The planet is Mertactor/District 268 of the Spinward Marches, located at the fringe of the Imperium. The assignment is simple and profitable - recover a flashy artifact recently taken from a representative of DerBonne Merchants, L.I.C., and return it to Baron Edkos Volentine, a corporate director. You've got two days before your passage home, the Far Trader "Arax House", is loaded with cargo and ready to leave. There's not really enough time, but it couldn't hurt to look around - the Mertactor outback is supposed to be fairly scenic, and you might get lucky. Baron Volentine could be a useful man to make happy.
"Gambit" is a term from chess, an ancient Solomani pastime, describing the early sacrifice of a pawn in exchange for a long-term positional advantage. Baron Edkos Volentine had many pawns on Mertactor to choose from, but guess who got the job?
Welcome to Mertactor.
StarCrystal is a solitaire text adventure series based on the Traveller science fiction role-playing game system. Each episode is playable separately or in sequence as a solitaire Traveller campaign. "Mertactor - The Volentine Gambit" features five non-player characters, 200 locations, 380 interactive objects, and incidental graphic support. Playing time is 10-50 hours. The package contains a program disk, a data disk, and this booklet of documentation and Traveller background information. The game is absolutely playable by thouse who are not familiar with the Traveller system.