Grizzly Corsair game

Referee: RooK

Player: Dave

Character: Aarg

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Plot Infliction 00 - Getting Up To Speed

After a brief indoctrination, Aarg, Buster, and F are each given posts on different pirate sloops. Aarg finds himself stationed aboard a ship called "Troubadour".

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What are my rank and duties?

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Troubadour:

• size: 80 chassis points
• stamina: 160
• shield:160
• strength: 1 (8 cp cargo capacity by mass)
• speed: 4 km/turn², 2 P/h
• sensors/comm: 80km EM, 2 Parsecs etheric
• cargo hold/crew compartment: 11.1 chassis points

Troubadour is skilled as infantry, technician, and leader. He is one of the dominant type of ship that prowls this region of space, and is part of a pirate league - specifically, the Odile Fleet. These fleets cooperate (mostly) in the League under the direction of the dominant Chodovo Fleet. The League work together to out-compete other pirate forces (both by direct engagement and starving them of victims), and maintaining their "protection" income.

Aarg's title is "Conscience Officer", and that entails advising the captain (in this case, Troubadour himself), leading selected raiding parties (if deemed honourably necessary by the captain), and conducting official communications with other entities (as directed by the captain). Aarg is also designated as Second Gunner.

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Is Troubadour a person who is captain of the ship, or is he a sentient ship?

Does Second Gunner give me responsibility of a turret? If so, how big? I introduce myself to the rest of the crew as well - try to get to know First Gunner and see how skilled he is. I'll let them know I've some weapon specialist, but not give away that I've got the all-important placement option unless directly asked.

I ask Troubadour if I'm going to be able to have regular contact with F and Buster. I also confirm what my cut is for being "Conscience Officer". Nikola indicated it would be around 7%.

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Troubadour is the sentient ship, and in this case is the commanding officer. All the ships in The League are sentient, as are most of the local ships generally. In fact, most of the ships based locally are of a similar type, with some being faster and having considerable turrets, and others being slightly slower, stronger, and trading most of the turret volume for cargo capacity. You can guess which Troubadour is.

Being Second Gunner means you are the third-in-command (after the Captain and First Gunner) with respect to who-shoots-with-what and with respect to target designation (after they've been classified as a target type by command). The First Gunner is a cocky Yiptak named "Weedi" with shock-shooter skills and a close friend of Troubadour. The Ship's Engineer is a Mavvice named "Hector"... he's very Mavvice-y. Alpha-Squad Leader is a Zygroten named "Claude", and Numb-Squad Leader is a Crocaloid Major named "Dagens". They both take turns being Tertiery Gunners. Plus there's two squads of raiding parties, all Reptiloids: Eyh, Bee, Seeh, Dee, Yyy, Eff, Jee, Wun, T'o, T'wee, F'or, Fyve, Sics, and Sebastian Vettel.

As suggested back on Medved, being Conscience Officer is worth 7% of the gross take.

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2011.07.21 - A Single Underwhelming Encounter

Gosh, a lone rival pirate ship, of nearly identical stats, with slightly-better medium-range guns, but only with professional turret gunners: TOAST.

Also, a passenger that is a chunky Zygroten and also affiliated with the Dal Fona? Unpossible!

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Plot Infliction 00001 - Let's All Go To The Lobby

MK12 Follow The Sun (Uh... Probably not safe for kids to watch.)

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That's just wrong.

It Troubadour going to go to a population center to sell the hover bikes, or are we going to continue our 'patrol'.

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Oh, you know, patrol vaguely population-ward. Without having a customer expecting the shipment, they're probably not particularly valuable, so no rush.

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2011.07.28 - Killing in the name of...

Now ya do wha' they told ya. (Apologies - Rage Against The Machine stuck in my head.)

Troubadour and the crew responded to a distress call, and found themselves showing up too late to prevent the raid, but in time to prevent them from walking away with the prize. They found themselves facing two "standard" combatants, but only crewed by mere professionals, and the damage-dealing prowess of Aarg more than compensated. They did, however, take a bit of a thrashing before earning victory.

