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DSESTINATIONS
:
PACEPORT TRIDENT VESPA
By Martin Ralya
Introduction
Trident Vespa is the first spaceport in the
Destinations line from Tabletop Adventures. This
mini-PDF presents a fully described spaceport that
can be dropped into any sci-fi campaign that
features space travel. It needs little or no prep just
read the overview, and you are good to go. Trident
Vespa is 100% description (no rules material or
crunchy bits), making it entirely system-neutral.
Throughout this PDF you will find sections of text
that are designed to be read aloud to your players.
They follow this format:
Scene Name
Read-aloud text. [Notes for the GM, not to be read
aloud.] Additional read-aloud text.
Overview
A sprawling spaceport built to accommodate cargo
ships, smaller vessels and atmospheric craft, all in
Trident
Trident Vespa or just the Trident, as it is more
often called started out as a good idea: a
sprawling spaceport built to accommodate cargo
ships, smaller vessels and atmospheric craft, all in
one spot. But in the first three months after Trident
Vespa opened for business, there were three major
accidents at the spaceport: the Black Spark
exploded on its launch pad, the Iron Shamans
computers went haywire and launched her payload
of missiles while she was coming in for a landing
and a large storage building simply collapsed,
killing four technicians and destroying the delicate
and expensive electronic components stored
there.
These three accidents were nicknamed the Trifecta,
and sometimes just called the Three Nails
because they were nails in Trident Vespas coffin.
Three accidents within three months at a spaceport
named Trident was an irony lost on no one and
spacers, always a superstitious lot, began finding
ways to avoid the port. Half of the Tridents owners
wanted to move on, invest in another venture; the
other half stood to lose everything, so they took the
only option that seemed available to them: they
made Trident Vespa a smugglers haven.
A week of suspicious accidents, mysterious
disappearances and one outright murder (still
unsolved) took care of the owners who had cold
feet, and the Trident grew into the bustling hive of
seedy commerce that it is today. The curse of the
Trifecta stayed with the Trident, though, and
accidents some large, some small have
remained a fairly regular occurrence at the
spaceport. For the many smugglers, rogues,
mercenaries, adventurers and scoundrels who use
Trident Vespa every day, though, it is worth the
risk.
The Curse
How unlucky the Trident is for the PCs is up to
you. You can incorporate the spaceports curse
into your campaign in a variety of different ways.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that the
curse should be fun for the players (if not for their
characters), and should add spice to the game.
Superstitions:
As you move through a busy section of the
spaceport, you see a group of mercenaries in
flight suits heading your way, deep in a heated
conversation with two Trident guards. As they
pass by, you hear the guard say, Like I said,
no threes. I do not know how you got past
landing control, but no ship named Three Suns
is going to be in my spaceport for long.
People pause as the group moves through the
crowd, and several exchange knowing looks
before returning to their business.
A Terrible Accident:
You hear a tremendous roar from up above
louder than any of the ships around you.
Looking up, you see an outbound freighter
trailing thick, reddish smoke from its main
drive. Within moments, it begins veering to the
right, and you spot flares and small explosions
Trident
deep within the smoke. The people around you
start to point and shout, and port personnel
begin running in that direction.
Spaceport Layout
Trident Vespas name is no accident: The whole
spaceport is laid out in a trident shape, with three
long, parallel lanes where ships land and take off,
and the hub at the point where the landing areas
join together. Each lane is built to handle a different
type of traffic.
One outer lane is for atmospheric craft, with small
hangars and other buildings on the inside edge.
Because many atmospheric craft require runway
room, the rest of the lane is left open for takeoffs
and landings (much like the deck on a present-day
aircraft carrier). The center lane is for large ships:
Cargo freighters, warships, mining vessels, factory
ships and the like. It is the shortest and widest of
the three lanes, and each landing area is surrounded
by thick, curved blast shields that protect the other
two lanes. The other outer lane handles smaller
spacegoing vessels, and it is the most active of the
three lanes. All manner of smaller craft land here,
from pleasure cruisers and brothel ships to
mercenary fighters, blockade runners and shuttles.
Landing:
On the Ground:
Looking down the length of Lane One, you can
not see more than a few hundred feet. After that
point, there are simply too many people,
taxiing aircraft and ground vehicles in your
way to see any further. The air smells like jet
fuel, hot exhaust and scorched ferrocrete, and
between the roar of engines, the shouts of the
ports personnel and the rumble of ships taking
off nearby, there is never a moments silence.
