 February 12, 2010 - 8:28am | Campaign Idea: PCs are hired by a slightly mysterious ship captain who has need for them to accomplish a sort of laundry list of jobs for him. (PCs dont need star ship skills for this to start) He has a list of names to be run down and found and its not as easy as just looking these people up in the phone directory. Plus occassionally he wants some old or well protected item found and or acquired. So they bounce around the Frontier in his ship which has some guns but also has cargo holds plus a few other oddities. The campaign goes like a TV series where each week its a different mission and the ship sometimes takes on cargo but the captains doesn't seem very serious about turning a profit (more like the freight business is just a cover) could even throw in a brush with pirates or other encounters that have nothing really to do with the main story line. Also the PCs will find the captain takes no notice if they engage in a little "side" shipping venture though he has to be aware of it going on. As the PCs do their job and time goes by they realize that something is odd 1. eventually they all will realize that the captain is using a holo field (80% chance to realize its a holo field) to hide his true identity from even them. If they try IR they will discover IR jamming in place. and the captain will get pretty angry over IR 2. the cargo business is just an excuse to fly around and do these odd jobs 3. some of the people they locate are odd ducks too and come across as: "crazy old wizards with a sad devotion to an ancient religion'' 4. some of those odd ducks turn up dead 1-2 days after the PCs locate them with their heads severed 5. star law and or other authorities have begun to notice that people turn up dead after the PCs ask questions about them 6. some of the artifacts they've had to steal came from very ancient archaelogical finds (possibly even Tetarach) 7. some times the captain talks with a lisp and other times a poly vox. plus he is about as bad arsed as they come with a sonic sword and martial arts. 8. The captain seems to be able to guess what everyone is thinking. 9. He avoids personal contact but if the PCs should ever really touch him they will discover that hes is "slimy" Story behind the Story: the captain is a mentalist and he and one member of each race: core 4, eorna, rim races, saurian, zuraquor etc. all are pretty much the only mentalist around and they are all paragons. The highest expression of their race with a mentalist power thrown in. What the captain is doing is collecting mentalist artifacts from all over the Frontier and even Sathar space plus he's hunting down the other paragons to fight in combat and sever their heads thereby gaining their mentalist power after a brief but powerful lightning storm. Oh yeah, and just where was the mysterious captain from? Why from the Highlands of course, that is the highlands of the sathar homeworld cause he's sathar or the sessu race if you want. Should the PCs ever penetrate the captains disguise all robots on the ship have a command trigger that will cause them to overwrite their mission to hunt down and kill the PCs (this could be discovered in the course of the campaign too. The captain may have used hypnosis on the PCs as well to prevent them from trying to resign their positions Naturally all this activity on the captains part is building to something- naturally it should be something that will threaten life, the frontier, the galaxy and or existence itself. I dont know what that threat could be but I do know this: There Can Be Only One! I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 12, 2010 - 9:04am | PC's would need to be the type that would hunt down other people with no or little questions asked. Sounds very hazardous for the PC's. Neat ideas presented. A combination of mentalist and cinematic martial arts wielding dual sonic swords! |
February 12, 2010 - 11:44am | PC's would need to be the type that would hunt down other people with no or little questions asked. Sounds very hazardous for the PC's. admittedly the PCs would maybe need to be on the shadier side of the star law. but then we dont have any declared alignments in this game. they could be dupes for the captain as well and only slowly realizing that something is up. that said this is not neccessarily a combat heavy campaign. tracking people is more of an investigative game involivng skill and ability checks more than combat. naturally enough combat will turn up but this should be a series of mini puzzle/mysteries that eventually put pieces in place to reveal a larger puzzle/ mystery. Ultimately it would be very hazardous to the PCs especially if the Captain ever decided they knew too much or had become a liability. the campaign could take a radical turn if the PCs put things together in middle stages and they "jump ship" at volturnus. where the yazirian paragon has set up a little school to train ul mor in the "ways of the mentalist" you'd get a massive battle going down with the yaz, his students, the PCs against the captain and his robots. after/before the battle the yaz and the PCs talk and the PCs begin to get an idea of the true scope of whats going on from the yaz priest/paragon. they now realize they've been helping an insidious evil and that the danger is so great that they cant just run away. They have one asset: the list of targets. so that they can try to prevent the captian from accomplishing his mission. You could also work in the Ul-mor time of oneness ceremony (when all the planet and the moons of Zebulon all align) and the PC's participation in it leads to emergent mentalist powers- oops are they now targets for teh captain? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 12, 2010 - 12:29pm | Another angle for this could be ancient (Tetararch?) cybernetics. The captain is hunting them down to remove compatible parts to add to himself. A desire to complete the whole. Maybe the captain is an ancient or from outside the frontier and is just passing through picking up the local parts. -iggy -iggy |
 February 12, 2010 - 1:16pm | Jedion strikes again! |
February 12, 2010 - 1:54pm | They have one asset: the list of targets. so that they can try to prevent the captian from accomplishing his mission. Or recruit them. :-) You could also work in the Ul-mor time of oneness ceremony (when all the planet and the moons of Zebulon all align) and the PC's participation in it leads to emergent mentalist powers- oops are they now targets for teh captain? /me likes! |
February 12, 2010 - 2:01pm | Just curious... How does the One Ring fit into all this?  |
 February 13, 2010 - 2:32pm | Don't forget the spaniard with a scottish accent dressed like a peacock to guide the party...  |
 February 19, 2010 - 6:09pm | You mean an overdressed haggis, don't you, Shadow? And, this badass...is his name Kurgan, by any chance? (Or Mister Krabs, ar, ar ar, ar ar....) "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
