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--- game_systems:traveller:starlightdrifter:adventure_journal [2025/11/12 12:29] – [Supper and Shopping] Bryan Stephens
+++ game_systems:traveller:starlightdrifter:adventure_journal [2025/12/20 14:19] (current) – [Red Light District] Bryan Stephens
@@ Line 1089: / Line 1089: @@
 Viktor notices the tail immediately. After leaving their autotaxi, Tangie notices as well and mentions it to Viktor. He tells her to ignore it. Their tail does not follow them into the Supper Club, which would be hard based on its exclusive nature. Their dinner is quite nice, this being one of the finest spots in the Verge.
+{{ :game_systems:traveller:starlightdrifter:lssupper.png?300|}}
 As they are waiting for desert, a sharply dressed woman departs from her group and walks to their table, her eyes on Viktor. He rises to meet her. She introduces herself as Thalia Casteen, a retired Admiral for the Imperial Navy with questions about the pirates in Ramiva. Viktor invites her to sit down. Sharri runs a data search and finds out this woman is now working for LSP as a consultant, a typical arrangement, though often seen as a way to land contracts. She is pleasant on the surface, but the danger is clear to them all. She knows all about their activity at Ramiva, including items in Viktor’s report. Her final request is that they //”Stop smearing Naval honor”//. She then departs to her table.
@@ Line 1100: / Line 1102: @@
 Meanwhile, during their recovery, both Hanson and Galen are approached by Agent Smith, working for Trin security. He is interested in how two men engaged as employees on a freighter have hundreds of thousands of credits to spend for combat upgrades. Hanson if courteous but asks for a lawyer to be present and the agent leaves. Galen is more talkative, perhaps not as good a thing. They both let Viktor know what happened. The two are discharged to outpatient care the next day and will need to find rooms.
+==== Many Meetings ====
+|Game Date|12/7/25|
+|Campaign Dates|1099, 208-216|
+{{:game_systems:traveller:npcs:reigns.jpg?300 |}}
+Sharri and Viktor pick up Hanson and Galen at rehab and clue them in. It is about this time that Rally calls in. Rally has been absorbed into the under culture.
+At the start of the week, Rally broke off from the crew to chase a very specific upgrade: experimental prosthetics and sensationware he believes will supercharge his pleasure-seeking lifestyle — with a crude, half-joking ambition of being “built for two-at-once.” He arrived hungry for chrome and indulgence… and promptly got swallowed by it.
+Instead of following through on the full prosthetic hunt, Rally fixated on something shinier: a backup singing robot he names Reigns. The detour becomes the trip. He disappears into android bars, tech lounges, and service-bot showrooms, entranced by the latest generation of bar-serving robots and the culture built around them.
+Rally vanised into the rougher districts and runs nearly nonstop on illicit substances, bad decisions, and bright lights. He wakes in random places — booths, back rooms, questionable pods, once even somewhere he can’t identify until the smell gives it away. Through it all, Reigns quietly became the thin line between “reckless” and “dead.” She redirected him, got him into a nearby room when he’s too far gone, and steered him away from the worst angles of the night without ever making a scene. Somehow in all his journeys over the week, Rally managed to break even with his gambling and spending. Typical lucky Rally.
+Everyone meets at the TAS Hotel, and Hason and Rally check in a guests of Viktor and Sharri. Galen decides to go some place cheaper. The shared suite becomes the meeting room for everyone. Sharri directs Viktor to update the crew on the goings on. After this briefing, Sharri goes to look up the customs and talk with KDV. This takes hours, and she finds out little new information.
+Viktor meanwhile hears back from Capt. Jace Orvelle on a secure com.
+//“Meet me at Pavillion 6 in the Stillgarden”//.
+They call it a “quiet node,” but the official name on the transit maps is The Stillgarden. It hangs off the flank of Trin’s primary arcology like a glassy seed pod, a swollen oval of green and blue anchored to the mile-high superstructure by a lattice of silvery support ribs. From outside, it looks delicate. From inside, it feels endless. The whole point of a Stillgarden is a place without comms, connections, and the ever-present hum of communications. People go for peace, fellowship, simplicity. It is also a place for clandestine meetings. Viktor goes prepared with a marker, and he leaves his comm unit at the hotel. But, as his appointment is not for several hours, he first investigates the general contraband on the planet.
+Stepping through the Stillgarden entry locks is like walking through a curtain.
+One moment there’s the usual arcology noise: crowd murmur, soft chime of public transit, the faint hiss of ventilation and advertising jingles leaking from a hundred personal devices.
+Then the door seals behind him, and all of it dies.
+Not fades — dies.
+{{ :game_systems:traveller:places:pavallion_6.png?350|}}
+Every comm implant, screen, neural link, and datapad Viktor carries drops into dead silence. For a man who has spent years as a constantly connected agent, the sudden absence hits like a missed step in zero-g. His reflexive awareness of feeds, channels, and threat updates finds nothing to hook into. There is no hum of background traffic, no comforting flow of data at the edge of his vision. His muscles tense without permission, waiting for an alert that never comes. The phantom itch of incoming messages flickers and fades.
