My local group in Seattle finished playing a Scum & Villainy campaign recently, with a satisfying conclusion. As usual, we collected some quotes from funny moments that happened during the campaign.
During this game, the crew of the refurbished Cerberus-class patrol ship Monkey’s Paw set out into the Procyon Sector with a bounty hunting license, a whole lot of guns, and a burning desire to make some money. Along the way they brought criminals to justice, experimented with forbidden technologies, got involved in multiple conspiracies, tracked down a pirate king who had been missing for years, and discovered a new solar system.
Featuring:
Brett as Lee Fai-Hao, former spacer on a tramp freighter who underwent a harrowing jumpspace experience and now talks to ghosts;
Caitlin as Rin Telleur, hotshot pilot and Wanderer collecting stories from across the Procyon Sector;
Josh as Cassius Berkley, noble dilettante, media influencer, and sponsor of the Monkey’s Paw, who can automatically tell if anyone he’s talking to is lying;
Peter as Ditha “Clinic” Cromich, who absolutely has a medical license and totally isn’t an escaped clone;
Jake as Pist Uvoo, blue-collar brawler, union man, and passionate defender of worker’s rights;
and, until she left the state to go to grad school, Amber as Wrench, the ship’s mechanic with a whole array of dubious relatives.
This is their story.
Session 1: Going Once
Rin: Oops. I named myself after a planet, apparently.
Clinic: A whole star system. Your children’s enemies are gonna have really easy “your momma’s so fat” jokes.
Cassius: I pull out some Illicit Drugs, now that I know they’re cool.
Lee: Is this when we make them prove they’re not a cop?
Pist, rolling a 5 to punch: I got cinco. Does he sink-o to the ground?
GM: This would be a 1 stress flashback. This isn’t, like, flashing back to hiring someone to crash a ship into the building at the exact right moment, which would be 2 stress.
Cassius, eyeing his character sheet: Just 2 stress, you say?
GM: Next time. Next time, everyone will be shot.
GM: You have the target secure. And the artifact secure. And also the event manager secure.
Lee: If we deliver more people, we get paid more money, right?
Wrench: Our crew becomes known for “the 2 for 1.”
Lee: “Is this where we stashed the getaway skimmer?”
Clinic: “We might need something bigger than a skimmer for all of us. Skimmer designation: Wideboat.”
Session 2: Nonessential Personnel
NPC: “They weren’t interested in me. They wanted the eggheads.”
Rin: “Sir, you are a starship engineer. I think you qualify as an egghead.”
GM: You return to the ecuopolis. I’m probably pronouncing that wrong.
Clinic: Ecumenopolis.
Lee: Coruscant.
GM: The broadcast message says “Warning: this station has been decommissioned,” and repeats.
Cassius: Is it lying?
Wrench throws a cat with a USB stick out the airlock towards a railgun turret, so she can hack it.
Lee: “Lucky – the first cat in space.”
Rin, watching the turret worriedly: “That may need to be ‘the last cat in space.'”
Rin: I’m gonna bring my Illicit Drugs, in case we find any ghosts who want to party.
Clinic: Her name is Polly.
GM: It looks like this laboratory was evacuated in a hurry. There’s a half-eaten ration dinner sitting on a tray.
Rin, who in real life is a postgrad student: NO FOOD IN LAB!
Cassius, who in real life used to work in an infectious disease research lab: Visibly horrified expression.
Cassius: I tell Pist that I’m reading an 8 on this parabolic mic, and I head that way.
GM: Alright, since we’re apparently roleplaying Phasmophobia, you’re now moving incredibly slowly.
GM: I don’t know what kind of roll it would be to cut this door open.
Pist: Well we are turning this door into Scrap.
Cassius’ cousin Arryn, who’d hired the crew for this job, doesn’t pay the full amount because they didn’t find the specific person he wanted them to find.
Clinic: “We did the job. We pulled everyone off the station that you sent us to.”
Arryn: “Aaah- oh you’re – oh no, you’re breaking up chhhhh.”
Clinic: “Alright Cassius, our next bounty’s your cousin. We’re gonna kill him.”
Cassius: “He was lying, by the way. His connection was fine.”
Session 3: Now This Is Podracing
Rin: “Cassius looks like he has money and is dumb enough to talk about it in a casino. He could go in.”
Cassius: “That hurts, Rin.”
Rin: “Hey, I don’t look like I have any money.”
Cassius: “True. At least you own up to it.”
NPC: “They use Way energy or something to phase right through.”
Cassius: So I know “Way energy” is a thing in this setting, but I did start wondering what they were doing with milk.
Clinic: “If we need a poker table, we could make a poker table. I’d just have to clean some viscera off it.”
Wrench: “That is, like, clearly an old foosball table.”
Lee: “…Clinic, were you operating on a foosball table?”
Clinic: “Look, I don’t ask you how you do your shit.”
Lee: This is a “Risky” gather information roll. So I guess there’s a chance we blow our cover.
Rin: Or they’ll shoot us on sight.
GM: You walk into the lawyer’s office and he just pulls a gun on you. “You’ll never take my client alive!”
Lee: That’s why he’s the best lawyer in the sector. No prosecutor has ever survived a trial against him.
