Traveller Hero: Pirates of Drinax

[Steve]

My group had our character creation session for the new campaign using Mongoose’s Pirates of Drinax campaign setting this weekend. It was quite a lot of fun, like a time-compressed pre-campaign session, and everyone had a great time following their character’s life paths.

 

One character started out with a fantastic stat set (three 12s rolled in front of me) and the other two were closer to average. Of those other players, one had his best stat as his social standing, and the third was fairly average with social standing as his dump stat (a five as I recall). Because there was a pretty big difference in the totals of their characteristics, we all decided to let the two with lower characteristics have some rerolls on their life paths to make up the difference.

 

They all then decided to go to the military academy for the Marines, and that’s when the fun began. My player with the golden stats failed to get into the academy and was drafted instead, ending up in the Marines anyway as a private. The low SOC player managed to successfully enroll on his first try and the third used one of his rerolls and managed to get in on his second try (and we explained that as his high SOC meant Daddy pulled some strings).

 

The other two later managed to graduate with honors without rerolls, entering the service as lieutenants, while the stat-lucky player finished pounding it out in his first enlistment and was promoted to a higher level noncom. The player kept joking about “college boys” like that sergeant character from the old “Black Sheep Squadron” tv show.

 

After that, things continued to be interesting. The golden-stat player kept getting injured and ended up losing both eyes, one each on two separate tours of duty which were replaced with the marines covering most of the cost. Meanwhile, the two academy grads steadily ascended in rank, never once failing an advancement roll and never getting injured that I recall. They also accumulated a small collection of contacts, rivals and enemies during this phase.

 

The high starting SOC player served his entire career in the motor pool, and the other graduate was a Star Marine.

 

During one particular enlistment later on, there was apparently a disastrous military campaign that took place that was the fault of the commanding officer. The low SOC player decided to turn in his commanding officer and received a bonus to his next promotion roll and advanced again in rank. The noncom player ended up getting injured in that mission and lost his other eye, getting that one replaced and picking up a bit more medical debt.

 

The golden-stat player, having had enough of the dangers of military service by this point, changed his career to being a corporate agent and then ended up almost burning his face off on his first tour of duty for his new employers but gained the Demolitions skill. This added to his accumulated medical debt for more repair work. Even before this, he was being compared to a young Nick Fury.

 

The other two players retired as Brigadiers with pensions and earned a lot of mustering out benefits. They also decided to pay for anti-aging treatments. The formerly low-SOC player finished with a 10 SOC thank to his rank, and the other somehow managed to become a decorated war hero with a SOC in the low teens all while commanding the motor pool.
 

After everyone settled their medical debts, the two Brigadiers joined up again with their old service buddy, who had become a deadly gunfighter based on his skill levels by then, and they ended up in the Trojan Reach together to begin their new adventure.

 

I’m now going to take their rolled characters and convert them over to Hero.

[Durzan Malakim]

I picked up the Traveller core rulebook update 2022 and discovered that we made some rolls incorrectly for some of our life events that involved skills. Evidently you're not supposed to add a characteristic modifier to these rolls, but since we're simply using them as inspiration for Star Hero characters I don't think we need to be sticklers. Rules as written, there should be many low-stat and in-debt Traveller characters who live short brutish lives. I suppose Champions and 5th edition D&D have spoiled me for starting heroic characters. I look forward to a life of piracy in and around Drinax.

[Steve]

2 hours ago, Durzan Malakim said:

I picked up the Traveller core rulebook update 2022 and discovered that we made some rolls incorrectly for some of our life events that involved skills. Evidently you're not supposed to add a characteristic modifier to these rolls, but since we're simply using them as inspiration for Star Hero characters I don't think we need to be sticklers. Rules as written, there should be many low-stat and in-debt Traveller characters who live short brutish lives. I suppose Champions and 5th edition D&D have spoiled me for starting heroic characters. I look forward to a life of piracy in and around Drinax.

Ah, I did miss that.

 

Based on my past experiences with the game in days of yore, most Traveller characters will be Average Joes struggling to make a living in unusual situations, which would translate into lower-point Hero characters in the 8-13 primary characteristic range. Our cyber-eyed gunfighter will probably have an 18 DEX as his best characteristic.

 

The Trojan Reach looks like it will have plenty of adventure potential.

[Old Man]

9 hours ago, Steve said:

My group had our character creation session for the new campaign using Mongoose’s Pirates of Drinax campaign setting this weekend. It was quite a lot of fun, like a time-compressed pre-campaign session, and everyone had a great time following their character’s life paths.