+A discreet sign by the inner gate reminds visitors:
+**STILLGARDEN QUIET ZONE**
+  *External comms are blocked within park boundaries.
+  *Emergency paging services available at Reception.
+  *Enjoy being off the network.
+After getting a coffee, Viktor heads to Pavilion Six. It is clear to his trained eyes is it used by men wishing to hook up with other men. That fits.
+He misses Orvelle coming up behind him. They walk along like men checking each other out as they talk. As they get secluded, the conversations gets real. Orvelle acts the part of showing him different scenery, but drops his magazine. Viktor swoops to pick it up and slides out the piece of paper hidden, palming it. In turn Viktor sets his coffee cup down and the men switch them. He has written the names he needs looked at as part of the KDV investigation. The two men part and return to the world of communications, each alone.
+=== Red Light District ===
+The paper has directions to a closed down former business, “The Muzzled Puppy” (the less said about what it did the better), including a code to open the door and the general location of a data stick. Rally remembers this location from the past week and offers to take Viktor to the red light district. Hanson and Galen come along, and Rally brings Reigns //”She keeps me out of trouble”//
+{{:game_systems:traveller:lore:the_four_left.png?350 |}}
+The red-light District sprawls along the arcology’s underside and outward into the ground-level sprawl—tight streets under old support ribs, neon reflected in puddles that never quite dry, steam venting from grates that smell faintly of disinfectant and hot metal. The air is warmer here, louder, crowded with basslines and bargaining voices and the soft hum of signage that never sleeps.
+Everything is lit in invitation colors: crimson strips, violet halos, gold "OPEN" glyphs in half a dozen alphabets. Doors are everywhere—some obvious, some hidden behind false storefronts, some only a seam of light when you know where to press. Officially, there are patrol routes. There are cameras. There are ordinances. In practice, the district is relatively unmonitored on purpose.
+The rich and powerful want it that way.
+They come here because it’s one of the few places in the arcology where money can buy privacy—and privacy needs darkness to breathe. So the oversight is intentionally soft: cameras that "glitch" blind corners that never get fixed, and enforcement that arrives late unless a headline is at risk. The city’s public stance is disapproval. Its private stance is accommodation.
+No one relies on civic protection here—not if they can help it.
+  *The wealthy bring their own security. Quiet professionals in plain clothes, sometimes with visible hard-tech at the neck or wrists. They don’t posture. They just //own the space around their client//—a moving bubble that parts crowds without anyone noticing how it happened.
+  *Businesses protect their assets. Club entrances have bouncers who don’t look like bouncers. Hallways have door-scanners disguised as décor. Some establishments run private response drones that never leave the block—fast, silent, and calibrated to restrain without creating a public spectacle.
+  *Everyone else is on their own. Which means the district has two kinds of people walking it: those with backup… and those hoping they won’t need it.
+For the less well-off, the Red Light District is a gamble you make with your wallet, your pride, and sometimes your blood.
+Muggings aren’t rare. “Accidents” happen. A wrong turn can lead you into a corridor where the lights don’t reach and the music fades just enough for you to hear footsteps that aren’t keeping time. Some predators work alone. Others work in polite little teams—one to distract, one to lift your valuables, one to make sure you don’t chase. And yet the district stays busy, because it offers what the arcology’s upper levels can’t: raw sensation, anonymity, and the dangerous comfort of being seen for exactly what you want tonight.
+It’s glamorous in patches—velvet ropes, mirrored foyers, curated perfumes—and brutal in the seams between those patches. The district has a rhythm: lure, promise, transaction, escape. It’s a place where desire is a currency and safety is a surcharge. Down here, morality is a costume you wear if it helps you get what you want.
+And everyone is dressed for the role.
+Rally leads the way to a bar he had been too, not far from the closed down building, The Velvet Bucket. The Velvet Bucket sits on ground level where the foot traffic never really stops—half sports bar, half low-rent cabaret, with a stage that’s just big enough to make it feel like a show. The servers run in coordinated “uniforms” that are more suggestion than fabric, and the dancers keep the room buzzing between song sets. It’s not elite, not dangerous by design—just a middle-class pressure valve where people come to laugh too loud, spend a little too much, and pretend tomorrow isn’t waiting.
+The four men proceed to party in Rally style. Viktor, trained as he is, has no issues with keeping up with Rally. Hanson and Galen, still recovering rom their surgery, both struggle. Reigns immediately takes care of them, even using medicines from her built in med kit.
+After making sure she has this, Viktor heads to the bathroom, and slips outside. Viktor steps into the streets with a sense of satisfaction. This is like the old days. A seedy street. The traces of drug smoke, urine in the air. He looks like he belongs. Normally a loan man on these streets is a potential victim. Not Viktor. His carful eyes note the potential predators who move on. They are only alive because they are good a picking prey. The man in the long coat with golden eyes is clearly a predator.
