level of 3 or more) bodyguard with a Rogue background. Randomising the characters in 1001 Characters I get Rogue number 29. Moving down until skill level 3 or more I get to number 30:
Rogue A96499 Age 42 6 terms Cr100,000
Streetwise-1 , Gun Cbt-5, Blade-2, Vehicle-1 gun, high psg
Rogues in CT only got one roll per term of service while in MT they get 2. So I rolled for an extra 6 skills and background skills to add: Computer-0, Grav Vehicle-0, Vice-3, Streetwise-1, Vehicle-1, Technical-1.
Add it all together and convert the generic skills to cascade and I get:
Rogue A96499 Age 42 6 terms Cr100,000
Streetwise-2 , Handgun-5, Blade-2, Grav Vehicle-2, Computer-1, pistol, high passage
Rolled a Mongoose Traveller random trait and got artistic.
And for a name...um... Hans Maglun.
I could have converted the gun Combat-5 into two or three gun skills, but having a skill 5 character will be interesting. At skill level 5, they will be obsessed with handguns and likely well known. And with intelligence 4 will make an it interesting too.
While GMing, it is a good idea to flesh out a character a bit more than I have, I am trying not to do so with this game. I am rolling the stats, giving them one trait and will let events help me put some detail into the character.
Hear rumour
Trak is looking for Cargo, so I give this as a -1 DM on the next cargo price.
Encounter
For the encounter, I got 1D Researchers + 3 vehicles with a reaction of Violent - Immediate Attack (snake eyes using Classic Traveller NPC reaction table). Rolled for 3 researchers so 1 per vehicle. How to explain this? Thinking a little, they are trying to run over Hans for some job he has done in the past. Everyone gets to take a Dex based Routine task to not get hit.
They all pass. Hans not happy as he knows what it is about). Asks to leave for a few days to sort it out. Will Trak and Jem help (8+ to do so)? Yes. Roll those cubes:
I'll save resolution of this for another post.
Buy Cargo
Rolled 4 tons of blades and rolled low on price for 4000/ton (standard price of 10000).
