Tag name：traveller

Contract terms for detached duty

Imperial Scout Service Detached Duty Terms and Conditions

Standard Terms

Article 1: Purpose The purpose of this agreement is to outline the terms and conditions under which a scout, hereafter referred to as the “Scout,” will operate a designated Imperial Scout Service vessel (hereafter referred to as the “Ship”) during their detached duty.

Article 2: Ship Allocation The Imperial Scout Service shall allocate the Ship to the Scout for the duration of their detached duty. The Scout is responsible for the Ship’s maintenance, upkeep, and overall condition.

Article 3: Mission Objectives The Scout shall complete any mission objectives assigned by the Imperial Scout Service, which may include:

Exploring uncharted regions of space
Charting new worlds or celestial bodies
Conducting surveys on planetary conditions
Providing intelligence reports to Imperial Scout Service HQ

Article 4: Communication and Reporting The Scout shall maintain regular communication with Imperial Scout Service using the Ship’s communication systems. The Scout shall submit regular mission reports, including findings, discoveries, and any notable events whenever visiting a system with an Imperial Scout Station.

Article 5: Safety Protocols The Scout is responsible for ensuring the safety of themselves, their crew (if applicable), and any third-party personnel on board the Ship. The Scout shall adhere to all standard Imperial Scout Service safety protocols and guidelines.

Article 6: Equipment Maintenance The Scout shall perform routine maintenance and inspections on the Ship’s equipment, including but not limited to:

Life support systems
Propulsion systems
Communication arrays
Sensors and scanners

The Imperial Scout Service will provide funding for annual inspection and servicing of the Ship and its equipment.

Article 7: Unauthorized Activities The Scout is prohibited from engaging in any unauthorized activities while operating the Ship, including but not limited to:

Commercial trade or commerce that requires the Ship to be at a specific location at any time or requires the Ship to perform any specific task
Military operations or combat
Illegal activities or espionage

Authorization must be obtained in writing from the Imperial Scout Service before the activity occurs. However, in the event that the ship is engaged in combat that it did not initiate the ship and its crew are authorized to act in self defence.

Article 8: Liability In the event of any damage or loss sustained by the Ship during the Scout’s detached duty, the Scout shall be held liable for the costs of repairs and/or replacement. This liability may be waived by the Imperial Scout Service at its discretion.

Article 9: Annual InspectionThe Ship must undergo an annual inspection and overhaul at least once in each calendar year

Article 10: Termination This agreement may be terminated at any time by the Imperial Scout Service, should the Scout fail to comply with the terms and conditions outlined herein or in the event of the vessel being required for other duties. In such cases, the Scout shall immediately return the Ship to the nearest Imperial Scout Base on being informed of the termination of the agreement.

Article 11: Effective Date This contract becomes effective upon allocation of the Ship to the Scout and remains in effect until terminated or superseded by subsequent agreement.

Supplemental Terms

Article S.1: The Scout is Earl Dumarest

Article S.2: The Ship is the Vagabond's Hope, a modified Type K Safari Ship currently at Walston.

Article S.3: The Scout will be supplied with Middle Passge tickets for transport of up to 8 people from Flammarion to Walston. In addition to the Middle Passage Ticket an allowance of Cr1,000 per person will be provided to cover all incidental expenses.

Article S.4: The Scout will be supplied with equipment and software that will allow the Scout to take possession of the Ship and bring to Flammarion.

Article S.5: The Scout will be supplied with Scout Service Refuelling Vouchers that can be redeemed at the Bowman and Asteltine Starports.

Article S.6: Once the Ship is brought to Flammarion, the Scout Service will provide Accommodation and Cr1,000 per person while the Ship undergoes a Full Systems Overhaul.

Article S.7: The Ship may be involved in commercial activities, as long as these do not conflict with the Scout Service

Article S.8: If the ship is hijacked the Scout is permitted to inititate combat to retrieve the Ship.

