The Cantons in Spaaaace

I have been trying to resist the space opera bug for months now—Jeff Rients' Traveller Leviathan campaign reports just made matters much worse.

Basta. I surrender.

Starting today at 8:30 I will be running an on-again, off-again Classic Traveller mini-campaign on Google Plus.

The mini-campaign takes place on the outer edge of the Cantonment, a distant-future confederation of 31 worlds. The Cantonment has mysteriously just emerged from the confines of a pocket universe it was shoved into (just as mysteriously) five centuries ago to find it has been shoved to another spiral arm of the galaxy.

All around it is the yawning darkness of unexplored space.

The coreworlds of the Cantonment are in sad shape for confronting this development. An inward malaise and weariness has set in the long years of splendid isolation. Endless rounds of flower wars, ponzi schemes, financial collapses, feuds, peccadillos, insurrections, and the like have wracked the confederacy leaving its central government weak and inert.

But some are stepping forward to face outwardly into the stars. Grasping corporations, ambitious planetary radas (councils), and now even spunky little “bolos” (small, cooperatively-owned outfits leftover from the Autonome Upheaval) are outfitting their own ships.

You are one such bolo. Pooling your savings and pensions from your years in service you have purchased a 200-ton Stormchild-class Space Xebec (pictured above and statted below). The ship only crews six and your bolo is larger, so expect some rotation (cue the in-game excuse for rotating player composition). You start on the edge of known space at a squalid, little planet called Outpost Nine (0801 Outpost Nine C446353-9 Non-Industrial).

A small detail, you still owe payments on the ship. Every six months for the next 20 years you must pay 300,000 cr—or you are going to make the repo list pretty damn quick. And the life of a space repo man is always intense.

House Rules

1. We will be using the three LBBs and the Citizens of the Imperium for character generation. Any number of terms are acceptable.

2. Failure to meet a survival roll in chargen gives you the choice between “cake” (-1 to one of the first three stats and forced discharge from service with no skills/benefits for that term, add two years to your age) or “death”.

3. Any melee weapon can be bought in a suped-up version that cuts all to hit modifiers against armor in half (rounding down). Such weapons cost three times the normal price. Feel free to add “vibro”, “chain”, “power”, or what to the name of it to sex it on up.

The Ship

Name: [Player-Defined]

200-ton Space-Xebec

Constructed by Hydra-Corp, Nova Marlankh

M Drive: Mongo-Bakunin Model A Infectuator, 2G acceleration

J Drive: B, Schizflux Rhizomatic Model B, 2 jump

Power Plant: Runtaz 2

Range: Eight weeks maneuver. Two jumps. Six months. RAM-type fuel scoops and processors.

Gravities: Adjustable 0.1 to 2.0 floor fields. Inertial compensators.

Minimum crew: pilot/navigator, engineer

Full crew: above and gunner, medic, gun thug/procurement specialist, and xenobiologist (or other necessary expert).

Cabins: 6

Cargo: 20 tons of cargo.

Armament: dorsal hardpoint, dual laser-blaster turret standard. Optional weaponry available.

Electronics: TRS Model/Ibis or equivalent. 8-bit entertainment consoles with cassette drives. Magnetic tape and punchcards sold separately.

Ship's Boats: No auxiliary vessels. One four-passenger Chim'ba Air/Raft carried in aft. Used for errands and has limited sub-orbital capability.

Diary of an AD&D Wandering Monster

Patchwall 1, 576

Sweet screamin' Yeenohu, graduated from the Rel Astra School of Hermetic Iridology today! Drank a whole case of Velunian brandy and ate a cold fowl with the guys before our silver ran out. Lucky I sobered up before the sun went down, because man does the city get all kinds of cuh-razy what with all the slovenly trulls, press gangs, spectres, and were-tigers running around.

Patchwall 2, 576

Should have listened to my mom about remaining 0-level, because now I just have this crappy degree and normal man status to my name. With saves like this, what am I going to do?

