When Flornce returns to the starship it is Abe who is waiting for her at the airlock. Welcomng her with a nod, he brings her back into the vessel to meet with the others. He's there preparing for departure when she asks for an electronics specialist. He studies her for a moment, this passenger who is friend to Crossers and knows how to speak to other xenos. Studies her and then offers, almost nonchalantly, "Perhaps I can help, Miss Pearce"

They make preparations for their departure, and a long journey.

They visit the agricultural ship Caledonia and stock up on fresh food.  For the crew of the Caledonia, this is a great event.  They aren't doing a huge amount of business with the Crossers, but plenty with the ships that come here to visit.  Including Lilana.  Through Minka, of course, they load up with weeks worth of fresh food.

It's a huge old ship, the Caledonia, an ex-carrier.  The crew is proud of it, and mentions that it is the last of its class still in use.

Everyone knows, eat the bananas first*.

Marlo is one of the last to reunite with the ship before departure.  He has some possibly interesting news.  During his brief time home, he learned that another of his colleagues, scouting out the Human worlds towards the frontier, has been working on a deal for a Human client in that direction, for whom the Crossers would build a space habitat.  This is something they are extraordinarily good at, Crossers built many of the large space habitats in Human space.  Having lived as space nomads as long as they have, they know a thing or two.  Marlo is happy that other Crossers would be headed in that direction, in fact, the entire Home Ship might be, soon, if the deal is signed and the project is big enough to require the resources and equipment of the home ship.

*****  ***** ***** *****

During a trip this long, (which will not be role played in detail!) the characters finally have some substantial development time.

During this time, everyone has the time to pick up 2 0 level skills, or advance 1 skill from 0 to 1 or 1 to 2.  At the same time, you can ask of the GM 3 questions to represent research, studying the things you have already, computer libraries, Lilana's pictures, etc.

Not General Questions!  Do not ask "Look at everything and see if I see something interesting".  By now there are probably things you are wondering- and there are bonuses if you have an appropriate skill.

***** *****

*The economics of bananas is dictated by the ripening process, which, even in the current age of space travel, doesn't allow more than six weeks from tree to eating- bio-engineered bananas offering more time were invented long ago but everyone agrees they taste awful.  As a result, around those star systems where bananas are grown (very few) there is a distinct "banana zone"; past that, no one ever gets fresh bananas.

 got some initial questions. hope they they all don't count toward my three questions
1. Trying remember but I assume we have someone with sensor skill?
2. Will we be going anyplace to that we can buy or sell cargo?
3. Will we be going to places that the commonwealth scouts have never or recently visited and would recording new data on these places be useful/profitable?

Charles main job is Mechanic so i think most logical is that he gets a lot more experience doing this job and of coarse the pay raise that comes with a higher skill level. So Mechanic 1 to 2.

And then the thing he has been wasting most of his free time with including time of the crew and the online courses. So the new skill Cinematography sounds in order.

Charles is wondering plenty of things but these come out on top:

1: Great story aside Lilana is poking her nose in a story that scares of crew and is a well kept secret for generations. What is her real reason to cover the ghost ships.

2: There are pods missing here and there and sometimes even whole ships? Is there a pattern in this not when looking short term but long term.

3: And the people that go missing with their pods. Is there a pattern in skills or life views of people? Are people picked at random or can we find something in the bulk data that reaveals a plan or something?

During the downtime, Abe will pick up Liason-0 and Navigation-0, representing his 'second-seat' as pilot and trying to smooth off some of his military edges. His second option would be to uplift Comms from 0 to 1, if you have a steer

(Jackson, re: sensors, Abe has Comms-0)

His questions would be:

1. Is he able to enhance Lilana's images to pull out any icons, motifs, metadata or similar information?

2. Is there a pattern in ports and routes the ghost ships take? Or those they avoid?

3. What information can he unearth about the ghost ships themselves? Is their a pattern in their type or crew?

“That would be great,” Florence thanks Abe, “But please call me Florence. Miss Pearce is…” She grimaced, obviously not comfortable.

Florence is obviously curious about the Caledonia, and would be perfectly happy to spend quite a bit of time in there. Through the whole purchase of food and loading, she can be seen talking with a few people, asking questions ranging from how it works to who buys what and so on.

