The Schamel Affair: A Traveller Braunstein

It all started in week 16 of year 929 of the Space Age when Tyrian von Stolberg arrived on Schamel. He was under orders from Count Murietta to explore for ways to boost the Schamelian economy. this was meant to get into the local's good graces and allow Murietta room to negotiate with them for mutual economic benefit. Two weeks later, von Stolberg's prospecting team hit the jackpot - a lode of gadolinium, possibly as much as a million tons of it. In-game, gadolinium is an important component of jump drives, so it's in demand by the ship-building powers: Lanzhou, Stavanger, Dekalb, and the Empire.

On the Traveller Trade tables, metals/alloys go for 10,000 credits a ton, so this mine was billions of credits waiting to be dug up.

What Happened?

Six Factions showed up on Schamel to negotiate and deal for access to the gadolinium mine.

• Count Murietta
• Baron Namsos of Stavanger
• The Lycosky Trade Protectorate Director of Operations, Corridor Region
• The Dekalbian business director for Thetford Aerospace
• Mr. Tarpov, Assistant Secretary for Trade at the Talaveran Consulate (a Boss for the ICO, the Sakamoto Ring)
• Baron de Quintero, another Contender who has a lot of money in mining already, and might see Murietta as competition.

and the Governor of the Schamel Habitation, Gov. Castberg, played by the Referee. In retrospect, it should have been a player running Castberg. The Referee had too much to keep track of to play him effectively.

The Referee assigned each faction a primary and a secondary objective. this front-loaded some conflict into the game. Each faction would, at the end, be assessed on how well those objectives were accomplished. 

Each turn, the players handed to the Referee a card explaining their plans for the following turn. Then they had 20 minutes to interact with the other players in negotiation, argument or whatever. The time limit kept things from bogging down, but we could have made it 30. We only had the afternoon to play it out, and we wanted to get through as many turns as we could, to get to some kind of resolution. We did. See below. 

Stavanger's view is that Murietta is trespassing on either sovereign territory or a Stavangerian dependency. Either way they dispute his right to start mining and building a colony. 

The wheeling-and-dealing began immediately. Some of the factions had goals that amounted to "prevent X from accomplishing Y". Others were simply "make money". A struggle quickly formed between Castberg and Tarpov, the Trade Secretary over who was going to keep their job. Much propaganda was spread around. Castberg asked Murietta and/or de Quintero to order the recall/arrest of Tarpov. 

Spies were sent out from one faction to another. Someone decided to try involving the Tabrazian raiders to disrupt the export of ore. More survey teams were sent out, looking for other mine sites. New mining companies were chartered. A lawsuit was filed with the local court - arguing that Murietta's mine was illegal under local law - that it was an invasion of sovereign territory.

Some actual negotiation for shipping contracts was conducted. Armed ships and personnel began to arrive. One faction offered to assassinate another faction's leader in exchange for mining rights. 

Murietta asked for a referendum to legitimize his mining town as a separate colony, not answerable to Schamel/Stavanger. More armed forces were ordered to Schamel. 

By Turn 5 Murietta had attracted about 200 people from the Schamel habitation to move to the mining site. He then declared an independent state based on the native population, not his imported workers. 

In Turn 7, the final turn, Baron Namsos pulled out his final trump card. He loaded a tactical nuclear weapon into his ATV and drove it out to the mine site. He demanded Murietta's total surrender and abandonment of the station or face immediate detonation. The nuke would have removed the mine and the mining outpost from the game, and from the surface of Schamel. 

Murietta instead ordered his forces in the area to attack the ATV, deciding that a small leak was more manageable than a kiloton detonation. A ship in orbit reduced the ATV, the device, and the Baron to cinders. 

With that, the game came to an end. 

The scoring worked this way: By thumbs up/thumbs down vote of all players, there were three questions asked to determine the score for each player.

1. Did this character improve his situation by the end of the game? (10 pts per thumbs up)
2. Did this character accomplish his primary objective? (50 pts)
3. Did this character accomplish his secondary objective? (30 pts)

The Results (number of yes votes):

• de Quintero - Yes (6), Yes, Yes  140 points
• Thetford Yes (6), Yes, No 110 points
• LTP Yes (6), Yes, No 110 points
• Murietta Yes (4), Yes, Yes 120 points
• Turpov No(1), Yes, No 60 points
• Namsos No(6 No), No, No  zero points

The big winner was de Quintero. The big loser was Namsos, but nearly as bad was Turpov, who was outed as a Sakamoto boss. The Ministry of Trade will take action on him. 

The question on everyone's mind, though is this: how is Stavanger going to react to the death of one of their Ruling Barons under contentious circumstances, and apparently at the hands of an Imperial?  Boy, we did not see that one coming. Nor can we tell where it's going. 

the Referee is not writing a plot here, the players spun up all of this themselves. And now will have to address the consequences. 

Stay Tuned.