During the pandemic I started a solo Traveller campaign and posted updates to Twitter, essentially a series of microblog session reports. When I left the platform at the end of 2022, they were one of the few things I saved. I’ve decided to curate and post them here in longform.
For this game I used Mongoose Traveller (1st edition) with a simple d6 oracle and the GM Apprentice deck. The setting started out as a worldbuilding exercise in which we would have to come up with four or five (plausible) events for every decade from 2010 onwards. We got to around the 2350s before we had to switch from decades to centuries and eventually got to about 3600AD.
My solo game was set in the aftermath of a short group campaign, in which ancient Transit Gates returned and a galactic wormhole network was partially restored. Exploration of local space revealed a cataclysmic binary that was close to igniting into supernova and wiping out neighbouring civilisations. Ragtag bands of explorers are now using the gates to travel to uncharted regions of the galaxy in search of a new home.
Sep 21, 2021.
My characters need a ship for this, so I used the ticket resolution rules in the Mercenary book to roll for a dangerous pre-game heist gathering salvage at a battle site from the group campaign. They managed to obtain a ship, but one of the characters died heroically to stop a reactor overload and the group made a powerful enemy.
Sep 29, 2021.
Now made space worthy, the retrofitted Escort Kriokos makes a long-range gate-to-gate jump, exiting the network in a desolate system around a M-Class Red Dwarf. Two weeks into a system survey and the crew find a derelict space station in orbit around the gas giant.
Oct 18, 2021.
The crew decide to dock with the derelict and try to retrieve library data on the local region. After restoring partial power, the station’s robotic defences activate, and a brutal firefight ensues. They manage to escape with some local star charts.
Oct 22, 2021.
Finishing the system survey takes another three weeks. It’s a poor exodus candidate with no worlds in the habitable zone. The data is uploaded to the Transit Gate and transmitted back to Commonwealth space. They check the salvaged star charts for a new destination.
At this point the d6 oracle I’m using indicates a random event has occurred. The GMs Apprentice card deck gives me “Guide,” “Consuming,” and “Nightmare.” The Synaptic member of the crew has a violent vision of her contact with the planetary cascade array1 (a background event from her character generation) and is compelled to a system three parsecs away.
Nov 8, 2021.
The crew decide to investigate and plot a course, exiting subspace at the edge of a system orbiting a K-type orange dwarf. The Synaptic’s distress increases when they surface into realspace, and she begins to experience episodic fits and some form of glossolalia.
The Scientist recognizes patterns in the Synaptic’s speech and identifies it as Hive. It’s some sort of ancient psionic distress call. They begin to cautiously explore the system and eventually pick up a metallic debris field at the edge of sensor range.
Nov 10, 2021.
Library data indicates Hive ships had a unique tessellated design, so the Kriokos slowly moves further in-system to scan for this in the debris field, which turns out to be a ship graveyard filled with Hive vessels.
To the horror of the crew, the wreckage dates back to the war with the Solomon AI and likely contains dormant nanite defences. The Synaptic is now catatonic so the crew debate whether to retreat through the gate or try to locate the source of the distress call and shut it down.
Nov 13, 2021.
Determined to help their stricken friend, the crew move the Kriokos into the debris field, locate the beacon, and attempt to board it. Hive morphology and architecture make progress slow, and they end up taking too long.
Dormant AI nanoswarms awaken and move to attack. The crew, aware of the overwhelming danger of Solomon tech, retreat to their ship and hard burn towards a jump point, destroying the Hive beacon with long range missiles.
Dec 8, 2021.
The swarms are moving too fast, so the crew attempt to jump the Kriokos before it reaches safe distance from a gravity well. They manage to submerge, but tidal forces damage the reactor, weapon systems, and the MgB2 array2. They limp to the nearest star system.
With repairs underway, they resurface from subspace into a white dwarf system. It’s a barren place, empty apart from a few scattered, frozen planets that avoided engulfment and outspiralled during the death throes of the star. The crew conducts a survey and moves on.
Dec 9, 2021.
Consulting the salvaged starmaps, they set course for a possible exodus candidate, a red dwarf system with two planets in the habitable zone. Upon approach, the Scientist discovers a very large gravity anomaly orbiting close to the star’s termination shock boundary.
The anomaly is some sort of megastructure approximately 18.6 million miles long, whose mass has caused orbital disturbances in the system’s Kuiper belt, sending asteroids hurtling into the inner system.
The crew start to investigate the habitable planets. One is a garden world, somewhere life could have survived the isolation of the last few centuries, but they find nothing except the ruins of a civilisation destroyed by asteroid bombardment. A graveyard.
They spend a week on the planet, stretching their legs, investigating ruins and searching for any surviving animal life. They take the time to finish repairs on the weapon systems, and then plot a course for the megastructure.
Jan 1, 2022.
The anomaly is so far out, it takes the Kriokos nearly three weeks to reach it, even with a small intra-system jump between gravity shadows. Numerous navigational problems occur due to the mass of the object disturbing the orbits of everything within its influence.
Nearing their destination, the crew are contacted by some sort of ancient caretaker entity. It tells them the structure is a malfunctioning lifeboat for a species currently in stasis and needs help. But the Synaptic can’t shake a growing sense of deep dread.
Jan 22, 2022.