While not disdaining the bananas, she doesn't seem to make a big case out of it: she's happy to eat some, but she doesn't seem to consider them as rare. Maybe because she comes from one of those few planets able to produce them?

The girl takes note of Marlo's news about the possibility of the Home Ship going somewhere else to build a space habitat, something she'd definitely like to see. The engineering feat is nothing to sneeze at of course, but she's at least as interested in the logistics aspect of such a massive project. Though not something to look at in the immediate of course.

As they left, she wrote a few messages, not knowing if she'd be able to send them through one of the systems they were going to visit on the way to their destination. And of course, one of those messages goes to the Droynes she met in the Home Ship.

Over the next few days, she explains a bit more to Abe - although she said most of it already, answers any question the ex-Marine could have and makes herself available for any test of course.

So basically, what Florence wants in fine is a sort of brooch combining microphone / speaker, that would be remotely controlled. It needs to be able to perceive / produce sounds in a wide range of frequencies (basically covering every known alien vocalizations).
She has zero issue with starting with a bigger prototype especially considering that she doesn't know exactly what kind of signal will be used between the device and whatever she intends to use to control it (and she's being a bit mysterious about that part, we'd need to talk about it IC if Abe wants to ask).

During the journey to their new destination, Florence also works on a few things :
1 - Regarding the lost pods. Florence assumes that there should be two kind of purchases: low number ones for stuff like research facilities, private interests who, for one reason or another, want to acquire a pod. Then there are high number ones for colony ships. Florence guesses that the pods that interest Lilana have been purchased in "medium size batches". Taking as a base the purchase previously found by Jackson, Florence looks for other purchases that fall in the same category and any pattern that would go with it. She then tries to sort through it to remove what she can (for example known deliveries). She hopes it'll give Lilana other ship names.
16:51, Today: Florence Pearce rolled 8,10 using 2d6+2,2d6+1.  Admin, Computer.

2 - What's been happening in the Commonwealth in the past three months?

Took me a while to even think about those, sorry for the delay!

Naturally it's going to take some time to answer all the questions, however...

Things that can be answered by a quick and routine check of known references (25th century Google) are free, not one of your 3 questions.

So, about interstellar marketing in the region of space you are headed to:


You will be headed past Calderada, capital of the Calderada sector and a gateway to the Trailing Frontier.  Calderada is an Earthlike world with a geologically recent (5-10 million years ago) major asteroid impact.  The world’s ecosystem is still recovering, and the planet has very high vulcanism and tectonic activity.  Sulfur dioxide and other pollutants make the air not toxic but unhealthful over much of the planet.  Colonization has been limited to areas where the air is cleanest.  This means a very small area of the planet is prime colonization real estate, but on the other hand, planets are very big.  "Very Small Area" can mean something the size of Mexico.

This region of Calderada happens to be very favorable for crops as well as humans.  So it is a major food growing region for the frontier, and an important source of coffee, the magical bean that makes humans function.  It has become an important world for food processing and distribution.  Big companies in this line of work have offices here.  This makes it one of the few areas where you could quickly sell your Crosser food in bulk.  Elsewhere, you would have to find smaller retailers and distributors.

*****

Lilana herself has a sensor skill.  Useful for a documentary maker.


*******

The last leg of the trip is off the Main Line, to one of the many "ignored" systems.  Beyond the region around Sol, there are so many stars and planets that people haven't bothered with most.  If it has a strategic location, or an important resource, or a habitable planet, sure, otherwise there are a zillion gas giants, more asteroids, and all kinds of things beyond measure.  This is one of those ignorable systems.  Unless it has something interesting, just another dead gray dust covered world, or just another big cloudy gas giant, is boring.

*****

And we go through questions, one by one...

Abe researches ghost ships.  There is an entire interest group/cult that asks these same questions, and they have asked them for a long time.  Sure enough, some ships are known to have general routes or areas of travel.  Still no proven purposes, just speculations.  One ship jumps out at him, because it conflicts with something they learned recently.  And because it's usual hangouts seem rather close to your destination.

