Each year, on the planet Na'a'bru, which translates to "The Host of
the Living", there is the Festival of the Dead.
On this day, the locals believe that the spirits of the deceased
return to the world, and undertake sundry vendettas and curses on
those they were angry at when they died.

To prevent widespread havok and mayhem, the locals recruit someone to
take into the all the spirits of the dead - the Ja'bru, literally
"Host of the Dead". A pool of people volunteer, each gaining a large
sum of money just for volunteering. Then, on the first of the year,
they all reach into a big basket of sweet biscuits, pick one, and eat
it.

One biscuit in the basket has a bone baked into it.

The person receiving the bone becomes the Ja'bru, and is feted and
fawned upon for a year. The locals try to make the Ja'bru like them as
specific people, so that when the spirits of the dead posses him, his
memories of the world of the living will blunt the vengeance of the
dead.

On the day of the Festival of the Dead, all the angry spirits come and
possess the Ja'bru...
In olden times, the Ja'bru would then be placed inside a large clay
pot, and the lid of the pot sealed, and then the pot dropped into a
deep lake, thus trapping the vengeful dead so they cannot act upon the
living.

In these more modern times, the Ja'bru is given a High Passage, sealed
in a large metal container (ie,a ship) and launched off the planet,
never to return.

This particular case:
1) Ja'bru, in the last month or so, fell in love with a woman, and
realizes that he will never see her again if he leaves the planet. He
is desperate to escape his exile, or at the very least try to arrange
for her to go with him
2) The prisoner is actually the twin brother of the Ja'bru, who
partied hard and then drugged and tricked his brother into taking his
place. Sibling rivalry gone way too far...
3) The planetary environment has certain factors which bring out
latent psi capabilities in some people. The entire ritual is designed
to focus everyone's potential psi into the Ja'bru and thus prevent it
from becoming non-latent. If the players take his guy on the ship,
he's a ticking psionic time bomb.
4) Combine 3 and 1
5) Combine 2 and 3: The real Ja'bru manifested his psi powers a week
early, sacrificed his brother to gain additional time to train, and if
he has a few months will become a Stalinist-style dictator on the
planet.
6) All is as explained,but the Ja'bru is terrified as the clock ticks
down for the Festival of the Dead, and is sure that the spirit of his
Uncle Leon is going to rend his body asunder in less than 12 hours,
even if he does get off planet. In his panic, he is completely off the
rails of anything approaching sanity. In 11 hours and 59 minutes, his
terror level will cause a very nasty heart attack...

On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 3:41 AM, Jeff Zeitlin <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
> Below is a scene to start an adventure with. You are cordially invited
> to write the adventure. The one I like best goes into a future issue
> of Freelance Traveller.
>
>
> ***************
> The manager, such as he is, of the local starport (nominally class C,
> but more like a class D in reality) calls you, the captain of a free
> trader landed here, to what passes as his office, near the entrance to
> the extrality zone. When you get there, he gestures at a person
> sitting bound and blindfolded in a chair, somewhat the worse for wear,
> with an odd-looking hat-and-mask covering his head and face, and
> explains...
>
> "I found him like this at the gate, with just a note in a local
> dialect that I can barely puzzle out if I'm lucky. The note seems to
> say that he can't stay on the planet any more - but he's clearly a
> native, so I may have misunderstood something. The note refers to him
> as "Jabru", but it's not clear whether that's his name, or some sort
> of descriptor. When I called the mayor of the nearest town to see if
> he could tell me anything more, he took one look at my 'guest' and
> literally spat the word "Jabru", said if he were seen anywhere off the
> port, he'd be killed, and walked away. He won't take my calls now; his
> assistant says he won't talk to me until "Jabru" - or maybe "the
> Jabru" - is gone."
> *****************
>
>
> Take it from there, folks!
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