Clouseau vs the Drug Kingpins of Kether

Once again, the forces of squareness fight their Space War on Space Drugs. The vicious drug Satyrphile-P has young adults partying in warehouses, feeling good about their supportive social environment, expanding their minds, and staying up a little too late sometimes. Obviously this epidemic of insanity must be stopped before… something bad. Or something. War on Drugs! In Space!

This time though, I’m very grateful that this book has relatively little use of the dice and is mostly based on choices. Why? Because my character is 100% luck, a total glass cannon: all luck and space weapons, but not a lot to back it up.

• 7 Skill, 12 Luck, 20 Stamina
• 12 Weapons, 2 Shields

I start my investigation on the ground at Kether, and being undercover and a rugged individualist, I immediately go straight to the cops to ask for help. The local constable informs me that there is no drug ring, except maybe a mom-n-pop meth lab on the moon. Ehhh… yeah.

That being my only lead, I go check it out and I don’t even find someone selling molly at a warehouse party. But I must be onto something, because I find a death threat in my locker and someone starts shooting at me! I bravely flee from this firefight, narrowly avoiding a run-in with somebody who may work for the drug cartel and therefore be my next lead… Good job, me! But I do find the person’s name in the travel computer, and it gives me my next lead: to the public library.

I sit down at a terminal that’s the least sticky, and type “kether drug lords” into SpaceGoogle. Yeah, that worked about as well as you’d expect. I spend a few hours on SpaceInstagram and SpacePornhub, and peruse many recipes all claiming to make The Best chocolate brownies in the galaxy, then I finally give up and decide to go to the government’s computer center. Maybe they’ll have a faster link, so these hilarious cat videos will stream more smoothly?

But alas, I get there and find that the public terminals are locked down to only historical information and nothing modern. So I decide to break in after hours. Fortunately, it’s a Luck roll and I have a 12. My first time touching the dice since page 1, … and I don’t even touch them because I have a 12. My perusal of the computer records shows some significant reporting anomalies in air traffic control, so I decide to go visit the local ATC.

The ATC is a total pushover: I pull out my badge and he just freaks out on the spot! Starts crying, saying that the Customs department is making him do it, tells me that he doesn’t know about drugs but knows that the traffic they don’t report is from a specific asteroid. Bingo! I let him collect his wits, thank him for his help, and take off.

The asteroid has some sort of facility in it, and I sneak in through a hatch. At this point I’m zero-gee and in a suit, but fortunately there are no skill rolls to keep from barfing, or from forgetting and opening my helmet to scratch my nose… I float down a hall and come across a temple. Yes that’s right: a flaming brazier, wooden doors with iron bands, and a snake-monster-woman-thing that speaks in puzzles. What the heck? I wonder if I’m high on that SpaceMolly that I’m trying to bust. No, more like SpaceMescaline because this must be my spirit animal: the talking snake thing tells me to go talk to the Customs folks instead, planet-side. Oooohkayy…

I back away carefully from what’s surely some intense hallucination, and fortunately my spaceship can fly itself, back down to the planet.