Article S.9: The Scout is allocated the ship on 120-1105

Character Back Histories

Timeline of character histories

Year	Chase Stormburg	Cyndariel	Earl Dumarest	Fiorana	Junebug	Masuyo Ryujin	Tharbin
1059						Born
1061
1063							Born
1065
1067		Born
1069
1071				Born	Born
1073
1075			Born
1077						Entered Naval Academy
1079	Born					Joined a clique
1081						Joined Navy	Became a Dilettante Noble
1083						Notable Military engagement
1085		Attended University				Became a Merchant as a broker	Appointed as an adminstrator
1087		Joined a clique				Struck a good deal	Family Scandal
1089		Became a scout		Entered Naval Academy	Joined the Marines		Promoted
1091		Exemplary service		Joined a clique		Struck another good deal
1093			Joined the Scouts	Joined Navy			Abandoned Post
1095		Discovered a new planet	Ship ambushed by enemy agents	Romantic Relationship	Took part in a planetary assault
1097	Joined the Scouts			Promoted to Sublieutenant	Promoted		Reappointed to role as adminstrator as a Manager
1099	Discovered new planet	Romantic Relationship	Travelling in the service of the scouts	Commanding Officer took an interest in career	Romantic Relationship	Struck yet another good deal	Gained an inheritance
1101				Promoted to Lieutenant	Promoted (and retained by the marines for another term)		Promoted to Manager
1103	Caused a conflict	Caused a conflict	Explemary service for scouts	Took part in a naval engagement	Promoted to Sergeant	Advanced Training	Involved in Politics
1105	Entered Campaign	Entered Campaign	Entered Campaign	Entered Campaign	Entered Campaign	Entered Campaign	Entered Campaign

Events in the most recent term

During 1102 Chase and Cyndariel were, as part of their scout duties, assigned to a mission to a systems just beyond the edge of the Third Imperium. One of worlds visited was Gollere (Egyrn 0505), a regressed settlement which was well on its way to recovering space travel (it is at TL 7). During the visit some starships from a nearby system, Belgard. arrived to trade for agricultural supplies. The Belgardians are xenophobic, particularly when it comes to other starfarers and Chase and Cyndariel managed to raise the hackles of the Belgardian (mainly by boasting about their past discoveries in the Egryn subsector).

The Belgardians responded by launching a full scale invasion of Gollere and kidnapping both Chase and Cyndariel.

The Imperial Scout Service doesn't take kindly to this (particularly as both Chase and Cyndariel are serving members of the Scout Service with excellent service records) and organises a counter invasion to both return the inhabitants of Gollere to their previous government (a collaboration between specialised clans) and to free Chase and Cyndariel.

Since the scout don't have significant military forces of their own, a significant military operation is required, partially organised by Tharbin (safely back in the Spinward Marches). The naval assets included the hiring of the Leviathan Class Merchant Cruiser Nicholas de Nicolay who crew complement included Masuyi who was able to earn the cruiser significant additional funds as it travelled to Gollere.

Since this is a military operation several naval and marine personnel was seconded to crew of the Nicholas de Nicolay including Earl Dumarest (of the scouts and acting as the main liaison between the scouts, the navy and the marines), Fiorana of the Navy and assigned as the lieutenant in charge of the Armament of the Nicolas de Nicolay and Junebug as a corporal in the Marine section assigned to the rescue operation.

The rescue operation was a great success with Fiorana in particular gaining the Navy Lifesaving Medal for rescuing the gunners under her command when the Nicolas de Nicolay was rammed by a Belgardian escort vessel (its pilot having lost control during an attempt to deliver a close range broadside to the Nicolas de Nicolay).

On the ground Junebug took over leading the rescue operation when her sergeant was incapacited during the assault. Her actions resulted in her promotion to Sergeant.

Earl's success in managing to keep the tensions between the merchant owners of the Nicolas de Nicolay, the naval officers in charge of the naval personnel, the marine commander and his superiors in the Scout Service (who were funding the operation) was recognised by the Scout Service after the completion of the mission.

At the end of the term it is 'suggested' to Chase and Cyndariel that maybe they could better progress their lifes outside of the Scout Service!

