Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

We played Confed again this weekend, picking up the adventure where we left off, looking for firestone smugglers.

The participants were myself as Carmella Maylock, a cheval trader (or gypsy) who's been made the default ship's captain; The Paper as Katy Swenson, a 21-year-old adventurer from a rich family; The Dormouse playing Liang Tze, a Shaolin monk who is strongly opposed to deadly violence; The Gryphon as weapons expert Jenna Starfall; and The White Rabbit as Alauzhi, a large female cat creature skilled with weaponry.

We started out with a brainstorming and strategy session about the two events that were coming up, namely the formal party aboard the ship the Rorima, piloted by a fellow cheval trader whom Carmella had met previously, and the meeting with mobsters the next morning to try to convince them we were interested in having some gemstones smuggled.

In order to make use of information we'd gained previously, we had Katie do an analysis of the information gathered from ships' manifests who had passed through the scanners, to try to determine any suspicious patterns.

We thought it might be helpful to have some inside information about the mobsters, so we flirted with the idea having Katie spy on them following or even before the meeting, with Alauzhi stationed at a nearby restaurant just in case she needed backup. We also considered the idea of planting a bug somewhere either in the warehouse where the meeting was to take place or on the person of the mob contact. That was dismissed as impractical, since none of the party present had the requisite machining skills.

The conversation grew silly, as Alauzhi suggested infiltrating the local mobsters herself by showing up at their local hangout with a copy dead bodies as tribute.

"Leave it to a cat," I said, "to think bringing them something dead would win their good graces."

The party that night was interesting. Everyone on the Vandervecken wore their best formal clothing, some of which had been recently purchased just for this event. Carmella wore her stunning new red dress which made her look even prettier than normal, serving as a nice contrast against her dark wavy hair and pale skin.

The captain met the crew of the Vandervecken at the door in his best dress uniform and exchanged pleasantries with Carmella, who introduced people in the party that he hadn't met, such as Katie.

By this point in the evening, The Paper had fallen asleep, so The Cheshire Cat joked that she'd been wheeled in on a cart, sleeping.

Later in the evening, Carmella spoke to him privately about the meeting with the mobsters the next day, worried she was getting in over her head. The goal was to smoke them out and try to figure out who was engaging in smuggling on the planet. The captain advised that, if no money had been exchanged, she could simply fail to show up, and that if the police knew about it ahead of time, she should be reasonably safe attending it.

Each member of the party ended up talking to a different member of the Rorima's crew. Jenna shared her piloting stories with some of the other pilots, impressing them greatly. Alauzhi bitched about how terrible this planet was with the person in charge of the cargo bay. Carmella conversed with the captain's son, who was close to her age and charming.

Then everybody was seated at the table next to different members of the crew. The Cheshire Cat, who is both the game designer and GM of Confed, went around the room, starting with Alauzhi, and asked what we would be discussing with our dinner companions.

I leaned over to The Gryphon and whispered in his ear, asking him if there was anything I should ask the captain. The other players had been teasing me about how warmly the captain was treating Carmella, which was no doubt because of the fact that they were both cheval traders, who are extremely closely knit, like the gypsies or the Irish Travelers. So The Gryphon suggested, not in so many words, that Carmella proposition the captain.

Immediately, I began hitting him in the arm with the folder containing my character sheet and notes. The other players, of course, wondered what was going on, and I fumed in silence while The Gryphon explained, without sharing exactly what he'd said.

I have to admit, I was playing wounded mainly for effect, although I will admit the remark caught me by surprise.

Jenna, however, became the star of the evening with her conversation with the Rorima ship's engineer. She asked him, "If you were smuggling gemstones, how would you do it?" The crew of the Vandervecken had already established that the Rorima crew was unlikely to be involved in the smuggling themselves, but the ship's engineer had a brilliant idea.

He suggested putting the gemstones (which are as small as diamonds but far more valuable) into a small container and launching them out of a ship on a precise trajectory, calculated to float past the Navy ships which serve as customs agents and into deep space, where it could be picked up later. Since the container wouldn't have its own power device, probably just a low tech tracking device, it would not register on the Navy ships' scanners and would be small enough to be visually undetectable.

After running the idea through her head aloud, Jenna agreed the idea was worth running down. She thanked the ship's engineer profusely.

When it came time for Carmella's turn, since there was no more information that seemed pressing, she spoke to the captain about pleasantries, intent on increasing her standing with the ship. Contacts are always useful.

So the crew of the Vandervecken, having enjoyed a pleasant social outing, was walking back to their own ship. The players knew trouble was brewing when The Cheshire Cat asked us to describe exactly what our characters had brought with them. Since they were attending a party at a friendly ship, few of them had brought weapons: only Alauzhi, who had a stunner in her purse; and Liang Tse, whose martial arts skills effectively make his hands weapons on anyone within range.

The Vandervecken crew heard a voice from above, commanding them to halt.

"Under whose authority?" Liang Tse asked. When the man replied, he picked up a stone from the ground and hurled it towards the voice, hitting the guy in the head and knocking him to the ground.

The attacker appeared to be a young guy, armed only with a knife. He was effectively toast. After a failed attempt by Liang Tse to kick him, the henchman took a swipe at Liang with the knife, missing. Carmella lobbed a rock that hit him right in the midsection, hard enough to blow out his air and knock him unconscious. That's what he gets for attacking her monk.

Meanwhile, a second attacker had landed right next to Alauzhi. It appeared they'd been using grav belts to literally get the jump on the crew of the Vandervecken. Alauzhi gave him a once over, saw how ill prepared and effectively nonthreatening he was, yawned and stunned him in the head.

Then, on Jenna's urging, the Vandervecken crew called the local police to have the two attackers picked up. Before the police arrived, the Vandervecken crew took their own set of fingerprints and photographs, to aid in their own independent research. Jenna accompanied the police to the station to give a statement, while the others retired to the Vandervecken for some rest.

Alauzhi bemoaned the fact that her combat gymnastics, trying to evade fire before the nature of her attackers were known, had done minor damage to her nice formal dress. She mumbled and took care of repairing and cleaning it. Other crew members did likewise, as their formal gear had gotten dusty from the scrapping, a minor tear here and there. Nothing the Vandervecken crew hadn't seen before.

Just once can't the crew of the Vandervecken attend a party without any fighting? Then again, it wouldn't be a party then, would it?

Further adventures from Confed:

Confed adventures index

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

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