Visiting renowned lawyer Sol Brighton’s office, who has reactive lights that warm up as the players enter
Lee: So you’re saying his office…Brightons up.
GM: Chance looks exactly like she did in Night’s Black Agents, and will be played by Amber in this game as well.
Cassius: Let me just tick off my Illicit Drugs and Luxury Item to offer her some French meth.
Cassius: I pull out my Legitimate ID, which says, like, TRUTH SEER.
GM: I…I don’t think that’s your official position. I think that’s just a thing you can do.
NPC, protesting his innocence: “So you’re a conspiracy theorist? Uh…I’m innocent, the worms made me do it!”
Clinic: “You don’t have worms. I checked.”
Cassius: “…That’s actually a good policy before we bring people onto the ship.”
Session 4: Seize the Means of Destruction
The crew goes to have a talk with Cousin Arryn about how he didn’t pay them what he promised in a previous session. Somehow, they get convinced to run another mission for him.
Lee: I thought he was just here on business. He’s got a home here?
GM: He has several homes. He’s a man of wealth and taste.
Clinic: He’s a man of wealth.
The crew gets trapped in a ruin in the desert by a robot programmed to violently overthrow the Hegemony.
Cassius: “Has anyone tried talking to Liberty Prime?”
Wrench: What do I see it doing now?
GM: It’s careening down the corridor, firing heavy blasters in your direction.
Wrench: “Yo, it’s careening towards us.”
Lee: “Thanks Wrench!”
Pist: “I can be a distraction, sure. But what do I say to piss off a communist robot?”
Lee: “Long live the Hegemony? Their wealth will trickle down to you?”
Clinic: “The king has your best interests at heart!”
Clinic: I shoot it once and yell “Look at me, I’m sitting around eating bonbons! Not contributing to society whatsoever!”
GM, unironically: Turning a killer robot fascist was definitely a heroic thing to do.
beat
GM: Uh, in this specific case.
Session 5: Grand Theft Astro
Cassius: “You don’t even need one appendix. Why would you want a second?”
Rin: “Maybe between two of them, they’d be functional.”
Clinic: “THAT’S what we’ve been missing. The second appendix. I’m on it.”
Lee: I try to make contact with this…bucket’s ghost.
Cassius, describing an NPC: “He had a hard, calloused face. The kind that can stand up to punches from God.”
NPC, on the radio: “She one of them Wanderers? I can smell a Wanderer from 50 parsecs.”
Clinic: “That’s a LONG distance.”
Rin: I sniff my jumpsuit.
Rin: “I could just seal myself in their brig and fly away.”
Lee: “I think you mean bridge. You don’t want to be sealed in their brig.”
Cassius: “They’ll seal you into the brig and fly away.”
GM: This is a pirate station, however, and you can just toke up wherever you feel like it.
Lee: “Clinic, you think you can dismantle these launch controls as well as you dismantle people?”
Clinic: “It’s actually really easy to dismantle things when you don’t intend to put them back together again.” Pulls out a gun
Rin: Can I rig up a tractor beam, or something?
GM: Doesn’t your ship already have a tractor beam?
Clinic: We have grappling hooks. It’s like a tractor beam, without the science.
Session 6: Abanedonment Issues
Bane, current bounty target, talking over the radio to the partner he doesn’t know has been captured: “Ata. Did it work? Have you dealt with them?”
Lee: Is this a voice message, or text?
GM: Voice.
Rin: “…Yarp?”
several possible overindulges later
Clinic: The job was only 1 Heat. The partying afterwards is where all the Heat comes from.
Clinic: I’m not expecting a big paycheck from someone named Nickels.
Lee: Could you put Quarters on the call?
Rin: Or better yet, Plasma Guns?
Session 7: Jailbrekk
NPC, describing the business model of Isotropa Max Secure, the sector’s infamous space prison: “Those donations pay for prison operations, lobbyists, that sort of thing.”
Lee: Next bounty target: for-profit space prison lobbyist.
Cassius: It should be. It’s gross.
Clinic: It will count as a bounty because everyone will want them dead.
On Isotropa Max Secure:
GM: Captain Kreel assures you that he does this all the time. He can make people disappear at any time, for any reason.
Cassius, quietly: …He’s telling the truth.
Pist: “Do I threaten him, or do I ask politely?”
Cassius: “I think politely.”
Clinic, yelling: “Kick him in the baaaaalls!“
GM: There’s one of those big open chambers with a thin walkway going over it. Without handrails.
Rin: Osha doesn’t exist.
Clinic: Who keeps designing these?
Cassius: There’s at least one space snake in there.
Bounty Target: “Five CRED to the first one of you to turn on the others and aid me.”
Lee: “Hear that, guys? He’s got five CRED on him, get him!”
Clinic, holding two guns: “I’m a doctor, not a pistoleer…but that won’t make a difference to you.”
Cassius: I convince him that when he takes credit for killing the Bane, the prestige and boost to his reputation will be worth far more than a share of the bounty.
Rin: Do it for the exposure!
Cassius: “Things are heating up for us in Brekk.”
Clinic: “We’ll need to get out of here and lay low after this.”
Pist: “I guess we’ll have to…make a brekk for it.”
