This is coming on the first of July instead of the last day of June as I was hosting the RPG Blog Carnival last month and the normal day for this post was filled by the wrap-up post for the carnival. Let’s get to it.
Looking Back
As I already mentioned, last month I was host to the RPG Blog Carnival with a theme of “Organizations” and that was the source of the majority of last month’s posts. I started the month (and the blog carnival) off with a post about the True Yazira Society, a group that works to oppose the Family of One and preserve the cultural heritage of Yazira. Mid month, I wrote about another organization, the Investors, a shadowy organization that works to increase their personal wealth and power by manipulating governments and corporations throughout the Frontier. Finally, we finished the month with the wrap up post for the blog carnival.
Behind the scenes I was supposed to be working on issue 29 of the Frontier Explorer. And while I did get some work done on that, I did not get nearly as much as I should have.
I also ran a session on my online Star Frontiers game, “Skills for Hire.” There should have been two sessions but due to technical difficulties and a lack of players, the second session didn’t happen. There was a bit of development work for that game that will show up in future posts. I just have to wait for the players to get to it so that posting the details doesn’t spoil things. But there is at least a location and possibly another organization to be written about.
On the technical side, I finally got my mail server migrated and updated from my old server to the new one. My old server is now officially retired. It’s still up and running so I can access stored passwords and such on my account there but all my servers are now running on the new machine. I even started looking into an upgrade of the starfrontiers.us site but didn’t get very far on that. Upgrading the mail server allowed me to use security certificates from Let’s Encrypt instead of being completely self-signed. Going forward this will solve some of the mail issues I’ve been having with my websites since their recent migration and upgrade.
Looking Forward
Beyond the Detailed Frontier Timeline post next week, I really don’t know what this month will bring. There should be a post about a new location. I have all the maps and room descriptions, I just need the players in my online game to get there first. 🙂
I also think I’ll be doing another post on the HSS History’s Hope. This will include at least an updated map of it’s progress, a description of the ship, it’s game specs, and possibly a rough 3D image. I’m currently working on deck plans for the ship but I don’t think I’ll finish them this month.
That just leaves one post up in the air. We’ll see what comes up, possibly a writeup of the mini adventure I’m waiting to run for my game.
The main thing I’m going to be working on is issue 29 of the Frontier Explorer. My goal is to have it all done by the 15th and out to the supporters of the magazine’s Patreon campaign. That means it will be out on the 22nd for general release. If you want to get it early, consider joining as a supporter there. Although if you are already a supporter of this site, don’t feel that you need to support both.
Also related to my on-line game, I’m still planning on posting the audio of the sessions (and possibly the video as well) on-line as a podcast here on the site. I just haven’t had the time to sit down and get it all put together. I was waiting for a Windows update that would allow me to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 on my computer. That came through earlier in the month (finally, it was dated for April). If I find time between working on the Frontier Explorer and posts for the site, I’ll try to get that up.
I’ve also floated the idea of doing a podcast series reading and discussing the core rule books for the game. I posted about this on the Facebook group and it got a positive response so maybe I’ll tackle that at some point in the future as well. But probably not this month?
Your Thoughts
Do you have any ideas or suggestions on things you’d like to see in the blog? Is the rules reading and commentary postcast something that would be of interest to you? Anything I’ve mentioned that you don’t want to see? Let me know in the comments below.
It’s the end of the month and time for a wrap-up on this month’s RPG Blog Carnival. Regular readers of my blog know that I normally do a “State of the Frontier” post on the last day of the month, that post will be up tomorrow. Today we’re going to look at the various entries in this month’s blog carnival topic, Organizations.
I don’t know if the topic wasn’t very appealing, people were crazy busy, or if the blog carnival is losing steam but we did not have a lot of submissions this month. I know I’m guilty of not doing an article every month as sometimes I’m strapped for time or just don’t have the inspiration to bend the often fantasy themed topics to sci-fi. But I was hoping this month’s topic of organizations would be broad enough to appeal widely, I guess I was wrong. That said the entries we did get were great.
First up was Building a Financial Landscape with Megacorps by Phil Forbes on the Stray RPG Thoughts blog. This entry discusses how to use Keith J. Davies’ Polyhedral Pantheons system to, instead of creating gods for a setting, create a series of mega-corps that are the main influencers in a setting. Phil then goes on to apply the system to the local branches of the mega-corps and the local markets they are operating in. This provides a rich framework of connections and competing interests for the players to interact with. I found this one interesting as my preferred setting, Star Frontiers, already has a pantheon of canonical mega-corps controlling various interests throughout the setting. I’m definitely going to take a look at this system for expanding these interactions.
