June Dune - House Solis on Arrakis

Dune: The Roleplaying Game
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I started my Dune June mini-campaign today at my LFGS group we have started.
A very different group to my normal one, being most male teenagers (and one young adult). So on average about 25 years younger than I am used to.
Luckily I only seem to have one murderhobo amongst them.

I am using several of the pre-written adventures as jumping off points for my campaign to cut down on the amount of work I need to do. Though as some of them have the core book I have shifted things around and changed key plot elements to throw them off in case they have read the adventure in the back.

They chose to create a House Minor focussed on Espionage Produce named House Soulless, but it was too close to the bad guys of my first campaign to pass up, so I tweaked it to House Solis.
Two of them used my pregens while the others created their own characters. A motley bunch consisting of the heir to House , his mercenary bodyguard, 2 mentats, a doctor and a negotiator (Seemingly to keep an eye on the heir, our resident murderhobo)

House Solis has a sub-fief on Arrakis for spice mining while their House Major, Ecaz, controls it.
Things have gone well but recently spice production has dropped off. The Lord has tasked his son with resolving the issue as he sees fit.
Narrowing down the losses to a specific region they headed for the Carryall Graf Von Dreissen which seemed to be at the centre of it all.
Welcomed on board by Jaris Obregon they quickly worked out that the place was not well maintained and that the commander was incompetent. A fact borne out by the explosion of a compressor as a harvestor was being unloaded. Jumping into action they rescued the crew in danger and shut down the systems. Though a complication rolled by the Heir meant a large chunk of the spice was ruined.

Realising that the compressor had been sabotaged they narrowed down the main suspect to a workman named Eulor, who had recently gotten into an argument with the commander and been reassigned to a spice depot shortly after he had apparently done the maintenance on the compressor. Making a note to deal with the commanders incompetence later they took a swift Thopter he had provided them and headed for the spice depot.

They made good time across the desert until they were within a dozen kilometers of the depot when the cut fuel line caught fire sending the 'thopter crashing to the ground. Grabbing what they could they headed for the nearest rock formation as the rippling sand tore open beneath the 'thopter and a sandworm swallowed it whole.
After waiting out the heat of the day, the party travelled at dusk from rock formation to rock formation towards the spice depot.
About half way there they realised they were being observed by Fremen. Despite the Heirs desire to immediately attack the negotiator called out to the Fremen indicating their peaceful intentions and desire to avoid conflict.
Negotiations went fairly smoothly after this. With the Doctor offering up some of his medical supplies to the Fremen and them giving a gift of a thumper in return to ensure their passage to the spice depot would be smooth.
Even the Heir seemed to come round to them at this point. Seeing the advantage in being able to direct sandworms to attack their enemies…

Arriving at the spice depot and surprising everyone by walking out of the desert up to the simple boundary fence. After a scramble by the small guard contingent when they realised who had turned up they were suddenly very deferential. Demanding to know the guard captains name he was suddenly promoted from mook to named NPC!
Meeting the boss of the depot, the confused Metzos, they settled in and had Eulor brought in for interrogation. Trying to the keep Heir from constantly telling him he should be killed.

This was a fun interrogation scene with the negotiator and various other PC going back and forth with Eulor about what happened on the Graf Von Dreissen. Eulor for his part was very dismissive about the maintenance on the carryall and the competence of the commander. Which actually had the players nodding along and agreeing with him.
They were able to pick up that while he was telling the truth, he was also concealing things.
They continued to press on this culminating in the negotiator using Mask of Power to make it seem like he had a dossier on what Eulor was actually up to.
At this point Eulor kicked the table into the negotiator and tried to make a break for the window. Swiftly stopped by the bodyguard, he shifted tack and shouted to Metzos that they knew about the smuggling operation and were going to kill everyone connected to it.