 

One character started out with a fantastic stat set (three 12s rolled in front of me) and the other two were closer to average. Of those other players, one had his best stat as his social standing, and the third was fairly average with social standing as his dump stat (a five as I recall). Because there was a pretty big difference in the totals of their characteristics, we all decided to let the two with lower characteristics have some rerolls on their life paths to make up the difference.

 

They all then decided to go to the military academy for the Marines, and that’s when the fun began. My player with the golden stats failed to get into the academy and was drafted instead, ending up in the Marines anyway as a private. The low SOC player managed to successfully enroll on his first try and the third used one of his rerolls and managed to get in on his second try (and we explained that as his high SOC meant Daddy pulled some strings).

 

The other two later managed to graduate with honors without rerolls, entering the service as lieutenants, while the stat-lucky player finished pounding it out in his first enlistment and was promoted to a higher level noncom. The player kept joking about “college boys” like that sergeant character from the old “Black Sheep Squadron” tv show.

 

After that, things continued to be interesting. The golden-stat player kept getting injured and ended up losing both eyes, one each on two separate tours of duty which were replaced with the marines covering most of the cost. Meanwhile, the two academy grads steadily ascended in rank, never once failing an advancement roll and never getting injured that I recall. They also accumulated a small collection of contacts, rivals and enemies during this phase.

 

The high starting SOC player served his entire career in the motor pool, and the other graduate was a Star Marine.

 

During one particular enlistment later on, there was apparently a disastrous military campaign that took place that was the fault of the commanding officer. The low SOC player decided to turn in his commanding officer and received a bonus to his next promotion roll and advanced again in rank. The noncom player ended up getting injured in that mission and lost his other eye, getting that one replaced and picking up a bit more medical debt.

 

The golden-stat player, having had enough of the dangers of military service by this point, changed his career to being a corporate agent and then ended up almost burning his face off on his first tour of duty for his new employers but gained the Demolitions skill. This added to his accumulated medical debt for more repair work. Even before this, he was being compared to a young Nick Fury.

 

The other two players retired as Brigadiers with pensions and earned a lot of mustering out benefits. They also decided to pay for anti-aging treatments. The formerly low-SOC player finished with a 10 SOC thank to his rank, and the other somehow managed to become a decorated war hero with a SOC in the low teens all while commanding the motor pool.
 

After everyone settled their medical debts, the two Brigadiers joined up again with their old service buddy, who had become a deadly gunfighter based on his skill levels by then, and they ended up in the Trojan Reach together to begin their new adventure.

 

I’m now going to take their rolled characters and convert them over to Hero.

 

Jeez, it's like you had to run a campaign before you could run your campaign. 

[Durzan Malakim]

6 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Jeez, it's like you had to run a campaign before you could run your campaign. 

It's a pre-campaign character-creation-minigame where much of the effort is on us PCs. We're the ones who concocted the stories that connect our characters. Mostly @Steve just had to look up tables and the results of our rolls. Although he also gave us our official campaign introduction to Drinax and our beat-up pirate ship in need of repair and a crew. The premise reminds me a bit of Our Flag Means Death with our group playing a mixture of the Black Beard and Stede Bonnet roles. Our ocular-challenged gunslinger might be Black Beard (Black Eyes?) and the two brigadiers have delusions of being gentleman pirates. We'll see if our campaign of piracy is more Captain Nemo or the Three Stooges. Daddy warbucks might not be happy to learn that his famous brigadier son has gone rogue. Much depends upon how well we follow Dexter's code: Can we prey exclusively on other pirates? Can we cover up our crimes and keep our secrets? Can our veneer of civility inspire the the remnants of the Kingdom of Drinax enough to transform a pirate fleet into an actual navy? Too bad literally none of us actually had a career in the navy. We've got an abundance of swashbuckling and a dearth of deck swabbing.

Edited June 20, 2022 by Durzan Malakim
Typos

[Steve]

I converted over the first of the PCs to 6th Edition Hero on Monday, and it went pretty well.
 

Brigadier “Mes” Meson came out to a surprisingly high 225 points after converting his stats, adding in the package deals for Marine and Marine Officer, some bonuses to those skills based on his career events and some extra tweaks I threw in. His high point value was almost all due to skills and perks. Thanks to having four ranks in Leadership earned during his illustrious career that ended in honorable retirement, his highest characteristic is a 20 PRE (since setting it at 19 bugged me), further boosted by some positive reputation bonuses.