+{{:game_systems:traveller:places:viktor_redlight.png?300 |}}
+Viktor comes to Muzzled Puppy. Above the entrance hangs the sign. Not lit. A thick, weather-pocked plaque with faded paint and a cracked laminate face, the edges curled where years of heat and moisture worked it loose. The art is blunt and unmistakable: a Vargr head in a bondage dog mask, muzzle straps drawn tight, ring fixtures and buckles exaggerated in a stylized way meant to read from across the street. Once, the eyes would’ve glowed—embedded LEDs, probably—giving the mascot a playful, predatory sparkle. Now the eyes are dead. Just dull plastic and old scratches.
+He enters into a side door using the code and heads for the kitchen. The data stick is going to be in a old refrigerator. The club is a hollow shell of velvet and chrome, the kind of place built to sell fantasy as architecture. His flashlight show the obvious theme:
+The walls are panelled with Vargr bondage motif art: silhouetted muzzles, collars, and harness shapes repeated like a brand pattern. Some pieces are murals—graphic, stylized, more icon than illustration—while others are embossed into trim and rails as if the whole building once wanted to be a single, cohesive statement.
+The data stick is hidden in a foul smelling cooler, but easy to find. Within less than 20 min, Viktor is back at the table. Hanson and Galen are barely awake, but Rally is rocking. They head back to the TAS, with Reigns carrying both of the sicker men. She puts them into Hanson’s suite and engages her medical protocols. Sharri diverts Rally to the TAS lounge and overindulges herself. Tangie manages to get them both back to bed.
+There is little sleep for Viktor as he revies the information Captain Orvelle has given him. The data stick contains data for LSP HQ. A blueprint and the security Layout, It also has an access card from one “Kellan Vayle” who a check on will see he was a Valet at LSP who was accidentally run over by an executive.
+==== Infiltrations ====
+{{ :game_systems:traveller:places:lsp_tower.png?300|}}
+//We used a points for heist system here, but I have knitted the narrative chronologically. -Bryan//
+The group spends much of the next week in preparation. Sharri gets an appointment to meet with LSP about possible shipping work for the megacorporation. This gets her access to the floor of Casteen’s office. She is also able to steal the access guest pass they give her, substituting a fake Viktor gave her and then getting a new one that works.
+Meanwhile, Hanson details where he could take out the power. Near the LSP HQ is a high end gym, “Executive Development”. He and Galen plan to go to the gym seeking “rehab” and find their way to the power systems and surge the grid.
+Meanwhile, Rally and Hason spend time searching for employees who might go to the Red Light District. He finds one, who after too many drinks manages to get significant information.They find a good place for Viktor to exit when the building is evacuated due to the surge. Sharri arranges for pick up of Viktor at this site, hoping the timing will be good, while she plots another car for Galen and Hanson as they depart.
+The evening of day 215, Viktor enters the LSP tower through the security entrance compromised by Rally and uses the stolen pass to get to the executive floor. He is confronted by someone and he pretends to be an employee of Captain Duncan and bluffs his way to directions. This is the end of the work day and people are mostly leaving and not looking at him. Thanks to the security guard, certain recordings are going to be “lost” when the power surge hits, erasing Viktor’s entrance.
+The door to Admiral (Ret.) Thalia Casteen’s office is not locked and Viktor easily enters. A quick search of her “wall of me” reveals a data stick hidden in her retirement shadowbox of medals. Viktor shakes his head at the way targets so often let pride dictate their patterns. He silently comms Hanson for the blackout as he brute force duplicates the drive, encryption and all with his advanced comm.
+During this time, Hanson and Galen had gone to Executive Development and asked for a tour. Hanson engages outrageously asking about several things and distracting their guide enough for Galen to slip into the machine rooms. The doors are not locked in any serious matter, and are easy for the old pirate to access. It is easy enough for him to find the power relay, and deploy his half of their equipment. With Galen’s signal, Hanson sends the guide off to get forms, and then he too, slides into the power room. The two quickly set up their rig and when the signal comes, the surge power into the grid, knocking down several blocks. Lights go to emergency and the men head to their assigned exit. As Galen passes their guide he notes that a year’s membership might not work for them as their ship might have to leave. With that, they head to a waiting grav car and flit away.
+Viktor, uses the chaos of the surge to both leave Casteen’s office and exit with the people leaving the building. The car arranged by Sharri lands just at the right time //(luck roll)// and the heist is complete with no one knowing.
+The rest of the night Viktor runs his advanced software and skills on his duplicated code. He is able to crack the security and arranges another meeting, this time at Pavillon 3, in the Stillgarden for the next evening. He then crashed for the day.
+Being up all night is getting to be a habit. Just like the old days.

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