Suddenly the situation shifted with two factions forming amongst the depot workers, the smugglers and loyalists. The negotiator chose to throw in his Determination to ensure that the Guard Captain and his squad were on the loyalists side.
With Eulor still trying to incite matters and the negotiator trying to calm things everything swung in the balance before they hit on the idea of offering the smugglers free passage off the base on one of the 'thopters on the understanding that Eulor stayed as the fall guy and they didn’t return to House Solis territory.
After a bit of back and forth this was agreed to.
While this was going on the Heir, annoyed he couldn’t just kill everyone, snuck off and sabotaged the 'thopter. I’m sure this betrayal won’t come back and bite them in the future.

With the Smugglers gone the players turned their attention back to Eulor. His more workman like demeanour gone, he viewed them with distain bordering on disgust.
It was quickly clear to the players that he held a great hatred for House Solis. Viewing them as violent, immoral scum. Careful probing and some record cross referencing by the mentats revealed that his family had probably been unfortunate collateral damage on one of House Solis espionage missions.
Picked up by a currently unknown House he had been offered his revenge on House Solis. Infiltrating via the smugglers he had been sabotaging spice mining operations in the area. Having no care for the smugglers, especially since they had abandoned him, he happily gave up their base. Prevented from killing himself by the players he told them that the others would finish matters.
The players were feeling a bit sorry for him at this point and decided to ship him off to prison, determined to not let him become a martyr. The doctor decided to have a last therapist talk to him before he went. At which point we got the first double crit of the session.
We left it with poor Eulor bawling about his lost family and his choices since then, but possibly beginning to get some closure.

So this was a very different game than what I am used to running. With a much younger group, most of whom have only played D&D before, I couldn’t predict their actions as well as I am used to. I also had to spend more time reigning in the murderhobo (thankfully he doesn’t know much about Dune so I didn’t have to worry about the Lasgun/Shield interactions…)
They all enjoyed it and I think it has opened some eyes to the world of RPGs they may have never thought of.
Next week is the follow up on their main clue. The location of the smuggler base to see what else they may know about the infiltration of House Solis by their unknown enemies.

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This week was another manic one, though the players seem to be settling down. Even the murderhobo wasn’t as violent (though he did still kill someone).

It is really gratifying to see the players develop as Roleplayers between the weeks. I’ve run for my group for so long (20+ years) that I’ve missed the wonder of players being introduced to nuanced gaming for the first time. Hard work steering them still.

The session started off with a series of investigations in Carthag. The players wanted to know which of their rival Houses were on planet. After a meeting with an information broker they learnt the name of the smuggling group that had been robbing their shipments, the Boselli gang.

They also learned that their rival House Strobel had a legal import/export business on Arrakis.

Splitting the party (the bane of a GM) two of them headed to the dive bar, the Eastern Wasteland, where they had heard some of Boselli’s gang hung out. Identifying them amongst the gossip they befriended them and proceeded to get them thoroughly drunk. This made it much easier to wheedle out their bases location.

They had a brief stop off outside to chase down someone who had been spying on them and be given a name of the underworld equivalent of Robin Hood (got to love natural 20’s).

The rest of the group decided to break into House Strobel’s warehouse & offices. Leaving the Noble outside to keep watch (with strict instructions not to kill anyone) the infiltrator and mentat broke into the offices. They were looking for links to the Boselli gang or failing that blackmail material.

Despite almost getting caught (some wonderful improvised RP by the mentat with a pair of guards) they managed to search the offices and find nothing linking House Strobel to Boselli, but plenty of blackmail material on House Strobels activities on Arrakis.

Outside the offices one of the workers came up to the Noble and began demanding to know what they were doing there and to clear off. The Noble, despite being in disguise, took objection to the insult and not only started a fight, finished it with a blade. Leading to him being chased away by a large number of the workers friends who were out for his blood in revenge.

A few days later they returned to House Strobel for some mundane negotiations. Part way through they revealed they knew about their activities and blackmailed them to stay out of House Solis’ way while on Arrakis. Whilst they thought about trying to get more advantages, they felt that removing one of their minor rivals from interfering while they tracked down the active rival was more beneficial in the immediate future.

