Last Friday, Group II of James Maliszewski’s Riphaeus Sector gang carried on with the first adventure where we’re all getting used to each other, how we fit together, and what we might want to be doing within the Sector. We happily spent less time this session fiddling with A/V issues, but it’s still clear that online gaming might just come with a certain amount of people having troubles with their audio connection consistently.
Settling on a name
Group II or A Bunch of Starport Randos seemed not useful as a name for the band of PCs (either in-game or out-of-game, really); the PCs felt they neeed a name they could use to convince the patron that they might, indeed, be hirable. The group settled on Red PLanet Investigation & Salvage (nicely colourful without being too suggestive of any specific kind of job; inspired by salvage consultant Travis McGee: “We’ll help you recover your stuff, and take 50% as a payment, because half of something is worth more than all of nothing.”)
Meeting the patron
The patron turned out to be Arlana Jeric, daughter of Jericorp Mining’s founder, and current COO (after the recent, and obviously suspicious, death of her mother).
She thanked the PCs for their assistance during the sabotage of their leased sandcrawler (especially for stepping in to prevent further injury to her father). She added more detail about the history of trials and tribulations Jericorp had suffered in the years since they’d taken up the lease on the claim they were currently working (or attmepting to work). Some of these details the PCs had already learned through some investigation.
Arlana made it clear that Jericorp management was not staffed with fools – they knew they were being intentionally nobbled, and she strongly suspected Arash Minerals, but had been to this point unable to find proof sufficient to get past the corrupt officials in the local government. (Coincidentally, Arash was working the large claim abutting their own.)
The pitch
Arlana offered the PCs a brief stint as a security and investigation team attached to the one remaining sandcrawler they had deployed in the desert. The base rate of pay was modest, but she also offered a sizeable bonus, should they manage to uncover solid evidence to implicate Arash Minerals, or uncover a sizeable find within the claim, or both. Arlana had ten days left of burn on the Jericorp investment here before it was no longer worth pursuing, and she hoped that getting the PCs to sign on as security for the crawler would help maximize its chances of striking a lode sufficient to make the leased claim pay out.
She emphasized that she’d like to get the team deployed out to the sandcrawler as fast as possible; every hour that past would eat into the ten days of burn she had left.
Setting out
The team decided to spend just the time required to get what seemed like a sensible load-out of “desert worker gear” and some extra weaponry. Arlana had indicated the group would get ferried out to the crawler by one of the industrial air-cars that would be attached to the crawler for reconaissance.
It was at this point that the second session drew to a close.