Those In Power
Hook: "So, the Port Authority of Diamond done groundlocked the ship for no immediately clear reason..."
Problem: There's a bit of a disagreement between the two ruling dynasties of this near-fringe planet, the Lebeaus and the Chens. The Lebeaus are in charge of the Port Authority and want something done by this deniable crew of nonentities. The something in question involves robbing the Chen-owned First Bank Of Diamond and making it look like an inside job.
Complications: The Chens have the biggest, orneriest security force on the planet. And if caught, Madam Chen will want the crew to take the Lebeaus down a peg or two in turn. And if you really want to complicate matters, a Chen boy and a Lebeau girl have been making eyes at each other in secret for months now...
Resolution: In an ideal Verse, play these two off against each other till one blinks. In the Verse we all live in, get the groundlock cut by other means and leave this sparkly rock behind double-quick.
Fun Stuff: Cheerfully corrupt families on both sides, a feud dating back to when the families co-founded the colony and nobody's quite sure why any more.
Theme: Those in power tend to be there for a reason. What that reason is can tell you a whole lot about that person.
Big Takeover
Hook: "If we're in orbit of planet Nightingale, how come the spaceport says it's planet Northridge?"
Problem: Since the crew last landed on this frontier mining planet, it seems someone's bought it. He's locked up most of their contacts in a workcamp and is treating the whole world like a fiefdom.
Complications: This kind of behaviour leads to disapproving types starting revolts and such, which in turn leads to mercenary troops chasing the rebels through high ground. And one of those rebel bands has what the crew came for. Feel like helping a planetary revolution? How about assassinating one of North's lieutenants?
Resolution: Much as it might irk, unless the crew want to spend the next few months bombing mine facilities, the best people to deal with this in the longterm would be the Alliance.
Fun Stuff: Going on the run from hired guns, trying to talk down lynch mobs, or possibly leading them.
Theme: What do you do if you don't like the guy in charge?
Thirsty & Miserable
Hook: "This soup taste a little funny to you?"
Problem: The ship's water reserves have failed, turning toxic after someone let that gang of hold-up artists shoot a hole in the fuel tank a while ago. So now there's not enough clean water to fill a canteen, and everybody who had the soup this morning has food poisoning. Which is nigh-on everybody on board.
Complications: The only medical facility in a day's flying is an Alliance customs ship, whose owners would be fascinated by your cargo of untraceable small arms.
Resolution: Find somewhere to stash the guns and fly on in, or find a way to sneak the medication off. And do it before anybody suffers total renal failure.
Fun Stuff: A tense, unwell and increasingly ripe-smelling crew. Disagreements over what to do with the cargo interrupted by occasional vomiting.
Theme: Don't take anything for granted. The bedrock of your life has a way of shifting underfoot.
It's In My Blood
Hook: "Seems like the simplest job Badger ever gave you. Ship some old retired feller from Coventry over to Persephone and treat him nice. So where's the thing bites us on the ass?"
Problem: What Badger neglected to mention was that said old feller was his father. And that despite not having much option due to the foreclosing of his house, he has no desire to leave his planet.
Complications: So your best notion is to kidnap this ornery old cuss and deliver him as soon as. And all you can really do is make him comfortable as you can for his trip as he complains every inch of the way across star systems.
Resolution: Bring him in and stand well clear.
Fun Stuff: For a handle on how to play Badger's dad, any of the several cantankerous old gits played by Mark Sheppard's own father
William Morgan Sheppard would be ideal casting.
Theme: Even the worst of us has, or had, roots someplace.
Caskets & Clocks
Hook: "So if we ain't back at high noon... oh, I see, you're gonna kill us."
Problem: A clock tower looms over the town of Repentance, marking each and every minute of the reign of the notorious bandit who's killed the Marshals and taken over. As we discover when landing in town. Deadshot wants the crew to help find the last surviving deputy and his family. He has three caskets all ready waiting for them. Or for three of the crew if they let him down. And the clock is ticking.
Complications: The deputy is a good man, and the other two coffins are for his wife and their six-year-old daughter. And Deadshot has enough men around town that he can send one on the ship for everybody on the crew.
