First Serious Fight

Having taken a decent prize, the players needed to figure out how best to proceed. In the end they sent Semi with the Kishermii's Fancy and seven of the new volunteers¹, plus a couple of the prisoners in cold berths, back to Drinax via a loop through Aslan space (ie Sink-Tyokh-Kteiroa). Taking the opportunity to take a peek at the ihatei encampments on Kteiroa as they passed through.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Ihatei?

So at the end of last session King Oleb tasked the PCs with dealing with the Ihatei issue on Kteiroa, but my players were somewhat torn on the best way to go about it.

The Ranger Class Subsidised Merchant

Sometimes dubbed a ‘Fast Trader’, the Ranger class is a variant of the 400 dTon Type R that is commonly encountered in the Domain of Debeb, where the relatively sparse Imperial settlement calls for hulls rated for longer jumps and which are capable of conducting wilderness refuelling operations as part of their planned schedule.

Small Mercy

SK-374812967-D is a Skinner-class survey cutter, laid down in the year 829 at Byrni highport. During the Fall it was attached as an E/W picket to CruRon Beta of the home fleet and suffered a catastrophic hit in the engineering section during the opening phases of the Battle of Rhizol, which destroyed the Jump Drive and rendered it dead in space. The hull was salvaged ten years after the Fall, the maneuver drive was repaired and it was attached as an escort to SDB-13A's squadron.

The Skinner-class Survey Cutter

The Skinner class was commissioned by the Drinaxi Ministry of Security to fill two roles. In peacetime they operated under the Pilotage Division of Survey charting navigational hazards and providing periodic updates to the astrographic rutters for use by Drinaxi-flagged merchant vessels; in times of war, they were mobilised as fleet auxilliaries and assigned to Star-Guard naval flotillas to serve as sensor pickets and electronic warfare platforms.

Friends In Low Places

As mentioned at the end of my 'Session Zero' post, the PCs were commissioned by Chief Galx to defend a Vespexer settlement from Sunchaser raiders.

The settlement in question was the Far Point Solar Foundry - several square kilometers of steerable mirrors, focusing the sunlight of Drinax Prime during local noon so that salvage gathered from the ruins of a nearby ruined city can be smelted and purified into batches of common raw materials, uncommon raw materials, polymers and precious metals suitable to be used as feedstock for the matterfabs and nano-forges of the Floating Palace. 

Session Zero

My regular group gets together in central London most Monday evenings to play RPGs. We wanted a change of pace after a fairly long run of D&D 5e and since it was past due for me to GM I pitched 'science fiction and space pirates' (with the Pirates of Drinax campaign from Mongoose in mind) to the group. This piqued enough interest that we agreed to run a session zero (actually it ended up being two session zeros since one player couldn't make it to the first one) to do some character creation, set the scene and maybe kick off an initial bit of action to get the ball rolling.

Who's Who In Drinax

Here is a run down of NPCs that my players may run across on Drinax. This post will likely get updated and extended as the campaign progresses.

Local Group

Drinax system sits in the heart of the Trojan reach, nine parsecs from the nearest outpost of the Imperium at Fist (Tobia subsector) but only six from the Aslan forward naval base at Tlaiowaha.

Drinax Jump-6 Hexmap

Drinax

Drinax (A-43645A-E)

Few travellers visit Drinax today. According to the charts of the Imperial Scouts, the planet still has a Class-A Starport, but the charts are centuries out of date. Drinax is a dead world. There are no major settlements on its surface, only the scars left by the Aslan when they bombed the cities from orbit. The once-fertile grasslands were seared to deserts; the forests where the kings of old hunted are charred stumps. The seas bloom red with algae after they were boiled to death. People don’t live on Drinax anymore.

They live above it.

The Reach

Between the Spinward Marches of the Third Imperium and the rimward holdings of the Aslan Hierate lies an expanse of wild space called the Trojan Reach. A narrow ribbon of stars, the dust-spice trade route, links these two empires. Every day, ships brave the perilous crossing from Imperium to Hierate, navigating a circuitous route from Fist (Tobia subsector) to Tyokh (Tliowaha subsector). Between these two worlds is a sea of lawless, dangerous planets.