With House Strobel dealt with they launched a strike upon the Boselli gang’s hideout. They spent quite some time strategizing and planning their attack (a great difference to how they had previously acted). Like all plans, however, it rapidly fell apart upon contact with the enemy. Especially since Metzos from last session had made it back to base after their ‘thopter crash and was in no mood to let the players betray them again.

With half the party held up at the entrance to the base, the infiltrator & Noble snuck on to the landing pad and set of explosions in the fuel supply. With their enemies divided the PCs focussed on killing Andros Boselli himself to destabilise the gang.

Despite taking several blows they succeeded in their assassination and fled the base in one of the gangs own ‘thopters. Confident that the Boselli gang was going to be out of commission for some time.

I called it there as we had at least one of the players mothers waiting for them to finish (Never had that in one of my games before…) Next week I have several players missing, but they are all looking forward to continuing the game until the end of June.

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My players continued to be enthused about Dune, to the point where a couple of them have gone out and bought the pdf. I’m taking this as a win.
The Heir & his bodyguard were absent this week due to family functions, but I did have the dad of one of the players turn up. He brought his own character, the brother of the Lord and leader of a industrial sabotage team. House Solis continues to live down to it’s reputation…
I used Coriolis Storm as my base this week, with a couple of tweaks to fit it in.

Returning from an inspection in the desert the players were asked to check in on a weather station that had sent a brief call for help and then gone dark. Being the suspicious lot that they are they got a site roster and immediately focussed on Beldan Rusk, a former house trooper with a discipline issues who was working as a technician at the station with his wife, Iris and two others.
They did a couple of sweeps over the station before coming into land in a bit too hard, a complication causing repairs to be needed on the 'thopter before it could take off again. With a powerful storm closing in they weren’t going anywhere until tomorrow morning.

Checking out the landing pad they managed to identify the explosive on the fuel drums and disarm it before it could be triggered. Moving to the main dome they carefully entered and did an initial sweep of the main area, finding the technician Albus slumped over the table in the galley having been stabbed. The doctor, in the process of checking him noticed that the water in his glass was slightly off. A few tests later he identified that it held some form of novel toxin that highted emotions, especially the negative ones.

Realising they hadn’t checked the greenhouse they decided to split the party! Half of them headed for the greenhouse while the others checked the closed bedrooms.
In the greenhouse they discovered the dead body of Lucinda, one of the scientists, caught in a shigwire trap and propped up on a garden fork. Realising that the place reeked of fuel they decided to rapidly retreat back to the main dome as an explosion went off inside where the others were.

Inside the others had checked out one of the rooms, finding the access to the underground stores had be removed and the drop hidden beneath a rug.
Opening the other room had the negotiator diving for cover as a shot rang out. A vague silhouette could just be seen inside the room. Deciding to go for surprise the mentat dashed forward and stabbed the person. Only to realise that it was a female body held up with shigawire and leaning on an explosive device. A valiant move roll got him out before the charge went off.
Realising that the storm was now hitting hard the negotiator pressed the button to close the shutters. Amazingly the player made the roll to avoid injury (His dodge rolls were amazing this session, every other roll less so).

The party returning from the greenhouse almost ran into a fresh shigawire trap that had been laid across the main door. Knowing it wasn’t there earlier they knew that someone was still present and trying to kill them.
Back in side and having boobytrapped the door in they went about systematically checking the place. Finding a time bomb in the underground stores they handily disarmed it, just as the power went out, plunging the base into darkness.

While half the party were still underground the front door rattled, but did not open. The players prepped an ambush and waited. Only to be caught out when the window in the galley blew open and a figure dived in firing at the players from behind, while screaming that he wouldn’t let them get him.
A desperate fight broke out with the Lords brother badly injured but the attacker successfully restrained. Once the Lords brother woke up he threated the other characters to not let anyone know what had happened to him. (The family seriously has anger issues)

Now that they had him restrained they identified their assailant as Beldan Rusk, their initial suspect. He was still in the middle of some form of psychotic episode, convinced the party was after him, especially the Lords Brother as ‘everyone knows what he does’.
Calming him down and giving him a mild sedative they managed to get more of the story out of him. Earlier in the day someone they knew from the House workers had dropped off some more supplies at the base and quietly warned him over a drink that the House was after him and he was being set up. Everything after that was a bit of a blur. All he remembers is people being after him and fighting them.
Pressing for a name of who dropped the supplies he does recall that: Metzos. From one of the spice depots. He often volunteered for the supply runs, said he liked the solitude of the long distance 'thopter trips.