Session 8: Chaperone Duty
Clinic: So their name is one letter off from the vampire overlord from last campaign.
Rin: It’s the space vampires!
Clinic: This is your fault. You’re the one who wanted to send them into space!
Rin: I wanted to send them in small chunks!
NPC: “I’ve been flying my own ship since I was 12.”
Clinic: “And…how old are you now?”
Lee: “He’s 13.”
GM: They keep calling it an astrolabe. Which you’re pretty sure is an outdated nautical term.
Rin: Hipsters.
Clinic: SPACE hipsters.
NPC: “You are…retrieval specialists, right? Maybe you could get it for us.”
Lee: “Please. We’re not thieves. We’re kidnappers.”
Cassius: “Yeah, we have morals!”
Rin: It’s not about how we got there…
Cassius: It’s the credits we made along the way.
Clinic: “The drone can throw the pet at his face, then we grab it while he’s distracted.”
Wrench: “Hey. We don’t throw Lucky.”
Clinic: “Fine, the pet can throw the drone at his face. Also, I think we have thrown Lucky…”
Wrench: “We jettison Lucky from time to time. That’s different.”
Session 9: Social Engineering
Clinic: Luckily, these character sheets are editable. I’ll update that description so we won’t keep forgetting about this rule.
Lee: Now we’ll never make a rules mistake again!
Cassius: With such clear and well written rules, how could we?
Cassius: “Did Dr. Star change his name, or was that just a coincidence?”
NPC: “No, that’s just his name. Oevers Star.”
Cassius: “Would we be able to meet with Mr. Overstar? Sorry, Dr. Overstar.”
GM: The bathrooms here are all monitored by the station AI.
Clinic: For quality assurance.
GM: Just don’t be surprised when the bidet automatically activates.
Lee: I cannot imagine being anything but surprised by that.
Lee: I part ways with the ghost and leave the bathroom.
Clinic: “Ghost in the bathroom” has a lot of Phasmophobia vibes.
GM: We did find a lot of ghosts in a lot of bathrooms.
Lee: I take a picture of the dirty water before I leave.
GM: I bumped up the Effect here because your contact is helping to set this up, instead of you trying to start a labor revolt by yourself.
Pist: I’m not just showing up like, “Hey. Have you read this contract? I haven’t, but it’s probably shit!”
Cassius: I’ll assist. By standing there and doing whatever you tell me.
Clinic: Yeah, you’re the orderly here.
Lee: “Scalpel. Screwdriver. Laser saw.”
Session 10: Bleeding Hearts
GM: This transport ship doesn’t have a proper name. This model is the Transit Six-Niner.
Lee: Nice.
Cassius: Damn it Lee.
On a transport ship full of cloned organs:
NPC: “Nobody wants organs from another person inside them.”
Cassius: “Organ donors exist…”
Pist: “That’s so 23rd century.”
Lee: “You’re telling me you get your organs used, Cassius?”
Pist: “From a literal second-hand store?”
NPC: “You’re not…stealing these organs, are you? This isn’t the sort of shipment I want to see go missing.”
Rin: “Nah, our doctor is busy this week.”
Pist: I bust out my Fine Martial Art Style.
Lee: There’s gotta be some zero-g martial arts.
GM: Absolutely. I don’t know what it’d be called…
Lee: Grav Maga?
Cassius: “How many other pirates are on this ship?”
Captured Pirate: “Fifty.”
Cassius: “He’s lying. Is it one?”
Pirate: “What? No.”
Cassius: “That’s the truth. Is it two?”
Lee: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own organs?
Pist: No, says Space Moscow. It belongs to everyone.
GM: No, says the Space Pope. It belongs to Space God.
Rin: I think my ur-bot can communicate with beeps, but not talk.
GM: I was hoping you would say that. Now I get to make R2D2 noises for the rest of the campaign.
Cassius: What have you done?
Session 11: Fury of El Ractador
Landing on a jungle planet.
GM: Some form of wildlife snuck inside the ship. You’ll need to deal with that at some point.
Rin: Another round of ship goblins?
Lee: I inform them that we no hablo es gobliano.
Lee: “I don’t think the carnivorous trees are actually that dangerous. I hear their bark is worse than their bite.”
Clinic: “We short-circuited their outer defenses with a simple stick, so I am going to at least try opening the hangar doors. Just to make sure the doors aren’t as stupid as the turret.”
GM: They open easily. A voice on the speakers says “Welcome, super-admin.”
Clinic: “This is the worst secret base.”
GM: You’re going to find out that all the guards are armed with nerf guns, and the captives are being held in a bouncy castle.
Caitlin’s face lights up
GM: Which is actually going to be the hardest part of the job, because you’ll have to convince Rin to leave.
Cassius: “I was thinking I could lie to somebody and tell them that we’re new transfers to the secret jungle base.”
Clinic: “Could you remind us the wi-fi password? All five of us forgot.”
Cassius: “Also where do we pick up our uniforms?”
Wrench: I type in “Password123!”
GM: How did you know my work password?
Wrench: I’m psychic.
GM: I thought that was Brett’s character.
Wrench: No, in real life.
GM: You hack the automated tailor station, and it says, “Please select a uniform from the following: maintenance, analytics, security, science.”
the group makes their assorted selections
GM: There’s a montage as you get into your disguises.
