On Saturday night, a large group got together to do a Classic Travelller Braunstein, “SPACESTEIN”. Here’s the story of my character, Percy Walker.
For those unaware, Percy Walker is just a play on the author Walker Percy whose most famous book was called: “Lost in the Cosmos”, which I felt was a fitting description of the character I rolled up.
Percy was intelligent, educated, below average in physical skills, and was an excellent candidate to enlist in and succeed in the Merchant Marine. After a very successful first term, which included getting commissioned as a 4th officer, the company that owned Percy’s ship was acquired and Percy was let go due to being redundant. With a few skills (Pilot-1, Medical-1, Computers-1) Percy went off seeking employment.
With only a few credits to his name, Percy was hired by the Leyland-Okuda corporation to travel to Space Station URF via low passage and steal a sample of combat designer drugs, steal the Sun Shredder, and get out. However, on the way to the station, there was an attempted skilljacking and Percy had a few holes in his memory.
After getting this backstory, I assumed the skilljacking hadn’t been botched, but it was just a part of the false memory. I’m a big fan of Total Recall, but I stuck with being a good role-player for the first two hours, and by then my character had enough reasons to have doubts about the story and switch over to trying to get my memories back.
When the Braunstein began, I was contacted by Anderson Poul who showed me that my medic who took me out of cyrosleep had been found with Loosey Goosey. He suggested I speak to Dr. Dag DeLeon to help restore my memory.
When things first got going and everyone split, I wasn’t brought into any of the big goings on, so I went to the Casino and won 100Cr betting on the Baron’s duel. I ran over to the med bay and saw there was lots of activities happening in there. I went back to the Casino, dressed wounds, and then went on my merry way.
I decided that I needed more information, so I signed up to help the Marshall, and particularly Lt. Col Max Force find out more about the missing Free Trader Ferigno, hoping that the combat drugs, or information about the Leyland-Okuda corporation would come up. We eventually found out the Ferigno would be arriving shortly by analyzing telemetry and from the distress calls knew something was terribly wrong. We reported results to the Marshall and got a team together to board the Ferigno. However, as we were preparing to leave, the Marshall and his team overrode us and went on with his team.
At this point, Force and I teamed up with Baron von Weltramstraufphen and started our own investigation. Force and I started by looking at medical reports on the miners. I was hoping to find out if they had suffered amnesiac symptoms like I had experienced from low passage, which would suggest I had, in fact, been skilljacked like we suspected the miners had been. This took longer than planned, and we ended up giving up on this thread because big things were happening elsewhere and our inquiries were small potatoes.
I met up with Anderson Poul and exchanged information we had gained during the session. At this point, I felt that my character having learned the combat drugs had been destroyed, and without anyone else being aware of the Leyland-Okuda corporation was ready to seriously doubt his own memories and decide that he had been skilljacked.
From here, I ended up making contact with Dr. DeLeon, and got recruited by Guy Vickers to pilot the Sun Shredder when he stole it. At this point things got hectic very quickly. I heard the team that had come back from the Ferigno had brought crates of cargo, and then another team had left to go on the Ferigno. I was convinced that something nefarious was going on, so I was left with a choice.
My first instinct was to commandeer the station’s weapons and fire on the Ferigno. Given my lack of familiarity with the station and only basic computing skills, I wanted to go and recruit aid. I informed a few people, including the Marshall, of the unvetted cargo and my suspicions, and went to the research lab to inform others. As I opened the door, I witnessed an alien being blown up and it’s blood corroding through the floor, causing an air leak.
Now, my goal was to just to get off the station, so I joined back up with Vickers and Dr. DeLeon to escape on the Sun Shredder, where we were joined by her captain, PB Ricks. Once aboard and cast off from the space station, things were looking pretty good to me, I had secured myself middle passage away from the station, I was about to be able to discuss my memory issues with Dr. DeLeon and hopefully get healed while in transit.
Then everything went wrong. First, Vickers pulled a gun on PB Ricks to steal the ship. I didn’t particularly care who won, so I was content to see how the first round of combat played out before hopping in. However, Dr. DeLeon chose to stick Vickers with a “medical slow” drug that caused Vickers to go unconscious.
At that point, we found out the Sun Shredder had actually been taken earlier by Anderson Poul, so we had to retcon our encounter to a small ship’s boat. Now, PB Ricks revealed his true tentacled form and ate Dr. DeLeon and myself. This probably shouldn’t have happened either because our ship’s boat was supposed to be an Air/raft with everyone in vacc suits and unable to be devoured. That’s Braunstein!
All through this episode, the majority of the cast, now on the Ferigno, were trying to contact Vickers over his communicator without an answer. We replied back that there had been an attempted hijacking, but all was now well, and docked with the Ferigno and were let on.
The former Vickers, DeLeon and myself came aboard the Ferigno and ate Lt Col Force and another character I was unfamiliar with. The former Ricks secured the bridge, and after failing negotiations with the Space Station, we set course away from the station in hopes we could repair the ship and jump to a planet where we could feast.
A big thanks to Joshua for putting this whole thing together. It was fun to participate in my first Discord-stein with lots of Bros, Living Urf guys, and various other folks.