Classic Traveller 05 - Search and Ye Shall Find
Date
20261015
Game Weeks
4-9
Present
Navy Starman Esperanza Klein - T
Aerospace Pilot Xia Becker - M
Party resumes on Karga, they are scheduled to join the Barrington, on which they have found employment, the next day, and so attempt to use up this one. They decide they do not care about their various open assignments: They will take their money and run from the gunslinger Bruno Ivanov (with his target on Haradad), and they will ignore the government spy who attempted to recruit them - though not, evidently, as a moral decision, for they wheel their other patron quest the revolutionary corpsicle along the sidewalk, drawing bewildered looks, to the police station, hoping to spontaneously turn it in for some sort of reward.
Instead they are threatened with a fine for dumping and, neither knowing the identity of the occupant nor willing to self-incriminate by divulging their activities on Tagh, they leave for a corproate hospital to drop their man off for identification.
Having gained employment on the in-system courier Barrington, when the day comes to meet it at the spaceport they skip out
The party discusses how best to make money, and comes to believe enlisting may present opportunity for graft.
Esperanza goes to the library to investigate military forces in this system, identifying the Urban Militia, Rangers (who ride around the icy wastes between mirror-lit oasis on speeders), the urban police (who they've just met, and seem mainly concerned with handing out fines), and the space guard. Knowing the latter has ample chance for theft or extortion during customs inspections, Esperanza seeks to enroll but fails and leaves in depression.
Xia spends the week attempting to find a psychic institute. (Karga doesn't have one). His research uncovers, however, that Haradad has evidence of psychic activity - microfilms record a few announcements, years apart, that the psychic menace there has finally been defeated - evidently it is a presence difficult to stamp out.
The results of the hospitals checks come back (the hospital is required to run checks on its patients against a police database, so fugitives receiving care can be apprehended): No hits. But their frozen 'John Smith' does sport signs of healed bullet wounds and has a prosthetic metal rib cage, so evidently has done fighting in the past. The hospital asks them to call and discuss next steps for their patient.
Deciding this information is unactionable and no further benefit might be gleaned the crew crumples the hospital's letter and trashes it, abandoning their cryogenically frozen man.
Esperanza is convinced to go to Haradad by institute-hunting Xia and they go to the starport, purchasing middle passage for Xia and Beatriz and low-passage for the apathetic Esperanza aboard a sketchy R-type trader. This leaves them 3000cr - The trader has 23 tonnes of unfilled hold space. Investigating the range of available trade goods (including firearms) they light upon wood as their only possible target for interstellar arbitrage, available at 90% of regular price. They decline.
Esperanza survives the trip, they find themselves on Haradad: An ocean world with a population of billions. It's remarkably livable compared to the other worlds, with innumerable floating city arcologies. Esperanza uses his Medic-1 skill to get a mundane job as a first-aider at a pseudoshark butchery while Xia spends three consecutive weeks searching for the psychic institute (I depart a bit from the rules here, but it has sparked the players' interest...). Appallingly I forget to roll for random encounters or police harassment during the fast-forwarded weeks.
While fast-forwarding, the talk of the planet is the destruction of the floating city 'Dewdney-Laborious' by the apparently idiotic heavy handedness of the Red Wolves counterterrorism mercenary force: Reports of torpedo boats blasting holes in the side of the city, infantry squads abseiling down through the atriums and so on. The city sank and the mercenaries were proscribed by the world government and have gone underground (or underwater, as the case may be), perhaps even to the point of being allies of convenience with their erstwhile targets. A shark-butcher who's sibling is a member of the planetary submarine force says they are rumoured to have taken refuge in the deep sea semiindependent vent cities. (desperately coming up with random things on the spot, rolled 'Mercenary' + 'Terrorist' on the patron table and worked from that)
Esperanza has found a friend in his empty life: Articulated shark-dismembering chainsaw operator Gabrielle Singh, who after showering away shark blood shaves all the hair on his body (including eyebrows) daily, applies sanitizing cream over his whole body daily, and believe these activities will somehow make him immortal (can't lay this at the feet of the patron table)
Xia, after weeks of failure and hopelessness, returning each night from endless intelligence-gathering parties and instrumental bar crawls (I allowed carousing to be used instead of streetwise for hunting down the institute), hemorrhaging the party's funds, eventually prevails in meeting a discreet self attested psychic - Mehmet Taylor - who after initially saying Xia has trustworthy eyes admits he did, apparently, read his mind to determine his yearning for the Institute is genuine. They will make contact next session.