Campaign Turn 1 Mission 1 - Swamp Fever

Campaign Turn 1 Bit of a mixed bag for the first pre-mission campaign turn bit. I gained a second patron but also managed to gain a rival. Spent a story point to re-roll the rival roll and ended up even worse as it came up as a Nemesis Rival who sends +1 enemies against you in any fight – I figured this might be the mercenary officer that did the dirty on Blackhart in the past and he is still tracking the captain down. Expensive use of a story point! Now onto the mission.

1st mission – 841 manages to break the encryption on one of Hastin Green’s data cubes which leads to the name of a local government patron, Chalcine Carrico (let’s say, Greeny’s patron in his initial roll up). She is a mover in the trade council and asks the crew of the Aurelian if they are interested in an urgent mission to investigate a missing cargo convoy.

On the western coastline of the main continent of New Sarthe is the Marsianna region. With a thriving trade in exotic foodstuffs, the capital city of Chagotier sits on the coastline astride the Red River. As well as dissecting the city, the river splits out into an estuary and flows slowly through the Marsianna swamplands which surround much of the southern edge of the city before finally reaching the sea. The swamps and mangroves provide a rich habitat for fish, shellfish and swamp critters.

For two months of the year the crawfish season is in full swing – the crawfish come to the edges of the swamp, in amongst all the mangroves, to do their thing and lay their eggs and this is where the bounty of highly prized shellfish is caught. They are such a famous delicacy throughout the local planetary systems that the yearly catch contributes almost a tenth of the off-world trade from New Sarthe.

Because the crawfish are twitchy at the best of times it has been found that the best way to bring them out from the mangroves from where they are caught is by pack animal, walking through the swamplands. They have tried swamp-boats and rotary-wing chopters and even landed spacecraft on the few prized areas of solid ground near where the best catching areas are. However the noise from any of these vessels saw the remaining crawfish disappear back into the swamps almost immediately, for the rest of the season, causing a huge shortage and a major hit to exports. So pack animals it is.

However in the last week a couple of the pack trains have just disappeared along with the teamsters driving them. Chalcine wants the crew of the Aurelian to go in on foot along the main route that these mule trains are known to take and see what they can find. (Mission object rolled is Move Through.)

Chalcine is good for +1 pay in addition to the +2 rolled for the danger of the task – two search teams have also disappeared without trace.

The battlefield is set on a bit of high ground in the swamps around a waypoint shack often used by the pack trains as a rest stop.

Special battlefield conditions came up as low visibility – 9” – story: an onshore breeze blew up sending cold, moist air in off the sea and when it hit the warm, humid swamplands a thick swamp fog sprang up – hence the 9” vis.

Now for opponents – I rolled Roving Threats which turned out to be pretty bad – vent crawlers! Only three, which was a blessing, but they have a move of 6” which, if they run, goes up to 9” – the exact distance of the available visibility! Not ideal. They are also toughness 5 and have a terrifying combat skill of +2 and big, nasty claws. Oh Great.

Here is the battlefield. Movement identified behind the barn and over at the edge of the swamp on the right but the fog is hampering sight somewhat.

1st turn – looming up out of the fog comes a vent crawler – bigger and nastier than your wildest nightmare.

On the right flank Atsu ventures forward to draw the enemies towards him and then hopes to out-sprint them for long enough with his speed until the rest of the crew can put them down with ranged fire.

Shots from Captain Blackhart, Lermantov and Atsu succeed in hitting the creatures but do not overcome their toughness. The 1” push back does put them beyond 9” though, and they disappear briefly back into the fog.

The Turn 2 roll for activation wasn’t great so 841 moves forward to take on the left-most vent crawler. He hit it with his autogun but the fast-moving creature shrugged off the fire and charged into close combat – both combatants scored two hits – 841’s toughness protected him from one hit and then he managed to save the other by rolling the necessary 6!

The vent crawler made its toughness saves and both opponents recoiled from the vicious clash. These things seemed almost impossible to take down! Lermantov stepped round the corner of the cabin and leant his fire to the fusillade that pummeled the creature and next turn 841 finally overwhelmed it with a third stun hit to put it down.

Over in front of the cabin Captain Blackhart had edged too close to one of the vent crawlers who now turned and leapt over a fence to come at him, whilst Atsu bravely pumped shotgun shells at the other crawler.

A lucky hit from the captain’s infantry laser found a weak spot and the first crawler went down.

On the last turn the dice roll for initiative was particularly good with four 1’s and a 2 and that enabled the crew to throw enough metal at the remaining vent crawler to finish it off.

Again the creature was only stopped by cumulative stun hits which succeeded in hurling it back into the fog. When they checked later they could only find a few blood trails.

Interesting fight – vent crawlers are fast and tough as you would expect. The crew of the Aurelian was lucky enough to only be facing three of them, especially in that swamp fog, and 841 showed his fighting prowess in holding off one of the big beasts.

Post-battle – The crew discovered the remains of one of the mule teams around the cabin along with a damaged autogun and a damaged hyper-blaster.

With that kind of firepower deployed it must have been a hell of a battle. This might explain why only three vent crawlers remained. If I can get those weapons fixed they will be fantastic additions to the armoury The 3-shot hyper-blaster is one of the best weapons out there and the autogun is also multi-shot and both have 24” range which is a bonus in 5P.

I spent 1 story point adding 3xp to Blackhart and also purchased a shotgun and blade – I want to get more crew members tooled up for tough opponents as well as being able to fight effectively in close combat.

Mission Debrief No injuries, a chunk of cash, a happy patron and a potentially significant upgrade to their firepower. The crew have got to be feeling pretty good about themselves after that one.