Change History

19^th November 2024: Add events in the most recent term and even out the columns in the table

Setup for joining us on Fantasy Grounds

We use a couple of bits of software to allow us to play roleplaying via a virtual tabletop:

Discord

The location of the settings icon

To allow voice communication we use discord. The desktop version can be downloaded for free from here. You do not need to pay anything to download, setup and use discord¹. Once installed and you've registered yourself as a user contact myself or Neil to get an invite to what Discord calls our "server" (a collection of text, voice and even video channels).
There are a few settings we require and/or recommend. You can get to the settings page via the cog icon at the bottom left hand corner of discord's window:

A view of the discord voice & video settings

My Voice & video settings

Once there select Voice & Video and check (and if necessary change) the following settings (note you can click on the image to see at full size):

INPUT DEVICE: Which microphone do you want to use. If you have only one microphone you can probably leave this at the default².
OUTPUT DEVICE: Which speakers do you want to use. If you have only one of set of speakers you can probably leave this at the default. If, however, you have both a set of speakers AND a headset you need to either change the default in Windows to send sound to your headset or choose which one discord should use here³.
INPUT VOLUME: Leave at the default of 100% unless everyone complains you're too loud. If you find someone else is too loud you can adjust just their volume as explained below.
OUTPUT VOLUME: If you're finding everyone else is too loud or too quiet you can change the global volume here.
INPUT MODE: Select Push-to-talk⁴.
SHORTCUT: Choose which key to press when you want to speak. I use the left control button on the keyboard⁵ but Neil uses one of his mouse buttons, You can choose almost any key for this.
PUSH-TO-TALK RELEASE DELAY: Move the slider to increase the time between when you release the push-to-talk key and the time your microphone becomes muted. Note that the default is 0 milliseconds and typically your fingers are ahead of your mouth and hence your final word gets either cut in half or muted completely. Mine is set to around 500ms which seems to work.

There's also a section of settings for Notifications that includes a PTT Activate and a PTT Deactivate notification sounds. Note, however, that the notification sounds are NOT sent to the output device you chose in Voice & Video but just sent as audio to windows. So if your default windows output device are your speakers you'll need to go to your windows settings⁶, select System then Sound followed by App volume and device preferences and then, With the discord app running, manually choose the devices to be used for sound for the Discord application⁷.

If you find that one person's voice is too loud or too quiet you can manually how loud they are by right-clicking their name in the voice chat channel and then moving the slider to increase or decrease their individual volume.

Discord will check if it needs updates as part of its startup process and will do an update if necessary

There are also mobile versions of the application for both Android and Apple available in their respective app stores. I do not recommend using a mobile for voice⁸ but I do recommend it as a way of seeing (and getting notifications about) the text channels.

I strongly recommend going through the setup for discord well before the first game session since, inevitably, it takes a while to get the setup working exactly the way you want it to⁹

Fantasy Grounds Unity main page

Fantasy Grounds Unity

You'll be glad to learn that there's less setup needed for Fantasy Grounds Unity. You can download it from their home page. You only need the Free Demo vesrion since both myself and Neil have Ultimate Licenses which allow us to host games for those with the free demo versiom. If you ever wanted to run a game you'd need to get the ultimate version since we have players with only the free demo version.

The free demo version has, for players, all the features of the core license or ultimate versions.

When the time comes we will lead you through how to join a game¹⁰. I do recommend that before every game session you fire up Fantasy Grounds Unity and look to see if it needs any updates. Our game sessions are widely enough spread out that there's usually some updates that have been made between our game sessions.

Footnotes

Discord does have a premium currency called Nitro to allow the purchase of additional features. We've not found the need to purchase anything. ↩
I do have two microphones potentially connected so I do set the device here. ↩
Similarly I do have both speakers and a headset so have to set the output device. ↩
This keeps the channel quiet except when someone wants to talk and hence avoids unneccessary distractions. ↩
Note that when I press the left control key to push-to-talk it still acts as a control key so I do have to be aware of that should I try to use any other key (for example to do something in Fantasy Grounds Unity). ↩
These instructions assume you're using Windows 10. ↩
Note that this is a real pain since whenever discord updates its main application the windows settings treats it as a new application and you'll have to go in and change these settings again - I haven't found a better way to do this so far. ↩
It does work but getting push-to-talk to work is not as straightforward. ↩
Don't get me wrong, it is good software but as seen above it can require a fair bit of setting up to get everything the way you want it to be. ↩
Assuming, of course, you have successfully set up Discord and joined the voice chat channel. ↩