 

Complications weren’t that hard to do based on his life events. A Hunted earned from his career events, the Imperium officer he reported for failure after a fiasco mission which later earned Mes a promotion for doing so. The package deals also gave some very good suggestions for psychological complications that fit: Marine Code-never leave a man behind. I added in “The Burden of Command” which I can’t recall right now if it came from the book or was my own idea.

 

For his Equipment load out, he has some mesh body armor (not battledress), an auto pistol and a cutlass. All in all, he would not be out of place as a “sword and planet” hero.

[Duke Bushido]

On 6/20/2022 at 5:32 AM, Old Man said:

 

Jeez, it's like you had to run a campaign before you could run your campaign. 

 

It's a minigame before you play the game.

 

Realistically, you can, with a bit of familiarity, roll up a Traveller character in under ten mimutes; using the original (ie, "unexpanded") character generation rules, you can do it in under five minutes.

 

Unlike most roll 'em games, though, the entire process lets you choose from different themes (careers or other "life paths").  All you are doing is rolling up you skills and a few random perks (maybe), but the thematic way in which the tables express the results is both kind of fun and extremely helpful to folks who have trouble coming up with backstories for their characters--  the skill generation system is quite literally presented as "you life up until the moment this adventure starts."

 

You absolutely do not have to use the story generated, of course, but if you are given to explore your characters, the entire process is a little bit addictive, and I personally believe it had a lot to do with Traveller catching on and its incredible staying power.

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

Classic Traveller, allowed a character to die in this phase, so you would have to roll up a new one. Mongoose rules did away with the death, but added more injuries and bad things to the character. In recent play, what the character wanted as a career in The Imperial Navy didn’t quite work out, but it still produced an interesting life from before the game.  

[Steve]

I found the medical debt concept to be a good replacement for the death during character creation notion of Classic Traveller, and dying appears to have been done away with after first edition. I think it’s called “Iron Man Traveller” now, for the true hardcore Traveller fan. Nothing like needing to pay your bills to motivate a group of adventurers to get out there and do something.
 

Group character creation was actually a ton of fun for everyone, and it was like a mini campaign played out in a single session.

 

The remaining characters have since been converted over to Hero, and we played the first session as the group started their pirating career. Since all three PCs were marines in the service until their forties and retired, they all worked out to be about roughly the same points, so everyone started at 225 despite having pretty modest stats.
 

The crew of NPCs is starting to assemble as well. Our illustrious PCs are also using fake names as pirates, with Brigadier Meson now called Captain Nemos. He even started wearing a cape to present a more dashing figure.

[Steve]

We’re now six sessions into the campaign, and the PCs have been away from Drinax for a few months now, exploring the nearby systems for loot and adventure.

 

Not much pirating has been getting done, but they’ve successfully fomented two revolutions so far and profited handsomely from them. Captain Nemos and his crew are coming together nicely and picking up oddball NPCs along the way. Here is one of them.

 

Blackfur: An uplifted ape (25 STR and knows a few martial maneuvers) that one of the PCs first came face to face with by defeating him in an MMA match on the pirate world of Theev, then later encountered in another system after having developed a rivalry for that PC over that loss. Two more fistfights in different game sessions ended with the dice giving more defeats for Blackfur, one from an uppercutting punch to the jaw (hit location 5) and a second with a solid shot to the nads (hit location 13). Neither hit was aimed there on purpose, just the luck of the dice.

 

The player is thinking Blackfur wants to murder him, but he’s actually more of a grumpy, honorable rival that is secretly a bit embarrassed at being so soundly beaten three times in a row by a mere human who just so happens to be a trained boxer from his military days. Despite his grumpiness, Blackfur is a good mechanic, fights well on the PC’s side and is fitting in quite well on the crew.

[Durzan Malakim]

I'm curious to see how Blackfur develops. He has a new military commission to add to his list of accolades. He also knocked out another PC for being mouthy. President Meson certainly has quite the odd cabinet of cut throats around him.

[Steve]

Our semi-nefarious band of pirates and rebels for hire, after a brief return to Drinax to report on their doings to the King and pay him his percentage after overthrowing one planetary government and destabilizing another in the favor of their patron there, added a few more able-bodied warriors to their crew and restocked what supplies they could. The First Mate continued to complain about the food supplies, missing having eggs to eat, a sentiment echoed by a crew tired of rehyrdrated meat, beans and rice. The captain also upgraded his wardrobe, finding he liked wearing capes and wanted an assortment of them. They then set off for Tech-World, four parsecs away from Drinax, pausing briefly in the Hilfer system in hopes of finding a ship to raid.

