Old Junk

By: Mark Clark (markc@brahms.udel.edu)
Adventure Seed

Everybody can find parts for a two-year-old Ling Standard Products air raft (just go to the dealership), but where do you go for a compensating magnetostrictor for your classic Funilawari Dyno-speeder, out of production for over a century? Well, you do just what collectors have been doing since the Rule of Man - go to a swap meet!

The planet Carlisle is centrally located, and supports a thriving salvage industry. It hosts an regular (once every five years) swap meet for vehicle collectors, and thousands of vendors travel to the planet to set up temporary booths, where they sell and trade parts and complete vehicles. Parts for almost any vehicle are available, either used or like new.

Classic Traveller

A Noble patron hires the players to provide transportation (if they have a starship) or security (if they do not) for his shipment of classic air-rafts to Carlisle.

  1. All is as it seems - use this as a chance to pull out all those vehicle designs that have been hanging around.
  2. All is as it seems, but unknown to the patron one of his air-rafts is stolen goods - conflict ensues when the original owner sees it at the swap meet.
  3. The "Noble" is actually a smuggler (of what is up to the referee), and the air-rafts have the smuggled item(s) hidden inside them.
  4. As 1, but the players discover one of the air-rafts has a sentient TL-16 robot brain installed. The brain pleads with the players to free it from servitude, but the air-raft is very rare and expensive, and will lose most of its value if the brain is removed.

MegaTraveller

  1. The players are from the Wilds, looking for parts to repair an essential transport system on a Failing world. A collector recognises the player's ship's vehicle as a rare model, and offers to buy it.
  2. As 5, but the collector tries to steal the vehicle.

New Era

  1. Carlisle is now a boneyard. The players are sent to explore, and find a version of Virus that is a collector of old vehicles. It controls an army of vehicles and robots constructed out of scrap parts. The Virus is potentially friendly, and will be happy to trade with the players. It wants rare vehicles and trade literature, and will send the players on quests for what it wants (it knows where all the vehicle museums in this sector were).

Note: This seed was inspired by my upcoming visit to an auto swap meet in Carlisle, PA. Hope you like it!