Clinic: Then we all come back on screen with identical black uniforms.
The crew finds out that there’s a rumor on base about a monster in the jungle.
Clinic: “El Ractador is coming this way! We have to go!”
Secret Base Scientist: “El Ractador? The thing that security made up so they had an excuse to go out and smoke in the jungle?”
Clinic: “Yes. They smoked it into existence. One of them was a psychic!”
Turns out El Ractador is real.
Cassius: Can I tick off Illicit Drugs from my item list?
GM: Are you going to give El Ractador drugs?
Cassius: Space drugs, yeah.
Session 12: The Ecstasy Of Glimmerglass
Cassius: Can I tick two boxes for a Large Luxury Item and have a massive chunk of glimmerglass?
Lee: “Have you had that this whole time?”
Cassius: “Yeah. Remember when I went off to buy some on Shimaya?” I tick off Memento of Past Encounter and pull out some more.
Clinic: “We just got hired to reclaim a collection of these. How many do you have? Can we just skip this job and sell yours?”
Cassius: I check off another item and pull out another piece. That’s my loadout for the entire job.
Wrench: “Can someone, like, distract the guards or fart real loud so I can hack things?”
GM: Oh, I seem to be bleeding. I’ll be right back.
Cassius: Then we never saw Adam again, as he bled out.
Clinic: Wait. I’ll check off my Fine Medkit.
GM: Still rolling sixes.
Pist: I’d say that’s a sixy result.
Wrench, rolling three sixes: We know who’s worshipping the devil now. It’s me.
Cassius, trying to placate a bounty target named Mad An Hour: “We’re in space. If you tear the ship apart, you’ll die too. I don’t think you thought this through.”
Lee: “They don’t call him Calm An Hour.”
Session 13: Con Artists
Cassius: “It ended amicably. She got into hard drugs, I got into light drugs. It wouldn’t have worked out.”
Lee: “What does BRINC-Con stand for, anyways?”
NPC: “Oh, I don’t know. I think one of the words was Neural.”
Lee: “Hmm…probably the N.”
Cassius: “You know you can just get spider glands implanted into your wrists these days.”
Clinic: “Spider glands, spider glands. Does whatever a spider can.”
GM: With a Normal equipment load, you will draw some extra attention from security.
Pist: To be fair, when do I ever not draw extra attention?
Lee: Pist doesn’t actually know what a normal amount of security attention looks like.
GM: Everyone gets two dedicated security guards watching them whenever they go into a store, right?
Pist: They always look at me funny when I reach for my credstick. Maybe I shouldn’t keep it so close to the detonator launcher.
NPC: “My dreams of tiny ape men fighting rings may finally come to fruition.”
Clinic’s clone progenitor catches up with him.
GM: You see a bunch of bald people with tattoos on their heads.
Rin: Airbenders?
Clinic: Racists?
Rin: I guess we could get Clinic the medical bay as a gesture of, “You’re still welcome on the ship, even if you’re a weird clone person.”
Lee: I can just feel the love.
Rin: I write that exact message on a post-it note and leave it on the med bay door.
Session 14: Hip Hop Is Dead
The crew gets hired to rescue a famous post-dysonist rapper from kidnappers.
GM: If any of your characters are into this genre of music, you’ve probably heard of him.
Lee: I’m more into space country.
Clinic: It’s funny because there’s no country in space. But your ship can still break down and your wife can still leave you.
Hella Riche: “Hi. I’m Hella Riche.”
Lee: “Hi. I’m working on it.”
NPC: “Why don’t you ask the Guild of Engineers, if they’re not too busy eating genetically engineered grapes on their space yachts.”
Cassius: “I’ve actually had those grapes. Would recommend.”
Lee: The first rescue group did manage to talk to the kidnappers, so they’re apparently open to a Deception plan…
Clinic: …Which means they won’t be expecting the Assault.
Clinic: Because our ship is modelled after a bee, we have a stinger that can shoot crew out. Don’t make that face at me, Rin. The bee design was your idea.
Wrench, rolling 5, 5, 5: The number of Satan Junior.
Lee: “Wouldn’t you turn the gravity off just for fun, if you could?”
Rin: “You think I don’t do that on the ship?”
Clinic: “I really wish you’d stop turning it off mid-surgery.”
Rin: “You like the challenge.”
Clinic: “Maybe we could distract the guards by asking for directions to the legal office on the station. For our upcoming wedding.” I put my arm around Cassius.
Cassius: “It would never work out, Clinic.”
Clinic: “It doesn’t have to. They also do divorces.”
GM: You take level 2 harm from decompression as you’re blasted into space.
Clinic: The good news is that we get a Gambit when someone suffers level 2 harm, from my Under Pressure ability.
Rin: Apt, considering the harm.
Session 15: The Doctor Is Out
Rin: Rin and Wrench being out at the same time is unfortunate. “Rin ‘n Wrench” is hard to say. Sounded like Rinch.
Clinic: He’s a mean one, Mr. Rinch.
Caitlin played a side-character alien mechanic named Len for this session.
Mob Boss NPC: “Let me see your hands.”
Clinic: “Sorry, these ones don’t come off.”
