I’m going on an extended trip this weekend and won’t be back until the new year. Internet access will probably be sketchy. I should still be able to get online once or twice a week, and it may be daily, but no guarantees.

Have a fun and safe trip, Thera!  See you in 2014! ... :)

Thanks. :)

Yeah, have a good one!

Hope everyone is doing well.

I hope that everyone has a safe and happy holiday season.  And I hope that the items left under your non-denominational holiday shrub are to your liking!  Best wishes from my family to yours.

Eat plenty of turkey (and ham and stuffing and pie).  I hope to RP with all of you in the New Year (and also beyond, if possible)!

Thanks, Dani! The same to you and yours, looking forward to a new year of adventure!

And to everyone, best wishes in the new year!

cheers

Season's greetings to all. :)

In reply to Thera Santorini (msg # 671):

Hope all had a great holiday season and are enjoying peace, health, and prosperity in 2014.

Wish I had a positive update, but don't see any break in my work schedule before May.

Good to hear from you Ref, We'll keep our fingers crossed for May. :)

Yeah, great to hear from you - hope things are going well!

Doing fine here in 2014!  Hope that things are less hectic for you soon RL, Ref.  Take care of yourself and your family and come back to us when you can!

Thanks for thinking of us, Ref! Hope all is well for everyone!

In reply to Hayden Marks (msg # 677):


This message was last edited by the GM at 07:37, Fri 25 July 2014.

Huzzah! :D

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg # 679):

So, to sum up where I think we left off, the group was negotiating with Mario Gazdik and his companion Dayani about a job taking life support supplies (40tons) and relief personnel (4 passengers total)  to an unlicensed mining site somewhere within a one parsec jump range from Tupolev.

Hayden has suggested Mario and Dayani prepare manifests and other paperwork showing Ozawa as the destination (where he has an ally who can cover any loose paperwork tracks).  Mario and Dayani seem open to the idea, but also reference having used Perseus or Oberon as fake destinations in the past.

Hayden has proposed a price of about Cr256,000 for a two week job, there and back.  Next IC post will be Mario’s response.

Some group members have been thinking creatively about faking a misjump or breakdown as justification for the missing time and presence at the mining site, if discovered.

Did I miss anything?

In reply to Referee (msg # 680):

Looks good to me.

A few questions for Team Moth:

Do we have anyone who knows anything about Prospecting or Geology?

There was some resistance to the initial idea of taking these guys on as passengers.  The easiest way to avoid the issue is to keep our price high and just not come to agreement on the terms.  If we start negotiating in earnest, we need to commit to doing it if we end up on a final price.  Is there still any hesitation in doing this job?

First off, very glad to see this game back on!!

Traveling today so just wanted  to touch base and say Jack would be down for this job if we can sort out the price.

IC post soon, welcome back everyone!

The gang's all here, almost :)



Doc has both physical and space sciences at 0, and Hayden has his JOT.

Sorry about the delay in response.  The weekend was a bit hectic and I'll admit that (as a player) I am more than a bit rusty on the details of the situation IC (even though I have reread things reasonably recently).

I believe the IC reasons for any hesitation was timing primarily.

As a player, I am a little hesitant since we don't know much about the colonist or their motives (of course, they could be their own worse enemy).  I suspect that IC, Danica is not really worried about that at all - a sort of 'the enemy of my enemy...' logic (though we know in real life how well that is policy going in Middle East like Iran and Syria...:D).  Well, that and Dani trusts Hayden (and his player...:)).

It is a bit of a catch-22 with respect to the monetary compensation.  They should pay the roundtrip since they know their destination is unlike to have return freight to cover that leg, but since it is all under the table - it's not like we are advertising the remoteness of the destination.  Guess we will have to see what happens...

And as the Ref noted, Danica has no physical or space sciences or prospecting skill whatsoever.  So, no love for her on that topic.

