Hi there,

many thanks for the responses on rescue bubbles.  Really helpful.

 

Rob wrote:

>If the bubble is 1.5m (5') diameter it could accommodate an adult human in a near lotus position.

>surface area is 4 x pi x (0.75)^2   or about 7 square metres.

>Assuming space blanket like thickness (mylar emergency blankets) the collapsed package is going to be >phablet sized.

 

OK, so I’m not too far out.

>I'd regard this as the lower bound of size given material requirements. This also ignores a pressurisation >system and gas supply.

Yes, I did wonder about that.  Perhaps that’s what the actual bulk is about.

>Computing/recording/locator beacon capacity is strongly tech level dependent.

Good thought, I hadn’t considered varying it like that.

 

Evyn wrote:

>From jTas 5;

 

>When folded, the rescue ball is a cylinder about 5 cm in diameter and about 10 cm long. When deployed, >it forms a sphere slightly over one meter in diameter which contains air sufficient to last one person for >from one to two hours.

 

Doh!  Of course, I always forget the journals when thinking of sources.  Nice, thank you.

 

Richard wrote (amongst some really helpful stuff):

 

>- do they have 'logging' facilities that would mark date/time/ship of inflation?

>Of course! These upload automatically to the ship/facility, since the darned things are a supply officer's >nightmare come to life (e.g. disposable and legally-required yet expensive as all get out). 

 

Hmm, I hadn’t thought about logging from that angle.  I was rather thinking along the lines of what info would be retrievable when found (in space).

 

>Bubble Club

 

Very nice!  Another wrinkle I hadn’t thought of!  Great.

 

> That line should have ended thusly: "reused.)"

 

I guessed.

 

Anyway, here’s what came to me on the bus the other morning which sparked the questions.

 

A String of Pearls

In an out of the way system, at the very edge of sensor range, an odd signal turns out to be a string of rescue balls.  All the occupants are long dead.

 

The logs of the balls will give a date and time stamp of when they were launched – some months back – and the ship they were launched from.  There are files of vids from the occupants, a random assortment of people in various states of panic, calmness, terror, resignation and in various states of dress.  Some bodies look as if they’ve just fallen asleep, some look terrified.  All are perfectly preserved in the cold vacuum of space. 

 

The messages are mostly farewells to loved ones and there’s the odd one that mentions an ‘attack'.  One is even a complex series of financial instructions from a Vice President Sartro for a PA which seems rather stupid until the final tag, that this will provide for three young, dependent nieces.

 

A little further away is a proper escape pod almost down to its last erg of power but with one occupant just barely alive in low berth conditions.  IF Hana Vaali can be revived the PCs will find it’s a junior member of the ship who will be shocked to find she’s the only survivor, but she will have details of the attack that took place.  If she can’t be revived, the pod’s log may cover the basics.

 

1.  A merchant ship was attacked by pirates who killed the crew but spaced the passengers in their view ‘humanely’ giving them a chance to survive.  Vaali got missed in the round up and managed to make it to an escape pod.  However, she’ll want to hunt down the attackers and will arrange for the system’s government to offer a bounty the PCs may be interested in.

 

2. As 1 but there’s no bounty and the PCs will have to decide whether or not to help Vaali regardless.

 

3. Vaali is struck by survivor’s guilt and employs the PCs to track down Satro’s nieces to ensure they’re cared for.

 

4. Vaali isn’t in fact crew but one of the pirates who had second thoughts about the whole enterprise.  The PCs may detect something odd about her story that raises their suspicions.

 

5. Vaali is actually the sister of Sartro and the mother of his nieces.  He was on the ship having finally caught up with her after she abandoned her kids due to a drugs problem.

 

6. Vaali is actually an agent who was on the trail of Sartro, a white-collar criminal who has embezzled MegaCredits.  Both of them were on the wrong ship at the wrong time.

.

 tc