Traveller Campaign Update: Wishing You Were Dead in Dogtown

The PCs have escaped the Imperium and made their way into the Vargr expanses; both on the run from the law and in search of the mysterious world that Grandfather had been showing them in his visions, the secret base of the Master where the final confrontation to stop him must take place.

At this point, all the PCs are ragged at the edges. After everything they've been through, they're not quite right in the head anymore. It was OK the whole time they were running ragged non-stop from one crisis to the next, but once they end up having spend weeks at a time flying through hyperspace, they all go a little stir-crazy.

One of the PCs is literally nuts, containing the consciousness of Grandfather in his skull, and he knows its killing him.  Worse, Grandfather needs to keep him alive so he drains the energy off another crewmember, 'the Marquis', who is left in a coma. No one blinks an eye.
The Navy vet is obsessing endlessly about his recently recovered hover-cycle, not wanting to ever be away from it again. The rest of the party is just stunned the stupid thing turned out to be useful in breaking out!

And "the Professor" has basically turned into this guy:

The PCs end up, close to broke and pretty exhausted, in one of the world belonging to the 40th Fleet, a Vargr pirate kingdom.  In spite of the Vargr having really shitty planetary data, they manage to figure out a short list, eventually narrowed down to just four possible worlds, that could match the location of the Master's secret hideout.

Meanwhile, "the Gambler" starts to play some poker, with the Vargr.  As it turns out, they're easy pickings, what with having easy 'tells', wagging their tails or perking their ears whenever they have a good hand:

The PCs go to a planet where the native Vargr have taken on human cultural trappings, only that just makes them even weirder, because they get it all wrong.  They dress like someone would in a very foreign country pretending to 'dress American', they try to feed the PCs (who are all instant celebrities for being real humans) traditional human drinks like milk in a martini glass, or a rum & coffee, or a bucket of cough syrup; and traditional human foods like flan & salmon, or cereal with mayonnaise. The PCs try to have a good time anyways, except for 'the professor' who decides to have way too much of a good time, and things get more than a little weird:

Unbeknownst to most of the party, the ship gets surrounded while they're away having fun, and they get back to find themselves ambushed by several dozen Vargr pirates.  Some fast thinking on the part of the Gambler manages to stop a potential bloodbath (though at this point it wouldn't be quite clear who'd end up being bathed in blood), that almost starts when none other than the team's captain decides he doesn't really have anything to live for or lose at this point.  At the start of the campaign, he was looking for a quieter life, a retirement from a life of piracy, only to end up the most wanted man in the entire Imperium, on a mission to try to kill one to two Gods (one of whom is a fellow party member).

So the gambler ends up pretending he's a spy for the commander of the 40th.
And he's so good a liar that the Vargr aren't sure about disbelieving him. They avoid bloodshed, and take the PCs with them, to be escorted to the 40th's capital world, to meet the Pirate King, Ivan.

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