The game began with the party being summoned to a meeting with the Harkonnens for a non-diplomatic matter. With the leadership of the House knowing enough to stay away the party were dispatched to represent the Nizari.
Upon arrival at the Barony spaceport a flunky appeared to guide them through the cavernous facility to the direct monorail to the Hakonnen palace. Dr Kine quickly realised they were be guided an unusual route and redirected them to a more populated path. The flunky appearing flustered left to arrange the carriage for them. Naturally the party was suspicious, but various complications means that the carriage appeared secure.
As the monorail swept high above Barony heading straight to the palace two groups of thugs revealed themselves from each end and closed in on the party. What followed was a brief and bloody combat resulting in 3 dead bodies inside the carriage and one unfortunate member bodily ejected from the monorail by Kreig. (A useful minor conflict to introduce the rules)
At the palace the party were briefed that House Novebruns has recently taken de facto control of the Odinani system at the expense of several House Minors who had been making good profits from their operations there. The Harkonnens also desire the valuable fief and have sensed an opportunity with the recent turmoil.
House Nizari was charged to destabilise the situation in Odinani so as to enable the Harkonnens to make a play for the system directly. The Baron did not care for the methods, just their results.
((This was the initial intro, made up off the top of my head during the session after they chose to play Dune and created their House & Characters. Improvisation does seem to be one of my strong points, certainly better than my planning))
After a week to put together a more coherent plot the party arrived in the Odinani system with a small team of spies and troops. House Novebruns Naval vessels were prominently placed near the Heighliner arrival point. They seemed mostly concerned with showing their presence, though the party did notice them ordering checks on some arriving freighters.
Having done some research on the disenfranchised House Minors in the system the players decided their best course was to focus on House Reyder, a ‘Minor House’ of Mikarrol. Though calling it a House was generous at best, more a bunch of rabble & pirates whose Head frequently changed as power shifted within them. The perfect disposable assets for House Nizari to exploit.
Preferring more control than a mere arrangement with the current head in the system, they chose to undertake a plan to acquire a prominent member of the House and through manipulations and assassinations secure their promotion to Lord. An arrangement that would be enforced by means of a delayed poison they would hold the antidote for.
They identified a promising candidate, Ennis Thiago, who controlled one the Reyder’s more aggressive pirate vessels. Sending out his agents Ashley found his vessel and managed to infiltrate it with some of his people. A successful use of Hidden Motives convinced Thiago that he was Trustworthy and he was persuaded to attend a meeting at a remote processing station.
The initial meeting went well until De’ath and Krieg, who had been keeping watch outside, noticed several squads of obvious troops preparing to raid the cantina they were meeting in.
De’ath decided that the best course of action was an immediate assault as they focussed on the cantina. 6 success later (He threw his determination in to start with and spent a momentum) one of the Lieutenants and his squad were dead across the promenade. Surprised the others fought back against De’ath and also broke in via the rear of the cantina.
Within the cantina Ashley had distributed weapons he had smuggled in (to be fair to the player he had mentioned he was bringing them at the start of the session) meaning that the attacking troops were now faced with armed patrons. Kreig spent momentum to create a squad of Nizari troops and then used Bolster to pass them to Ashley who promptly attacked the squad inside the cantina in a brutal pincer attack which wiped out the squad and allowed him to incapacitate and kidnap their officer.
Falling back to their ship they escaped the station and rendezvoused with Thiago’s ship within the local asteroid belt. The beginnings of an arrangement between them were now secure, though with Thiago being kept in the dark about exactly who they worked for other than they wanted revenge against the Novebruns.
Interrogating the officer they had captured (which consisted of Kreig intimidating him, De’ath beating him unconscious and then Dr Kines using him for some experiments “What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity, so… be honest. How do you feel?”) they discovered that House Novebruns had a bounty out on Thiago and were being fed information from someone within House Reyder.
I left it there with them plotting to find this House Reyder leak and use that knowledge to get Thiago promoted to the Reyder council and onto control over the House.
It didn’t occur to me until I was hunting for ideas for the main session that the group and I have effectively created the Spacing Guild chapter from Masters of Dune, just from the mercenaries side. 
This group are much more bloodthirsty than my main group. But then they are about a third of the age as well.
There will be another 3-4 sessions of this campaign, I’m hoping to conclude it with a Harkonnen invasion of the system to have that set piece battle conclusion. But we will see what my players do.
