Asteroid Cowboy Blues: Intro

Party Size: 5

Party Roles: 1 scum warrioress, 1 ultimate AI hacker, 1 belter techie, 1 criminal/assassin/Kingpin esque character, and 1 Theologian isolationist scavenger evangelist(ish)

Introduction: For the game I required that each player have some sort of background that would make them want to be on the fringe of society, working for a hypercorp in the main belt, spending months at a time on a small transport ship (big enough for bunks), and calling themselves independent prospectors.  Essentially, people with a past to hide.

The party initially works for the ComEx hypercorp, and is based out of the Extropia society on 44 NYSA. Their job title is intentionally misleading. What the party actually does (and why this campaign has your typical fighter/warrior/killer along with a hacker) is go to a newly found resource rich asteroid group (called  a family) or the like and stake it out until ComEx is able to legally claim ownership over the site and begin with the automated mining work. They are essentially hired muscle and as  an added bonus have the automated mining equipment to set up a mining operation before they go.  We decided that they are most like the ‘Sooners’ and land claims in American history.

Their ship is owned and piloted by Emerald Levas, a now extropian free lance pilot. His ship is fairly newly purchased and has its own history (from my previous campaign, I recycle a lot, even non physical objects). Levas is an ex Nine-Lives upper level member. He left the organization on mysterious terms, and when the party inquires with various research and networking checks, all thats clear is he burned all his G-rep to get out and doesn’t appear to be a wanted man by anyone on Legba (the home of the nine lives syndicate).

The ship, aptly named ‘the dump’  is large enough to carry six-eight passengers comfortably and hosts its own fusion reactor for all your energy needs, as well as a detachable cockpit which is itself a small transport ship that was modified to attach to the larger habitats hull (see Figure 1-1 below).

Levas is quiet and keeps to himself and spends most of his time in the cockpit and is friendly with the crew, but a kinesics check or psychology roll reveals he’s not edgy around the crew because he still sees them as lambs to the slaughter (how I imagine 9 lives sees most of transhumanity).

The asteroid family the crew is currently going to was initially identified and taggged by ComEx’s competitor Fa Jing. The information was obtained through corporate espionage and leaked to ComEx’s acquisition department who sent the dump and its crew to the asteroid family ASAP to stake a claim while Fa Jing was still filing paperwork. **Side note here, I was operating under the assumption that mining the asteroid belt would be difficult because of red tape more than technological logistics, and the reason why the belt hasn’t just been cleared out is a lack of higher demand for resources from the belt and there are so many relevant government/factions close enough by that getting approved for mining operations can be a headache. That being said, the first people on site get mining rights, and thats why ComEx has a crew of actual meat bodies willing to do the mindnumbingly boring job of traveling the vast distances between asteroid claims and extropia to stake claims.

With this information we started the campaign with the players already on a hard burn to the asteroid with a few hours left in contact with Extropia’s mesh. Giving the players a chance to do any research or networking checks needed.

Continued in Part 1: Asteroids and Emptiness