The Agricultural Ship Caledonia, according to its crew, was the last remaining ship of its class.   But that's not exactly true.  Its sister ship Patagonia is operating... well.. past Caldera.  As a ghost ship, meaning it's not engaging in known trade.  Just coming and going doing it's own thing, and nobody really knows what it is up to.

Naturally, for "sinister purposes", an Agricultural Ship is a bizarre choice.  It's old and slow, converted from a long obsolete attack carrier.  Now it carries pods with agricultural habitats.  It's huge, slow and obvious, and most of its systems are very old.

Of course there is speculation about what it does:  smuggling and intelligence gathering are pretty much out.  The leading consensus is that this ship is a kind of traveling resort for the super-rich of the frontier, who want to experience an Earthlike environment, so instead of making the long trip back to Earth, they have some Earth brought to them.

There's still debate, of course.

Yes, there are pods gone missing... and now found.

Ships, not really.  "Ghost Ships" aren't vanished ships, they are just ships that do not work to a known purpose.

99% of the time, a ship arrives in a system, lands or docks, and who they are and what they are doing is very obvious.  At the very least, port authorities demand information when they arrive.  No one wants dangerous or illegal materials to pass through a port, and when the port officer asks what you are carrying, ignoring that is not going be helpful.

But ghost ships... when they do land or dock, it tends to be in places where no one asks questions.  When they don't have that option, sometimes they will send out shuttle craft.  The crews shrug off questions about purpose, destination, cargo, etc.

Of course there are plenty of possible reasons, and people have speculated for years, gathering information to "prove" one theory or another.  Reclusive rich people, smugglers, espionage... all of the above.  It's all been discussed and argued for a long time.

An Agricultural Ship would be a terrible choice for any of those missions.  It's big, slow, obsolete, and obvious.

*************************

Florence tracks down some Commonwealth News.

Politically, the system is destabilizing.  But not in the way many might think it would.  It is not the colonies thinking they should break away from the core worlds.  Far from it.  It is the core, especially the people of Earth, thinking the colonies are sucking up too much effort, to the detriment of poorer regions.

There has also been a worrying return to old fashioned Nationalism, especially in Asia.  People have been demonstrating for "national sovereignty rights", and it's been very serious in places.

Alien mediators do not want to see the Commonwealth crumble- they feel that unification is the only thing keeping humanity from "going rogue".  But many Commonwealth Governors feel they have to do something to defuse the tensions, and it looks like individual governates will have increased local autonomy soon.

"Time flies when you having fun." Jackson remarked out loud "I think Caldera seems the best place to sell the Crosser candy."

He will then say to Charles "Unless I am mistaking it's looks we are going into terra incognito, or least something damn close to that. that means little in the way trade opportunities."

But he realized that trade wasn't the primary mission. "Hope we find what we are looking for, or at least survive it. Who knows we might find other interesting along the way. After all the journey is just as important as the destination."

He also realized that all the interesting things were already found by the scouts the first time around. By the sense of adventure he still had from his days in the scouts hoped there might be a exception. If they did he hoped that they could survive that as well.

Discussing the business opportunities with Jackson he nods.

"Maybe have the boss make a stop at Caldera then and do a wholesale. Also leaves us room is we find stuff we should take on site. Might also be the last chance to party before we meet an untimely death."

Charles himself feels at a loss. All the research and there was no pattern to be found at all. It just made no sense to him and it bugged him more then it should. But at least all the finding nothing has led to his whole camera skill really improving. He is especially proud on the short music video he made about him doing a hull weld on the float and if anyone would sneak into his personal files they would find a music video of all the other crew members too in a classic earth tv show intro.

Florence gathers some information about purchases of hibernation pods.

She is right about their being two general types of purchases, small numbers for special purposes, or for swapping out when pods have mechanical problems, and large numbers when entire ships are being outfitted.

She finds things are a little more complex, though.  On the one hand, easy to track, as these pods all get inspected and certified by the Commonwealth.  But complex, because when pods have problems, or flunk inspections, they are removed, sent back to the manufacturers, and rebuilt.  It turns out there's not much market for pods that aren't flowing through "official" channels- people who are entrusting a device to keep them alive for months aren't normally willing to accept suspicious second hand pods.

