 January 7, 2016 - 6:54am | Poka-dot lightning tree oasis' in the barren aeras of Cyclops, evidence of the general environmental collapse. Players should discover how life works on cyclops, identify and name creatures. How to drive this investigation? The plateau: area with none of the metal eating creature and thus a full and possibly pristine ecosystem. Heliopes connection? Proto heliopes are more primitive, is there any evidence of klikks? PCs will need to deal with ongoing hostile environment issues. Heat from green house effect and replenishment of water supplies water filtration equipment left unattended is susceptible to the metal eating creatures. Lightning will be striking robots and drones, can strike and damage equipment on ship is ship not grounded, metal rod and grounding cable susceptible to the metal eating creatures. Heliopes primitives can be problematic. Lightning rod tree was designed with screwing with PCs in mind. Ruins and remains: can these be dated? Isotope dating will require several skill checks. Klikk ruins? Or heliopes ruins? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
January 7, 2016 - 7:07am | In conjunction with past klikk presence I want to include an NPC with telepathy or empathy. She can be a medical doctor with a science specialty to explain her inclusion on the expedition. (Team Dr is not always a popular choice with players, as everyone likes being a gun slinger). By referee fiat she will be abducted by end of adventure and become the core 4/ klikk interface - basically a rip off of the story line in StarCraft where the girl who is a ghost (telepath) is taken and mutated by the zerg becomes the "human" face of the zerg. I'd like for her to tell the PCs that "The Klikks are rising" and that the frontier will be assimilated or wiped away. Fun stuff and high stakes. Her kidnapping should come close to the end of the Mysteries of Cyclops module with the change in her being revealed in Adventure 2. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
January 7, 2016 - 7:35am | PCs will have a scout ship with ground vehicle air drones (robots lvl 1-2) and some other bots and equipment. 2 water purifiers tents and assorted expedition equipment. Upon arrival in the vicinity of Cyclops they detect a radio signal with a "Help me Obiwan Kenobie" message loop. This should force a landing in the barren areas first instead of the plateau. A small free trader stumbled on the system landed and because of hostile environment never lifted off. Someone from crew put a radio (not sub space) and parabattery in cave and set it to broadcast the SOS once every 5 hours. Cave is inaccessible in a cliff like side of a rock formation. Wreck of ship can be seen, its been well eaten by the metal eaters. (This should be a warning to players but up to them to heed it. ) Toying with a sathar agent being in the crew of this ship. Or this is the ship that originally discovered the system, briefly landed and reported findings to exploration service for bounty. They've only chartedc1/2 off the jump route and prefer to take a quick bounty for their information and let the exploration service do the dirty work. However, since this crew has wagged their tongues while drinking a sathar agent overhears and learns of their little adventure and reports it to handler who recognizes that the primitive creature/potential sapient photographed might be a heliopes and this planet might be connected to an old enemy, the klikks, he orders the agent to hire this free trader at all cost and return to the planet to investigate and sub space the location to the worms. The agent will manage to kill allow of the Ships crew but not before one of them set up the SOS. So once again the table will be set for the UPF, the klikks, and the worms to clash ala Starmist part 2. PCs won't know there is a sathar ship on the way till too late I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