All around you, people are quietly wheeling
and dealing, swapping manifests and
arranging passage for their goods. Nearly
everyone is carrying a weapon of some sort,
and many of the grounded fighters, scout ships
and other craft look like they have seen better
days clearly, Lane One is a rough-andtumble sort of place.
Trident
Lane One is Trident Vespas second-busiest section
less active than Lane Three, more active than
Lane Two. Commercial craft ferry people from all
over the planet to the Trident, and from Lane One
those travelers catch a flight on an outbound ship
from one of the other lanes. Smugglers and other
rogues also land here to conduct their business, and
to transfer goods from the spacegoing vessels for
distribution to planetside destinations (as well as to
those same vessels, for distribution offworld).
Lane One is a mile long and 300 feet wide, with
roughly one-third of its width taken up by parked
vehicles, outbuildings, hangars and pedestrian
traffic. The rest of the lane is devoted to takeoff and
landing space for the dozens of aircars, skiffs,
hovers and other small craft that use Lane One
every day. The landing surface is very well
maintained, but the other third of the lane is in
much worse shape. When the Trident became a
smuggling waypoint, the focus shifted away from
providing exemplary service to facilitating swift,
secretive transactions and truth be told, most of
the Tridents clientele do not worry too much about
the spaceports appearance, either.
Some of the buildings adjacent to Lane One are
held by the spaceport, while the rest are rented out
as needed. At any given time, up to a quarter of the
hangars and other buildings here are available for
rent. Front organizations, cartels and other groups
rent about half of the buildings on a more or less
permanent basis, while the remaining quarter are
used by individuals, adventuring groups, mercenary
companies and the like.
Lane One is hectic, rough-and-tumble place, and
offers plenty of danger in the form of ships
landing and taking off (a process that is much less
controlled than it is at a present-day airport), and
due to the spaceports fine selection of customers.
On the Ground:
To get anywhere on Lane Two, you have to
travel through tunnels just like this one. It has
a very functional appearance, all bare, brushed
metal and directional markings, but there are
also touches that reveal the wealth behind it
like the monitors every fifty feet, which display
views of the nearest docking bay, as well as the
two adjacent to it. The light in here is soft and
oddly soothing, in marked contrast to the rest
of the spaceport, and there are guards every
couple hundred feet. They nod politely as you
pass by, but you also catch them sizing you up
the landing bays around you accommodate
the spaceports elite, and Trident Security is
responsible for their protection.
Trident
Lane Two is shorter and wider than the other two
lanes at Trident Vespa, and it sees a lot less activity.
This lane is built to handle all but the largest
spaceships, with room for up to nine vessels on the
ground at a time. Seen from the air, it looks like a
row of circles, each circle connected to the next by
a series of tunnels, with small buildings around the
edges.
Lane Three:
Small Spaceships
Landing:
Coming in for a landing on the Tridents Lane
Three would make an ordinary person want to
close their eyes there is so much activity in
the air and on the ground that it looks like it
would be impossible to land there. The ground
On the Ground:
You can see why they say this is the busiest
section of Trident Vespa it is not the volume
of ships, because there are two or three times
as many on Lane One, it is the combination of
scale and diversity. Scale because the ships
here are relatively large ranging from
cruisers, gunboats and small freighters all the
way down to personal shuttles and little scout
ships that barely qualify as trans-atmospheric
and diversity because there are ships and
people here from dozens of worlds. Lane Three
is awash in color and sound, and it never stops
moving. Even when ships land and take off,
their engines rattling your teeth and shaking
every building on the lane, no one here pays
much attention.
Trident
The busiest section of Trident Vespa is Lane Three,
the lane that handles the ports small spacecraft
traffic. This lane is used around the clock, and it is
nearly always a bustle of activity, with ships
landing and taking off, personnel servicing
grounded vessels, loading and unloading, etc.
Lane Three is dotted with walls and barriers, which
are interspersed between stretches of open landing
area. It is designed to accommodate spacecraft that
require short runways (shuttlecraft, for example), as
well as ships that take off and land vertically, and
need only a small footprint. Service buildings and
storage areas are scattered throughout the lane, and
the noise of ship engines here is just incredible
earplugs, helmets or other headgear are more or
less required.
While Lanes One and Two are fairly uniform in
appearance from end to end, Lane Three is a hodgepodge of new and old buildings and equipment, as
well as the most diverse population of ships.
Spaceships come here from all over the galaxy, and
Lane Three features a range of bars, brothels, stores
and small hotels, all designed to cater to the crews
of these ships.