Resolution: Come up with a plan that doesn't involve the deputy's family, or any of the crew, ending up in those boxes. This may involve doing something sneaky to the bandits on-ship, releasing the captive townsfolk, maybe blowing the clock tower up as it strikes high noon for the deadline as a distraction.
Fun Stuff: Hostage situations, High noon shootouts, broadly-drawn thuggish types.
Theme: We all only have so many ticks of the clock. How we spend them is what defines us.
Criminal Youth
Hook: "Captain, you were robbed by
nine-year-olds?" "Now, see, it was
numerous nine-year-olds."
Problem: You can tell you're getting older when the thieves start looking younger. But being stuck up after getting a courier job by a group of urchins lead by an eleven-year-old in pigtails may yet be a new low. Even if she had a gun.
Complications: This band of artful dodgers inevitably has a Fagin taking their profits and chuckling about how smart he is for this And as he's scum enough to work such a job he's like as not happy to shrug at a gun to his charges' heads - even put a gun to them himself if threatened, possibly undermining his fatherly act towards his gang in so doing. Oh, and the package will void at the end of a rather tight deadline.
Resolution: Catch one of the kids, find your way to their base, retrieve the package and help the kids towards a less crappy life.
Fun Stuff: The kids may bear a passing resemblance to kid versions of the crew personality-wise, and are almost sure to find heroic adventures in space fascinating. Be sure to check all storage spaces for stowaways.
Theme: Apparently the children are our future.
Hollow Inside
Hook: "So our new passenger's a robot." "... Yeah." "And apparently also a
bomb." "... Yeah."
Problem: Taking on new passengers always brings new stories. In this case, it seems this particular charming young lady is actually an AI in a high-end replicant body, designed to infiltrate and destroy a major Blue Sun manufacturing facility, crippling a planet's economy. Which we discover a little early when a Reaver attack sets off her self-defence protocols.
Complications: She's perfectly happy to blow herself sky-high to defend the ship... and blow the ship sky-high to defend that planet full of colonists below from the Reaver armada.
Resolution: How do you persuade a bomb not to set herself off while you're around?
Fun Stuff: As an infiltration unit, she's designed to blend in, make friends, and be flattered by passes from the likes of the ship's public relations officer.
Theme: How do you weigh one life against more?
Know Your Rights
Hook: "And so, Captain Reynolds, it is the verdict of this court that you be taken from this place and hanged by the neck until dead."
Problem: We open with the Captain's neck in a noose...
Complications: He's about to swing for a crime he may or may not have committed, but either way he was grabbed up sharpish and the trial is notably short and lacking in such niceties as genuine evidence. Busting him out will take some doing, but finding out why he's in should be interesting as well.
Resolution: Sort out the hanging judge who was bought by a troublesome enemy in the Verse's underground to swing the trial his way.
Fun Stuff: A trumped-up court case. Busting the Captain out of his impending hanging.
Theme: Do you break an unjust law?
The Man Who Drank Too Much
Hook: "So, in exchange for getting out of the drunk tank, you want us to do what?”
Problem: A job goes off without a hitch and the crew celebrate. And in the morning they wake up under arrest. The Marshal doesn't really care about holding them, though, and figures they'd be more use paying off their rather large fine bringing in a much more troublesome bounty. Said much more troublesome bounty is a bank robber, gut shooter and all round dirty dealer.
Complications: And, inevitably, turns out to be a friend of at least one of the crew.
Resolution: Figure out how much said friendship is worth, and sort out the issue one way or t'other.
Fun Stuff: Partying hearty, bounty hunting while hung over, betrayal and disrepute.
Theme: Would you sell out a friend if your livelihood or life depended on it?
Fan Club
Hook: "Ain't it nice to be popular?" "I'm leanin' towards no on that one."
Problem: Routine sorta job, defend a border town from raiders. But the Cutter gang are especially enthusiastic orphanmakers and so there are a fair bunch of kids around looking for a role model. Naturally, the biggest meanest guy on the crew seems like a great choice.
Complications: So things are going all Jaynestown with the under-twelve set, and they're bringing him food as he stakes out his corner and wanting to play gunslinger with him.
