The module “Star Spawn of Volturnus (SF2)” has the following suggested additional adventure:

Solving the mystery of Lizard Head rock. This strange rock formation is shaped like a giant lizard's head. The Eorna have always wondered about it, what it is, where it came from, who made it, etc. They have heard that there are large numbers of Yernoids in that area, but have never investigated these reports.

It always struck me that this is an odd little tidbit thrown in at the end of the series. Now, by the time your players are through with SF0 –SF2, they may be ready to go gallivanting elsewhere than being stuck for some vague adventure idea on the planet of mystery.

A little more imagining needs to be done about the Eorna. They are portrayed in the modules as being a peaceful, gentle race… a peaceful race that manufactured combat and warbots that could evolve into the Mechanons… a gentle race that had a vast underground command post with various sensors to scan space for hostile ships.

Makes one wonder if the Eorna of 900+ years before were really all that peaceful or gentle. Maybe they were as peaceful or as gentle as your average human or vrusk or dralasite… or yazarian. Before becoming a high tech race, they certainly had a number of hostile flora and fauna to contend with. Everything from Megasauruses to Land Sharks, Land Whales, Air Whales, Magma Monsters, Roc-like eagles and the such, so the Eorna couldn’t have been naïve about possible dangers when they went into space.

Now, did it strike anyone else as odd that the Sathar are masters of hypnosis and cybernetic/genetic engineering and yet so are the Eorna? Were the game designers hinting at a deeper connection between the worms and dinos?

There was a story in Star Frontiersman to that effect – that maybe the Sathar weren’t so unknown to the Eorna and something went wrong in their interactions.

How long were the Eorna actually exploring before the Sathar decided to wipe them out? I know the modules say it was a relatively short time, but a short time compared to what? Was it decades? A little less than a hundred years? Or maybe a century or two?

If they terminated the Eorna with extreme prejudice – to use a little Apocalypse Now lingo – why were there so many other species on Volturnus that survived? There were still enough proto-Kurabanda, proto-Edestekai and proto-Ul-Mor to be genetically manipulated to make into intelligent races… and then there was a failed attempt to work on silicon lifeforms and the Rogue Crystals were created.

Others have written little fill-in adventures for Volturns, such as Tom Verreult’s “Volturnus Desert Encounter” in Star Frontiersman, or Jim Young’s “Eornal Defense Installation” and the “Eorna Lunar Defense Battery” in Frontier Explorer.

There’s even another fan-created Volturnus race, the Arborean, by R. Kevin Smoot in a Star Frontiersman issue…

But now I return to Lizard Head Rock and a possible scenario for it.

So, was TSR trying to give game referees the option of making a branch of the Yernoids intelligent like the Ul-Mor, Kurabanda, Edestekai and Mechanons? Possibly. But I for one think Volturnus has enough native and genetically enhanced intelligent lifeforms. The Yernoids already seem to be a primitive race similar to the lokkuku of Alcazzar or the Sapes in intelligence.

Fan speculation – which I think I’ve read elsewhere on the starfrontiers.us site – is that the Eorna probably didn’t think the Yernoids were worthy of being “raised up” in intelligence. So, why don’t we leave them as semi-intelligent beings, probably with Log/Int scores of about 15-20 and capable of making spears and using primitive tools.

So who built Lizard Head Rock and why?

Some other Eorna who didn’t participate in the Great Mission?

Or, can we provide some other answer?

If the Eorna were capable of exploring their surrounding systems for a period of time – a century or two – before bringing the wrath of the Sathar down on them (deserved or undeserved), then they probably visited a number of star systems in the Frontier/Rim area. They might have established a few colonies too (as has already been speculated by others here on starfrontiers.us).

It is very likely that the Eorna would have encountered the Ifshnit, Humma and Osakar… (Yes, I know these races probably weren’t even in the minds of the Volturnus module writers, but allow me to continue.) …and interacted with them. A few Eorna may have been left behind on those worlds when the Sathar nearly annihilated their fellow dinos.

The Ifshnit, Humma and Osakar probably had not attained spaceflight capabilities when the Eorna encountered them, but the dinos might have sought to “improve” the more primitive cultures through education and possibly some genetic manipulation. Several hundred years after the Day of Doom, the Rim races achieve spaceflight and then Void travel, creating their own interstellar society even as the Frontier is being settled by the Humans, Vrusk, Dralasites and Yazarians.

Maybe the Rimmers went in search of their dino benefactors, found Volturnus (and probably Anker) in ruins and left a monument behind – Lizard Head Rock, before departing back to home. Every so often, a Rim ship might visit the Zebulon system with the intent of surveying it for future colonization, but then they start encountering the Sathar and fight defensive wars.

Then one day Truane’s Star and the Star Devil disrupt the status quo on Volturnus. The Rimmers detect several Sathar warships heading on a vector toward Zebulon and mount another expedition to Volturnus.

A scout ship arrives. It detects the Truane’s Star/UPF war fleet in orbit around Volturnus, but no worms, so they depower and stealthily slip by and land on the planet at Lizard Head Rock.

About this time the adveturers/Truane’s Star/UPF survey team also takes a jaunt over to the monument and… voila, you have a first contact situation.