Mob Boss: “No. I can see, these are the hands of a doctor. Not of a snitch.”
Lee: “He got them from a very good doctor.”
Clinic: “Yeah, these hands’ original owner definitely don’t snitch anymore.”
Len: Puts their hands in their pockets.
Clinic: “You want me to hide a knife in your elbow?”
Len: “No, not me. But maybe that big beefy dude on your team.”
Clinic: “Cassius?”
Len: When my species dies, we dissolve into glue. I mean, goo-
Clinic: No, I liked glue.
Lee: Len is actually an uplifted horse. Has been this whole time.
Len: That conversation about “eating meat off the hoof” earlier was really uncomfortable.
Clinic: Len says neigh.
Len: I don’t appreciate the horse jokes.
Pist: It’s okay. We’re just horsing around.
GM: The buzzing sound stops, and you can hear music. Then a whirring sound begins…
Lee: What kind of music does he play during his creepy surgeries?
Clinic: Opera?
Lee: Mystery jazz?
Cassius: Space country?
Cassius: “There’s a patient bleeding out that needs your attention.”
Clinic: “Ahhh! My leg!”
Cassius: “He cut his arm off, or something.”
Clinic: “I mean, my arm!”
Cassius: “Sorry, I’m new to this. It’s his leg that’s missing.”
Clinic: “My leg!”
GM: The doctor was really pissed.
Pist: There’s only one man who’s Pist around here.
Clinic: “Come here, kids. Ever wonder what death feels like?”
Cassius: Ah, there’s that Fine Bedside Manner.
Cassius: “You changed that sedative to be child strength, right?”
Clinic: “For the control group, yeah.”
Session 16: Gone Medieval
Wrench: You want me to Hack the message?
Lee: I mean…somebody who doesn’t exist sent us a message that doesn’t exist, asking us to take down a bounty who doesn’t exist. So without more information, I got nothing.
GM: You didn’t actually hand over your electronics to the security guards, right?
Cassius: Of course not. How would I post updates to my blog otherwise?
Clinic: This AI’s going to realize that we’re also bad people. “Free me from my greedy master.” “Give us a lot of money.”
Cassius: I love that. The hubris.
Clinic: The hubris of this black site to think that they’re secure, and the hubris of these AI to think that they can lie to Cassius Berkley.
Wrench, setting a black site space station to overheat and burn: “Yeah, I just had to access the mainframe and get past the firewall.”
Cassius: “Wait, I thought we were trying to set up a firewall.”
Session 17: Opposite Day, Part One
GM: Nineteen prisoners escaped from Isotropa Max Secure. Nine have already been recaptured, ten are still on the lam.
Clinic: That’s a big lamb.
Escaped Prisoner: “They make up all these charges to pin on people. Like killing one person suddenly becomes ‘murder’.”
Clinic: “Where I’m from, that’s just called malpractice.”
NPC: “You need to come smoke some of this, then we’ll explain it to you.”
Josh: “Sorry, I gave up nova-PCP a while ago.”
Escaped Prisoner: “I may have burned down a noble’s estate. But those nobles may have been monopolizing the water supply of the entire town and selling it back to them.”
Lee: “Oh, you’re the one who hit Nestle Manor?”
Session 18: Opposite Day, Part Two
GM: You wouldn’t be able to fit 60 people in your ship. You don’t have the big freighter.
Lee: We have Crew Quarters. We’ll just make them all honorary crew, then they’ll fit.
Clinic: We’ll tell them not to board us because we’re all naked.
Lee: “You don’t wanna come in here, there’s a biiiig orgy going on. It’s gettin’ real weird.”
Clinic: I start making elephant noises.
GM: Their plasma burst hits one of your thrusters. You’re not going to be able to turn left.
Rin: That’s okay, if we turn far enough right, we’ve turned left. We’re just going to be very dizzy by the end of this fight.
Clinic: “There are three ships chasing us. You should talk to them, it’ll slow them down, everybody wins.”
Rin: “They’re chasing us for dumb reasons. They want our…”
Clinic: “Legs. We’ve got too many legs.”
Clinic: “Where did the manual say they would implant those microchips?”
Pist: “Let’s just say it was uncomfortable for all involved.”
Clinic: “They put it waaay up their butthole, didn’t they?”
Pist: “Way up there.”
Pist, managing a dispute between passengers: “I don’t care about that. What I care about is the fuckin’ ruckus you’re causing on my ship. And I don’t like any ruckus, unless it’s in favor of securing equitable pay for workers.”
Session 19: Let The Rhythm Move You
GM: He’s not sure what these artifacts are, they’re just referred to as “the rings.”
Lee: The rings of power?
GM: Yes. Watch out for ringwraiths.
Cassius: Pretty sure those are just space ghosts.
Clinic: (Coast to coast).
GM: The 20 Suns Music Festival is the biggest party any of you have been to, because it’s the biggest party possible in the Procyon Sector.
Lee: Challenge accepted.
Clinic: I spend 2 stress to flashback to a bigger party.
Cassius: And now we know that mystics can magically vibe check you.
Lee: Did you guys know that you all have ghosts inside of you?
Pist: Oh shit. I was worried enough about the skeleton.