Resolution: Drive the Cutters off, and nudge the kids towards a more appropriate lifestyle choice than ammo hoppers for a travelling mercenary.
Fun Stuff: Scummy outlaws, cute kids, he Public Relations guy getting to be Charles Bronson in The Magnificent Seven.
Theme: How do we affect the world around us, what impression do we make on folks?
Spicy Little Outfit
Hook: "You want me to wear
what for this job, Cap'n?"
Problem: A sleazy crimelord that someone needs abducted has a pretty tight security regime. The best place to catch him without any of his regulators around is at his favourite saloon, where he likes to have first shot at the new dancing girls. So someone will have to get that job...
Complications: Naturally, if there's someone on the crew like a Companion who would feel no embarrassment in this assignment, the target has already met her so that rules her out. And a sweet little thing like her is just sure to acquire a fan base during her tenure in show biz, however brief it may be, which is sure to make somebody keen on her a mite jealous.
Resolution: Burst in on him before the running-around-the-waterbed part of the interview while someone runs interference with his gunmen downstairs, bundle him out and let your crewmember put some proper clothes on.
Fun Stuff: Kaylee in fishnets!
Theme: How we present ourselves can influence how people treat us far more than it sometimes should.
Gonna Be My Girl
Hook: "Will you marry me?" "Um..."
Problem: The Companion's been wondering about her place on the ship for a while now, and when a wealthy and rather charming young client asks her to marry him, she can't help but consider it.
Complications: He isn't also secretly a heel and prone to swordfighting, unlike so many of her serious suitors, he just seems interested. Of course, anyone with feelings for the Companion is likely to be less fond of the fella. But why ask now? Might have something to do with the daughter of a rival dynasty turning him down earlier in the social season. And why'd she do that?
Resolution: Reckon it all comes down to the Companion's informed decision. Finding out why her suitor's preferred choice refused him, and whether she wanted to, might well factor into this.
Fun Stuff: Grand shindigs and carriage rides and generally being Cinderella, which a Companion might be used to but has sorely missed hanging out with rough frontier sorts.
Theme: Being the rebound is never the ideal situation in a romance.
Hijack My Heart
Hook: "Don't shoot, Cap'n! I love him!" "Dammit, y'only just
met him!"
Problem: Sent to steal a computer prototype back from a group of pirates, the crew have to sneak onto their secret island base.
Complications: The pirates are idealistic types seeking to free the data, lead by a charismatic scoundrel who reminds the Captain of why he tries not to be idealistic. He's the perfect candidate to become an annoying rival, and a romantic foil for a starry-eyed young member of the crew.
Resolution: Retrieve the prototype. Maybe after the pirate technician gets a good look at it.
Fun Stuff: Pirates!
Theme: Maybe there is someone out there for everybody. But even so, timing is crucial.
Is That All You've Got For Me?
Hook: "Shaddap an' fight! You an' yer...
twin over there, ya... blurry sonsabitches..."
Problem: Due to a disagreement over a rather substantial sum of money, the crew's best goon has to work off his debt. The best way to do that is in his creditors' decidedly illegal underground fighting circuit.
Complications: The rest of the crew have to get him out as he takes more hits than he can heal. And he starts to acquire a following, before being told to throw a bout and set up to lose in a fatal way if he refuses.
Resolution: Save him, before or after he gets into the ring one last time.
Fun Stuff: Jobbing, kayfabe, heel and face turns. And brutal fights to the death in front of baying crowds of heartless spectators.
Theme: What we want to do for a living might not be what we're best at.
You Gotta Burn
Hook: "So we gotta get there an' back in three days. And if we don't make it in time, we get..." "Set on fire. Yes."
Problem: Someone decidedly unethical wants the crew to steal a sealed unscannable package, on a very tight deadline. Failure or refusal will result in a painful burning kind of forfeit.
Complications: They're not the only competitors in the race. And do they really want this guy getting the contents, whatever they are?
Resolution: Figure out a way to lose the hot potato without being incinerated piece by piece over several days.
Fun Stuff: A full-tilt race across space. A client too scary to refuse.
Theme: Do the ethics of doing a job properly override deeper-seated morals?
Linear Mode