Patchwall 18, 576

Should I change my name to an anagram?

Ready'reat 5, 576

Career path here I come. I was milling around the Old Quarter when a buff man in ring mail carrying a glaive-guisarme picked me out of the crowd and told me I was just the kind of dude he needed for his band of 20-200 “reclamation experts”. He assured me that his band was strictly neutral and that they didn't go in for that “chaotic evil brigandry kind of stuff” so I said “fuck yeah.”

He told me I need to bundle up my gear and hump it as they needed to get out pdq on account of the great need for normal men in the Inhabited And/or Patrolled Areas--especially those with Temperate and Sub-Tropical Conditions and all.

Ready'reat 6, 576

Did I luck out signing up with these guys. As I was shipping out I noticed a gang of crazy fuckers with beards. I was desperate enough I would have joined them and today I'd be running around barefoot screaming my head off with two weapons in each hand instead of getting my nice shiny new suit of boiled leather, light crossbow, and 2-8 gold pieces.

These dudes are a class act too. Not only is the boss a Lord but his lieutenant is a Champion. Both of them could fall 60 feet without dying! Sarge told me that we have a one in four chance of being joined Enchanter, Warlock, or Sorcerer too if we get lucky!

Fuck yeah!

Sunsebb 11, 576

Tough month, diary. It was cool when we just sat around that informal camp and all, but we have been marching up and down the countryside for like four weeks. That last patch of Uninhabited/Wilderness Areas was totally off the chain!

Sarge says we're looking for a cave complex with a secret entrance or a small castle, but I was like “good luck”.

Fireseek 8, 577

I doubted it, but we found a totally stupendous underground lair underneath this ruined abbey. This place extends for miles and has like scythe traps, trapezoidal rooms, tons of branching passages, and shit.

Sucks Dispater's hairy balls though because Sarge has broken us up into small groups and we have to march around the first level in ten-minute intervals. We can't even enter the levels below.

Fireseek 11, 577

Those bullywugs we keep bumping into are total dicks!

The Zombastodon

No. Enc.: 1-3

Alignment: Chaotic (Evil)

Movement: 120’ (40’)

Armor Class: 5

Hit Dice: 9

Attacks: 2 tusks, 1 front trample

Damage: 2d6 (tusk), 1d12 (trample)

Save: F9

Morale: 12

XP: 1,500

Though colloquially called “zomabastodons” by feckless wags who care not for life and limb, the Mammut Morbidium is a reanimated spirit-demon of the more mundane mastodon. 

It is said that Kostej the Deathless himself had a hand in the base sorcery that first revivicated the lifeless corpses of the wooly elephantine pack animals so very much beloved by the northern rump-states of the Hyperboreans in the long glacial age that ended their civilization.

Whatever their origin, Zombastodons have been imbued with a relentless fury at two-legged mammals--and a cold, undying semi-intelligence to sustain that rage over the centuries. They appear as shattered shells of their former robustness, mangy hide splitting, exposed rib bones, and a demonic red glow to their eyes.

Zombastodons have the same range of magical protections as do the more human-appearing undead. They can be turned by clerics as per their hit dice (or as “vampires” in some systems).

Though their tusks are somewhat desiccated and gnarled by the ravages of time, each tusk is still able to fetch 1d4 x 100 gp from collectors of curios and the arcane.  

The Hyperborean Past-Future of the Hill Cantons

The Hyperboreans play a prominent and reoccurring role in the Hill Cantons campaign. Their cycolpean halls, haunted battlefields, tomb complexes and sprawling undercities stand testimony to the far reach of that time-space distant northern empire.

Jarek the Nagsman, Marlank bon vivant and sage, maintains that the World Turtle that the Hill Cantons rests on swims through time in a series of dialectical mini and macro cycles upwards to the End of History. The other planes, he contends, may be the antithesis or synthesis of the present of the HC, but of course that's absurd heresy.