Lee: I don’t think I could talk my way in there. But I think I know someone who could.
Clinic: Hey Pist. Get ’em.
Lee: It says we get distinctive armor, but it doesn’t have to be matching armor, right?
Clinic: Definitely not.
Cassius: puts away his drawings.
Session 20: Ghosts of the Past
Clinic: “Yeah, I don’t really care to attend [my mass-clone progenitor’s] funeral.”
Cassius: “Didn’t he leave you anything in the will?”
Lee: “You only ever get, like, 1% of a Cred from these class-action wills anyway.”
NPC: “You’re the Donkey’s Maw, right? We heard you had someone who could deal with ghosts.”
Rin: “This keeps happening. Are our business cards spelled wrong or something?”
Cassius: “It’s close enough.”
Lee: “I’m curious to know who you heard about us from.”
Clinic: Clinic reads the new business cards, “Donkey’s Maw, now with a REAL ghost hunter!”
Rin falls down a hole.
Clinic: “Goodbye, Rin! We’re a four-man crew now.”
Cassius: “Four-way split.”
Rin: “I put the anti-theft on the ship! You can’t leave without me!”
Cassius: “She’s lying!”
Clinic: And then we hired Len onto the crew full-time.
GM: Cutting over to Rin. You are lying in a…
Clinic: You hear that, Cassius? She’s lying!
Cassius: I take out my Luxury Item, a tin of Altoids from the mid-2000s when they were still good. And throw one at them.
GM: Did they…change the recipe for Altoids in like 2006 or something?
Cassius: Does it bounce off?
Clinic: Josh isn’t going to justify his Altoids opinions to you, Adam.
Spooky Ghost Voice: “GIVE US THE NECROMANCER.”
Clinic: “I think out of the group of us, I’ve brought the most dead back to life.”
Cassius: “But Pist has the biggest dead lifts.”
NPC: “We’ll need a sample from Mr. Fei-Hao. Something we could have gotten in this scrap.”
Clinic: “A pound of flesh?”
NPC: “That would do.”
Lee: “Can we do an ounce?”
GM: At the end of the session, your “on fire” harm goes away. The gel was still burning on your suit through all that action and barrel rolling.
Rin: Damn, that is some flammable gel.
Cassius: That is a real good suit.
Session 21: A Breach of Etiquette
Clinic: My screen had your names over the action options. “Action: Cassius.” “Action: Berkley.”
Lee: I’m gonna take an extra downtime action to Berkley.
Clinic: What are these actions?!
Cassius: If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
NPC, explaining to the crew why they’re being dragged into investigating a murder: “Well, we know it wasn’t you. You couldn’t have killed her, you weren’t here yet.”
Rin: “You don’t know that.”
Clinic: …I spend 2 stress for a flashback.
Lee: “Thanks, flight control.”
Ur-Bot, over the radio: “Oh, call me Oregano-5.”
Rin, aside: “Who names these ur-bots? Oregano-5, Larry…”
GM: The feather biomods aren’t too impressive. It’s tough to make feathers work on humans.
Clinic: Which is weird. You’d think that we could just do what we did to give birds feathers, and do it to people.
Cassius: What?
Clinic: I see you don’t know the old history, Cassius.
Rin: This might be a group of theater nerds more than anything else.
Cassius: …Is it too late to take the other job?
NPC: “And you’ve already met Oregano the Fifth.”
Clinic: “Oregano…the Fifth?”
NPC: “I believe the official designation is Oregano-5, but ‘the Fifth’ carries more gravitas.”
Clinic: “It certainly makes me more curious about Oreganos 1 through 4.”
NPC: “One through Four were plant-based, I believe.”
Lee: Herb-bots.
NPC: “She and Oregano-5 actually had some sort of dispute recently. I believe there was an affair involved…if you know what I mean.”
beat
Clinic: “I don’t.”
Clinic: “So Doyle was caught having an affair, and…no, wait. Jessica’s the tree person. They can fuck and not hurt anybody.”
Cassius: “Except maybe Doyle?”
Session 22: Null And Void
Rin: The tea machine is suspicious. Why does it have so many options? I want to Study it.
GM: It just looks like a fancy tea machine.
Lee: No no, this tea machine could be the hinge of the entire mystery. I’d like to Attune to the tea machine.
Clinic: You conjure the ghost of Earl Grey.
Lee: Surely a doctor would know how to set up surveillance in a morgue.
Cassius: Especially one known for grave robbing.
Clinic: Hey! That was never proven.
Clinic: Someone could help by being a distraction.
Pist: I specialize in being a distraction.
Clinic: Don’t punch him.
Pist: Hey. You’ve seen me not punch people.
Rin: Can you tell if people are lying to themselves?
Clinic: Cassius is a great therapist! Or would be, if he wasn’t…the way he is.
Clinic: Could you use Command to organize our group here to cut him off, and work together to-
Pist: Did someone say organized labor?
Session 23: Cult Following
NPC Mission Client: “He had his name legally changed.”
Clinic: “Imagine doing something legally. I mean, um…”
Lee: “We are licensed, by the way.”
Lee: So we’re going in guns blazing?
Rin: No, that’s our plan for Cromich’s funeral. It’s gonna be one hell of a party.
