Note: The adventures of the SS Placeholder are very much not in line with social justice or safe spaces or whatever. We’re really clear about this– our characters are utter degenerates in all senses of the word. The Captain is pretty much Zapp Branigan, mostly Id and Ego walking around sometimes wearing pants. Alain is the most sane of us, and yet we’re learning that he has no problems with cold-blooded murder. My character Kiray is the only female on the crew and therefore has a unique uniform with a “regulation” amount of mandatory midriff exposure. This has led to at least one harassment lawsuit in the past, and yet she continues to work on this ship….
These people are tremendously broken. You know how a lot of people are uncomfortable with sex in their RPGs? In this campaign, we use it as a comedic device. Somewhere along the way, Kiray changed an aspect and became “Lieutenant Cock-block,” and decided that no females are allowed on board without her approval… and she doesn’t approve anyone the Captain might be “getting with.” Hm…. wonder why.
Incidentally, every one of us calls it “my ship.” Allow me to put words in our mouths:
- Captain Steele: It’s my ship because I’m the captain, goddamnit. Now do what I ordered, would you?
- Alain: It’s my ship. I built it. I repair it. If I wanted to, I could buy it outright. It’s mine in all the ways that matter.
- Kiray: It’s my ship; this is my territory, my den, and woe to anyone who tries to mess with that.
I don’t remember where we left off from the tales of the SS Placeholder, but in recent weeks, we have aided the Capp (fish-people) in their war against the incompetent Drakens, visited a K’Ten homeworld… and our engineer Alain inherited a planet.
In the process, we angered enough people that it was finally time to change our ship’s registration, so we’re currently the Pony Express. For now.
Ricky Serrano finally made his appearance as the Big Bad Guy in the campaign, showing up on our viewscreen to taunt the captain. Kiray (my werewolf character) got his “digits,” and proceeded to text him privately to arrange an assignation. She’s pretty clear with him. even as she flirts, that this is strictly sex– she wouldn’t mind a boost to her porn career (a sideline gig she has going, you might recall from the Space Vore incident), and tells him it would probably help his profile as well.
From the DM: What are you going for with this, by the way?
Me: Oh, I plan to get him on camera and go full puppy on him. The repeating gif of him screwing a dog should be priceless and go viral in minutes. The Captain wants him dead, but I think utterly destroyed is better.
DM: Muahahaahah. Ok.
Ever since the incident with the vampirism, Kiray’s embraced her “Alluring Predator” side, and shamelessly manipulates her prey at will. She does so now, and Serrano is downright eager to meet up. Kiray tells him we’re still on a job, but she’ll call him when she gets shore leave.
Should’ve known that wouldn’t work.
No sooner have we finished dealing with the Draken, we’re attacked by Captain Svenni, who used to work for Space Race and was fired after Alain caught him tampering with our ship.
Anyway, Svenni attacks us with an EMP which takes out a lot of our systems, including the humanoid suits that the Capp wear. This is problematic– we like our Capp crewmen and women. Yes, Kiray allowed one Capp female on the crew… mostly because she’s Alain’s love interest and seems to defer nicely, like a good beta should.
Alain responds by teleporting our ship into Svenni’s, merging the two in ways that are not good for either vessel. Harsh words are exchanged, and Svenni invites Alain to come up to his bridge to consider his offer of employment.
Meanwhile, I keep texting Serrano, telling him to call off his goons. Serrano is amused from afar.
We continue to go back and forth via viewscreen. I eventually mention out loud that Svenni is working for Serrano, but no one listens to or believes me.
At this point, we head up to Svenni’s ship. It’s like a space-ship dungeon crawl. We start in our captain’s quarters (the Penthouse), where we are greeted by a large group of foxy-boxing style space babes led by a space babe pirate. I turn to the captain: “This looks like a good time to engage the mud wrestling protocols, doesn’t it?”
Captain: “Yes. Yes, it does. ‘Sprinkler system: activate!'”
He rolls for flashy as we create an advantage that his cabin has a built-in mud wrestling pit. And why not? The captain is a pervalicious perv! It makes sense to us that this is just one of the many ways in which he’s frittered away his hard-earned bounty.
We engage in a mud wrestling contest with the space babes, ultimately kicking their asses and shackling them with their own handcuffs to the walls of the “Penthouse” (aspect: lots of anchor points.)
