LogYuriRT1-2010/07/22-Jason-1

Game log for the 2010/07/22 session of Rogue Trader: After the Gold Rush, as taken by Jason

Marneus returns home to find that his father is retiring, and the family wants him to have Solo Drakban so he can show them what he's made of. He's done a few basic courier-type runs to shake the ship down, and now he's been sent to Footfall. The mission: meet with a guy, who has some stuff for the ship.

Marneus has Solo parked in the mooring area while the bridge crew fly to the rock where the meet is to take place. Anastasia Xanatov and Victrus Karellius remain on the shuttle, while Marneus, Bors Tovon, Opiter Castus, Jotham Lentillus, and Seneschal Cornelius, an old family functionary, cheerfully blunder into a trap, and Cornelius gets schwacked early. A mob of eight thugs give chase, seeking to do bad things to us. Bors deploys his heavy bolter and puts on an exhibition of firepower, generating substantial panic among the bystanders. Opiter sets up overwatch with his bolter. Marnes asks Anastasia to prepare for hasty takeoff, and Jotham runs ahead to try to set an ambush with his flamer. The enemy boss facepalms the nearest civilian, exposing him to Opiter's fire, and ends up getting pasted badly - the third bolter shot effectively amputates his leg. Opiter claims first kill by a PC. The fire toward us actually intensifies as the bad guys' rage increases. Their return fire hits Bors and Opiter, bloodying both, but not causing any critical damage.

Meanwhile, back at the ship, Anastasia and Victrus fail perception rolls. It surprises them a lot when someone shoots the viewport, which starts to show a spiderweb of cracks. Victrus investigates and sees a guy in a dockworker's coverall spraying the shuttle's hatch with a bolter. Victrus' return fire suppresses him. Anastasia struggles to expedite the startup sequence. The situation deteriorates as another bad guy comes around the shuttle, firing yet another automatic weapon, forcing Victrus to duck back into the hatch. Even so, Victrus gets nicked.

Bors, seeing the crowd thinning out, decides to engage properly. He finds a decorative buttress and uses it to brace his heavy bolter, taking aim to set up some extreme hate death next round. Opiter ducks behind a delivery truck and puts two rounds each into two guys, just like that shit was easy. The first guy loses his arm at the shoulder, spraying blood and shoulder bones everywhere. The second guy also loses an arm, and in this case, his severed arm begins twitching and freaking out any perceptive bystanders. Good call on the running away, innocent civilians! Marneus joins the fight with his laspistol but fails to impress. Jotham's attempt to set up an ambush is failing dismally, but fortunately, the bad guys decide that it's better to run before the properly braced heavy bolter comes into play.

At the ship, Victrus' return fire forces the nearer bad guy to duck again. Sadly for the foe, he ducks behind the engines, which deliver such a vast cleaning flame that Jotham, had he seen it, would have died of envy. Of course there were two bad guys, but bad guy number one is still unjamming his weapon. When he finally pops back up, Victrus has him dead to rights, and blows a big ol' hole in his stomach.

On the Promenade deck, Opiter tries to hotwire the delivery truck, but gets a nasty shock for his pains, and gets thrown backwards, smoking and unconscious. The local laws draws closer. Marneus tries to hotwire the same truck, and can't. Bors wakes Opiter up. Marneus moves to plan B: step out into traffic with a power sword and a pistol, and demand that the oncoming car stop. Fear: delivered. We make the youthful driver of the delivery truck sufficiently terrified that he drives us to the docks.

At the shuttle, port control demands that we shut down, but Anastasia patches the Lord Captain through and he successfully commands them to free his shuttle. Sadly they don't speak for port security, who surround the shuttle and insist that the crew vacate the craft. The shuttle crew refuse to comply. When the landing party arrive, the standoff continues, with port security growing increasingly upset. Marneus gives him some attitude, and they stand down. Victrus opens the hatch and we board the ship. Yay, we got away with it! Except that the Lord Captain seems upset about his shuttle window.

As we travel through the outer system, Jotham conducts funeral services for Seneschal Cornelius, and then the ship enters warp for the week-long trip back to Port Wander. Victrus keeps an aggressive drill schedule going, beating to quarters twice a day, running out the guns, training them on arbitrary coordinates, and generally keeping everyone busy. About two and a half days into the warp, the navigator warns the Lord Captain of an oncoming warp storm. We try to detour around it, but by the fourth day, the whole ship feels the immanence of chaos. On the fifth day, the storm's strength has the whole ship rocking. Marneus gets a video call from a former shipmate who's been dead for a score of years. The line of voidmen looking for religious counseling has Jotham busy as a one-handed Callidus assassin.