Freelance Traveller

Disappearance on Aramat

by Paul Anuni

Disappearance on Aramat. Gary Pilkington.
Grenadier Models Inc (defunct; no website)
51pp., PDF
Available via FFE Apocrypha 2 CD-ROM

Disappearance on Aramat is one of the early Classic Traveller adventures that’s mentioned even four decades later, with good reason.

Grenadier Models was a manufacturer of miniatures for Traveller, so, along with the usual Books 1 to 3, Disappearance on Aramat also used Book 4: Mercenary, and recommended also referring to Supplement 1: 1001 Characters, Supplement 2: Animal Encounters, and Supplement 13: Veterans, plus the box games Azhanti High Lightning and Striker for resolving combat situations. Only Books 1 to 3 were actually required, however; if Book 4: Mercenary was unavailable, six characters were provided that were generated with those rules. Note that these are not to be considered a complete pre-gen party; rather, they’re NPCs that can be hired for skills if the necessary skills are not available within the party. The module recommends that one or more absolutely be included if the party is four or fewer players; the intent is that this adventure be run with four to six players.

Plot Summary

A team consisting of an archaeologist (Dr Alandra Chadra) and several graduate archaeology students from Dalaan University have gone to Aramat, an uninhabited world, to learn the basics of setting up a “dig” on such a world. The team was supposed to check in via X-boat after getting set up at the site; they failed to do so. The PCs are hired to bring Dr Chadra’s father and her fiancé to Aramat and look for the team.

Unbeknownst to the PCs, the team was drawn to a site other than the one they were supposed to set up; the new site was a source of high-frequency radio noise. This site turns out to be an alien base guarded by robots; in attempting to defend themselves, all but Dr Chadra and one student were killed, and Dr Chadra and the remaining student captured by the robots.

Also unbeknownst to the PCs, Dresden Chemicals has an interest in the world; they have been using it as a covert storage site for prohibited biochemical warfare agents that a Dresden subsidiary intends to use against a native population of a planet that the subsidiary intends to exploit for natural resources (against the wishes of the natives). The Chairman of Dresden fears that Dr Chadra has stumbled across the illegal material, and has either been killed by exposure, or has deliberately ‘disappeared’ to draw Imperial attention and expose the illegal operation. Dresden has therefore sent a team of eight operatives masquerading as hunters to investigate the situation, and either kill Dr Chadra if she has found the biochem agents, or keep her away from them if she has not.

Mr Pilkington has clearly thought about what makes an adventure; he has provided sufficient information to address essentially any reasonable eventuality without attempting to tie the hands of the referee or the players. From materials in the ship’s locker to animal encounter tables to maps to library data that the player-characters may want to access to rumors and red herrings to potentially mislead the PCs to rules for managing an ATV’s fuel consumption to rules for creating robots/androids – it’s all there, ready to be used, without forcing the players into a particular sequence of actions. Mr Pilkington has even included notes for using Striker or Azhanti High Lightning combat rules for those who prefer those systems to that provided in Book 1: Characters and Combat.

Beyond that, the events here can be used to provide ‘hooks’ for a mini-campaign; there’s no need to consider this a ‘one-and-done’ adventure.

Although the subsector and worlds of this adventure’s setting are non-official, there’s no reason why one couldn’t relocate the adventure to suitable worlds within the canonical Third Imperium.

As written, the adventure focuses on the PCs with Dr Chadra’s father and her fiancé; there is, however, enough information presented that one could conceivably run the Dresden team as PCs instead, looking to secure the biochem site. With skilled and cooperative referees, this could even be run as a ‘paired’ adventure, with one ‘table’ being Dr Chadra’s father and those PCs looking for Dr Chadra to find out why she hasn’t checked in, and the other being the Dresden team looking to protect the secret of the illegal biochem agents. A skilled referee could also use the basic information about the events that Dr Chadra and her student experienced to build a ‘prequel’ adventure to this, setting up the scenario for either or both teams investigating her disappearance.

If there’s anything to criticize, it’s the choice of font – Avant Garde was not designed to be used for large quantities of ‘body text’; it was intended as a titling and display font. Its use here moderately inhibits readability, especially on smaller screens. The PDF does appear to be ‘text behind image’, so if you find it annoying enough, you can always copy-and-paste into a word processor document and use a font you find more comfortable.

This is definitely a product that adds value to the Apocrypha 2 CD-ROM from Far Future; it would also be worth Mongoose putting in some effort to ‘re-master’ it, perhaps into a trilogy of adventures as outlined.