Everytime at a Table and BASHCon 2023

Spacers 12: 19.Mar.23

The third season of Spacers "The W&J Sector" started last Saturday night/Sunday morning. Peryton, Just Ben, and Iron Curtis showed up to reprise their Spacers. Nextremi 37 from Proxima Centauri, Gal Qixtar of the Gyyko Clan Devvah, and Alezander Captain of the Arcadia  were all set for the upcoming season. Alezander has grown a mustache, and Curtis roled high enough to make it a decent one. Not to be outdone by anyone, Peryton got a hat for Netremi,and no ordinary one at that but French tricorn one at that. Such Character development. We even got into Gal's subplot, he's just a spy for the 7th Kodoan Federation. Not everyone has such deep insights as a new hat and radical 'staches.
    Oh yeah, after playing doctor in Sick Bay, a new addition to the Arcadia Alezander and Doctor Orlando, one of the NPC love slaves now turned into ship's NPCS, discovered that the "cap-EE-tan" was actually a clone. Not just any clone at that, but a clone type from the Fastidious Wars on Earth some 150 years ago (subjective time). These clones would become inform and die without a certain biological additive to their diet once they turned 40. We determined that Alezander was only 32 so there was not a pressing hurry, but there was a reason to head to Earth sometime in the near future.
    Nextremi had developed a friendship with the Wise Key 27 Hive Queen, Arodda. They shared a nickname in common from their Uni-days, "b 364." Both had also played Zero Ball, volleyball in free fall, during school as well. Where the hat came from? We have no idea yet-- we'll probably have to do a flashback one session.

Those flame looking things are Plasma-Ferns of Galileo 3

So the Arcadia took off from Galileo and began navigating towards a FLAT point, places where gravitational effect is minimal upon any object there where starships can jump to other points. As there is nothing exactly stationary in the universe as far as I know, these are not static. "Star Maps" as seen in most sci-fi tales aren't that helpful for interstellar travel. Astrogation, per se, requires vector monitoring of nearby masses and correct knowledge of where stars are actually traveling to along what is known space. The model I gave was a giant beach ball filled with other balls of various sizes from ping-pong balls to beach balls to medicine balls and bigger. That giant beach ball was rolling as well. The various balls being systems and other gravity phenomena and FLAT Points are where balls meet.
   Before getting there, Sexy, the ship's AI, detected another manatee class ship. Identified by its transponder as the Nora Zedd, the craft was in bad shape and looked derelict. After a quick docking, without a Failure on the piloting rolls, the PCs suited up and entered ready to maybe salvage some stuff. The AI Sexy as well as the Dr. Orlando and Bloom the mechanic to look out for their ship and whatnot.
    Boy the players were ready. From aliens from Alien to even space zombies, these guys and gal had their cheese slicers ready. What they found was the remains of the crew that suffered sudden decompression, which isn't as violent as one would think. That is at least according to my research. This also caught a glimpse of a wonderful looking FLAT-capable 
   Then a Kastuk class (big fighter) with scorch marks all over it was detected. Now Kastuks were extensively by the Zentrum during the Corridor wars, so this was like a Dornier Do-217(a Nazi bomber), showing up to a yacht in need of towing situation indicating that raiding as well as salvaging was on the newcomers mind.
   Alezander decided that he was going have N-Zedd act as a torpedo against the pirates, while the Arcadia slips out the backdoor.
   That's where we left off. 

Was it already three years since?
Let's see. 2022, the near-divorce. 2020 the Great Plague. 2019, Cory ran the Wendy's Fastfood RPG in Toledo at BASHCon. Ayup three years. It certainly needed to happen. I've moved to Indianapolis, back to I should say, because the city is rather central to everything that I like to do on weekends. That is roleplay and take road trips.
  While I am recovering financially from the sudden relocations of 2022, I am a bit restricted in what I am willing to do-- that mean's if I can't buy a late model car in an afternoon, I'm broke. Still BASHCON is BASHCon and Peryton showed up. We were off for an adventure and, more importantly, Adventure Gaming.
   Getting to Toledo was a bit of adventure. Somewhere along I-69, north of Kokomo, the bafflement of my car's front end decided to come loose on one side. Stopping to check things out and get a snack, I moved the cheaply built piece to spot to where it wouldn't interfere with travel. It was kind of raining hard, so I felt very manly doing so. En route once again, Robin did her navigator job of looking up things on line. We found a service station in Toledo that would help us out. An hour and a half later, we were not charged a penny because the mechanic "only had to remove a bolt." It was nice to see that people still have pride about the jobs we do. I still made sure his next lunch was paid for.
   Mind you, I can do that level of car maintenance but rain and snow were moving sideways. A garage was needed.
   That bad weather was why JerryTel had to run his "Oh Dark Cha'alt" scenario at home and not at BASHCON. Robin and I would spend the evening at our favorite Red Roof Inn in the world, doing delivery pizza and salads to make the night decadent.
   The rest of the weekend was awesome without qualification. Note that the people that I've known as kids are stepping up to run some old fashioned tabletop gaming for us old folks.