OOC: I’m a novelist, so bear with me.
Ah, Holiday. There wasn’t another day like it. Most places in the Third Imperium did the day of celebration up right, but walking through Banfi Starport in Glisten took it up another level.
First of all, it seemed every surface had a colorful poster or bunting hanging from it. The color selection was tasteful, so none of you needed to fear about the health of your retinas, but it is omnipresent.
Even the starport employees had gotten into the spirit. Their bland uniforms supported armbands of various colors—likely noting which department they work for if one were being honest—and many of them even seemed to be smiling. That was unusual, but it was Holiday, after all.
Each of you has been through Banfi starport before. Either you were en route to another system chasing a bounty, or you had come here searching for one in this system. The colorless, businesslike atmosphere the bureaucracy that ran the system preferred couldn’t hide the extraordinary artistry of the starport itself. It was a magnificent work, and even if it seemed perpetually unfinished, it was humongous and almost delicate until one considered its size.
As Glisten didn’t have a habitable world and all the population lived in or around the asteroids that made up the two wide belts in the system, the starport was a free-floating structure. That allowed certain latitudes with how it was put together. Ones that someone on a planet just couldn’t get away with.
It was constructed of innumerable pods connected to a central axis, each sporting protuberances, spires, tubes, and extensions in a seemingly haphazard pattern. That design philosophy lent the starport a decidedly asymmetrical look, but it didn’t distract from the beauty of the construction.
Whatever their end plan was, it was undoubtedly many decades or centuries in the future, but the structure was still capable of handling the thousands of ships that transited the system every week, including the vessels that brought each of you here. You didn’t come to celebrate the start of a new year, after all. You’ve accepted a job offer from Joey “Mad Dog” Vincenzo.
The seasoned bounty hunter sent each of you an offer to come work for him, and even though he was sparse on the details, he’d made arrangements for you to travel to Glisten in style aboard whatever transport could be arranged—including sending each of you high passage tickets to get you here—so long as you arrived on Holiday itself.
He’d been very insistent about that for some reason, but considering that he’d included five thousand credits each as a signing bonus, you’d been more than willing to take a little trip.
OOC: I’ll add that to each of your characters’ accounts. Happy Holiday!
The other thing he’d sent along was an actual golden ticket. It’d take a bit of research to dig up what that meant, but it was definitely the kind of glitzy, shiny joke that Mad Dog favored. He was a renowned bounty hunter, but the man had no taste whatsoever. Not even in his mouth.
You each arrived at the starport separately, each coming in from whatever system you’d been located in before. Once you arrived at customs, you had to surrender your armor and firearms—or heavier ordinance—because of the restrictive law level. Even though knives are permissible, wearing them around is frowned upon and will get you harassed. Talk about uptight.
OOC: If one—or more—of you want to try slipping something heavier past the customs droids and the personnel backing them up, we’ll have to play that out separately. It might mean you miss the initial meeting, though. Depending on what it is you try to slip through, you might even miss the first few months—or more—of gameplay. Your call.
The instructions you were given had you all going to one of the suites that the station maintained for meetings and such. The moderately sized, corporate-looking room felt like what each of you would imagine a middle-grade executive boardroom might look like. The table was an expanse of no doubt expensive dark wood that had to have been brought in from somewhere else at great expense. That chairs looked plush and comfortable, and were in matching black.
One of the sideboards held a selection of liquor and other alcoholic beverages that seemed decidedly classier than what Mad Dog probably enjoyed. Perhaps he intended to celebrate your new enterprise in style.
The six of you have either worked with the others in temporary partnerships chasing down bounties or perhaps were in competition with one another, pursuing a different bounty. That’s the nature of the business, after all.
What you can say for sure is that you know the reputation of everyone else in the room, and they are all solid. Each of you is relatively new to the bounty hunter game, with some of you only having a few years under your belt and no one being at the work for more than a decade. Each of your reputations—though good—isn’t as widespread as you’d like it to be, and you don’t know why Mad Dog would choose relative newcomers to form a team.
Or maybe you do. Mad Dog is headstrong and eccentric enough that he’s difficult to work with. Perhaps that put anyone with a better reputation off their game, and they weren’t interested.
Their loss and your gain.
The person who’d delivered the tickets had let you read over everything and waited for as long as it took for you to make up your mind about the job. Then he got your signatures on all the paperwork and departed. You’ve been part of this new operation for weeks or months at this point. It’s too late to get cold feet now.
As you arrived within a few minutes of one another, you were all just beginning to catch up on what was going on and checking if anyone had more information about what Mad Dog was doing, but the door to the suite opened, and a tall, dark-haired woman with clear blue eyes walked through with a shorter man with dark hair trailing along behind her before you could really get rolling.
OOC: Feel free to describe yourselves and make some small talk, but the events will continue to unfold.
You all looked behind them, expecting to see the boisterous Mad Dog rolling in with something obnoxious to say, but the door closed with no sign of him.
Though the woman is the most visually captivating of the two, a few of you realize you recognize the man. He’s not a bounty hunter or any kind of official. Rather, it’s Doctor Lucius Metz, a robotics scientist from over in the Deneb sector.
Before any of you can ask any questions, the woman cleared her throat. “If I can have your attention? My name is Aster Treegarden and I’m afraid that I’m the bearer of bad news. I realize all of you are here to meet “Mad Dog” Vincenzo, but I’m afraid that he won’t be coming. I regret to inform you that he was murdered two days ago.”
OOC: Dammit! I broke the game with the first post. Now what?