Next up was an entry by Andrew Girdwood on the Geek Native blog. He gave us a random secret society generator. You can never have enough random names on hand and this generator gives you an infinite supply. You choose a general genre (Contemporary, Horror, Low or High Fantasy, or Sci-Fi) and then generate a name. You can keep clicking to get new ones or until you find one that sparks your imagination. The second one I got on his sci-fi generator was “The Eternal Planet Faction.” I immediately thought of a tie-in with the True Yazira society that I posted as part of the kickoff of this month’s carnival. In this case, it’s not part of the True Yazira Society, but a faction within the Family of One and the GODCo mega-corp that is trying to recreate their homeworld. I might write that up in the future. I’ll definitely use it at some point in my game.
Next was the entry by Gonz from Codex Anathema with their entry on the Silver Arrows, a loose, crime-prevention organization that might be part of the Church of the Silver Flame in their Ebberon campaign. They even provide a variation on the Arcane Archer archetype to play a member of the Silver Arrows.
As host, I offered up two different organizations. The first as part of the kickoff post, was the True Yazira society, primarily a cultural organization striving to preserve the traditions of their homeworld but also opposing the practices of the group that has usurped authority (as the True Yaziria Society sees it) from the rightful rules of their species. The second was the Investors, as shadowy, behind-the-scenes organization that works to influence governments and corporations to increase their own wealth and power.
That’s it for this month’s RPG Blog Carnival. I hope you found a nugget you could use in your game from this month’s posts or were inspired to generate some new organizations for your world even if you don’t blog or didn’t submit an entry. For me this is just a springboard as I plan to present various organizations from my setting in future posts, not just part of the Blog Carnival. I have several ideas lined up, I just need to find the time to write them down and get them posted.
Next month’s entry is still TBD but be sure to check out the RPG Blog Carnival’s home page on the Of Dice and Dragons blog to find links to past and future topics. And come back tomorrow for my regular “State of the Frontier” Post.
I had originally planned to do a post on the HSS History’s Hope this week but I’m not quite ready for that. Instead, I’m giving you the outlines of a small town on Pale, Myha’s Beach. While I developed this as part of my Star Frontiers campaign, you could easily drop this town on to any world in any game.
Location
In my game, Myha’s Beach is located about 300-400km east of Point True on the sea coast. Here’s a map of the region around Point True.
I can’t seem to find where I recorded it, but I believe each of those grid boxes are either 300 or 350 km on a side.
History
Myha’s Beach started as a small fishing village founded shortly after the sathar were driven out of the Frontier. The village was built about five kilometers south of the crater left from the sathar’s destruction of a former costal city.
Not long after the basic city infrastructure was in place, the small town became a favorite beach destination for vacationers wanting to get away from Point True. The waters are warm and clear as the spur of land to the north keeps the cooler arctic waters from flowing into the bay. The city has embraced this role and now tourism employs a major portion of the city’s workforce.
About a decade after the city was founded, Streel decided to get into the shipbuilding industry and brokered a deal with the city to open a shipyard some 10 kilometers to the south of the city proper. This caused the city’s population to grow once again as the shipyard workers moved to Myha’ Beach and more services grew up to support the new citizens.
City Layout
Click for full sized version
Myha’s Beach is a long narrow city that sprawls out along the seacoast. The original village lies toward the northern end of the current town. The original marina is still in use. As the tpwn began to grow, it was originally small, 4-10 room hotels that were built both north and south of the original village, with almost everything built with access to the beach. This region of small hotels and private residences comprises the northern 3-4 kilometers of the town, centered on the now historic original village center and marina.
With the construction of the Streel shipyards to the south of the town, the town’s growth began to shift more in that direction with new residential and commercial districts being built southward with the residences on the beach and the commercial districts more inland. While growth continued to the north, it slowed considerably. At this same time, several large resort-style hotels were built on large swaths of the beach south of the existing city.