 

There they encountered an enemy almost more than they could handle, a 1200-ton Aslan Halaheike-class pocket warship, the Meatgrinder, under the command of Hroal Irontooth, one of the Pirate Lords of the Theev system. Fortunately for them, it was already significantly damaged after attempting to raid an Imperial Treasure Ship and battling its escorts, the debris field showing several wrecks. The Treasure Ship managed to limp away from the battle to the planet and crash landed before the PC's ship arrived, leaving them to deal with the damaged Aslan warship. Utilizing their ship's recently repaired cloak, they were able to approach close enough to launch a boarding party in spacesuits, preferring a stealth approach to an exchange of weapon fire with a ship six times their mass.

 

In a vicious duel with Irontooth, Meson almost died, after being run through twice in the depressurized ship's corridor they fought in. Luckily, his Imperium-made spacesuit kept sealing up and preventing explosive decompression, and he was able to kill the hulking Aslan with the aid of his new lady friend, Syrna, a raider from the Sword Worlds. She stepped into the breach when he fell, giving the captain enough time to recover a little, but not really doing any damage to the enemy captain. They now have to figure out what to do with their new prize and the surviving Aslan crew.

 

There is also an even bigger prize still awaiting them, the Imperium Treasure Ship.

 

 

[dmjalund]

I wonder what's Aslan for Meatgrinder?

[Scott Ruggels]

8 hours ago, dmjalund said:

I wonder what's Aslan for Meatgrinder?

Purina?

[Durzan Malakim]

Player decisions are the bane of every GM everywhere. Having just given us a mission in Aslan space, we wiley PCs decided to forego adventures in Aslan territory and instead further plunder the Trojan Reach for crew, equipment, and targets of opportunity. Granted, as we understood it our Aslan mission is a fetch quest where we bring the stuff to the place. If the place already had the stuff within easy reach, they wouldn't need expendable outside contractors such as ourselves. We were hoping to plunder more from our favorite megacorp PRQ (Pretty Rotten Quality?), when one of the PCs spotted the name Techworld on the system map. His eyes lit up like a kid at a candy store, and it didn't take much to convince the rest of the crew that we needed a world's worth of tech.

 

Kudos to @Steve for improvising our visit to left field so that Popeye could continue his quest to acquire more robotic or replicant minions followers and ship's crew. Fortunately he'd read ahead and knew the basics of the Hilfer system. We also gave him some extra time by having a side discussion about our ship's mixed stances on slavery and slavers. We are one robot revolution away from "ALL FLESH MUST DIE!" and yet Captain Nemos is vehemently anti-slavery. I'm sure this is fine, and nothing bad will happen.

 

This session had a lot of story told by the dice. For example:

• A GM roll produced an enemy ace fighter pilot.
• GM combat rolls for Hroal Irontooth were consistently deadly (both deadly hit locations and high damage rolls)
• PC luck roles where we earned 5 counts of luck on 6 dice.
• PC critical success on a constitution roll.

We also managed to use our entire supply of HAP. It turns out that deadly combat is deadly. All in all a great session with lots of complications and avenues for further development. I'm sure inheriting a pirate crew of Aslan will be fine. I'm sure the obstacles between us and the Treasure ship are few and manageable.

 

[Steve]

Yes, there should be few difficulties. Raiding the treasure ship will be a piece of cake.

[Steve]

The crew of the PC’s ship is remarkably diverse. At a rough count…

 

Seven male humans (two are PCs)

Three female humans (NPCs)

One male human with cybernetics (PC)

One male flesh-covered android (NPC)

One female flesh-covered android (NPC)

One uplifted gorilla (NPC)

One male Vargr (NPC)

One female Aslan (NPC)

Five robots of varying levels of sentience

 

They’ve now managed to conquer an all Aslan-crewed pirate ship with around ten female Aslan techs and a few surviving males.
 

Forging this motley band of pirates into a unified fighting force will take every ounce of Captain Nemos’ leadership ability and a considerable amount of luck.

[Steve]

Our first session of the year was mostly roleplaying as new NPCs were introduced to the players, including their first meeting with a psionic in the campaign, one of the Aslan females who came to negotiate their new role after the PCs victory. She is now acting as an advisor to the PCs.