Lane Three is also the center of the spaceports
illicit activity. This is where the most deals are
struck, and the most money and smuggled cargo
changes hands. It is not cheap to land on Lane
Three, since a sizable portion of the docking fee
goes towards bribing local officials, customs
inspectors and other bureaucratic irritants. For most
of the spaceports customers, the high price is
worth it there is no other spaceport like the
Trident within a hundred parsecs, if in fact there is
one like it anywhere.
The Hub
Approaching the Hub:
Heading across the ferrocrete towards the
Hub, you see a collection of low, boxy metal
buildings rising up ahead of you. They are not
in great shape, but they look well shielded
and well protected, too: large gun batteries sit
astride their roofs, swiveling to track incoming
Trident
Apart from supporting the day-to-day activities of
the spaceport, the Hub has a secondary and
arguably more important function, too:
obfuscating the customs process as much as
possible. While Trident Vespa is widely known to
be a smugglers paradise, proving this is much
more difficult and that is where the Hub comes
in. The Trident employs a whole layer of staff
solely for bribing inspectors, misdirecting
government officials and otherwise keeping the
wheels of the spaceports illicit commerce well
greased.
The Hub is also home to the spaceports defense
system: eight large gun batteries, each capable of
accurately striking targets up to three miles away.
These are mounted on the roofs of several of the
Hub buildings, and they are manned around the
clock by port personnel. At least four batteries can
be brought to bear against any part of Trident
Vespa, including the furthest sections of any lane;
all eight can be fired at any airborne target. A small
fleet of spotter drones hovers around the port at all
times, relaying images to the Hubs gunners.
Cast of Characters
Roughly 250 Trident employees are onsite at any
given time, broken down as follows: 50 bureaucrats
and officials, 50 repair technicians, 100 service
staff (loaders, drivers, etc.) and 50 guards. About
20% of the staff will be at the Hub, with another
20% on Lane Two and 30% each on Lanes One and
Three.
On an average day, 500-1,000 visitors pass through
Trident Vespa, with about one-half of that number
present at any particular moment.
All of the guards are well armored, and each one
carries a light, hull-safe rifle (a weapon that will not
penetrate an average ships hull, but has no trouble
against soft targets like people). In addition, 10 of
the 50 guards also carry a hull-penetrating heavy
weapon as a last-ditch measure, just in case a
hostile inbound or outbound ship makes it past the
spaceports defenses.
Bringing Trident
Vespa to Life
The Trident can feel like a pretty lawless place to
first-time visitors, and there is a sense of barely
controlled chaos about the place. Lanes One and
Three are always buzzing with activity, and you
can emphasize this by focusing on motion and
colors as you describe them to your players.
Observant PCs will also notice shady dealings
going on everywhere (except right in front of the
Hub), almost but not quite out of sight.
Trident Vespa also looks and feels very lived-in. It
has been a long time since anything here was new,
and countless crews have personalized their
favorite landing areas with graffiti, additions,
murals and other touches. The only exception is
Lane Two, which feels like a different world
sterile, clean and somehow lifeless. It stands out
from Lanes One and Three in every way.
Interestingly, almost no one takes the short way
between lanes simply turning left or right and
cutting across the open ground that separates the
landing areas. Some spacers will say that this is
superstition, that on the Trident it is bad luck to
cross between the lanes, but more pragmatic folk
will make the point that all of the really good stuff
happens along the lanes and why would you want
to miss that?
There are lots of superstitions on the Trident, most
(but not all) of them involving the number three.
They are part of the spaceports culture, and they
serve as a good way to tell new visitors from old
hands. Bored spaceship crews often use this to their
advantage, playing jokes on new arrivals who they
do not recognize either by passing on fake
superstitions, or by tricking spacers into breaking
some of the Tridents unwritten rules.
Trident
Plot Hooks
Cursed? Yeah, Right:
Shortly after landing at Trident Vespa, the PCs hear
about the spaceports curse. The next day, their
ship stops working entirely, all at once, and with
no apparent cause. There is a cause, of course: A
handful of small malfunctions in specific, essential
parts of the ship. But were they the result of
sabotage (and if so, by who?) or were they caused
by the curse?
Enough is Enough:
In the past week, the Tridents curse has struck 13
times and the last one was a doozy: A merchant
ship crash-landed on Lane Three, damaging or
destroying three other ships in the process. One of
the Tridents owners in particular has had enough,
Credits
Writer:
Project Manager:
Layout:
Martin Ralya
Vicki Potter
Marcella Ganow
Elizabeth Brakhage
Editor:
Vicki Potter
Border Art:
Danillo Moretti
Interior Art:
Gillian Pierce
Fonts: 2006 Jupiterimages.com
Spaceport Sections: