Booker Starcrash must die: a scenario for the Traveller RPG

Here's a bonkers scenario I made for my Traveller Campaign set in the Sol System.

The party is contacted by an enigmatic corporate contact by the name of Tegan Rosek. Raised on the low gravity of Mars, Ms. Rosek is tall and unnaturally thin, with jagged silver hair and bright opalescent eyes. She wears a black suit and has a neural interface, kind yet sociopathic.

Her mission is simple: Board the luxury star liner Renegade Spirit while in transit to kidnap Booker Starcrash, the front man of the ThrashPunk group Gory Starcrash.

Rosek wants Booker kidnapped for reasons she is unwilling to disclose (Her boss, the SuSAG megacorp, has fronted him millions of credits worth of an illegal narcotic called Gentixent. To pay back this debt, they want to acquire him to study his biology on how he is able to take so many of the damn drugs.) His band is on a tour of the Sol system and the pay is 2MCr, with a bonus of 2MCr if the kidnapping is incognito and nobody is killed.

The current route for the liner is Amalthea -> Thebe -> Callisto -> Io -> Europa -> beeline through the asteroid belt -> Mars -> Earth.

Shakarkha Class Level 1

Shakharka Deck 2

Shakharka Deck 3

The ship is a SHAKARKHA CLASS STAR LINER (s10, MERCHANTS AND CRUISERS, pg 97) equipped with 12 double beam laser/sandcaster turrets for self-defense.There are 30 staterooms for the crew, 40 Luxury staterooms for the band and groupies. The cargo bay contains mostly equipment for setting up the stage/performance stuff (of which there is a lot), but locked in the vault are 10 tons of illegal drugs and luxuries, costing 1MCr total, as well as 3MCr worth of cash, luxury goods, and rare band items (signed guitars, other things that crazed fans would spend a fortune on.) The lock can be unlocked with Booker’s DNA which, disgustingly enough, has a 50% chance of being available on any of the groupies.

The band itself is a trio lead by Booker, with rhythm guitar and backup vocals by Sammy Thompson, and drumming done by a mysterious man in a gimp suit named The Saw.

The security complement (10 marines) are armed with Combat armor and Laser rifles, and the armory has enough pistols for the rest of the crew (another 30). Besides the band members, there are another 80 groupies/partiers on board the vessel.

The kicker: Unbeknownst to most, Booker himself has had an unexpected reaction to the prototype narcotics - if given an adrenaline rush, it acts as an enhanced combat drug giving him unnatural strength, speed, and stamina as well as hallucinations induced by intense paranoia. If he’s high, stats are FFF47B. Be very afraid.

Another kicker: There’s an assassin on board who has managed to disguise herself as a member of the security personnel. She has been hired by the lead guitar player and backup vocalist, Sammy Thompson, who is jealous of the fame and stardom and wants to take over as front man.

ANOTHER kicker: One of the groupies is a serial killer named Jato. He’s a real fan of the band, but has really come into his stride by forcing people to OD on narcotics.

When the PCs are on board, the ship is having a drug fueled jam session/groupie orgy (as always). Lots of loud music, black lights and strobe lights, booze. If bullets start flying, expect utter fucking chaos, panicking drugged out partiers, an armed marine response, and an unintentional drug enhanced super-soldier...

Booker is either:
1: Playin a rad guitar solo and singing
2: Bangin 1d6 groupies
3: Getting really fuckin high
4: drinking a shitton
5: Arguing with his bandmates
6: PTFO’d

And he is:

1: Onstage

2: in the bar

3: in his room

4: in a groupie’s room

5: in the engineering section

6: in the cockpit

Random staterooms:

1-3: Empty

4-5: Groupies doing one thing from the booker table

6: Dead body (1-3 overdose, 4-6 serial killer)

c9rcle by ianllanas
https://www.deviantart.com/ianllanas/art/c9rcle-336264470

When I ran this scenario, the players got on board by making Booker one of their contacts and getting invited on board. (For those unfamiliar with Traveller, character generation works out as a lifepath system/minigame where they receive skills, life events, equipment, and relationships with NPCS. One player decided that Booker was a friend from college and used a contact slot she earned in character generation to create that relationship.)

Of course, a series of bad decisions and bad luck resulted in a 3-way firefight between the party, the assassin hired by Sammy, and the marines on board, all while a super soldier version of Booker tore groupies in half. Needless to say, they did not earn the bonus in the contract.