 

The remaining male Aslans had their toughest fighter, the ace fighter pilot the PCs dealt with in the last session, nearly killed in a fistfight with PC Harrison, a boxer built a bit like Rocky Balboa in his abilities. Despite the Aslan having a four SPD and a higher DEX, Harrison blocked several blows and then unleashed an uppercut that struck his foe’s head, nearly killing the Aslan after hit location modifiers were figured in.

 

After a bit of travel time, they made it to Hilfer, where the next steps in the current adventure happened.

 

More to follow…

[Durzan Malakim]

I was responsible for some PC dithering as we encountered obstacle after obstacle between us and a vault full of treasure.

• Obstacle 1: Missile launchers shooting at our starship. We did manage to take out two missile launchers, but are there more?
• Obstacle 2: Imperial Navy and Marines guarding the vault. There are three factions aboard to contend with.
• Obstacle 3: A dead man's switch on a nuclear device that prevents us from just killing everyone from afar with starship weapons.
• Obstacle 4: Two groups of imperial marines in battle dress (basically Ironman armor).
• Obstacle 5: A Zhodoni psionic agent somewhere in mix scanning us from afar.
• Obstacle 6: My PC's psychological complication against killing Imperial military forces who he still has a sense of duty to.

It's an interesting situation we find ourselves in.

[Steve]

The Meatgrinder was rechristened with a new name to honor the Princess of Drinax during the voyage to Hilfer, and the travel time allowed repairs and healing to occur.

 

The Imperium Treasure Ship had made a poor landing in the wastelands of Hilfer, and the remaining crew readied what defense they could while awaiting rescue, knowing it might take months to arrive, if ever.

 

@Durzan Malakim summarized the challenges facing the PCs pretty well. Here is some additional commentary.
 

The captain of the treasure ship is a martinet a bit reminiscent of the one from the movie Mr. Roberts, mixed with the British officer from Bridge on the River Kwai. He’s currently unconscious courtesy of his First Officer, Commander Mari Jagat, after I did my best to portray him as the insufferable prig he was.
 

She’s described in the module as the slightly Mary Sue-ish protagonist of a series of science fiction military action-adventure novels occurring parallel to the PCs activities, apparently an Honor Harrington homage. Further complicating things, she hero worships Brigadier Meson thanks to his “war hero” Positive Reputation but didn’t at first believe the “pirate captain” she was talking to was him even after he revealed his true identity, throwing quotes from his own biography in his face as to why her crew was not going to meekly surrender and letting the PCs know about the armed nuclear device.

 

Further complicating matters is the surviving Marine Commander Harc, who is paranoid that the ship was infiltrated by one or more Zhodani spies (apparently true from what the PCs later discovered) and refuses to accept the commands of any Navy officers, thinking they are all compromised puppets, and he’s not too sure about his fellow marines either. He and an unknown number of surviving marines are in full battledress and ready to fight pirates to the bitter end.

 

There is also a spy from the megacorp General Development Company (GeDeCo), running a scheme as well, but the PCs don’t know who it is. As one of the PCs also works for GeDeCo, he received some text messages from the spy on his personal comm device as a professional courtesy (and perhaps worried they would be killed if the PCs weren’t aware of their presence).

[Steve]

It took a few sessions, but our intrepid group of pirates made their biggest score yet, finally looting the Imperium Treasure Ship and making off with about a hundred million credits in booty composed of various items. Thanks to an extremely high PRE attack from @Durzan Malakim’s speech to the crew, the pirate gang has grown with the addition of about forty Imperium naval crewmen.

 

Their next stop was Tech-World to use their newfound wealth to repair and upgrade their vessels. After later making a clandestine deal with the planetary leaders and discovering an ancient, slumbering AI aboard their vessel, they then had to chase after a scientist who was the victim of a nanotech infection a bit reminiscent of the protomolecule from The Expanse series. They are trying to stop the scientist before she reaches an Imperium world in the Spinward Marches and potentially unleashed a catastrophe.

[Steve]

It's been a while since the last update. Our intrepid group of pirates have made a lot of progress in the campaign, traveling up into the Spinward Marches to the distant worlds of Mirage and eventually all the way to Neumann, a journey of almost twenty-five parsecs or 13 jumps. They almost managed to catch her at Fist, at the most Rimward border of the Spinward Marches, but they encountered complications that enabled the nanotech infected scientist to escape and continue to Mirage.