Or maybe some do?  She runs across an account of when something like this happened once before:  a smuggler was caught using a dozen "diverted" pods to move people with criminal records to frontier worlds where new "identities" could be provided, generally for a steep price or work contract.  But as with any secret, the bigger it gets the harder it is to keep, and this fell apart when one "transfer" returned to a life of crime, was captured, and talked.  And this was a small operation, involving less than ten pods.  This missing group.. hundreds!

But one element of the story is the same.  The pods that she can identify from pictures, and the purchase previously identified, and pods used by the smugglers, are all "second market" pods, purchased from ships being overhauled or decommissioned.  She can find many few more purchases like that.  Most are for traceable government entities or corporations, but some... not traceable.

*********************

The ship arrives at Calderada.  A number of worlds claim the title of "Gateway to the Frontier" and Calderada is one of them.  What they really mean is:  after this, the colonies get smaller and smaller and fewer and fewer.  But it's not a sudden drop off.  Every world from Lyonesse (The Gateway to the Colonies!) out follows this pattern.

Calderada is a world that will probably never be a major inhabited world, though.  Too much of the planet is problematic.  The air over most of the world is tainted, and volcanic activity is high.  The local day is only 16 hours, so people's internal rhythms always seem out of sync with the planet.

The biggest city and major commercial space port is Porto Plano- the population is largely Spanish speaking and descended from Latin American settlers.  Aviano has a space port as well, but is more aligned with supporting the substantial Commonwealth Navy base here, and not nearly so important to the local economy.

As the days passed, Florence spent her time between fievrously sending out what requests she could about information whenever they were in one system or another, or pouring through all the records and data those had given her.

The situation about the Commonwealth wasn't a good one of course, but at least things were not spiraling out of control just yet. It seemed at the moment that the biggest issues came from people who wanted to be relevant again, something she didn't consider with much sympathy, but others could decide to join, or inflame the situation very fast. Though of course, she couldn't do anything about it.

So instead, in the dark between the stars, she studied what her own small investigations in Liliana's matter had given her. She still wasn't feeling like it was something that really mattered but she had to admit to being curious about the whole thing.

At some point, she organised everything in a neat package and presented it to Liliana and anyone who cared to listen, which in the end she sumed up with “So all that to say that I don't have much as far as your Ghost Ships are concerned.” Not much meaning nothing in the present case of course, but it was such a bad word... “However, I think that if we don't find much at our current destination, we could take things from the other side: not by looking for the ships themselves, but for those who supply them with the pods. Therearent that many places the pods could disappear from, and it's probably near one of the repair or re-certifications centers. As for what the whole thing is about...”

She paused briefly. “Well, regarding that, I have a sort of theory: what if the people in the pods are criminals who tried to disappear? No one would miss them, dealing with Ghost Ships would likely reassure them... As for why the Ghost Ships would drop the pods where they do... Well, at least that way you don't have to fear one of your clients reappearing and putting everything in jeopardy. Plus, it's a nice advertisement for prospects: you can say that someone you helped disappear has never been found again.”

She seemed a bit less sure of herself when she concluded, “The only thing I'm not too sure about - well, rather even less than the rest - is why did they not just jettison the pods in the nearest star? The only explanation I could come up with was that this way, should you need one of them for one reason or another, you could still find them easily enough, but...” She shrugged.

Florence does a lot of busy research on her own.


Lilana is planning on only a short layover at Calderada.  If the crew wants to use the time to engage in side trading, they had best act quickly.

Not too short.  Not like she's planning to turn around in minutes.  She knows, as most people with spacer experience know, that too much time on a small ship is not physically or mentally healthy.  Everyone needs a breather.  With that in mind, Lilana opts for a physical landing on the planet surface, not just a turnaround at the orbital space port.

In the centuries since contact, most Human languages have become extinct.  There are hundreds of African languages which are now gone, except for recordings.  English is the number one survivor, with Chinese a distant number two.  Other languages with strong geographic and cultural roots survived as well, and one of them is Spanish.  Like Russian, Japanese, and Korean, it is one of the "minor languages" with enough popularity and prestige to warrant entire planets where it has been established as the main conversational language.

Fortunately, automatic translators have had plenty of time to perfect English - Spanish translation.  Most people do not need to speak the local language to get along here- although use of a translator does immediately identify a person as an off worlder.

