Art pending
The hangars
Empty, and locked up.
Message in a Bottle
- ClientBaxter (bar owner)
- DestinationEarth (Sol System)
- Payment5K per head
Opening Narration
You find yourselves in Phoenix, a small village on Nexus. The shuttle port where you just got off lies at the end of a road with twenty or thirty houses along it, and at its end stands a larger building called The Key and Shield, an old-timey sign outside welcoming you in. This looks like a great place to lie low for a few days, until whatever is chasing you here gets bored of looking.
The Shuttle Port
The shuttle pad is a pretty standard ordeal: a large landing pad surrounded by hangars, warehouses, and a Zephyr branch office. Two AutoGolems walk around doing cleaning and general maintenance.
Art pending
The warehouses
Freight stacked for onward transport, locked up for the night.
Art pending
The Zephyr office
Locked up, but the lights are on. Bypassing the lock is a two-hour job for someone with Security 1.
Art pending
The AutoGolems
They answer simple questions politely, and stick to their scripts. Mess with the locks and they will warn you off.
The Key and Shield
As you walk through the door you enter a large main room, dominated by a big viewscreen on the right wall, a sportsball match playing. At the table closest to the screen sits a young couple in supporter gear, watching the game intently. Across the room from them sits a large black man in combat armour, feet on the table, leaning back in his chair; he glances at you as you enter, shrugs, and turns his attention back to the game. In the middle of the room three men sit around a table playing cards. Behind them is the bar, where a beautiful woman with a rather terrifying facial tattoo in the shape of a wolf, dressed in colourful clothes, is pouring drinks for a man who has probably already had one too many; also at the bar, a sharply dressed man who looks completely out of place is chatting up a scantily clad woman. Behind the bar stands a stack of storage containers, the kind you might find on a spaceship or in a warehouse. Above the bar is a sleek black tinted window, a staircase on the left leading up to it, indicating there is probably a room up there. Next to the stairs, a double door leads into another room; the sign above it reads Kitchen.
Art pending
The card table
Sonny deals anyone with money into the game. Bogdan and Dot are happy to no longer be the only ones being fleeced, and might even take some of the newcomers' money.
Art pending
The couple under the screen
The Parks will talk sportsball with anyone who shows the slightest interest; tonight's match matters.
Art pending
The bar
Wolfrend is very curious and wants to hear everyone's stories. Zhao, conversely, is very happy to share his.
Art pending
Louis and Sindy
A private conversation, but they will absolutely engage if addressed. Sindy will offer a good time; Louis will offer anything else.
Art pending
The man in combat armour
Pretty talkative, and happy to supply the players with information about Phoenix.
The Thule Arrive
If One or More Players Are Still Outside
The shuttle pad suddenly lights up again: a new shuttle is incoming. Troops pour out of the ship and secure the area. An older man in an immaculate uniform steps out, pulls out his pistol, and shoots both AutoGolems if they are still present. He spots you and barks out an order as everyone opens fire on you. You need to find cover, fast.
Inside the Key and Shield
The door opens and an older gentleman in an immaculate uniform walks through. He immediately spots Munch sitting near the door in his combat armour, pulls his gun, and calmly says "Don't. We're not here for you, we just want the bottle", as Munch puts his hands in the air and the rest of the warband pours through the door. The older man turns to the bar, and suddenly an expression of puzzlement shifts across his face. "You," he sneers, and starts firing at the woman behind the bar. Munch drops back in his chair, kicking over the table, and comes up with his LazCar, lighting up the soldiers. Zhao falls off the barstool, whips around on the floor with both his pistols, and opens up, firing indiscriminately into the room. Sindy and Louis dive behind the bar. Everyone else dives under their table.
The Aftermath
Wolfrend tends to the wounded with a samaritan's bag from behind the bar. Munch walks over to one of the crates along the wall, reloads his LazCar, and stocks up on cells. Baxter comes down and greets the team: "You can really handle yourselves in a fight. I'm Baxter, by the way; this is my place. Everyone okay?" The other survivors start sorting through the dead bodies.
The Negotiation
Baxter moves back behind the bar and starts pouring drinks for all the survivors. "Welcome to Phoenix, I guess. Sorry about the rough welcome; it's usually a lot quieter around here. What brings you to my neck of the woods? Looking for work? I might know a guy."
- What's the job?
- A delivery. One package, to Earth, into one specific pair of hands.
- What's the pay?
