Spoilers below! This post contains some details about three Traveller adventures, Flatlined, Islands in the Rift, and Chariots of Fire, so if you're a Traveller player who hasn't already played those, you might want to stop reading now.
I'm currently bringing my travellers through Islands in the Rift, and I followed Seth Shorkowsky's suggestion to place Anders Blixt's classic Amber Zone adventure Chariots of Fire on Colchis. The travellers had a bad second jump from Acadie, and I made Blixt's little country of Castica into something like a Caribbean paradise province where they could relax -- until someone asked them to fetch two fire engines from Handor. The government of Colchis seemed like it treated its more remote provinces like subsidiaries where the local management better sort their internal issues out, or be replaced, so I think it fit. The local environment and local production ability is at TL5 in this remote island, despite Colchis at large bing at TL 9.
One of my players, another Anders, has been passionate about Lego for 50+ years, and he's a creative, mechanical engineer with several patents in his name, so I asked him to build me a fire station where they could steal the fire engines. My input was basically how many vehicles it had to fit, and what the measures were for those vehicles. He took it from there, and made much more of this than I could have imagined!
The travellers made a trip to Colchis high port during their preparations, so that they could book passengers and load cargo, and they used their advanced sensors in Perfect Stranger to get a lot of pictures of the fire station then, so I allowed the player's to look at the model from the outside while they planned their heist, and Anders temporarily stepped into the role of an ex fire fighter NPC who had until recently worked here.
Anders had obviously planted some possible ways in for the Travellers, and besides my son, the players are a seasoned team, who were the first Swedes to take part in the Robot Wars TV show with their fighting robot Rawbot, which is still in the basement just below where we stand. They look just the same as 20 years ago.
The front of the fire station faces the main road, and that might not be the best side to approach from, even if the night is dark. A false alarm should have called out most of the fire brigade crew, and the rest will probably sleep in the top floor near the corner to the right in the picture, but the staff in the control office where they take alarm calls and direct the fire fighters, should be awake in the top floor corner room to the left, with blue windows. The yellow structure on the roof is a solar and battery powered communication station which will continue to work in case of a power loss. The tower in the far right corner is for drying hoses, and there is access to/from the roof near it via a roof window.
The back side is mainly garage ports, the two last for the ladder truck, which need 4m clearance. There are maybe more interesting things on the side of the building There is an air intake at the bottom of the hose drying tower, but the NPC fire fighter doesn't know if that's protected by the burglar alarm. There are also the air outlets at the top of the tower. The electricity to the fire station comes via the little yellow transformer building.
They discuss breaking power before going in, or sneaking in as the fire trucks exit for the diversion, but finally decide to wait a while after the bulk of people leave for the false alarm, cut out the glass pane in the door leading to the side of the garage part, visible above, and try to sneak in that way.
The aslan character rolls 11 as he cuts the glass pane with his augmented dew claw. The four travellers all sneak in and get out of plain sight for whoever is moving in the upper level.
The aslan then proceeds to go up the stairs, only to notice that someone is making a cup of relaxing tea in the middle of the night. He aims for a while, and downs him with his stun gun before he is noticed.
The stunned fire fighter is given a dose of the memory loss substance the travellers themselves suffered from on Neon five months ago. The travellers establish themselves on the upper floor.
The people in the control center hasn't noticed a thing.
Hands in the air, and just do as we say. If you just follow our instructions, you will both be fine. Now open the doors for the two big fire trucks. Thanks. Now you call the main border station and tell them that there is a fire in the rubber factory in Jaco. They should take on their gas masks as the toxic fumes might come their way, and let the fire trucks cross the border! Then these ladies also get a dose of the memory loss drug.
There they go. Not a scratch so far.
Approaching the border control, two things became apparent: 1. The scam about this being a legitimate fire department mission hadn't worked. The gate was closed and the border guards were aiming guns at them. 2. None of us really understood how combat worked with vehicles.
Fortunately the border guards all missed the fire engines, and ramming the gate only caused minor damage.
Of course, Anders wanted to show the details in the fire station we hadn't seen. After all, he had made quite an effort here...
Anders, being an automotive engineer, not a house building expert, had the idea that in case there weren't electrical power on, you'd have to get up the (out of focus) yellow staircase in the rear of the picture, and turn the big, black wheels by the big grey engines above each garage door. Two players protested, and meant that it's always possible to open garage ports from the inside by the port, for instance by pulling a chain right by the door. I'm not sure how they could be so certain of safety standards on Colchis, but this is typical discussions in our team, but since they decided not to cut the power, it didn't matter.
The fire fighters sleep in the corner room with the blue beds, and the next rooms are toilets and showers. Then there is a gym with (going clockwise from 10 o'clock) barbells, bench press, shoulder press (with a fingertip on top) a long bar with a crash mat under, wall bars, and finally a tread mill. You've seen the pantry before.
More details on the gym and pantry, and in the lower right corner, you see the classic bar for getting down quickly if you don't prefer the stairs.
Lifting off this floor, reveals some more. First, more office space below the control room.
Reception area below the pantry.
Conference room where visiting school classes get to se some suitable audiovisual presentation. Anders said the was a big flat screen, but considering the tech level, that probably means a projection screen...
Storage area under the dormitory.
