Tales from Trantor presents: Stellar Drift, a Stars Without Number podcast series, using the revised edition ruleset, created by Kevin Crawford.
The cast for this series include:
- Ben, the Game Master/Referee for the game.
- Jackson, playing William “Billy” Lapp, a fast-talking human with a shaded past he seems to be running from.
- Luke, playing RV-96, a humanoid VI with managerial experience.
- Michelle, playing V1CK3, a worker bot VI with expertise formerly in piloting ships, but most recently making coffee.
- Ze, playing Rayner, a tall, brutish human specialising in computer programming and psionic teleporting.
The story begins in the year 3208, on the habitable moon of Woll, in the system of the same name (see the Sector map for more details), which orbits around a large gas giant called Filru. Through one reason or another, the characters have found themselves in the capital city Kallisto, looking for work on the public data net. Each of them have enquired and agreed to speak with a contact, a government employee named Stavros Makris, at a location called the Last Light bar, to learn more about the job. Looking around the bar, the team introduce themselves and what they look like:
Billy is middle-aged man, hunched over in a corner of the bar, nursing a whiskey, visibly uncomfortable with the 1.2G standard gravity of Woll. V1CK3 a VI worker bot, leans against the wall monitoring the room. Her flat, dome-shaped head clearly makes her stand out as a robot of some design. Rayner has positioned himself in a dark corner of the bar, his data pad providing a small source of illumination, searching for details on Stavros online. Finally, RV-96, a humanoid android, walks through, clipboard in hand, surveying the room.
After some time, an elderly man with a beard wanders in, dressed in the aqua blue uniform that identifies himself as a government employee of the Kalistan government. He looks around the room before walking up to what appears to be a set of rowdy adventurers, assuming these are the group that agreed to his job. He begins to introduce himself and moves to explain the mission. Billy strides in, mistaking at first whether or not the others in the group are in fact the people who signed up, but quickly confirms with Stavros that he has approached the wrong people. Enquiring around the bar, he finds V1CK3, RV-96 and Rayner who identify themselves and move to another table.
Stavros explains that he is a radar technician, and he is offering a time-sensitive mission where he needs to acquire pre-tech – technology from the Mandate, pre-scream – equipment that can be used to repair the radio telescope he maintains on a mountain just outside of town. He explains he had hired a team to acquire the parts originally, but they fled upon finding out they could make more money offering the pre-tech parts to other interested buyers. He reiterates the time-sensitive nature of this job, as the telescope must be able to receive an expected radio signal arriving in approximately three local days (60 standard hours). He offers them a small amount up front, with the remainder when they deliver the pre-tech parts in person to his telescope. Stavros goes into detail about the original ‘team’, consisting of Keelex Bane, Sasha Fury and Datum, a team who had signed up to his first posting, but have since ignored his calls and have begun offering the goods on the local data net. The team take the initial payment, and begin with a lead Stavros suggested, that the ‘other team’ are located somewhere within Fogtown, an industrial and seedier part of the city. They depart, with RV-96 calling a taxi to take them to their destination.
After some shenanigans with getting into the taxi itself, the team arrive in Fogtown a short time later. They pay the driver and start to consider where the other team may be lying low. V1CK3 searches the data net, finding several rental cube hotels that are frequented by short-stay travellers intending to cut costs. They begin to walk and check out a nearby hotel. They enter inside, seeing a young receptionist at the counter. Billy walks up, and attempts to introduce himself as Keelex Bane, and associates. The woman expresses confusion, as she believes she checked in Keelex yesterday, and Billy fails to convince her of the deception. The team consider other avenues to check out the rooms, with Rayner stepping aside to go to the bathroom. RV-96 provides an informative discussion that cooperation is in her best interest, with her agreeing to print an access card to get them into the room hosted by Keelex and Sasha. At the same time, Rayner steps back out of the bathroom, activates his psionic abilities to teleport, and shifts to immediately behind the woman, knocking her unconscious. They express some concern over the way they handled it, but move on to inspect the room.
Walking upstairs, the team find the room that unlocks from the access pass. They find several physical mail notices with “Overdue”, “Final notice” “Payment required”, indicating that they have a history of avoiding payments or avoiding creditors. From the interior of the room, it is quite clear it is hosting just Keelex and Sasha. Rayner finds a data paid inside and attempts to hack it, finding it is several versions behind on its operating system. Gaining access, he realises this belongs to Sasha, and acquires some information, including that they have a shuttle craft called the Argo docked in a nearby landing berth, along with conversation logs with several interested buyers wanting the pre-tech parts. They elect to scout out the ship, assuming this is where the parts are being kept.
The team make their way to a landing berth in Fogtown, owned and operated by Yanis Makopolis, and find a number of technicians, humans and robotic, working on or moving to repair or inspect starships. They approach a main office, meeting with Yanis himself, and pretend to be delivering parts to the shuttle. Yanis expresses relief, but indicates he won’t release the hold on the shuttle craft until the owners pay their fees. He directs them further along to a hangar bay further down the corridor. As the team approach, they see a small drone operating in a fixed, repeating scout pattern, monitoring signs of approach to the shuttle itself. Rayner attempts a difficult check to remotely access the drone, but finds the drone itself is also behind a few versions, and gains access to run simple commands. He plugs the drone’s camera feed into his own data pad, and guides the rest of the team on approaching the shuttle without being caught. V1CK3 uses an access panel on the rear of the shuttle craft to open the cargo bay doors, and they step inside.
Reviewing the contents of the cargo bay, they find the pre-tech parts in two large crates, which they prepare for transport. As RV-96 inspects the room, he notices what looks to be a fake wall and inside a smuggler’s hold, intending to conceal the contents from cursory inspection. Looking inside, RV-96 pulls out a large green crate labelled “FORCE DOME”. A subtitle reads: “IF FOUND, RETURN TO THE NEAREST MANDATE MILITARY BASE. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OPERATE THIS DEVICE WITHOUT PRIOR TRAINING”. The team express some interest in taking this back with them, but with four pairs of hands for three large and heavy crates, they struggle to consider how to do this without additional help. As they move content around the cargo bay, RV-96 accidentally knocks something, and they begin to hear footsteps in the main cabin above move towards the cargo bay…