The players recognised the name. Metzos was the smuggler they had double-crossed and then killed his groups leader. It seemed he had a grunge against the House now.
They set up some plans for next session as we were almost out of time.
Setting up a fake scenario where the Heir would be at a lightly defended medical facility and ensuring knowledge of it would get out through the smuggler network, where Metzos still had friends.
They weren’t sure if they should intervene before or after the assassination attempt though… But that is a question for next week.

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So final session today and it was a big one. 7 players, so the maximum I can handle.

They had prepped their facility with hidden troops and explosive booby traps concealed around the Medical building where the Heir was being ‘treated’.

Arrakis Medical Facility
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(modified version of Alnor Bay from my main campaign)

The discovery of a dead body of one of their guards despite their having a full headcount sent them scurrying around searching for the infiltrator.
I used the spice blow tokens for this. Each building had a token and they needed to get to a score of +3 to find the infiltrator. It took them searching almost all of the sites to succeed and discover that they had a Face Dancer trying to sabotage things.
It didn’t take long for them to subdue it, by which point they had received a distress call about a crashed Carryall nearby. Despite them being fairly certain it was a trap one of the Mentats headed out with a squad of troops to investigate.

Unsurprisingly it was a trap. :astonished: Leaving the troops to fight back the Mentat sabotaged all the ornithopters and fled back to the base having set off a thumper. Regardless of who one the fight no-one out there was likely to survive.

Back at the facility the main assault had begun. Mercenaries were pushing in from the north intent on breaching the hospital. The players troops fought back leading to a swirling melee by the Labs.
Inside the hospital the Heir was holding off waves of mercenaries who just couldn’t land a hit on him. The disguised troops were fighting back while the Heirs bodyguard and Metzos faced off in a personal conflict which would end with the smuggler unconscious and restrained.

As the third turn rolled round more 'thopters swept over disgorging well equipped and disciplined troops into the fray before strafing the melee by the Labs, not caring about either side there.
Realising this was a third force, most likely House Askelson, the negotiator tried to bluff them by gloating that this was a diversion to draw their forces away from their base.
He had some success, enough to make the enemy commander uncertain.

Within the hospital the Heir had finished off his enemies and with the certainty of youth and murderhoboness he decided to attack the fresh enemies who were now engaged with the troops protecting the medical facility.
In the skies above the returning mentat decided to try and board the enemy 'thopter. One determination spend later he had ejected the gunner and was threatening the pilot.

Down on the ground the Heirs uncle had cleared the East of the complex and proceeded to call his troops back from the medical facility. Leaving the Heir surrounded without any support.
The negotiator once more contacted the enemy commander and offered a truce, each side would remain in their current locations and then withdraw. Despite being threatened that they had the Heir surrounded he seemed unconcerned.

The heir attempted to break out and fled through the medical facility towards his (supposed) allies. At which point the twisted mentat triggered the explosive booby traps, bringing the facility down on his head.

I called it at that point and we moved into narrative epilogue with uncertainty over if the Heir survived. (Though the player wanted a post credits scene of a hand bursting through the rubble to clutch a knife)

Despite having to negotiate a bit of inter-party fratricide (nepoticide?) all the players, including the betrayed one, enjoyed themselves. There are requests for another campaign, which I will think about. This one was exhausting.
I can safely say that I have definitely encouraged them to experiment with other genres and systems. They move onto Wrath & Glory by a fellow GM next. After summer I might run another campaign, hopefully I will have Cohors Cthulhu by then.

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The player from my original campaign decided to create the crest for House Solis as they connected both games.

As House Solis has a background in pharmaceuticals as well as being an all round dodgy, backstabbing House she went for a stylised potion bottle that could also be viewed as a dagger.

House Solis
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