Moving Targets
Set-up: The characters visit the Freeport on Siakwar at the wrong time. Three mercenaries decide to hold a contest to impress the local Assassin’s Guild. They have randomly chosen a group from the crowd, and are each trying to kill as many members of that group as possible within one solar day. The characters have been randomly selected.

Action: While on the world, the characters somehow tip their hand to show that they aren’t locals, and that they are at least somewhat of a challenge to an aspiring bounty hunter. This can be accomplished through a deal gone wrong, a bar bet, an old “score” on the part of one of the PC’s, or a brawl. In any case, the encounter is short-lived, but the characters catch the attention of the neophyte assassins.

Finding out they’re targeted won’t be too difficult. This is amateur night, after all. A few grenades detonate just far enough away to warrant suspicion, a planted poison capsule is ineffective against a certain species (with possible interesting side effects), a few oddly timed firefights seem to break out just before they enter or leave a given area. Each time, some sort of clue remains behind, like a residual smell (for the Luxan or Vorcarian PC’s) or an overheard conversation about the impromptu contest. This eventually leads to a chase through the city while the characters attempt to either find a place to make their stand or start tracking the assassins themselves.

If the characters defeat the amateurs, the real members of the Guild curtly thank them for cleaning up their mess. Any bounty contracts on the players will be overlooked for their duration on the freeport. The Guild may offer them a boon to help smooth things over. (GM’s discretion, but make it painless for the Guild to grant. The “killers” weren’t real threats to them.)

The Guild will get involved in the fight only if the PC’s are clearly over their head. Why would they stick their necks out for the party? The candidates make the huge faux pas of publicly naming the Guild in their efforts. The Guild takes offense to these unsolicited upstarts for tainting their names. Of course, if any of your characters have bounties under the group’s contract, they will have to negotiate with the Guild once the fireworks die down…

Sick and Tired
Set-up: A group of Sheyang pirates decide that the characters’ ship is worth attacking and boarding, but they don’t want to actually engage in combat. Thus, they expose the characters to a slow-acting disease, then attack.

Action: The disease is contracted through a Sheyang informant working as a bartender, or service worker who transmits the contagion when the PCs are planetside. The disease causes disorientation and vertigo within 1D6 solar days after leaving the port. As it progresses, it will cause chills and trembling within an additional 1D6 days.

Since the disease is unknown and defies analysis (due to lack of a specific type of Sheyang scanning equipment), the characters should probably turn around and go back to the port. The infection is very contagious, and spreading it to other ports could be catastrophic. Regardless of what they decide, the Sheyangs take the time to catch up. They send a boarding party of four individuals (three soldiers and a technician), aboard a stolen Peacekeeper Prowler. Even if they manage to damage the Prowler, those four Sheyangs get through. If the characters lose this fight, they have their ship commandeered. The Sheyangs cure them of the disease, and in form them of a plan to sell them into slavery. If the characters play a successful game of cat and mouse with the Sheyangs, the technician threatens to kill himself in the engine room (and thus destroy the ship), unless they surrender. The characters need to subdue him or talk him down. If they do not, he commits suicide, blowing himself up and attempting to take out the engine in the process.

A sample of the cure is aboard the Sheyang vessel, and it is remarkably easy to synthesize. It can be discovered without difficulty once the Sheyangs are dispatched.