Revisiting the Rings of Kether

I recently saw on a Facebook group, someone playing The Rings of Kether. That reminded me, that I’ve still not completed this one! I had a lot of it mapped out, had some fun times bumbling around and getting my butt kicked, and so on, but never beat the big baddie at the end. So, here we go again.

I am not the best officer for the job, and as I board my spaceship I feel that I am not long for the world of the living.

• 8 Skill
• 15 Stamina
• 9 Luck
• a ship with 11 guns and 1 shield

I arrive at Kether, and immediately to hit up the local saloon. They are, as they saying goes, wretched hives of scum and villainy. I plunk myself down at a card table and meet a local import/export entrepreneur named Zera Gross. I then make some tasteless joke that import/export means drugs, so her goons take me out back and beat the shit out of me, reducing my initial Stamina from 15 to 13.

So, that did not go well. My backup plan is to go to the library and punch her name (“Zera Gross” yeah, real nice) into SpaceGoogle, and see if maybe she comes up on SpaceWikipedia as that person who makes drugs on Kether. Stupidly enough, this may work: I find mention of her in conjunction with some other guy, being prosecuted on suspicion of selling drugs, and find the address of that guy. This “Blaster Babbett” appears to live in a nondescript warehouse. Feels like a lead!

I sneak into the back door of the warehouse, and have a stroke of luck: I eavesdrop on a phone call, where a guy seems very nervous, can’t talk now, and will meet tomorrow at a cafe. Sounds interesting, so I sneak out and head to the cafe. But, the guy never shows. Fortunately, I caught his name and he’s in the phone book, so I decide to go remind him of his appointment. Bad news: he’s dead. Good news: his wife is really pissed about it, and is glad to cooperate with me. She even lets me rifle through his papers, where I find some suspicious notes about a local customs officer. Hmmm!

She even agrees to go pull her husband’s safe deposit box from the bank, where he kept business papers. Nice! Well, no, not nice: some of Clive’s old associates were waiting for us at the rendezvous. I shot at the sniper, but missed, and he shot me in the hand, reducing my Skill to 7. Shit! Worse, they made off with the papers and my character forgot about that customs official, because I’m sent to the dreaded page 231, where I have no clues, and am scrambling desperately.

I blast into space and test my luck just sifting through radio transmissions and satellite photos. I find a communications satellite, which I deem suspicious on grounds that I am desperate, and strap on my space suit for some piracy in space. But my 7 Skill is not up to the task. I screw up on my spacewalk, and jet myself out into the infinite void of space, never to return.