Renna's Transport Service

By Morrie Mullins
Living Force Plot Director and Campaign Designer

Living Force Plot Director and Campaign Designer Morrie Mullins presents the latest in our monthly series of supplements to the campaign's newest scenarios. In "Renna's Transport Service," the Rodian female falls under suspicion when hard questions start to be asked about her business. Is everything at Renna's on the up and up, or is her good fortune due to more illicit dealings? This supplement ties into the September Living Force scenario, Outward Bound, the first part of the "Looking In" trilogy.

At the Living Force launch at Winter Fantasy 2001, characters were introduced to Renna, the Rodian female who owns and operates Renna's Transport Service. Some characters were even lucky enough to gain employment as part of Renna's security team, a fairly lucrative position that provides them with some stability and, if needed, a place to live. Recently, though, questions began to be asked about Renna, and the Rodian herself has been fairly quiet about them. The following report was filed recently in the Cularin media, but it has yet to draw any kind of action from local authorities.

Some local personalities notwithstanding, it has long been the desire of legitimate Cularin news organizations to provide fair, unbiased, and accurate reporting of current events. In that vein, we wish to critically examine the role that Renna's Transport Service (hereafter, RTS) has played in the Cularin economic structure over the past 20 months.

Renna's assistance in the fiasco surrounding House Hirskaala and its uniform theft earned her a great deal of respect in the community, as well as business. The fact that she was immediately able to capitalize on the publicity generated by the Metatheran Cartel's expulsion from the planet by hiring a number of the individuals who were key in gathering evidence and directly combating the Cartel also worked to increase her business nearly tenfold in the space of two short months.

It has been asked, by a number of individuals throughout the system, how it was that Renna came to be in such a perfect place, at such a perfect time. There is always the possibility that it was luck. In a universe that allows for an infinite number of possible actions and consequences, there will be times that fortune favors an individual to the nth degree. But these occurrences should be so few and far between that we should be very careful in attributing to chance what could be attributed to scheming manipulation.

We certainly do not wish to accuse Renna of any untoward activities. It is simply our desire to put forth the facts and allow the reader to make his or her own decision. But we believe that there is compelling evidence to suggest that, perhaps, someone should take a closer look at the business Renna is running. She would also be well advised to come forward and explain what it is we have observed over the last year.

Fact: RTS has grown 500 percent in 20 months. Its staff has outstripped the building that housed the transport service twice, and the operating budget is in excess of 100,000 dataries per year - a sizable increase from the 20,000 datary operating budget at the beginning of the prior year. The profit margin for RTS has also increased, as the cost of security in the system has risen astronomically in the wake of increased pirate activity, increased Cartel transport activity, and a rather impolite series of questions being asked about the Thaereian Military. This growth period in RTS coincided precisely with any number of other changes, so it is impossible to separate all the possible causes.

Consider this fact, however: In the same 20-month period, no other transport service has seen growth in excess of 100 percent. Business is up everywhere, and secure transport and delivery is valued, but no one is making quite so much money off it as Renna. We say, "Show us your books." Let us see where these increased profits came from. In the absence of hard data to support the increase in profitability, there are many who suggest that Renna is using her business as a front and the legitimate heroes of Cularin as a means of protecting herself from investigation. We cannot speak to the veracity of these suggestions, but they are certainly troubling.

Fact: RTS does not offer significantly better pricing structures than any other transport service in the system and, in fact, charges a slightly higher rate (in goods shipped in metric tons) than other shipping and transit concerns. The quality of the RTS fleet, though, is not substantially better than the fleet of any other transport house in Cularin, nor are its pilots or guards appreciably better-trained. What, then, is the difference in cost? Why should we believe that consumers are willing to pay so much more for a product that is no different from what they can get anywhere else? The name may play a part, but there is much more to safe transport of goods than just a name, and the people of Cularin are smarter than to be taken in by a cheap name recognition game. Again - we want to see the books. We want evidence that people really are paying this much for a service that is not meaningfully different from what they could get almost anywhere else in the system.

Fact: A large number of "legitimate" businesses in the system have ties to Nirama's smuggling organization. It is rumored that such businesses may have an easier time obtaining questionable goods and may be able to get their own goods in and out of the system more easily than might otherwise be the case. While we certainly have no hard evidence that Renna has aligned herself with Nirama, it would pose more than a small ethical problem if she had. The line between legitimate transport and smuggling is drawn very clearly in the minds of the people of Cularin, if not in the laws themselves. We would be very interested in reviewing manifests from Renna's flights, compare them with the market rates for what was shipped, and then decide whether the goods that RTS is bringing in are likely to fall within "acceptable" ranges.

The facts are the facts. They more than speak for themselves. We do not accuse Renna of any definite wrongdoing. RTS simply may have been lucky. It may have been the right company, in the right place, at the right time, making the right hiring decisions. It is also possible, though, that RTS represents a link to Cularin's criminal underworld -- and this possibility should not continue to go unchecked.

If you want to learn more about the Living Force campaign and how to take part in the adventure, this introduction will get you started.