- 5,000 bits a head, cash on delivery.
- What is it?
- It's a bottle. It's a secure method for transporting data between systems.
- What's in it?
- Nothing much. Crop reports, balance sheets, that kind of thing.
- Is it legal?
- Sure. Just don't get caught with one, unless you've got Zephyr or UN credentials.
- Why us?
- You seem like a capable lot, you're not associated with me, and this needs to leave, right now.
- Why not take it yourself?
- I'm getting too old for this vrak. Also, I'm not really welcome on Earth.
- Why not send it with Zephyr?
- They don't really operate a super reliable service out here, and right now I need reliable.
- Who's it from?
- No one person. It's a data run. There could be hundreds of messages in there, from as many people.
- Who's it for?
- Catherine Salazar. Yes, that Catherine Salazar.
- Why did the Thule want it?
- The Thule are vraking morons. If I knew that, I'd be living on an estate back on Earth, not running a bar in this backwater.
- Why did they start shooting at the bartender?
- See that facial tattoo? That marks her as property of the Thule. Property isn't supposed to be free.
- How do we get onto Earth?
- Getting to Earth isn't much of a problem, ships go there every day. The trick is getting through security. You'll have to find a plausible reason.
- What if customs finds it?
- If I was a gambling man, I'd say it's a two year minimum.
- What if we lose it?
- Do not, under any circumstances, lose it.
If the Players Agree
Baxter turns around, gets something out of one of the boxes behind him, and puts it down on the bar. "This is the bottle. I need you to transport it to Earth for me. 5,000 bits a head, cash on delivery."
The War Council
The survivors gather for drinks while Baxter talks, overhear the whole thing, and everyone who lived offers to help in their own way; these are prompts, not a plan, and the players build their own approach from whatever the room gives them. Sonny Okafor knows cons, and can teach how rich people are read and how lies survive questioning. Bogdan Ilic and Dot Reyes know freight, and suggest skipping entry entirely: stow away on a cargo vessel and slip out of the freeport at night, since as they sarcastically point out, nobody on Earth pays any taxes anyway, so it's basically a free pass in. Louis Marchand knows paperwork: QBC can source forged credentials and the right clothes for any plan that needs them. Sindy Kane knows the entitled, how they talk to staff, what they never carry themselves, what security defers to. Lucky Zhao, sober by morning, offers the route that doesn't use a manifest at all: a Tonglu ship. Jun and Astrid Park know sportsball: there is a tournament on Earth soon, travelling supporters are one of the few ordinary reasons frontier people ever get planetside, and while the Parks can't get anyone a ticket, they can make the crew pass as lifelong fans. Dead patrons make no offers; what the players have to work with is decided by who they kept alive.
The Journey
A passenger story: the crew has no ship, so they travel on commercial transport with the bottle in their luggage, passage covered by Baxter. Two days: day one in-system to the heliopause for Translation, day two from Translation to Earth. The tension is twofold. Earth is the most exclusive destination in human space, frontier nobodies don't get entry, and the crew are not billionaires, so getting onto the planet at all is the first problem; the bottle is the second, highly illegal in civilian hands, impossible to explain, declare, or talk past, and it must never be found. The crew has two days to work out both. Good plans work, bad plans don't, and the clock is the hull: when the transport docks, the plan is whatever they've got. Each war-council route leans on different competence. The con is the social route: Presence, sharpened by Sonny and Sindy's coaching, with Computing and Security for props like a spoofed booking. The mule plan is the technical route: Computing into the ship's systems, Security through what guards the passenger manifest, Larceny to plant the bottle in a legal carrier's luggage (UN personnel, a Zephyr courier) and lift it back planetside, Security again for the credentials game at entry. The freeport is the physical route: it exists to move things in for the rich who live there, nobody examines the cargo by design, and the AutoGolem patrols are there for one thing only, making sure no rats get in with it, so the bottle passes trivially and the crew are the contraband; Larceny gets past the Golems by sneaking or by lying to their scripts with a dock worker's overalls, a staged distraction, or a spoofed transponder, Security for the electronic end, Ranged and Brawling if it comes to fighting, Computing to pick the right vessel. The Tonglu run is the relational route: Presence to negotiate terms with Zhao's people, paid for in obligation to pirates, backstopped by Ranged and Brawling if it sours.
The Delivery
Arrival at Earth. The smuggling plan meets reality at entry control, then the handover to Catherine Salazar. Content TBD.