Front view of Observatory Manor
The city’s growth northward was effectively halted in FY18 with the construction of Brekstoone Manor. The manor is simply referred to as Observatory Manor by the locals, due to the large observatory dome on the manor’s north tower. The Brekstoone family secured a large tract of land that ran from the sea several kilometers inland on which they built the manor. With no more room northward to grow, the town continued to grow southward.
The 3-4 kilometers around the initial resort hotels was zoned for more of the same while the area between these large hotels and the Streel shipyards was reserved for the smaller hotels and residences. As this area filled in the city began to grow inland from the seashore with more commercial and residential areas to support the growing resident and tourist population.
In FY36 a small spaceport was built about 30 kilometers inland from the town to reduce the noise and air traffic impact on the town. This allows offworld visitors to come straight to Myha’s Beach instead of having to go to Point True first.
Current Population
The current resident population of Myha’s Beach is about 20,000. It is about 55% human, 20% yazirian, 15% vrusk, 9% dralasite and the remaining 1% made up of Rim and other races. In addition to the residents, the city supports between 20 to 40 thousand visitors, depending on the time of year.
About 5% of the resident population work at the Streel shipyards. Another 10% work in the town’s still thriving fishing industry supplying fresh seafood to both the local residents and tourists but also to Point True. A quarter of the resident population works directly in the tourist industry running shops, hotels, equipment rentals, and as guides both to the ocean and the inland areas. The remaining population works all of the support industries including city services, maintenance, restaurants, and stores that keep the city running.
Your thoughts?
That’s the city of Myha’s Beach. What other details would you like to see in a city write-up like this? Do you have any suggestions for other things that should be included or discussed? Let me know in the comments below.
This is another new organization for the June RPG Blog Carnival which I’m hosting here on the Expanding Frontier. I had originally thought I was going to write about my vision of the Galactic Task Force, Incorporated, which I am using in my current game, but decided that I would rather go with something completely new instead of an already established mega-corp in the setting. So I decided to write about “The Investors” a secret society I created as part of my Detailed Frontier Timeline project.
The Investors
The Investors is a secret society composed of a number of the very, very wealthy citizens of the Frontier. They work behind the scenes on nearly all the worlds of the Frontier. Very few people outside the organization even know of its existence. Star Law has a slim file on the organization, and a few of the large mega-corps have some data, and a few planetary governments have some data, but beyond that, they are very obscure.
The society does not have an official name, the members just refer to themselves as “investors.”
Aims and Goals
The aims and goals of the organization can be summarized by two words, money and power. The organization exists to increase the wealth of its members and increase the power they have in influencing the operation of the Frontier economy.
The members of the society, while sometimes at odd with one another, and always in competition with each other, use their already considerable assets to influence businesses and governments in ways that will increase their personal wealth and make it possible for them to exert greater influence in the future.
An example of this recently in my Detailed Frontier Timeline is their acquisition of the Groth Energy Corporation on Groth in the Fromeltar system, the major power supplier on that world. First, they manipulated the finances of the company to force it into near bankruptcy. They then bought out the previous owners, and finally tripled energy prices on the planet. Since GE was the only power supplier to many portions of the planet, people either had to pay the new prices or go without power. At the same time, they started trying to buy up all the smaller energy producers as well. They were a little too rash, however, and many of the smaller energy providers banded together to form the Consolidated Nebula Energy Group to fight back.
As the society has grown, and due to its decentralized nature, sometimes the members find themselves working at cross purposes with other members. When this is discovered, they meet to discuss the best way forward that provides the greatest benefit to all. If there is ever a business conflict that seemed to be at a compete impasse and then suddenly resolved itself, sometimes in a completely unexpected manner, it may very well have been the investors behind the scenes making deals.
History
The society started at a country club on Triad in the Cassidine system, in 37 p.f. There was a gala event and three of the Frontier’s richest beings, including the then CEO of Pan Galactic Corporation, were commiserating with one another about all the laws and restrictions their respective planetary governments were placing on them. One of them joked that they should create an organization to invest in the right people to sway things in the direction they wanted. The idea stuck with them and by the end of the night, the three had formed a rough outline of how they would operate.
Over the years, the original three members felt out others around the Frontier with similar feelings and desires and the number of investors grew. While they are primarily a self-interested lot, not everything they do is necessarily bad. Fed up with the depredations of the pirate Hatzk Naar, the organization worked to facilitate the organization of the First Common Muster. The sathar invasion in the Truane’s Star system a few years later was definitely bad for business and the organization was instrumental in the speed at which the Second Common Muster happened, which allowed the sathar to be quickly defeated. And with the formation of the UPF, most of the new military contracts for the creation of Spacefleet and equipping Star Law went to businesses owned by members of the society.
