Act 2 - A Time of Strife

Captain 4 - A Bounty Hunter

Captain creation

Describe the Captain and consider how they took command of your ship, and any notable crew or assets.

Our 3rd captain, Myles, left his ship at the scene of his latest heist/mission. It makes sense to me firstly that someone would be annoyed enough to try and go after him and secondly, that they might make use of the ship he left them. And so after a day of sitting empty our 4th captain takes control of the Endurance.

• Name: Isabella Wolfe
• Is contracted to take the ship and hunt down Myles, its previous captain.
• Isabella is a weapons master and for the first time the ship takes on a slightly military aspect under her command.
• She travels with a squad of hunters. Some of them fighters, some of them tech or investigations specialists. There are only a few, but they are highly effective.

Describe their signature arsenal and the strict code they follow.

• Reputation for bringing targets in alive for questioning. She employs a selection of stun weapons and traps, able to disable targets and their equipment. Lethal force is a last resort.
• Notorious for close combat ability, trained in the use of clubs and staffs, carries an extensible stun baton.
• No pleas, no mercy. Contract is binding, gets the job done.

I’m playing a bounty hunter in a group Shadowrun game at the moment, so there’s a bit of him in Isabella. After all, inspiration can come from anywhere, and apparently it’s bad form to just use Star Wars for everything.

Who was the most fearsome target shackled in your hold?

• Clever use of traps and tactics captured the whole of the Orion gang, fearsome pirates who ran a whole sector for 5 years through violence and intimidation.

Memorable events

Back to the negative events table for the final event of act 2. I feel like ending the act with a negative event plays nicely into the general theme of decline that suffuses the game.

Emergency Klaxons jolted the crew awake but before you could escape, raiders boarded.

• Retaliation. Key members of the Orion gang bribed their way to an early release and made a point of tracking me down to exact revenge. They found us landed and assaulted in force.
• Isabella and the crew fought hard, most were killed, and Isabella herself was badly wounded when they finally captured the ringleader.
• Isabella executed him in the cargo hold with the last remaining member of the bounty hunting crew looking on. Breaking her code, but she had lost faith in local justice system.
• I was heavily damaged in the fight. We limped back to port and my bounty hunting days were done.

Ship Question

Your last captain installed a secret modification that they never got to use.

• As a bounty hunter the EMP cannon alone wasn’t enough, although it was well-used and beefed up while Isabella was captain.
• Isabella had a mod installed that would fire a magnetic clamp and tether. It was never used as this was a high-risk thing to do, but would have been a one-shot, last-ditch attept to snag e.g. a departing escape pod from another ship.

How does the captain and ship’s time together end?

• Isabella couldn’t return to bounty hunting after her injury and, with one remaining crew member, was forced to retire.
• She sold the ship as a spares-or-repairs project to to a low-tier merchant.

Resolve a Rest

• Wait: 1 year.

I think with the ship in such bad shape it probably sits in that merchant’s yard for quite a while before being picked up. This means we get to roll on a new table, and given the fictional framing I’m going to pick Dust and Rust.

You are abandoned in a destitute junkyard on a bleak, backwater planet.

• Planet is wracked by acid rainstorms. They cause streaks of rust to run down the bulkhead as they dissolve the paint and cause moving parts to start creaking and squealing as they move.