Calderada is a major base for the Commonwealth Navy.  Approaching the planet, the Nellie Bly passes a small armada in orbit.  Military shuttles scurry back and forth.  But there's no sense of danger here.  Calderada is considered far enough back from the front to be safe, in fact there hasn't been an alert in years.  The ships are here in between patrols, or rotated back from forward positions for rest and repair.  About forty of them are here, a large number.

Charles gets together with Jackson to see if they can set up a trade pre arrival. That way they might be able to offload their goods in bulk at a decent price without the time pressure urging them to hasty bad sales. Now he had the basics for cinematography under control he wasn't that extremely adamant in filming everything any more. Sure one of his 3 drones was always somewhere zooming about but not as intrusive as when e was learning the ropes. Now it seems he is 'training' the drones to be as unintrusive as possible.

Florence wasn't really interested in trading in itself. Or more precisely, she found trade interesting, but she wasn't planning on trading anything for the time being.

She had been a bit disappointed by the lack of reactions to her presentation of what she had found, but she supposed that it was just because she didn't really have anything concrete. Well, all she could do was continue and try to find if not smoking gun at least the hints of one, which was why she sent a slew of requests as soon as the ship came into contact with the nearest of system's comm buoys: while what became of the pods that disappeared after being repurposed was untraceable, it didn't mean that she couldn't find anything. In fact, she concentrated on trying to find any kind of commonality between them from just before they disappeared. A name on contracts, an intermediary, a workshop specializing in refitting the pods, things like that.

When they reached the ground, Florence eagerly disembarked, really wanting to stretch her long legs. Surprisingly maybe to the other members of the crew, while she had shown at least a passing knowledge of three alien languages so far, she didn't know a word of Spanish and had to rely on her com' like pretty much everyone else.

Still, that didn't prevent her from walking around, though not too far from the ship that she wouldn't be able to go back to it quickly if need be. She had invited Marlo to come with her, and while she going from stall to store or street cart, she asked a lot of questions about pretty much everything, starting from culinary specialties to the military presence in the system or the local news.

Charles and Jackson do a quick search of potential buyers for the cargo they have.  They've had time to prepare for this, and they've learned how it works:  there are food distribution companies that buy exotic food products wholesale, then package and reship to retailers.  Calderada happens to be a popular planet for that activity, because of the range of "cash crops" grown here.  This is the furthest out planet with a coffee crop, for example.

Your Crosser snacks would be offered the same way:  notices are sent out to the food trading companies, and they send representatives to physically examine samples and make offers.  An auction system is used, with a guaranteed reserve bid system- this means that if the product meets its specification, merely showing up to examine commits to buyer to make a minimum bid.  It's a tool to keep out the hordes of merely curious, but must be used carefully- knowing where to set the bid is a broker's art.  After that there is not much to do- if the right bidders are attracted they will make their offers and you sell to the highest.

A broker skill can be used to manage the auction process which can enhance returns, or you can plunge in without skills if necessary.  One character gets to make the broker roll.

OCC: which will would be the best attribute for this broker roll?

ooc: And can the other give a bonus? I got Broker 3 +1 if it goes with social.

I would allow a social bonus.  It would reflect that having better human connections DOES help, even in a society where the dealing is automated over computer networks.

LOL. That would give Jackson a Broker 2 plus two roll. We effectively would have the same roll. Boss. If Jackson and Charles work together could we get a plus 1 on a 2d6 +4 roll?

You can't get two social bonuses, higher one takes precedence.

I am not asking for two rolls. We would be rolling the same 2d6 + 4. I was asking for an additional plus 1  for one roll to simulate use working together, at your discretion of course. Charles can go ahead and make the roll.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:07, Tue 03 Nov 2020.

You could get the same effect by using Charles to do the Broker stuff and adding Jackson's bonus, so you can have a +3 (Broker) +2 (Social bonus) roll!

Only the higher of the social bonuses can be used.  In effect, Charles would be doing the technical end while Jackson scours lists for people he might have a connection with.

In reply to The Boss (msg # 72):

That works for me. Charles can make the roll unless he wants me to.

Didn't know we could mix n match abilities like that.

09:48, Today: Charles 'Viper' Delorean rolled 12 using 2d6+5.  Double team Broker.