Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

I'm a little behind with Musings because of all my Otakon Musings, so I'll try to get caught up.

Two Saturdays ago, The Gryphon and I met with our florist in the morning to finalize plans for our wedding. We really just confirmed what we'd talked about earlier, and I made plans to bring him some ribbon to wrap around my bouquet, as well as to tell him exactly how many tables we'll have at the reception.

We spent the afternoon relaxing and then headed for the home of our friends, The Cheshire Cat and The Paper. For the first time in several months, they were hosting a gaming session of Confed. This is the role playing game that The Cheshire Cat developed and for which he is the GM.

Participating were myself as Carmella Maylock, a cheval trader (or gypsy) who's been made the default ship's captain; The Dormouse playing Liang Tze, a Shaolin monk who is strongly opposed to deadly violence; The Gryphon as weapons expert and pilot extraordinaire Jenna Starfall; The White Rabbit as Alauzhi, a large female cat creature skilled with weaponry; The March Hare as Fader, a baron and reckless adventurer; and The Martial Artist as Taiwan MacGuyver, the idiot savant ship's engineer and my character's second cousin, twice removed.

The crew of the Vandervecken was undercover on behalf of the Confederation, amongst a group of pirates, with the mission being to discover what their plans were and to notify the Confed navy.

Now, in the previous session, which happened months ago but, as I said, The Gryphon and I did not attend, the crew had taken on alternate identities. When The Cheshire Cat asked me for a fake name, I said the first thing that popped into my head: "Spanky." Of course, everyone tried to make something naughty, but I insisted I meant Spanky as in the "Our Gang" shorts. But since they didn't seen willing to let it go, I suggested Molly Ringwald instead. Much cooler name for a pirate, wot?

I joked that Carmella ought to counterfeit some newspaper clippings about Molly Ringwald's daring exploits and "accidentally" drop them on the floor while talking to some pirates. Of course, her poor forgery skills put the kibosh on this idea.

Apparently, Liang Tze's alias was known for his ultra-violence, ironic considering he actually bewails any time he needs to injure a foe seriously, even those who are cruising for a bruising. I'm not sure what the other alternate identities were, since it didn't really come up.

In the previous sesh, the Vandervecken crew had befriended one of the pirates, a musclehead henchman named Bob, and they'd managed to get him to serve as a go-between to a band of pirate renegades who were clearly up to something.

This renegade group was interested in setting up a deal with the Vandervecken crew to do a job for them. Incidentally, the Vandervecken also had a fake name while the crew was undercover. I don't remember exactly what it was, except that it had the word Angel in it. We'll call it the Avenging Angel, though I don't think that's exactly right.

Bob had relayed that the other group was offering a 60-40 split to us — with us getting the 60 — just to tug them to somewhere in space that was too far for them to get to quickly under their own power. It didn't add up to me, and I insisted we meet with the renegade captain to see if we could suss out the real deal.

I suggested that those of us who had the ability to sniff out lies should actively try to do so while we were talking to him.

So we arranged a meeting with the renegade captain. Carmella strode forward and introduced herself as the captain, introducing her crew as the Breakfast Marauders. Then we spoke about the job at hand.

Now, the job at hand seemed to be simple enough. We were to tether their ship to ours and tow it into the far reaches of the galaxy, since we could fly much faster than they. When he asked Taiwan how fast we could go, he lied and told them about half as fast as we could actually go, just so we'd have an advantage in case of emergency situations.

This meant, however, that we'd have to fly at the advertised speed. This meant that the pirate leader we had been working for insisted that we'd have to pay him money for the inconvenience of returning any time past four weeks.

After towing the renegade ship to the other end of the galaxy, he wanted to take over an automated space station and lay claim to any of the available booty, including any docked ships. Then, he would also, effectively, have control of that station.

Now, we knew it was important to stay undercover and recognized as legitimate pirates; however, as members of the Confederation, we certainly didn't want to see this leading to the loss of innocent lives.

