Places and groups:

Phenes: Planet we are on, freezing dirt ball, Heavy industry mining world, desert planet covered in dust and smog.  Terraforming is failing and breathable zones are shrinking, PPC (Phenes Planetary Council) is the government, although industries control most things.  Gets cold enough at night that if you don’t have somewhere to stay you will die. Sudanese culture.

Obadoom: Major city on Phenes, starting place, space port there

Katoomba 5: Space Station

Astynas: Planet in another solar system, rich world

Eretus: Jungle moon of the planet Thorin, used for mining, miners on the planet are essentially slaves, but are provided medical care because it costs too much to ship workers there to just let miners die.  

Red Sun Runners: Smugglers and space pirates

Characters:

Marky: Mechanically inclined, pilot, cocky, scavenger, native to Phenes, grav cab driver (low altitude flying cars), Works for Uncle Enzo, and lives in his place with a bunch of other orphans.

Uncle Enzo: Not Marky’s real uncle, just a guy who lets orphans crash at his place and make money driving his grav cab when he isn’t using it

Trevor Brentwood, AKA Crunchberry Trev, AKA Trev: Former trust fund kid, native to Astynas, son of corporate parents, youngest of 3 children, his older brother and siter were groomed to take over the business side of the family business, and Trev was sent off to school so he could take over the tech and R&D side of things. Trev was on a high tech education path, but got kicked out of grad school and never completed his dissertation because he go distracted playing keytar with his band, Zero-G Sex Party. After dropping out Trev’s parents disowned him and cut off the money. Recently Trev was booted from 0GSP and left destitute on Phenes. Currently crashing on the couch of Slandarr Warfarm, the bass player for the band Blaster Stab.

MER-13 (Mining Evac Robot-13, referred to as Merle): A rescue medical robot form Eretus, who was taken with a group of miners who were liberated from bondage on Eretus by an anti-Thorin group called the 7 Cuts and dropped off on Phenes.  On Phenes there isn’t much work for a medical robot in the mines, because human life is considered cheap, so MER13 was left to fend for himself.  Being a robot, he can survive outside on Phenes at night, so lately he has just been hanging out on the streets.

Jeffery Timothy: Uncle Enzo found him wandering near the spaceport and took him in. JT works in Uncle Enzo’s machine shop doing repair work on the grav cab and also takes turns driving the cab. Known for driving recklessly but somehow never getting in accidents and always avoiding traffic, good at fixing things, shows up when not expected, mimics other peoples actions, when asked where he is from deflects the question, psychically trained.  Acts like he has Asperger’s.

Alien Races:

Felleti: Humanoid but fishlike, grey-blue skin, sharp teeth, wear face masks, wet clothing, give off ammonia smell, tendrils for hair, and one tendril ends in a glowing tip like an anglerfish, air-breathers but like moist air, tend to do security work, very calm

Twisi: Size of large pumpkin but more like an apple, vine coming out of butt, small black eyes, move like snails, vine acts like fingers, when found by humanity there were building wooden exoskeletons for themselves but since being introduced to technology now they make robot bodies for themselves, speak through synthesizers, interested in fixing things, hard to get them working on anything they aren’t interested in

Story:

Started out with everyone looking for work.  Uncle Enzo indicated that it was time for Marky and Jeffery to move out, and he seemed to not like that they were using his cab so much, Slandarr was dropping hints the Trev needed to move out, and Merle needed to get off the streets.  On New Years day morning we all answered the same job listing on the local net advertising for freelancers needed for a special project.  Job was offered by Faraj Abu Addam from Blue Nile Industries.  We all showed up at a non-descript building, and met in a boardroom that was in poor repair. Farraj seemed uncomfortable in the shabby setting.

He told us that 2 days ago Blue Nile was robbed.  A ship called the Nostalgia which belonged to Sophia L. Hill, the CEO of Blue Nile, was stolen. The ship is apparently a pretty common model, but we were told it has sentimental value. The ship was stolen from Obadoon spaceport. We were being hired to locate and return the ship, and completion of the mission would pay 500 credits.  Faraj told us to contact him once we found it. Call sign on ship is PHX723-L

We asked Faraj if there were any leads, and he suggested we might want to check at a local club called the Blast Furnace, because some of the people involved might hang out there.  The Blast Furnace was known to Trev as a place that played electronic music, a dive bar, dangerous. One of the other people who was crashing with Slandarr got a gig there.

Marky ferried the group to the bar in Enzo’s cab.  On the way there Trev checked the dark net on his dataslab, and found a forum where people were hiring mechanics for shady jobs. On such job from yesterday was for repurposing a ship, and the job was accepted by someone with the online handle shod721693.
We arrived at the Blast Furnace at about 11 AM.  The bar was in a repurposed industrial site. The cover charge was 10 credits, and after Trev was unsuccessful in talking his way past the bouncer he paid to get in.
Inside there was a DJ playing for a packed crowd. There was a long bar against one side and seated at the end of the bar was a felleti seated in front of a hemispherical dome that was some sort of odor cancelling device.
Marky went over and bluntly started asking the felleti questions about the people we were looking for.   He said he notices everything and didn’t seem happy about it. He pointed to an older guy in the crowd and told Marky to talk to him. The indicated guy was greasy looking and appeared kind of down and out. His hands were covered in grease, indicating he was some kind of mechanic.  His name was Old Shoddy. Marky tried to talk him up, and pretended to be interested in him, giving him her number (he called himself from her phone to get her real number), but he didn’t tell her much useful.

Trev circulated in the crowd asking questions and discovered Shoddy was known for being willing to do any kind of work such as stripping VIN numbers off ships and redoing IDs.  He had apparently been unusually quiet and cagey about the last job he did.

Jeffery determined the felleti was a psychic, and he had a discussion with him, but the rest of the group didn’t hear what was discussed.

When Old Shoddy left the bar we tailed him, which was very easy because he was drunk off his ass. He lived in a residential building, up on the 63rd floor.  Trev and Jeffery worked together to hack the lock on his door. Inside we found a very tiny apartment, with broken ship parts scattered around and a mattress on the floor with Shoddy on it, very unconscious.  His arm was draped over his datapad, but Trev was able to lift his arm and retrieve it without waking him. Marky also wanted to get his phone to remove his number from it so it couldn’t be traced back to her. While she searched his pockets Trev played a soothing lullaby on his keytar to assist, and Mark was able to retrieve it without waking him.  She deleted her number from his phone, and on Jeffery’s suggestion we dropped the phone in his toilet for good measure.

Trev hacked into Shoddy’s datapad and found he was doing a job for a company called Radison Shipping. The pad contained some invoices from Radison shipping for work wiping ID codes and changing VINs. Invoices signed for by someone named Ramon N.  Doing some research on the net, found very little information on Radison Shipping, indicating it isn’t a legitimate business, and found it has some association to the Red Sun runners.
The Radison Shipping facility was out near the starport, so Marky drove us there, ignoring Jeffery’s requests that she let him drive. The building we arrived at appeared to be a warehouse with a landing pad on top. It was a low, squat structure, with small offices in front. There was an air filtration system on the front of the building, it had a chain link fence around it, and as we observed we saw a couple people going in and out. Over on the left side to the building was a separate door going into the warehouse area.
 

Last edited by Erindor (3/20/2021 11:39 pm)