 

Thanks to plentiful expenditures of HAPs at the climax of that adventure, they were able to enact a cure to the nanotech plague on Neumann that had consumed half the planet, ending up getting paid but then subsequently banished from that world. They then made their way back down to the Trojan Reach, trying their hand some more at doing some honest trading along the way. They had done some of this on the way up as well.

 

During their long journey back, they picked up an archaeologist who paid High Passage all the way to Drinax, who had a message globe dating back to the end of the Sindalan Empire, getting the PCs involved in a hunt for a legendary treasure, not of gold and jewels, but planet-destroying weapons of biological and nuclear varieties.

 

The last session had them reach the world of Cordan, where they had gained landholdings and the rank of Baronet thanks to helping the Baroness Lux there. In the many months they were gone, one of the PCs who comes from a fallen, formerly noble family, had his mother show up with a whole retinue of the family, all looking to squat and plunder basically. Thanks to a technological find they made while in the Spinward Marches, they had obtained the equivalent of cortical stacks for use. Using one of them to replace one of the PCs useless cousins with a copy of their ship's AI personality was discussed and almost happened but was stopped at the last minute when the PC decided against the plan after initially being for it.

 

The transhumanism elements of the campaign continue to shine as a major subplot. One of the PCs is a cyborg; they killed and cloned a towering Aslan male pirate lord named Irontooth and implanted within the clone body a copy of their ship's AI; several members of the crew are either robots or advanced bioroids; the captain acquired a genetically altered spare body they keep in a Low Berth to aid him in alternating between his pirate guise and his old Brigadier ID; and they have a dozen spare cortical stacks that one of the PCs is just aching to use, to make more copies of the ship's AI and implant them into organic bodies.

[Durzan Malakim]

I love PC decision-making. It's easier to turn your foppish dandy of a cousin into a cyborg-zombie than to just tell him and the rest of the family of freeloaders that they get nothing but a place to stay. I look forward to Gaston's future hijinks even if the most likely scenario is returning to find him resting peacefully in the local cemetery. Without some outside help, I don't see the Vanderbilts getting the better of EDI.

 

I almost got our crew out of the low berth prison business, but Krrsh pushed our disloyalty buttons. We can't be leaving tasty breadcrumbs behind for Judas Cain to sweep up. As it is we're leading him to a potential stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. I'm sure that won't get us and the entire sector into any trouble.

[Steve]

@Durzan Malakim @thudgun@King RedAs you all know, Krrsh the Vargr was an interesting case of NPC neglect that I could finally find a plotline use for. He is a former Vargr pirate captain who was betrayed and left aboard a space station, and the PCs picked him up during one of their earliest adventures. With his aid, they managed to get to the pirate world of Theev, and then he was simply forgotten about and given no duties on board for months of in-game time and also real world time. His character description in the module is that he is a loudmouth, a drunkard and an astrogator, and so in my notes he has just been off in a corner quietly getting drunk while all the PCs have been having their adventures as they jump about star systems in the ship. Months later he shows up again in one of the PCs quarters @King Red, caught raiding his private stock of expensive wine, and then he gets a plotline of getting beaten into shape. I suppose we will see if it takes.

 

I was actually quite impressed with how the whole Vanderbilt storyline last session ended up. This bunch of NPC dilettante losers shows up hoping to sponge off their relative, the PC, who has managed to get a piece of a planet and a noble title (baronet), led by his widowed mother. Despite her having only just shown up for the first time on camera in the campaign, that PC refused to take the easy way out with her, because she was his character’s mother. He could have had her mind wiped and turned into a meat puppet with an AI installed to drive the body. Then there was talk of doing this with useless cousin Gaston Vanderbilt, and he went along for a little while then changed his mind. Then there was talk of leaving a clone of himself behind to deal with the useless bunch of dilettantes that is his family, and the abandoned, arranged marriage fiancee that is part of his backstory, and just heading off for the stars to be a pirate. It was all quite an interesting look into the mind of Harrison Vanderbilt IV.

[Durzan Malakim]

It turns out that the original Harrison Vanderbilt IV was the evil clone all along. Unless we alter the clone's memories or personality, I suspect that we'd end up with two runaway grooms galavanting about the galaxy. How many clones variants will it take until we end up with our own version of Kang the Conqueror? May I suggest Harrison the Holocaust? Or I suppose we could go the Star Trek mirror universe route and create a clone for each of us.