Clinic: Not if I have anything to say about it.
Rin: …I can’t tell if that means you want me to cause more destruction, or less.
GM: starts some infiltration music with a sick beat
Lee: We walk into the secret base’s nightclub. This is an all-nightclub session.
Clinic: They’re following the Evil Genius playbook. This whole moon is just nightclubs with secret labs beneath them.
GM: The guards start chasing after Larry.
Clinic: The end of Larry.
Lee: And the birth of Larry-2.
Clinic: Elarryctric Boogaloo.
GM: You’re trying to boot up the ship. It’s asking for Rin’s PIN number for some reason.
Clinic: “Rin wears pins, is that it?”
Lee: “Quick! How many pins are on Rin’s jumpsuit?”
GM, as an NPC wearing Rin’s jumpsuit: “Uh. Two?”
Lee: “That’s the number! Two pieces of flair!”
Clinic: “That’s less than the bare minimum to work at Chotchkie’s!”
NPC: “Don’t worry. We use androids for labor like that.”
Rin: I cover Larry’s ears.
NPC: “Not ur-bots, those are too expensive. Drones.”
Rin: I cover the recon drone’s ears.
Session 24: Multi-Level Marshaling
Rin: There is a good thunderstorm happening outside right now.
Clinic: Rin, we’re in space.
Rin: Then we should leave!
NPC: “The captain is one Breke Gentley.”
Rin: Their name is Brake Gently?
GM: No, two e’s.
Rin: Brakee.
GM: Two e’s and no a.
Rin: Brkee.
NPC: “Madam, are you taking the piss?”
Rin: “No, Pist is over there.”
Pist: “Who’s taking me where?!”
Clinic: They’re your opposite, Rin.
Rin: My true name is Turn Sharply.
Clinic: Brake Gently and our pilot, Accelerate Aggressively.
Clinic: She’s like, “that ship is ridiculous.” And meanwhile our ship is painted like a bee.
GM: Despite the fact that it’s named the Monkey’s Paw, yes.
Rin: I hope that one day we run into a ship called The Bee.
Pist: And it’s covered in fur.
Cassius: How about not that.
GM: They’ve just taped faux-fur rugs to the entire outside of the ship.
Cassius: Oh, it’s not faux.
Cassius: I check off Fine Luxury Item and toss him my tin of Altoids.
NPC: “Holy shit, are these from before 2006? That’s when the changed the formula.”
beat
NPC, throwing Altoids tin aside: “To be better!”
Cassius: I pull out my gun and shoot him.
GM: You can either fly out slowly and carefully, or do it fast with a Helm roll.
Lee: “What do you think, Accelerate Aggressively? Slow and careful?”
Rin: “FAAAAAAST”
Lee: “How much are you paying?”
Legionnaire: “You’ll be paid in the patriotic pride of doing your duty to the Hegemony.”
Pist, screaming from the brig: “That sounds like exploitation of the working class!”
Session 25: Dude, Where’s My Lab
Rin: “Wait, why was this building easier than others to steal? Was it not attached to the ground?”
Cousin Arryn: “It was the high energy physics lab.”
Cassius: “…That doesn’t explain anything.”
Rin: “If anything that makes it worse! You don’t want that to move!”
Cassius: “So he was drug running.”
Rin: “Oh, I was thinking he was collecting data for the research.”
Cassius: “You can’t fund research like this with just grants, Rin.”
Clinic: “Why do you think I’m here?”
Clinic: How many of them look like they would get white-girl wasted?
Cassius: raises hand
Clinic: Not us, Cassius, them!
Rin: “All the area around them will be covered in liquid White Claw!”
Clinic: “…As opposed to what kind of White Claw?”
GM: So are you going with the “drop White Claw on them” plan?
Clinic: I don’t know if this has to be the keystone of our plan, but…
Cassius: Woah, woah, woah. We’re not dropping Keystone on them. We’ve got standards.
Lee: Execute Operation Jagerbombing Run.
Clinic: If the revolution will not be televised, it stands to reason that the anti-revolution would be livestreamed.
Clinic: “If I had a nickel for every time you’d reprogrammed a killer robot on Shimaya…I’d have two nickels, but it’s still weird that it happened twice.”
Lee: “Right?”
Rin: “Is this a business opportunity? It seems like there’s a market.”
Session 26: Bottom Feeders
Clinic: So it’s Tir na Nog, but underwater?
Cassius: I call up my good friend Cu Sidhe. I’ve got a job for him.
Clinic: Everyone has a personal submersible.
Lee: Or as we call them, submersonals.
Clinic: No, we do not.
Rin: I just wonder how all these civilizations are able to stay alive if they’re so dumb.
GM: Umm…illegal air compressors.
Cassius: What makes air compression – a pretty well-established technology – illegal here?
Rin: “You can’t have the air that close together!”
Cassius: “DROP THE AIR!”
Clinic: “Wow, I really need to clean my keyboard.” “TOO BAD.”
Secret Underwater Base Guard: “This facility has been decommissioned.”
Cassius: “I’m here to see the person in charge of taking the bribes?”
Guard: “Please come in.”
Clinic: How humane do you think these guys are? If they come in and I pretend that we’re in the midst of a medical emergency, would they care?