So I'm not sure what to do at this point.  The 150,000 for a one way trip, dropping off the 4 person crew and not taking 4 people back is tempting.  I was going to suggest that they give us 40 tons of semi-valuable ore (1000 cr/ton or so.. nothing super valuable - hence the need to evaluate it though to make sure we don't end up with garbage) for the outbound leg, so we wouldn't be leaving with 40 tons of empty hold after we drop off the resupply gear.

We've got them on the hook for a full charter now (256K), but in the interest of time, we might want to revisit Mario's proposal for a single drop off and then we move on to our original mission.  What does everyone think?
This message was last edited by the player at 01:05, Mon 04 Aug 2014.

The less time we spend doing illegal stuff, the less chance there is of getting caught. A one way trip means less exposure and reduces the risk of our primary trail going cold.

One way is fine with Danica as well.  There is no reason to push the return charter.

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg # 687):

Not trying to push the group one way or the other, just clarifying because I don't think I explained it well (or at all) IC.

The four person relief crew Mario wants you to take along with the supplies is to spell some poor sods who have been "on shift" for an indeterminate period of time, probably months.  That's why he wants the second leg, be it return to Tupolev or continuing service to another world, almost any other world, so the guys/gals can come "off shift".  A modern day analogy might be oil rig workers.  I've never been one, but I'm given to understand the one number a "rig pig" knows better than any other is the number of days until the helo comes to take him off the rig for some down time back in the world.

Of course, if you want, there's no reason for the group not to tell him you'll do the supply drop, nothing more.  If his compatriots are low on life support supplies, like he says, you've got him over a barrel.

IMHO, all three paths (1 - deliver supplies and exchange workers, 2 - deliver supplies only, and 3 - tell Mario to sod off) are completely justifiable paths and can be plausibly RP'ed in-character.

Without pulling back the curtain too much, yes, as Hayden caught, this could introduce the party in advance to a group they may see again down the road.  But, the group could also bypass this job and move along.  The campaign (such as it is) won't collapse without this encounter.

------------------------------------

On a mostly unrelated, but apropos to the topic, I think, note, it really is something to consider isn't it?  Remote station workers in the modern world, be it on oil rigs, weather stations in Greenland, Antarctica, wherever, even the ISS, have a lot of amenities a belter would kill for.  If something disastrous happens, survival is theoretically possible, through immersion suits/medevac/etc.  Internet/e-mail/radio connect them to their loved ones and humanity in general. Life (a connection to Terran life) can intrude in minor ways (sea birds, aurora borealis, the view from NEO, etc) to remind the individual that it is there and link him/her to a whole.

A belter working in deep space has... nothing.  Truly nothing.

Makes one all philosophical just thinking about it.

For what's it's worth, to me that's a large part of what sci-fi is about.  Take a bit of science (bodies in space may be rich in minerals), extend a reasonable hypothesis (if people could get to those bodies you're damn right they'd mine them), and them consider what that hypothesis means to "being human" in those conditions.

Not that this means Mario's miners have become reavers, just pondering.

Didn't expect Mario to cave so easily ;)

I'd be fine with a one-way trip and getting back on track to Consul, the original mission. Hopefully it would be someplace trailing we'd be headed and therefore going in the right direction. Hayden, the idea of getting some ore from Mario is a good one - keeps the hold full, provides a cover story and also is likely to sell on the frontier-ish worlds we're surrounded by.

My neighbor works as a pilot's mate on a construction vessel, stationed off Brazil. Four weeks on, three weeks off. He's young and likes the travel but you can tell it gets to him, the first week back he goes crazy with all the toys he just bought on amazon, drinks more than he should and generally parties before settling back into his routine.

What's fascinating is the divers his vessel supports. Three full shifts of deep sea divers building the sea floor infrastructure for a new drilling rig - one shift in hyperbaric compression for a few weeks prepping to dive, one shift actually diving and working and one shift decompressing. Those guys must go nuts when they're off the boat!