Idraluna Archives

Odradek's Drift Session 3: A Cicelian Conspiracy?

Players

Summary

(Thank you to Epistellar for keeping session notes.)

It has been three weeks since the Krongu crew departed for the industrial world of El Zocalo. Two more Krongu employees from the El Zocalo branch office were activated: a dissolute and prematurely-aged doctor, and an extraordinarily hearty rake with a background in aquatic piracy.

The crew decided to follow up on investigating the corrupt spaceport clerk Joey Pistachio on behalf of the athletic "supplement" salesman Tucker Hogarth. They chose to go armed, so Castrucci forged a weapons permit to dissuade law enforcement from confiscating their guns on this heavily-policed planet.

3132 Orbus St. was a short public transport ride away. Pistachio's apartment was in a block of lower-middle-class housing. Nothing amiss was visible. Minnow and Castrucci gathered up some discarded cardboard boxes and rang Pistachio's doorbell pretending to be food delivery people. Initially there was no answer, but then a voice told them to go away. Rather than comply, Minnow withdrew his shotgun and blew the lock off.

Inside, eight men occupied a depressing bachelor pad with a leather couch and a TV perched on a milk crate (upon which a baseball game was playing). One of the men wore a stained sweat suit, the other seven were armored in jack and had pistols. Three immediately opened fire, but all missed as the crew dove for cover. A burst from Minnow's shotgun immediately felled four. The remainder immediately surrendered.

Castrucci immediately set about confiscating firearms and ID cards. There were 11 in total, once the men in the bedroom had emerged. All ID cards indicated that the men were active-duty soldiers based on the planet Cicely. In the bathroom, the doctor found anxiety meds and male enhancement drugs above a dirty sink. The soldiers were allowed to leave, but the IDs and guns weren't returned.

Dr. Papadopoulos and Capt. Blux started to interrogate Pistachio and the soldiers. Initially Pistachio's story was this: he got an email from one of the dead soldiers, one Rhipidon Spiridon, offering to buy the PEDs he was smuggling for twice the price that Tucker Hogarth was paying. He tried to refuse, but then these soldiers came and held him hostage.

After some pressing, he eventually revealed that he willingly acquiesced to the offer, and that the soldiers only arrived later, for protection. "It's the free market, man, what the fuck was I supposed to do?"

Castrucci spent some more time poking around the bedroom. In Rhipidon's bag, he found a baseball signed by one "Hoagie Lunchman".

At this point, Tucker Hogarth burst in, flanked by four hired goons. The crew brought him up to speed about what had happened. When it was mentioned that all the soldiers were from Cicely, he grew quite agitated -- doubly so when the signed baseball was brought forth.

Hogarth expounded on his theory: that forces on the planet Cicely were attempting to rig the upcoming Drift Series baseball tournament in favor of their team, the Cicely Carbuncles, of which Hoagie Lunchman was none other than head coach.

Perturbed by the dark implications of this theory, the crew did not intervene as Joey Pistachio was thrown out the window to his death. They agreed to meet Hogarth to debrief at the spaceport bar, and took separate routes back. On the way, police officers stopped them, but Castrucci's forged weapons permit was adequate to the task.

Back at the spaceport, Hogarth paid the crew 110,000 credits for their services, and retained their contact information for future jobs.

During the following week, the Doctor lost 10,000 credits at the roulette wheel, Castrucci used his skill with watercraft to help Hogarth recover the lost PED shipments from their seaside cache, and Minnow Blux went in search of additional patrons. He met a member of the Castalian Order named Brother Arpeggio Goldmund, who told him the following:

I am a scholar of musical history, and my particular passion is archaeomusicology. I specialize in reconstructing the music of the Proboscidean precursors who ruled this sector long before humans walked the stars.

I was perusing Father Haller's history of High Dynastic Proboscidean biomancy looking for schemata of the trunk modifications induced by the orchestras of pre-terran El Zocalo when I stumbled across something rather strange. It seems that during the apex of this period, the rich cultural flourishing with which we associate it was tainted by a presentiment of the impending decline of the Proboscidean civilization. Great beauty mingled with a certain darkness and pessimisim, even a longing for the savage joys of a life unshackled by civilization such as appeared many times in the cultures of Old Terra... anyways, it seems the great composer "The Transcendent Apex" became obsessed with the notion that music, being by nature the most pure and ephemeral of art forms, would pass away entirely.

In an effort to wage war against the forces of entropy, he pursued an ingenious stratagem: he encoded his greatest symphonies into the DNA of animals, then set them loose on suitable worlds. I believe I have tracked down five likely candidates, all species known to have arrived at their worlds during the High Dynastic period. I need brave and trustworthy spacefarers to bring me DNA samples from the following: on the planet Goshen, the Morticarn, Sorbitar, and Wixit, and on the planet Redgate, the Mungle and the elusive Tumbling Pobbit. For each sample returned, I offer 50 kilocredits per suitable sample.

Blux agreed the pursue the job, and parted ways with the scholar.

Next, the crew decided to market Krongu Ultradrank ahead of the (still) upcoming cage match. A sum of CR 57,000 was scraped together, mostly from Castrucci. They developed a plan to film some TV commercials featuring Tulip the boxer and Dr. Papadopoulos, and to gather a team of alluring and photogenic viral marketers to do public stunts to generate publicity and notoriety for the brand.

After the first set of viral marketers returned, some reported that a smelly man was throwing trash at them and yelling "Krongu makes you spew! Krongu makes you spew!". Recognizing this to be Rudiger Kreft (the escaped industrial serf paid in the initial viral marketing attempt), Blux immediately sprang into action.

Unfortunately, on the way to Kreft's last known location, they passed a diner where the seven surviving soldiers from Joey Pistachio's apartment were eating lunch. The soldiers spotted them, and began following.

Blux hotwired a motorcycle and the other two hopped aboard. They sped toward the nearest police station, then ran to an officer saying that the soldiers had attacked them. The cop asked them to stay put, but Blux sped toward the soldiers and tackled one to the ground, while four cops chased the other six on an Air/Raft. One soldier died after attempting to shoot a cop, and the other five fled down an emergency staircase to a lower arcology level.

While pinning him, Blux asked the soldier why they came back for round 2. The soldier replied, "Lunchman doesn't forgive." Then the cop came back, and arrested both Blux and the soldier.

Is Tucker right about a Cicelian conspiracy to rig the Drift Series? Will Rudiger Kreft destroy the Krongru Ultradrank brand in its infancy? Will Blux manage to avoid jail? And what even is a Tumbling Pobbit? Tune in to the next session of ODRADEK'S DRIFT to find out!

Notes

#session-report #traveller