We tried out a new location for playing this time around, Shoebox Games and Cafe. I was warned when I booked the table that it would be quite loud because there were Magic and Pokemon pre-release events going on that day, and that was certainly true.

In retrospect, it probably would have been better if I had sat in the middle of the table instead of my usual location at the end. I think it would have made it easier for everyone to hear me well, and vice versa. I also found the table to be a little narrow, but this particular adventure didn’t need any props or maps, so it wasn’t a problem. And, as always, I’m always grateful to these locations that offer us a place to play.

This months adventure actually started out with the prologue and first scene from the fourth adventure in the Living Campaign, “Convoy SE-119”.

The Kimura returned to Narendra Station, after towing the Nightingale to Starbase 123 for repairs and refit.

Lt. Cmd. Dihas Krevo, the Chief Engineer, finished her exchange program and returned to the I.K.S. Mupwl’ under Captain Akul. Lt. Cmd Rowan Tonelli transferred from the Mupwl’ to the Kimura as Chief Engineer.

The Kimura also picked up Lt. Cmd. Reitta Andreas, an experienced Security Officer and Chief Petty Officer Dallas Brenner as an Operations Officer. All the engineers, scientists, and security staff were tasked with installing upgraded sensor suites and defensive grids and trouble-shooting the new software that went with the physical installations. The Mupwl’ was getting similar upgrades at the same time.

All the players in my Campaign have two Characters. This was partly due to a misunderstanding early on about how Supporting characters work, and it’s just worked out well especially for those adventures where there is an away team and events happening simultaneously on board the ship.

What this let me do was to take the premise for “Convoy SE-119” and merge it with Episode 3 of the Living Campaign “Fading Sun”.

The mission for “Convoy SE-119” is to work with Captain Akul and The Mupwl’ to shepherd a convoy to Array 3-5, one of the joint Federation-Klingon research posts deep within the Expanse.

The mission for “Fading Sun” is to deliver scientific equipment to Epsilon 19, a scientific research station in the Osarin system, deep in the Shackleton Expanse. The ship drops off the PCs and then departs the station to conduct detailed scans of the Osarin star.

It was simple enough to adjust this to have the ship drop off half the PCs, one for each player, at Epsilon 19 and have the ship continue on with the convoy to Array 3-5 with each players second character.

This nicely fits in with the intent of the adventure:

“Because the intent of this adventure is to challenge the PCs without having access to the resources aboard their ship, the GM may need to get creative in explaining why the PCs cannot contact their ship or otherwise gain assistance from the ship until near the end of the adventure.”

This session covered the PCs on Epsilon 19 and the next session will cover the PCs that remained with the convoy.

There were a few fun highlights going through the adventure.

At the welcoming dinner, Captain T’Kor completely failed to convince the Station Commander Erich Johansson to not let the all the Orions have shore leave on the station. The PCs did manage to get some time alone with the Commander after dinner, away from the influence of Paja, the Orion trader captain. At that point they did convince him to limit the number of Orions allowed on the station to four at a time.

Later in the adventure, Asha, the ship’s counselor slipped while climbing done the Jefferies tube (failed roll and a complication) and ended up wedged in with her knees up by her shoulders.  The security officer had to scrounge up some cabling to use as rope and fish her out.

The Captain managed to redeem himself when he succeeded in convincing two Orions that were caught “moving equipment to a safer location” to give up without a fight and surrender rather than engage in a fire fight or brawl.

Overall, the PC’s did really well in the adventure, about the only thing they missed was they didn’t think to check for survivors on the command level after the explosion on the station occurred, so Commander Erich Johansson ended up expiring.

I’m looking forward to running the other half of the PCs through “Convoy SE-119” at our next session, which will lead into my first completely home brewed adventure for the session after that.