First, we haggled over the price, trying to get a higher percentage of the cut. Then, failing that, we made him agree to our condition: that nobody would be killed in the course of this mission.

Of course, after we'd shaken hands on the deal and he was walking out of the meeting, I suddenly remembered something: "We didn't check to see if he was lying! And he was right here!" I buried my forehead in both hands, both in and out of character. But everyone assured me that, if he was lying, it would become apparent soon enough.

At this point, we put on our thinking caps and discussed how to put the situation to our advantage while assuring no one at the space station got hurt. We decided we couldn't let him get close enough to the space station to fire, on the assumption he wouldn't honor the agreement not to harm anyone.

The idea arose that we could simply get him disoriented and drop him off in front of the nearest Confed military base, where they would surely be arrested on our say-so. However, if we did that, we'd have to have a cover story when we returned.

So the idea developed that we could jump into the military base airspace, where the renegades would be arrested. Then we tow it to the space station, stage a firefight with a previously warned ship, and claim that all the renegades had been killed after foolishly engaging a superior ship. We would return to the pirate home base with our tale of woe.

The main problem was ensuring that there wouldn't be any unexpected happenings on the way, such as the renegade captain attempting to take over the Vandervecken or breaking off early and making haste for the space station without us.

We discussed multiple ways of incapacitating them. Carmella suggested inviting their crew to our ship for a drinking contest with Taiwan, who is renowned for his ability to drink, and as they were incapacitated, show up at the military base. I thought this could have been a good cover story, in case anything ever happened later. We could always claim that they'd been so drunk they'd ended up there on their own.

But nobody else liked that suggestion quite as much. I liked it in part because I thought it could lead to some fun role playing, but I deferred to the group.

Alauzhi suggested that she put on a space suit and sabotage their spine-mounted laser so that, even if they should break free early, they couldn't do any damage. This idea was — pardon the pun — shot down because it was far too dangerous for Alauzhi, since we were still in warp space at the time and there would be almost no room for error.

We decided that, through Jenna's mad piloting skills, we'd engage in misdirection until we ended up in the military base airspace. Then we'd detach, fly away at faster than advertised speed and notify the military that they had a delivery.

Just to be sure, Taiwan also welded shut the inner doors of the airlock that connected the two ships.

All went as planned, and as we were flying away from the ship, the renegade captain contacted us over the communications band to ask what we were doing. At the suggestion of the other players, Carmella responded, "We're renegotiating our deal! How about 70 percent." The renegade captain replied with a curse word. "OK, 80 percent, but that's my final offer." The renegade ship rounded on us to try to fire.

Each round, as we were now in combat mode, we each got a chance to say what we were going to do. As the pirate ship rounded on the Vandervecken, Alauzhi targeted a laser at their engines. Meanwhile, Jenna was engaging in some acrobatic flying to keep us out of the range of the other ship's gun. Fader radioed the military base and, using his knowledge of military practices, notified them of the situation, giving them full strategic details.

With nothing better to do than antagonize the renegades, Carmella sang an old cheval trader song over the communication band.

As they were just about to fire, Alauzhi fired a well-placed shot, taking out their engines, and they spun wildly out of control as the military closed in. Over the communications band, Carmella sang the "You've Been Owned" song. To add insult to injury, quite literally, Taiwan projected an image on the side of the ship of someone mooning the renegades.

No one ever accused the Vandervecken crew of being gracious winners.

After the pirates had been rounded up and led to prison, Fader gave the military a fuller explanation of our scheme. They agreed to lend us a forensic expert who could stage the scene on the renegade bridge so that it looked, indeed, like the scene of a fatal battle.

We conducted a preliminary search of the ship, finding they were transporting some nasty illegal drugs but finding little else that was surprising.

Then, because everyone was getting tired, we called it a night. Unfortunately, I know that The Gryphon and I won't be making the next session of Confed, and I'm not sure when we'll be able to next. If I hear any details about what happens, I'll try to remember to share them here.

Further adventures from Confed:

Confed adventures index

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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