The Ace of Spades Campaign - Alien Base part 12

Epilogue

Gunnery Officer Jeanette Grey took The Jack of Spades space shuttle down to the surface of the planet and picked up her crew mates and passengers. Danica and Tara Seven were purposefully kept apart to prevent Tara from suffering more headaches by being in the presence of a telepath.
As soon as everyone was safely on board The Ace of Spades, Kimberley set course to return to Fabergé in the Saga starsector. The journey back lasted just over two days and once in system Kimberley contacted Captain Devon Renton of the Survey Scouts to inform him of the good news of a successful mission. Naturally, he was delighted to hear that the DSX Timothy had been located and that some of its crew safely returned. More worrying, however, was the revelation of the Npurth slavers. He told Kimberley that he would have to notify the UFP Starfleet and that she and her crew would have to be debriefed by them. Kimberley expected as much and was only too happy to comply.

A few days later, a UFP Class XIV Fleet Cruiser, the Valarion, arrived in system. The UFP Fleet Cruiser was sometimes described as a "pocket battleship", for it mounted very heavy armaments and battlestarship class screens and armour. As usual, the ships exhibited the classic Terran compromise between speed and powerful guns and defences. In fleet actions, these powerful capital ships were given the mission of engaging and driving off enemy light forces and of finishing off crippled ships of the line.
Both crews of The Ace of Spades and DSX Timothy were debriefed by officials from the UFP Starfleet and their military intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence, aka BRINT. The crews were seen as groups and then individually. Unsurprisingly, their stories tallied with one another. Lynda was able to show the whole mission via a video camera that had been fitted to Smiley. From this footage, Sharuna had been able to construct a precise map of the alien base, which Lynda passed on to the Starfleet. In addition, the crew also had three specimens of the Npurth insectoids, kept in stasis, which they were glad to transfer to the authorities.
As an aside, when Jeanette was seen alone by BRINT officers, she revealed to them that she was an undercover BRINT agent and she passed on a separate report she had made all about the mysterious android, Celeste. She asked for more time to monitor her target and this was granted.
The crew of The Ace of Spades were thanked for all they had done and that the UFP would handle matters from now on. They were allowed to keep any loot they had found in the alien base. Most of it was of little value but Rebecca had found a large industrial diamond that was worth 10,000 credits and Lynda had removed four memory cores from the biocomputer which were worth at least 100,000 credits each. Kimberley decided to sell them on Achamandra, the capital planet of the UFP in the Phoenix starsector, which they had visited before, prior to their adventure with the Sterling Agricultural Colony. Kimberley was able to sell the four memory cores to the University of Achamandra for the sum of 500,000 credits and the industrial diamond to the Matsai Corporation for 15,000 credits, thus making a tidy profit. A big chunk of that profit went towards paying off the mortgage for The Ace of Spades but everyone received a substantial bonus in their pay packets for that month.

Conclusion
This scenario was originally written by Larry Smith for FGU's Space Opera RPG and was published in 1981. It was intended to be the first part of a five part campaign package, with the sequels being titled, Derelict, Slaveworld, Scoutship and Starmother. Sadly, none of the sequels were ever published. Some clues were given in Alien Base as to what happened next, but not enough to form well detailed follow ups without a lot of work on behalf of the games master. So, I played this as a stand alone adventure.
I always knew that this would be the second adventure of my The Ace of Spades Campaign that I'd run. It was very different to the first scenario, being more about exploration than combat. Although some of them are very good in combat, the crew of The Ace of Spades are classed as independent explorers, and so this mission was right up their street, being their regular bread and butter work.
Playing any scenario as both games master and player gives me an unfair advantage in that I know the plot but I mitigate this by playing fair with my characters. Because the crew of The Ace of Spades has such a good cross section of character professions, skills and attributes, they were able to cope with almost any situation with a fair degree of success. Obviously, I still made dice rolls for them and most times they succeeded, but sometimes they failed and they did miss a few clues. In this scenario, because they acted cautiously throughout their exploration of the alien base the threat of serious danger was kept to a minimum. If they had gone in with all guns blazing, things would have turned out very differently. There was only one instance where they shot the two security robots that could have turned nasty for them. The computer was in the process of activating more robots to investigate, but that took time and before they could be sent out the party had overridden the main computer. Unbeknownst to them, the clock was ticking against them but they acted promptly and thus prevented further confrontation. In addition to the robots, the base computer could also have activated the many human clones it had on sub-level four as well as removing the three Npurth insectoids from their stasis chambers. A battle against just a single Npurth would have been a tough fight. Against three of them, the odds greatly favoured the Npurth.
I played to the strengths of the crew and played in character with each one, which is the best way to play. All of the five crew members who took part in the exploration of the alien base did exceedingly well but for me, Lynda in particular, was my "woman of the match". Her science and engineering background proved to be a real asset. 
Of the three NPCs, Chembles, Johan and Tara, they were meant to provide help in certain circumstance if the players hit a brick wall and were unsure of how to proceed further. Chembles is a chemist par excellence and has his own in-built chemistry lab inside his shell. He could provide the party with just about any chemical substance they requested, providing they asked for it. However, he would never offer a solution unless asked first. Johan was meant to be the fount of all knowledge. He was the most experienced character in the scenario and his role was to fill in any gaps in the skills and knowledge of the player characters. As it happened, my crew were so good, he was hardly needed at all. Tara was destined to shine in the later scenarios of this campaign, and as such, for this scenario, could be safely ignored. By including Danica in my party, I was able to reveal her secret about her inertial psionic powers. 
I very much enjoyed playing this scenario as it allowed me to shine the spotlight on some of the crew, such as Lynda and Judith, who took very little part in my first scenario. The scenario I played was pretty much as written but I did make a few minor changes. 
When I began this scenario, Captain Denton told Kimberley that he could not pay her for completing the mission but that he would put in a good word for her and her crew. So I gave each character a +1 bonus to their Rep Attributes. Reputation is one of the hardest attributes to increase. So this meant that Danica went up to Rep:3, Celeste, Jeanette, Katja, Kyran and Rebecca went up to Rep:4, Gwendoline went up to Rep:5, Judith, Julia, Kimberley and Sharuna went up to Rep:6, Lynda went up to Rep:7 and Storm went up to Rep:8. In addition, Danica, Jeanette, Judith, Lynda, Rebecca and Storm received 6XP for completing a Medium difficulty encounter. For the others, they received 0XP as this was considered a Trivial difficulty encounter. Danica, Judith and Lynda also received 6XP for completing major storyline milestones in the story. Finally, Jeanette, Judith, Lynda, Rebecca and Storm received 6XP for their Explorer exploit. So to recap, Danica, Jeanette, Rebecca and Storm received 12XP, whilst Judith and Lynda received 18XP.
The adventures of Kimberley and her crew will continue, most likely in a scenario of my my own creation. I fancy sending them to a pleasure planet next to spend some of their bonus credits and for some of them, the chance to earn even more.