The fifth adventure in my ongoing campaign was “Convoy SE-119” by Jim Johnson. this is the fourth adventure in the Living Campaign from Modiphius. We tried out another new location for playing, this time “Ogre’s Den Gaming Club“. I liked the table layout better, we were able to get two large tables side by side.

I thought the noise level was a little lower than at Shoebox, but some of the players thought it was about the same. I noticed on Facebook that they have just installed some additional noise baffling panels, and we are playing our next session there so we’ll see if that helps.

This adventure occurred simultaneously with our previous session, “Fading Sun”. The Players ship, the U.S.S. Kimura, along with the Klingon Bird of Prey I.K.S. Mupwl’ were assigned to to shepherd a convoy to Array 3-5, one of the joint Federation-Klingon research posts deep within the Expanse. They dropped some of the crew, including the Captain, off at the Epsilon 19 research station in the Osarin system and continued on their way to Array 3-5.

They soon lost contact with the crew left behind at Epsilon 19, but this wasn’t unexpected because of the strange electromagnetic disturbances in the area they were travelling through. They did get a message from Starfleet Intelligence, specifically from Commander Natalie Sigmund whom they encountered in the “Doomed to Repeat the Past” adventure. The message was an authorization for one of the cargo ships to leave the convey for approximately one day and then rendezvous back with it. The players didn’t question the orders or do any investigation of the ship that was leaving.

The adventure played out pretty much as written. The Mupwl’ suffered an explosion, everyone dropped out of warp, one of the of the cargo transports also lost engines and started drifting, the players used the tractor beam to pull it back into position. They sent a few of the engineering crew over to the transport to assist with repairs, opting to use a shuttle rather than risk the transporters. They did well with the repair rolls and then the pirates showed up. The two pirate freighters, looking an awful lot like Orion Wanderer class blockade runners from FASA showed up with a dozen fighters that bore a strong resemblance to fighters from another popular Sci Fi show.

The Wanderers kept the two escorts busy, and gave us a chance to try out the ship combat rules, which we actually had not done in any of the adventures up to this point. It took awhile, and we had to refer to the rulebook quite often, but it went well and everyone seemed to enjoy it. They managed to take out the Wanderers, but the fighters did manage to get a boarding party onto the tanker and go to warp with it.

The Kimura pursued, taking out several of the fighers and managing to beam a security team on board the tanker. A brief battle took place and the Players quickly regained control of the tanker and were able to return to the convoy, along with several prisoners. They didn’t spend any time questioning them though, we were running short on time and we might pick that part up next session.

The additional cargo ship rejoined the convoy, and they successfully made it to Array 3-5. A victory party ensued, with Captain Akul and the crew of the Mupwl’, who were impressed with how the Players handled themselves in combat.

On the return trip, the Players picked up a Borg Sphere at the edge of their sensor range in a system they were passing by. It appeared to be inactive. The Klingons didn’t detect it and the Players decided not to share the information with them as they were sure the Klingons would want to stop to investigate, possibly endangering the convoy.

They made note of the location of the sphere and continued on to Narendra Station, stopping at Epsilon 19 to collect the Captain and the rest of the crew.

And, Jamie won the copy of “Strange New Worlds” the second Adventure Compendium from Modiphius. I won it for submitting photos of our group playing, but I already had a copy so we had a dice off to give it to one of the players, with the request that they guest GM one session and run one of the adventures from the book. Jamie has now picked the adventure she wants to run and will probably run it in April.