As a result, the need for replenishing their neglected stock of ship-scale patches was highlighted, and the Troubadour escorted the rescued client ship to their destination. Which the crew used as an opportunity to take some shore leave.

While lounging in the spaceport bar with Alpha Squad, Aarg and Claude the squad leader frighten off some arrayed grunts with a display of badassery. Subsequent to which Aarg wandered off to acquire some tactical weaponry. As Aarg returned to the bar, he also acquired some plasma wounds courtesy of a Kvankii bounty hunter. Claude and Alpha Squad are summoned to help fend off the sniper, and it is eventually rendered unthreatening. After questioning it, and finding the experience displeasing, it's vitals were blasted into a smoking spray. It had been sent by the Grizzlies to kill Dal Fona.

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Plot Infliction 00010 - Nobody Likes Kvankiis Anyway

They're icky.

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Just for fun, I do a quick check to see the availability and cost of Dynomer. Also, if I'm still with the gang and we stop by an equipment store, I'm going to stop in and get some double-movement move boots.

Going to try to use whatever planetary communication is available to see if I can hail Buster and F.

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Dynomer availability is pretty average: 5 credits per personnel unit.

Double-movement move boots are acquired.

Planetary communication puts you in touch with Buster and F.

F: "Greetings. What has gone horribly horribly wrong now?"

Buster: "Dude."

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F&Buster: "Just wanted to let you know that we've got bounties on us, courtesy of the Grizzlies." I feed them the interrogation I had with the Kvankii.

I also hail Hector: "If I get some Dynomer, would you build me a small robot when you're not busy with the ship?"

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2011.08.04 - Predators and Prey

After repairing and refitting, Troubadour sallied forth. After a few parsecs of travel, Troubadour was hailed by another ship following them in the nearby shipping lane, and asking to converse at short range about hiring them. Being somewhat paranoid and generally horrible, Troubadour agreed to meet and then proceeded to blast the other Dingo Class into helpless submission.

Further discourse revealed that the other ship's nominal offer was to assist with an assault on a rival facility developing weaponized biotechnology. Unfortunately, not only was the competing facility affiliated with a significant organized crime, they were operating the Dingo Class as a slave - which perturbed Troubadour... lethally. The ship was boarded, and their crew were slaughtered - was not entirely easy, as they were mostly highly-augmented hand-to-hand combatants. One member of the boarding squad had his head ripped off, but all other casualties were recoverable.

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Plot Infliction 00011 - Existentially Ominous

Aside from the unfinished task of finding someone to lease the newly-freed Dingo Class, there was the awkward aspect of God insinuating that He was bored and would kill everyone soon.

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Indeed. Aaarg is sensing a grave disturbance in the force.

Also, the risk/profit ratio isn't all that good so far. I think the plan of earning skill and capital to eventually exact vengance isn't going to work with these guys. The additional risk of bounty hunters after me is also problematic.

I check to see if there is a fold space available on this planet.

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There is, in fact, no publically-available fold space on this planet. If they did, there wouldn't be quite so much difficulty with piracy.

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Makes sense. I try to familiarize myself with this area of space. Where's the nearest system that would have a fold space?

Alternatively, I could just lay low here for a while - study at a university or something to get my 1st stages of the sciences.

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The nearest systems with a fold space are at the edges of the region controlled by the pirates, about 40-60 Parsecs away.

Enrolling at a university might not be the best way to lay low from the Grizzly bounty hunters.

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2011.08.11 - Boooring END

Cruisers arrive to kill everyone, and Aarg manages to be sufficiently wiley to avoid getting himself killed. Which, really just means that there was a bunch of story-oriented role-playing and no actual combat. Bad god.

Aarg retires to skulk about until the Dal Fona have need of him as a turret gunner.

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