My Mutant Future campaign just took off in a ship out of the Traveller Book, a great score that I picked up at Smith Family Book Store the other day. I already owned reprinted versions of the original LBBs, but the Traveller Book includes awesome illustrations, particularly of the ships.
Thus it was that when James Bomb ducked out while party member Rok fought an honor duel with one of the Elven Champions, and went for a swim in the lake, he found what he was looking for: a spaceship.
James Bomb had a hunch this was more than just a dream, and he also had a feeling that things would go badly for the party if they stayed on this planet until one of the party members could use his Plane Shift mutation to return the group to the Mutant Future they all knew and loved. You see, the party was invited to a ceremony to be conducted at night below the castle and the party already knew that at nightfall the elves turned into werewolves, the queen and her daughter into green skinned vampires and the hairy servants into red-eyed little balls of animate fur. To make matters worse, Dr. Hops had teleported to the tallest tower of the castle (where Stang had previously spotted a garden arranged in concentric circles around a tree that perched atop a tiered platform in the center of the tower) to use his sniper rifle to cover the duel in case the elves tried anything fishy. When he arrived atop the tower, he discovered the tree had branches bearing humanoid heads of all descriptions instead of fruit, and the heads opened their mouthes and spat seeds at him. Luckily for him, his Dog Boy armor had a forcefield which deflected the seeds, and he tossed a grenade at the tree and teleported away.
The occurrence of an explosion atop the highest tower of the castle instantly brought the duel to a halt before it even began, as all the elves acted like their god had just been attacked. The queen disappeared, and reappeared momentarily to reassure her people that the Mother Tree was safe and sound. She smiled at Dr. Hops, who had casually rejoined the group around the dueling ring, and told him that he would be the guest of honor at the ceremony in two nights time. The elves relaxed, and the two combatants took their places in the center of the circle and walked away from each for the allotted number of strides.
Rok lost the duel despite a most valiant effort, and his head bounced three times upon the perfectly smooth grassy field before the surrounding elves let out a cheer for their champion and offered their condolences to the rest of the party. "Your friend died with honor. Join us in celebrating the duel!"
James Bomb quietly radioed the other party members about the space ship he had discovered in the lake, and while the elves began preparations for the party, Bozko the shape-shifting plant made air-bladders around party members' heads and ferried them one by one down to the hidden spaceship. The session ended with the party, plus one sympathetic gnomen (the hairy servitor race of the elves, this one who identified himself as Grosso was the only gnomen the party encountered capable of speech or independent action; he just crawled out of the birthing vats like that...), blasting off into space.
I love this, because now I get to essentially run a Traveller/Mutant Future game for a few sessions. I am going to go 1/2 and 1/2 Traveller and Star Trek, with a good dash of Star Wars for flavor (after all, Haiku-spouting droid IG-88 recently joined the party...).