Others more orthodox in their tastes maintain that Time itself revolves around the rim of the Sun-Lord's chariot wheel (which one is a matter of intense debate).

Whatever the true nature of this movement, I call on my friend Vsevolod Ivanov (the painter not the famous Soviet writer) and his wonderful paintings to provide snapshots--it's unclear in what point of the cycle actually occur/occurred--of that great civilization and its successor states.

The End of History

Meeting the Eld

Demise of the Grand Fleet

Successors

Latter States

News from the Hills

With the approach of low summer, the Alkonosts, great long-winged seabirds with the torsos of beautiful maids, complete their great annual migration from their austral homes in the Weird to lay eggs on the beaches and roll them into the sea. It is said by men of science and learning that that when the eggs sprout open that great wracking thunderstorms are unleashed on the sea. Blagoy, the Lord-Accipitrary of Lower Kezmarok, is offering 2000 gold suns for each egg brought to him unbroken.

Boumila the Bountiless has returned from a far voyage on the stout if strangely-named caravel, the Flux of Doom. The crusty sea-lass spins wild tales of the land of Cockaigne where the plum brandy runs in streams, halushky grows on trees and where no dice are rolled for saves. She is hiring for her next voyage.

A pitiless and odd gendarme named Sir Eld has been harrying the villages south of Marlankh. Vile cruelties and humiliations have been heaped on the local peasants by this pitch-skulled menace. He has seemed to focus his depredations on the backhills hamlets swept up by the Manzabarge schismatic cult last month.

The Patriarch of Kezmarok is offering 60 suns a head for border ruffians, reclamation experts, hedge wizards, and other “adventuring types” to be part of his entourage for the Night of Kostej the Deathless, a local festival and night-time soiree. Costumes will be allotted. Tiger wrestling and other feats will be greatly rewarded.

(Those of you visiting from the real world should see the early post about the South Texas Minicon.)

FLAILSNAILS, Special Guests and the South Texas Minicon

Longtime readers know how much I dislike excuses about posting. Moving to the new manse, family rollercoaster, the blazing white-hot intensity of the Texas sun blah, blah, blah.

The latest, greatest project (beyond finishing the Roustabout's Guide to the Hill Cantons this week) is organizing the South Texas Minicon on August 18th. The (still free) event is building quickly to the point that we have contemplated adding another room. If you are interested in attending or running a game drop me a line at kutalik at gmail dot com.

Excitingly we will have a number of “special guests” on hand at the Con:

Jeff Dee will be running a Tekumel game with Bethorm, the Pocket Universe hack of that setting.

Talzheimer Mrr--who I have mentioned before for her wonderful and free paper Tekumel miniatures--will be running Cavemaster, the Stone Age rpg

A. Miles Davis, author of the darkly comic rpg Homicidal Transients, will be on hand.

Coming in from Georgia, Mike Davison, of Sword+1 blog (and Ruins and Ronin) fame is likely also gracing with his presence. (By the way I am pleased as punch that Mike is doing the layout for the Guide.)

As far as what I may be running, I am still very much in love with the rollicking chaos of the “open world” FLAILSNAILS experiment. Expect to see some tie-ins to that. I will be attempting to use some new desk-mounted web-cams to make use of virtual players (and observers) in each related event.

Some of the ideas I had (an feel free, mighty peanut gallery, to suggest others):

1. Hill Cantons face-to-face session with players potentially from both the home group and the Google plus group—and any other G+ player who makes it down (and expect at least one surprise virtual guest). I am accumulating and scratch-building some dungeon terrain for the soiree, so expect to see something with some visual flash to it.

2. A miniature battle royale using By This Axe I Rule that will play out a pivotal battle in the borderwar. Though the play-by-post side was more than a bit stalled, expect to see FLAILSNAILS player characters taking a role as sub-commanders in that conflict.