The artefact is damaged and partially submerged in subspace. The caretaker needs help to repair the malfunctioning drives, so the Kriokos docks with the megastructure. A mote of dust clinging to a colossus. The Synaptic begins to have waking nightmares.
The crew starts helping but something is wrong. They begin to lose track of time. Fragmented memories. Hallucinations. The Synaptic is plagued with terrible visions of genocide and extinction events. She tries to get back to the ship, but the caretaker stops her.
She uses Hive salvage to build a psionic shield and the truth is revealed. The caretaker is a predatory subspace entity that forced its way onto the lifeboat, subsumed the controlling AI, and killed all biological life onboard. The megastructure is now nothing more than a tomb.
Feb 2, 2022.
Enraged, the entity tries to punish the Synaptic by systematically killing her friends. In desperation she merges with the artefact’s command machinery, shepherds the remaining crew back to the Kriokos and ejects it from the hull. She then submerges the artefact.
Feb 5, 2022.
Stronger in subspace, the entity burrows past the psionic shield and begins to amputate her consciousness. With a last spark of awareness, she commands the artefact to resurface into the heart of a star.
Tidal stresses and the combined mass tears star and structure apart until they both collapse. The churning maelstrom is dragged into subspace, leaving behind nothing but jagged debris and wisps of coronal matter.
From thirteen light-hours away, the two remaining crew members watch the stellar cataclysm in silence before plotting a jump back to the Transit Gate, and from there, home.
May 30, 2022.
The Kriokos is resupplied, and new crew are hired, but the ship is denied permission to re-enter the Transit Gate network. The high-ranking enemy I rolled during the original salvage mission has rescinded the crew’s authorisation.
Jun 2, 2022.
The Scientist begins upgrading the ship’s MgB2 array whilst the rest of the crew investigate rumours of a past impropriety by their enemy for use as leverage. Their inquiries lead them to the Junk Worlds of Skrane, where they are set up and ambushed.
The crew perform admirably, turning the tables on their ambushers, who flee. The Kriokos pursues and disables their ship. My characters use evidence found in the computer core to blackmail their enemy into lifting the travel ban.
Jun 19, 2022.
The ship enters the gate network, exiting weeks later into a system orbiting a K-class red giant somewhere along the 55˚ line in the Perseus Arm. With two planets inside the habitable zone, the system might make a good exodus candidate.
Unfortunately, long range sensors pick up the drive signatures of two or three large fleets engaged in combat around one of the system’s gas giants. The energy plume of the gate activation has also drawn attention, and five ships are on an intercept course with the Kriokos.
Jun 22, 2022.
The crew receive a garbled transmission from a distant capital ship. It warns of a behaviour altering mutagenic plague infecting ship crews. The five approaching vessels take up an attack formation and fire missiles.
After scanning the incoming projectiles, the Scientist concludes they are likely delivery mechanisms for some unknown biological component, and the crew take evasive measures, hard burning towards the outer asteroid belt.
Jun 27, 2022.
Thirteen days pass. A game of cat and mouse unfolds deep within the belt. Unfortunately, a hybrid viral shred piggybacked on the capital ship’s warning signal, downloaded itself into the Engineer’s brain augments and started replicating, slowly taking control as he slept.
No longer himself, the engineer modifies the surgical and food printing systems and commandeers the industrial maker in the cargo bay. The ship begins printing biomechanical fusions of crew body parts & repair drones.
Jul 9, 2022.
The Engineer overrides the comms and broadcasts their position. The biomechanical drones attack. Throughout the ship the crew fight for their lives whilst the Scientist and Pilot, sealed in the bridge, scramble the Kriokos through the asteroids to evade their hunters.
Jul 16, 2022.
All seems lost, so the Scientist takes extreme measures. She shuts down and purges the computer, ejects the contaminated medical bay and orders the crew to detonate decompression charges in the cargo area.
Jul 30, 2022.
Finally managing to evade their pursuers and in desperate need of a safe place to make repairs, the crew attempt to find a viable jump point. They intercept a faint distress beacon coming from outside the heliosphere.
Aug 25, 2022.
A tiny speck against the void, the barely functioning Kriokos slowly drifts into interstellar space. Using minimal power, the crew make their way to the distress beacon and begin to encounter Oort cloud debris. The beacon is ancient military freighter tethered to an icy planetesimal.
The crew investigate, hoping to find repair salvage. They find a battered reactor hooked up to a series of cryoberths. A patchwork of repairs stands testament to the ingenuity of whoever has been maintaining the ancient system. There are four humans and fifty-two valkyries3 in stasis.
Oct 6, 2022.
The crew begins to reawaken the highest-ranking human and valkyrie. A bargain is struck. The two groups will work together to find a way to return everyone safely to Commonwealth space. The Kriokos limps to a jump point and begins searching for a way home.
1 – Cascade Arrays are a type of psionic weapon effective against Artificial Intelligences. During the galactic war against the Solomon AI, these arrays were deployed on a planetary scale.
2 – In this game world magnesium diboride superconductors are used to shield ships, orbitals, and colonies against radiation. They are also used to deflect dust and small debris from a ship’s trajectory.
3 – Valkyries are extremely dangerous engineered humans spliced with Carcharodon carcharias DNA.
Derelict Otherlands 
Leave a comment