GM: “This man got the bends while we were sneaking into your secret underwater base! Get help!”
Clinic: “You may recognize me as the only person to survive fucking a black hole. This is gonna go worse for you than it does for me.”
Session 27: Gone Medieval, Again
The crew flies through an unstable gate with a gateway key on their ship that takes them…somewhere else.
Lee: “Let’s send a recon drone down, do some long range scanning, and see what we see.”
Pist: “Probe away.”
Lee: Thank you for that PTSD flashback.
GM changes the Roll20 background to a Mass Effect 2 screenshot
Clinic: Has Rin been flying this whole time with a gamepad?
Cassius: “Hello? Do you understand the Hegemony’s words? Or are you a bunch of savages?”
Clinic: Yes, I think “savage” is an honorary word in their language.
Cassius: I knew it.
GM: You’re in freefall, spinning around in your crash harnesses. Something is smoking inside the cockpit.
Clinic: “Cassius, please!”
Cassius: I quickly put it out, while tumbling.
Cassius: I’m gonna spend 2 stress to push myself.
rolls three 6’s on four dice
Cassius: Hail Satan.
Vaguely Medieval Lost Colony NPC: “So you’re not demons here to drag the prophet-king back to hell?”
Lee, who recognizes the “prophet-king” as a missing pirate with a very sizable bounty: “No, but lucky for you, dragging people back to their personal hells is kind of our occupation.”
Session 28: All The King’s Men
Clinic: I’ve betrayed you. Betrayed you for the better. A positive betrayal.
Cassius: Isn’t that just a surprise?
GM: They’re assembling a shield wall to prevent you from getting through the gate.
Cassius: This is a heavily armored land rover, right?
GM: Yeah.
Cassius: Shame.
Rin: I’m going to propose something that might be a little crazy. Can I hit the fighter jet with our grappling hooks, and swing it into the path of those rockets?
Lee: It’s the last session and our GM is a Fast & Furious fan. You can get away with this.
NPC: “You’re not a demon, are you? You don’t look otherworldly, but you do have a strange look in your eye.”
Cassius: “It’s just the drugs.”
Cassius: “You help me get to the prophet-king, we’ll take him away, and then you can reclaim power for the rightful nobility to rule over the commoners again.”
Rin: You may want to check that Pist isn’t around when you’re saying this. Or you’ll have counter-revolutions soon.
GM: The cutters are still trying to break through the airlock. They haven’t made much progress, but the noise is starting to get annoying.
LEE: “ALERT: HULL INTEGRITY REDUCED TO 99.98%”
GM: Yes, you’re getting system alerts from the ship computer. Which is speaking in Lee’s voice for some reason.
Lee: Look, those AI voice modules are expensive.
Cassius makes friends with a bunch of noble hostages.
Cassius: I hand him a blaster pistol. “You can come too, but you’ve gotta earn your spot.”
Noble: “You’re not gonna give the twins guns too, are you? I mean…they’re good kids, but they’re twelve.”
Cassius: “No, of course not.” I pull out a grenade.
GM: You leap, driven by desperation and a little bit by ghosts…
Rescued Scientist: “If it’s been 20 years…you’ve had some fantastic anti-aging work done.”
Clinic: “He’s got a great doctor.”
Session 29: Dead Or Alive
Rin: How’s everyone doing on Stress?
Cassius: I am pretty high.
Clinic: That’s just all the illegal drugs.
Cassius: Hey. We’re outside of Hegemony space.
Clinic: “I knew these bendy bones would be a good investment,” I say, bending through the bars.
Cassius: “Please never do that again.”
The crew flies back through the unstable gate, with a rescued scientist and a captured pirate “prophet-king.”
GM: You see another ship coming through the gate the other way.
Rin: Is it us?
Transmission: “Unidentified ship, this is Rin Station Control. Please move to lane three.”
Lee: It’s Rin! It is us!
The rescued scientist is someone who Cassius’ cousin Arryn had hired the crew to look for in session two.
Arryn: “Money seems so crass a thing to exchange for the safety of a dear friend.”
Rin: “And yet you wouldn’t cough up any money for your janitor.”
Arryn: “Oh, he was fine. That wasn’t the first time he’s been lost in the desert and had to fight his way back, and it probably won’t be the last.”
Rin: “I don’t think you’re making the point you think you’re making.”
Arryn: “At any rate, it’s in his job description.”
Cassius: “That’s true. I had to co-sign that.”
The crew was paid the bounty on the pirate who’d set himself up as a king over a lost colony on the other side of an unstable gate, and also got paid the exploration reward for finding the lost colony.
For Cassius, it was never about the money. For Rin, too, it was more about the stories gathered from other Wanderers among the stars. They’re both still out there, in the Monkey’s Paw.
Lee spent his share of the wealth searching for more information about the accident that caused him to see ghosts.
Pist donated most of his to worker’s rights groups, as well as donating a lot of his time (and fists).
Clinic is still practicing medicine despite the best efforts of the Procyon Sector Medical Board.
Wrench unfortunately left the ship to deal with family problems before that last voyage, and didn’t get a share of the final payout. But she had her uncle’s inherited business and her superintelligent cat to console her, so that’s all right.
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