Kelvin Horst is a well-known and extremely wealthy merchant, head of Horst Metals Enterprises, a trading and industrial manufacturing company with offices on numerous worlds in the Lyran Commonwealth, the Draconis Combine, and the Federated Suns. For the purposes of this scenario, it is assumed that Horst has his headquarters and offices on the Steiner world of Port Moseby, close to the border with the Draconis Combine. The referee may change this to almost any other world on which the player characters find themselves, however, in order to adapt this scenario to a current, on-going MechWarrior campaign. Horstwald is Horst's palatial country estate in the hills north of Port Moseby Starport. Built within and incorporating the ruins of an abandoned, five-centuries-old garrison fortress, Horstwald serves today as a private fortress protecting Horst and his family from the numerous enemies the merchant has acquired during his years as a ruthless and aggressive interstellar trader. The characters are approached by Sendic Henning, a young, expensively dressed man representing Kelvin Horst. At least one of the characters will have heard of Horst; the man has a widespread reputation, both as an extremely wealthy and powerful merchant, and as a ruthless businessman. While no one has ever proved that Horst has worked on the far side of the complex tangle of planetary and House laws, it is rumored that he makes as much from his illicit smuggling operations (chiefly across the Steiner and Davion borders into the Combine) as from all his other business interests put together. Research by the characters will reveal that the once powerful Horst family is all but gone now. A Kurita raid twenty years ago resulted in the deaths of many of them, and the rest died in an epidemic which was widely suspected of having been released by the Kurita raiders. The Horst family is now entirely represented by Kelvin Horst, who has the reputation of being a cynical, embittered old man. Horst is in need of mercenaries with military experience and skill with weapons. The agent explains that Horst has recently received an unexpected and extremely valuable delivery which is awaiting transhipment aboard a Horst-owned interstellar freighter due into port tomorrow at noon. News of the delivery has reached certain of Horst's competitors, men who will stop at nothing to steal the delivery if they can reach it. Horst wants to hire the characters to guard the delivery until it can be put safely aboard the Horst Metals freighter DropShip and sent offworld. The Mission The characters will meet Horst, a whitehaired, scowling, fiery-eyed man of 70 years, if they accept the mission. Terms can be negotiated. Horst will be willing to pay up to Cb 3,000 per man for 20 hours of sentry duty. They will be expected to take up positions (they may plot their own strategy based on maps provided by Horst) around the Horstwald compound and stand guard until midday tomorrow. At that time, a convoyof lightarmored hovercraft should arrive from the spaceport, and mercenary troops in Horst's employ from the DropShip will take charge of the package. The characters will not be allowed to see the package. Their backgrounds have been quickly but efficiently checked by Horst's organization, and he is willing to trust them to the extent that he will provide them with maps to the grounds so that they can plan their defense, but he will not allow them to see the package itself. Horst's estate includes a sizeable force of servants and bodyguards-NPCs who will be helping to protect Horst's delivery. They are armed with rifles and pistols. Assuming that the characters have fairly extensive military experience, they will be put in charge of the entire defensive force, under the overall command of Sendic Henning who, it turns out, is Horst's senior executive assistant. Equipment The characters are expected to provide their own weapons, but, if necessary, Horst will provide a small selection of rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, pistols, laser pistols, and gyrojet rifles for the characters' use. There is an alarm system in place at Horstwald, and the characters will be shown how to work it. Personal radios, allowing the characters to communicate with one another anywhere on the estate grounds, are available. Special gear such as night-vision devices or sensors are not available, however, unless the characters are able to provide their own. Under special circumstances, the characters may be allowed to employ their own BattleMechs, if these are available, but only on the grounds outside the fortress walls. Horst himself will not be enthusiastic about the idea of using BattleMechs on sentry-go and will insist that he is expecting an attack not by a BattleMech army, but by a handful of men acting in a commando role. The characters may wish to employ them, however, because of their sensors and IR-vision devices. The NPCs The men and women who are already guarding Horstwald are servants, Horst Metals employees, and family retainers. There are 20 of them, all together, each armed with a pistol (slug thrower) and/or a rifle. A set of guidelines for creating these characters is provided in the section of this scenario entitled CHARACTER STATS. Horst will also mention that he has three dogs, trained to respond only to their handlers (three of the regular NPCs) and used to patrol the Horstwald grounds at night. The Delivery The cargo Horst wants protected is a package wrapped in paper, approximately the size and shape of a small book. It is now in the vault of Horst's personal estate. The vault is dug into bedrock and accessed through a half -meter-thick steel door. The electronic locking mechanism will open only to Horst's paImprint. Horst will be unwilling to explain what the package is, why it is important, or who the forces are who want to steal it. It will be evident in conversation with the man, however, that he is convinced that someone is going to try. More NightShadow: A MechWarrior Scenario Simulator Information Background Maps Time and Plan Running the Adventure The Intruder: Step by Step Character Stats Back to BattleTechnology 2 Table of Contents Back to BattleTechnology List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1987 by Pacific Rim Publishing. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com