Kiray and the captain fight the space babe pirate leader of this gang, and Kiray takes a personal explosive to the chest. She mostly shrugs it, and the taser follow-up, off, but takes a minor consequence as the explosive damages the corset of her uniform. This is not the first time I’ve had “Wardrobe Malfunction” as a consequence.
After defeating the space babe pirate by making her eat mud, Kiray takes her clothes and wears her jacket in place of her own corset. Kiray is miffed– she doesn’t mind being out of uniform… that’s a pretty common thing for her. She minds being in something other than her uniform.
The space babe pirate tries to use crocodile tears to convince us to let her go, claiming the mud is making her sick. We shackle her anyway and move on.
We’re passing the infirmary and I suggest to Alain that he might be able to get admin access from in there. We enter and tussle with a space babe and the doctor who are in the infirmary. The doctor (also space babe-esque, but highly intelligent) is someone I decide I know from my past and suggest she should just do her job and leave us alone (spend a fate point to invoke an aspect and create an advantage). When I step into the hallway, I see the space babe pirate sneaking away, using my damaged corset as an ineffective cover-up. I grab her, take her to the infirmary, and we tell the doctor “she’s sick and needs her stomach pumped. She even said so herself. Have fun!” The doctor ominously gets out the rubber gloves.
We field a call from their engineer, who exchanges taunts with Alain. Finally, we move towards the bridge, arriving to confront Svenni and two space babes. He tells them to stand down, having seen the video of the mud fight (our ship has a Big Brother style camera setup and video feed). We parlay for a while. Alain says something to the effect of “but how would Serrano even have found us?”
Kiray looks up from texting. “Oh, he probably didn’t track my phone signal or anything, right?”
Alain and the Captain are flabbergasted (as are their players, who have not been privy to the contents of Kiray’s messaging.) Captain Steele grabs her phone, throws it on the floor, stomps on it a few times, shoots it, and stomps on the pieces a few more times.
From here on out, Kiray has no personal communicator for the rest of the night’s session. Also: the captain is furious with her.
Svenni sits down in his captain’s chair, presses a button… and drops through the floor.
Alain follows and is snagged by some kind of teleportation leash! Oh, a surprise! He and Svenni have a “little chat” in the captain’s panic room while Kiray and Captain Steele bicker on the bridge.
“Why would you even do something like that–”
“Well, it’s not like you were paying any attention–”
“Because you tried to rip out my throat!”
“I said I was sorry!”
“Wait– attention? If you were interested, what was with all the harassment lawsuits?”
“Uh… flirting?”
“You don’t flirt using lawyers!”
We continue like this while the scene cuts to Alain interrogating Svenni. They come to some agreement about transferring the leashing technology to Alain in exchange for not killing Svenni. At some point, Kiray gets Alain alone and explains her plan, and he tries to intervene with the captain, though not terribly successfully.
We discover that in the course of things, we’ve destroyed the navigation system on Svenni’s ship, which was heading for Serrano but is now kind of drifting. Steele puts the brakes on and halts the ship.
Eventually, Alain teleports the ships apart, though there is plenty of damage, and the Penthouse is left behind on Svenni’s ship. There are hull breeches everywhere, but we use force fields to contain them.
Kiray timidly asks Steele for permission to come aboard the Placeholder. He says nothing as he returns to his bridge. She’s crestfallen. Eventually, when he realizes his cabin has been left behind, he tells her to get his “supplements” from his cabin.
Kiray suits up and goes for an ineffective spacewalk. She uses a tether to launch herself through the hull breech and gathers as much of the captain’s pills as she can get… but it’s not much. After she returns, Alain pages her and mentions that the last time she went for a space walk, she ended up trying to murder people. And maybe doing that without a comm wasn’t a great idea.
She seems fine, though, and quietly returns to the bridge.
We end the session trying to figure out what to do next, with two heavily damaged ships and a captured crew. Also some kidnapped Capp scientists in our cargo hold.  We head to the Capp planet to turn over everyone and make repairs and salvage on Svenni’s ship. Captain Steele is still undecided about what to do about Kiray’s well-meaning betrayal (for that matter, neither am I!) I have renamed “Lieutenant Cockblock” to “Oh, Captain, My Captain!” to reflect the fact that Kiray has, like, feelings and stuff for him.
We have 4 or 5 more sessions left before the campaign will come to a close, and the DM has already decided to drop the other Big Bad he’d planned on bringing in (Dr. Vampyre).