Saints of the Corridor

At the beginning of Easter Weekend for those on the Western calendar, and the start of Holy Week for us on the Eastern calendar, I present something I've been working on for a while now.

A hagiography of the Saints who Shined Forth in Holtzmann's Corridor.

To go with this, here is the tale of a miraculous deliverance worked by an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

The Miracle of The Blessed Virgin of Vaasa (Kemasiik)

Vaasa is a subordinate world of Kemasiik. For many years it has been plagued by attacks from pirate & slaver gangs, sometimes carrying away entire villages. In the town of Lojotz, there lived a priest named Fr. Gervais. When Fr. Gervais heard the alarm that meant another attack was coming, he went to the church to pray. He asked God what he could do to protect his people. He was told to take the icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary from the altar, and go out to meet the raiders. He would then know what to do.

Session Report St Patrick's Day 2018

Today the Adequate Seven forged ahead with their 100-hour endurance airship race on Stavanger, while facing many challenges.

Somehow during the break at the Oasis, adversaries smuggled a robot aboard, disguised as a number of fuel canisters. It assembled itself in the engine room and began tearing up the place. Jay, Joe and Landreth managed to destroy it, and Landreth started taking it apart looking for intel on who had put it aboard. They recalled that while at Oasis 'race officials' and porters were going on and off the ship without any close oversight. Won't make that mistake again. 

The robot did not disable the engines, but it did cause damage. Most of the Seven have mechanical and/or engineering skill, so they were able to effect repairs in flight. 

Reaper stayed behind in the Oasis for a while, and managed to acquire some (dubiously legal) cryonic grenades, which came in handy later. He had to <ahem> liberate an air/raft to catch up with the team in flight but was able to rejoin them at a race checkpoint.

Team Trendheim is in the lead, withTeam Namsos and Team Hokksen catching up. Every obstacle that arises seems to chip away at their lead. I'm using the Chase rules from Omer Joel's Quick and Dirty CT Vehicle combat rules to determine place order. McGee's rolling hot so far.

The Seven made it to the next-to-last checkpoint and stopped to refuel, and hand over the robot's remains to the race officials who will start a formal investigation. 

Taking off at sunset for the next to last leg, the crew are all getting tired, but no rest for the weary!  In the depth of the night the airship is attacked by a group of grav-belt wearing assassins!

They're armed with swords and grenades, and attacked the ship from several fronts at once. The Seven are spread out and can't help each other. Jay, Gray (4) raced up the catwalks to the aid of Longfinger, Gray (7) who was on his way down to the gondola when an assassin flew in at him. Sword and claw rang out in the darkness. 

The Adequate Seven are in Grey, attackers in yellow.

Joe (2) and McGee (1) are trapped in the Salon while Reaper fights on the catwalk outside.

In the photo, Landreth is Gray(3). He was guarding the engine room when he heard Tawnee, the patron's mistress screaming. Rushing to the rescue he found one of the attackers in her cabin, and they're at close quarters with sword and pistol. Ca'al is the inverted gray counter outside on the catwalk. He went axe-to-sword with an attacker, but as the attacker was wearing armor and Ca'al wasn't, he's down. Reaper, Gray(6) froze one assassin with a cryonic grenade and now he's fencing cutlass-to-sword with the guy who stabbed Ca'al.

Joe shot down one assassin through a port-hole with his SMG, but the second is keeping under cover and tossing shock grenades through the portholes. Joe managed to return one but it went over the side and discharged below the ship. McGee is defending the bridge and watching Joe's back.

We ended the session in mid-battle. Shots and blows have been exchanged at close range, but everyone's wearing armor so not much damage has been done. Whoever these masked assassins are, it means whoever sent them is serious about taking Team Trendheim out of the race. Can't wait for next month's session!

Programmin'

Programming in the Far Future

I mentioned in my last post that I spotted a curious thing in the computer software table of the space combat rules. The even more curious thing that I discovered is that there's an aspect of space combat that I've been ignoring for years. Despite the fact that I've played Traveller since 1982, and run this blog since 2014, I still find from time to time little bits of the rules that got lost in the paperwork. Here's one of them.
 
From TTB, page 74:

"Players can and should seek out new and different programs to improve the performance and enlarge the capabilities of their spacecraft."

COOL!

Meet Royal Talaveran Navy Ensign Heidi Klune, Computer skill-4, Liaison-3. Yes, Ensign, I'd be happy to spend two months helping you write that program! Obviously.

TTB gives us rules for how to write your own versions of the existing list, as well as writing new ones. A similar procedure is found in JTAS #1, which is noted as the official rules module for Computer Programming.

Either way you go about it, writing your own copy of programs has four requirements: computer skill, a skill associated with the program, time, and a throw for success.

An example:
TARGET program:  Computer-2, Navigation-2, 10+
The programmer has to have skill-2, the programmer or an assisting character has to have Navigation-2, the programmer has to throw 10+ w/ DM for Computer skill after two months of writing for it to work. Computer skill ABOVE the required level is a +DM for the success throw.

Pilot Ace Enrique Salazar

While reading the section in The Traveller Book on computer programming, I spotted something of great interest. One of the requirements to write the program Maneuver/Evade-6 is that someone has to have the skill Pilot-7.

I have never seen this in play before. Yes, there's the Other character in Supp: 1 1001 Characters who has Electronics-8, but that's non-standard creation.Still, it's there in the rules so the possibility is valid and canon.

Is it possible, though, to be this skilled via normal character creation? I decided to find out.

Yes. It is.

Meet Enrique Salazar, The best pilot in the Royal Talaveran Scout Service. 

777587 Age 30 Scouts, 3 terms

Pilot-7