Stardate 49011.4
By Garrett Crowe
For the Star Trek Adventures RPG by Modiphius
This adventure is serialized. Set a Course for: Part 1/Intro & Scene 1 and Part 3/Scenes 3&4. WARP SPEED! (Linda, Copy Editor)
Scene 2. Tribble Hunt and Security Overrides
All across the station, Tribbles start falling out of air vents, pouring out of Jeffries tubes and running down corridors.
The chaos causes Admiral Hebert and General Kargan to summon the crew to the conference room. Instead of the Deep Space Nine Battle, the screens show security cameras all across the station, showing Tribbles getting underfoot and knocking people over as they pour out of closets when the door’s are activated.
“This is not acceptable,” General Kargan shouts, pointing at the monitors.
“I agree with General Kargan,” Admiral Hebert reluctantly agrees. “You’re in charge of ridding the station of this menace. Get rid of the Tribbles, and of course uncover who brought such a creature on board in the first place.”
“Get out!” General Kargan shouts and turns to face the screens, his arms folded in front of him.
One screen shows a just-arrived Klingon ship’s crew open their airlock, only to be swarmed by Tribbles. Admiral Hebert giggles.
“That isn’t funny,” General Kargan says.
“Sorry,” Admiral Herbet says, forcing the smile from her face.
Part 1. Ridding the Station of Tribbles
Tribbles are drawn to grains, which they eat to reproduce in vast quantities. The crew needs to replicate a great deal of grains and use them as a bread crumb trail, leading the Tribbles to a docking bay,. Once they’re all in the docking bay, it can be sealed, the air lock can be opened to suck the Tribbles into space.
This is a timed challenge, representing calculating how much grain will be needed, where the grains will be placed as trails to lead to the docking bay, then timing it right to launch all the Tribbles into space. This is a Work 15, Magnitude 3, Difficulty 3, Threshold 6 extended challenge. The Gamemaster can call for different combinations of Attributes and Disciplines to represent the different stages of the operation. If time runs out, the station is hopelessly infested with Tribbles. It will need to be evacuated, and life support will need to be turned off long enough for the Tribbles to suffocate. Then comes the unenviable task of removing the Tribble corpses from all across the station, to be launched into space.
What the crew doesn’t know is Ynas and Nint are working against them, providing Resistance 2 to the challenge. Finally, any complication rolled brings a member of the crew face-to-face with one of the Ferengi as he sabotages the group’s efforts, then vanishes into a Jeffries tube.
When the challenge is complete, or when time is up, Ynas and Nint summon the robotic Tribbles, then steal a runabout to dock with the Ferengi luxury ship, waiting to take them to the Grand Nagus.
When running the challenge, offer opportunities where Klingons and Federation officers get in each other’s faces, accusing one another of hacking into one another’s computers and downloading the computer contents. If a crew member investigates the hacked computer, have him roll a Reason + Security check, Difficulty 3, to find Tribble hair inside the computer jacks. A Tribble trying to get inside a computer would get electrocuted and leap back, probably on fire. No one in the offices witnessed such an obvious scene. For a Momentum spend, the crew member realizes the computer was hacked by something meant to look like a Tribble.
Tribbles
ATTRIBUTES:, Control 7, Fitness 9, Presence 8, Daring 7, Insight 7, Reason 7
DISCIPLINES:: Command 2, Security 1, Science –, Conn–, Engineering –, Medicine 1
TRAITS: Tribble, Hungry
Stress 10 Soak 0
TALENTS: The character gains all of the following Talents:
DUPLICATE
Requirement: Constantly eating from a large stash of food.
As long as the Tribbles are constantly eating from a large stash of food, once per Scene they may duplicate..
SOOTHE
The Tribbles may attempt to help a character recover Stress. The target character recovers 1 point of
Stress, plus an additional point per Momentum spent.
KLINGONS
Requirement: A dislike towards Klingons.
Your Gamemaster must tell you if a Klingon character enters into Close range with the Tribble. Upon being told this, the Tribble shrieks loudly and shudders until told the character has backed away out of Close range. A Klingon character must attempt a Control + Command Task with a Difficulty of 3 when hearing this shriek, or you inflict 2 [CD]of damage. The Tribble may attempt an Insight + Command Task to detect Klingons at further ranges.
Part 2. The Tribble Traitor
If the crew had trouble completing tasks in the last scene because of the Ferengi, they probably have a good idea who’s responsible. The easy thing to do is to search all cargo manifests destined for Ynas and Nint. This is a Difficulty 2 Reason + Science assisted by Narendra Station’s Computers + Science (11). On a success, the crew discover an item marked “Nagus party favors” that was supposedly inspected by Klingon docking bay worker Grul Kommich.
If the crew wasn’t unfortunate enough to go toe-to-toe with the Ferengi in the last scene, then they need to search docking bay logs for shipments that had holes in it for the creatures to breathe. This limits the amount of shipments to go through. This is a Difficulty 4 Reason + Science roll assisted by Narendra Station’s Computers + Science (11). On a success, the crew discover an item marked “Nagus party favors” that was supposedly inspected by Klingon docking bay worker Grul Kommich. On a failure, the crew succeeds at cost. They take an extra hour to find the information, and Grul was monitoring the computers for scans searching for this specific delivery. He was bribed not only to let the package into the station but to take care of anyone who comes looking for information about the package. He finds the crew at their terminal and makes ranged attacks from cover, behind a console or around a corner. He has three docking bay workers (paid off with Ferengi gold latinum).
Should the crew go to the docking bay to talk to Grul, he claims he has no idea what the crew’s talking about. A successful Difficulty 1 Insight + Medicine reveals Grul is lying. When he feels too backed into a corner, he activates his com and says, “Latinuim.” Three Klingon docking workers stop working and attack the crew. Like Grul, they were paid off by the Ferengi.
In both cases, the goal isn’t to kill the crew but to keep them occupied long enough for Ynas and Nint to make their escape.
Klingon Docking Bay Workers [Minor NPCs- Grul is a Notable NPC]
ATTRIBUTES:, Control 8, Fitness 10, Presence 8, Daring 8, Insight 7, Reason 7
DISCIPLINES:: Command 1, Security 2, Science –, Conn 1, Engineering 1, Medicine –
TRAITS: Klingon: There is a great redundancy in Klingon organs, with two livers, multiple stomachs, three lungs and an eight-chambered heart. Their skeletal structure also has several redundancies that mitigate injuries that would prove fatal to other humanoids.
Stress 12 Soak 1 (Docking Bay Worker Heavy Clothes)
Unarmed Strike (Melee, 3 [CD] Knockdown, 1H, Non-lethal]
Phaser Type-1 (Ranged, 4 [CD], Charge, Hidden 1)
TALENTS: The character gains all of the following Talents:
To Battle!: Whenever a Klingon buys additional dicefor a melee attack using Threat, for each Threat added to the pool, you gain 1 bonus Momentum that can only be spent on Bonus Damage, increasing the damage of the attack by 1 per Momentum spent.
Well-Oiled Team: When assisting a fellow docking bay worker on a task or attack, the main person performing the task or attack may reroll 1 d20 for every successful assist.
