This is a project I’m working on with Bill Logan, the creator of the FrontierSpaceTM role-playing game. This will be a module for that game designed for somewhat advanced characters. Bill created the general outline of the adventure, the star system, and the PC’s ship, but I’ve been working on a lot of the rest of the details. I suspect that as we get further along Bill will be adding in additional details and material as well.
As I was writing up this outline, and the one for the Sathar Assault Carrier, I realized that while the spoiler alert icon was an interesting idea, almost everything I’m creating is for the GM side of the screen and so it is all spoilery. I’ve decided to just drop that icon and not worry about it going forward, both on this project and the others. On to the outline.
Ghost Ship Osiris
Project Tag: Osiris
Level
A FrontierSpaceTM adventure for 4-6 characters of rank 1-2.
Tagline from the Title Page
A team of corporate troubleshooters is sent to Outpost Osiris to solve a dangerous threat. What they find may change the political, technological, and scientific landscape of the frontier forever.
Premise
The Nebula Vista corporation operates the Osiris mining base in the inner asteroid belt. The miners uncovered something dangerous a few days ago and have requested help. The PCs are being sent in to investigate and assist the mining team.
Basic Story
Outpost Osiris is a Nebula Vista Corporation mining and research base on a mineral-rich asteroid in the Duergan’s Star System. They mined deep into the rock, following unusual readings from their mining scanners. They located what they believe to be the ruins of an ancient alien starship, somehow embedded deep in the asteroid’s core. While probing its exterior, they somehow awakened it from its slumber. Its proximity defense system attacked them, and they were forced to retreat to the warehouse complex on the asteroid’s surface. They tended their wounds and sent a request to NVC for a team of troubleshooters to assist.
Unknown to the miners, their discovery attracted the attention of a crew of independent scavengers who believe such a find would bring forth untold riches. The crew, commanded by Captain Thrawl, intercepted the mining outpost’s call for aid and has contacted a group of hit men on Hawthorne (the closest known NVC administration facility) to stop any departing troubleshooter team, or at least slow them down. Thrawl and his crew landed and took over operations at the facility, hoping to get as much salvaged alien tech as they could before the NVC team arrives. Thrawl explored the alien starship and found a very valuable piece of alien tech: a “phase screen” generator, but lost several men in the process of trying to decouple it from the reactor core.
Hiring hitmen is a bold move for Thrawl and his kind. They’re not normally this violent unless they believe they have vast wealth at their fingertips. The scavengers aren’t looking for a fight. They will dump their prisoners and escape with a cargo bay full of looted alien tech at the first sign of an NVC ship approaching, reluctantly abandoning the phase screen generator.
The activities of the scavengers have activated alien security robots which are not moving through the mining complex. The PCs will need to neutralize the robot threat, pursue Thrawl, investigate the alien ship to remove the phase screen, and fight off an attack by Thrawl and a rag-tag scavenger fleet bent on capturing the phase screen.
Materials Needed
- System map showing the location of the planets and asteroid belts
- Star system description (partially done by Bill)
- Deck plans of PC ship (already done by Bill)
- Deck plans for Thrawl ship
- Stats for the various robots
- Map of Outpost Osiris
- Deck plans for alien ship
- Details on the aliens
- Bio for Thrawl and other significant NPCs
- Stats for all NPCs, both scavengers and miners
- Table of rumors for the PCs to know/learn (partially done)
- Final adventure write-up
Last Words
That’s the basic outline for this project. This one is slightly different as it is a collaborative project between me and Bill. As such, I’ll only be posting what I work on here on the blog. To get all the details you’ll have to wait for the final product.
Now that the three projects are laid out, it’s time to start working on the details. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, let me know in the comment section below.
OK, I like the general idea and I’d definitely like to run the adventure with my StarFrontiers campaign .. HOWEVER .. I think the plot is TOO BASIC
—- Here’s how I will likely run it —-
My campaign deals with alot of Tech and science types, with a single military type character … I will have this as one of the 10+ mission options that are already in play .. the trick is to low sell it .. Archaeological dig site found, presumed to be ancient Terran (or Dralis…) __ my group have their own company (and their own ‘shell’ company when funding seems a bit sketchy to launder to credits) .. the science dudes will jump at a chance to go into a mining site and do their “thing” .. The MINERS are really the THRAWL pirates .. and little hints come to the players through interaction and game play that something seems a bit off (maybe if they don’t catch on they find the body of the Real Mining Chief Engineer!) … then things get a bit hairy from there … maybe deal with pirates or captured because they need the ‘scientists’ to figure out the alien-tech contraband .. but then maybe party #3 comes alive (the Aliens in hibernation, or maybe just their organic robots) and the pirates and the Players have to escape with mining asteroid and start pulsing to JUMP .. working together \ parting ways \ fighting over the alien contraband … hmmm… something like that