Today, members of the society control, or at least exert strong influence over, nearly all the mega-corps and large planetary corporations. They have tendrils into almost all the governments of the Frontier with some of the members serving in those governments.
Membership
There are no more that a few dozen members of the society across the entire Frontier. You must have a net worth of over a billion credits to even be considered for membership and there just are not that many billionaires out there.
No single person within the organization knows all the members, or even the true names of all the members as they only interact through holovid communications and use aliases in their interactions. While a single member might know the true identity of a few other members, possibly the person who recruited them and those they may have recruited, the members are careful about not revealing their identities, even to other members of the society.
That said, due to the limited pool of possible recruits, it is sometimes possible to determine the identity of other members by the agendas that they support. And a few members openly share their identity to other members.
The membership contains representatives from nearly every major industry in the Frontier.
Recruitment is done slowly and carefully. As members interact with the other elite, wealthy citizens, they keep an ear out for those that are discontent with restrictions they are facing or which are limiting their opportunities. These contacts are nurtured and if they are deemed to have the right mindset and ethics, they are approached for membership, sometimes openly and sometimes indirectly.
Organization
There is no real hierarchy or formal organization to the society. In theory all members are equal. When conflicts arise or major decisions have to be made, they form committees consisting of the members affected by the activity to discuss and debate the issues and reach a decision.
Occasionally, some endeavors are so large in scope, that it requires a meeting of the entire society. These events are rare and are usually scheduled around major events on one of the core worlds that all the members would reasonably expect to travel for anyway. Even these major meetings are held remotely so as to preserve the anonymity of the members that wish to do so.
Despite there being no formal organizations, there are definitely clicks and power blocks within the organization. Most members are at least somewhat loyal to the member that recruited them and gave them access to the society. Other power groups form along industry lines or other areas of common interest. Some major decisions can take weeks to resolve as each group tries to influence things most favorably for themselves.
What do you think?
The society’s outline is fairly vague and nebulous. That is intentional. It is partially due to the fact that the society is still taking shape in my game and I haven’t decided exactly how and where I want to use it. But it is also partially to allow others to shape and use it in their games as they wish. This description paints broad strokes over the society’s operations and memberships but leaves the details for individual game masters to implement in ways specific to their campaign.
Let me know your thoughts on the society and how you might use such an organization in your game. And don’t forget to check out the other posts linked in the comments of the kickoff post of this month’s blog carnival to see what others are writing about on this month’s topic.
I really struggled this past month in getting the updates out on a daily basis. They came out eventually, but often in bunches instead of one or two a day. As I’m writing this blog post, I’m a week behind on posting. I’ll try to get those caught up soon. As always, you can follow the @StarFrontiers twitter account for the daily updates, this is just a summary from the past month.
This month, the UPF and some of the militias begin to increase their ship rosters, the first Saurian Ark Ship headed toward the Frontier departs, the Gullwind continues its flight from Dramune, and the HSS History’s Hope gets lost once again via a misjump.
Date (FY)
Events
61.081
Construction of the CMS Swallow complete at the Minotaur (Theseus) shipyards. The ship begins its maiden voyage to its home system of White Light.
61.082
– Construction begins on two assault scouts for Strike Force Meteor at the Streel shipyards (Pale, Truane’s Star).
– The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps back to the YS02 system completing the YS02-YS03 jump route. They begin decelerating and plotting the jump back to YS03 to begin the next leg of their journey.
61.083
The seventh Saurian ark ship is completed and begins its shakedown cruise.
61.084
Garulus Tylappar discovers Chukkas, a protected and beloved species of Inner Reach (Dramune), in shipping crates marked as “Foodstuffs” he was contracted to deliver to Malco Enterprises on Darkworld Station (Outer Reach, Dramune). (SFKH1)
61.085
Worried about being discovered with the new knowledge and unwilling to turn the lovable chukkas over to the Malthar, Garulus takes his ship, the Gullwind, and makes a fast jump to the Cassidine system.
61.086
The UPFS Eleanor Moraes completes its shakedown cruise. With its crew fully assembled, it is tasked with exploring the region beyond Theseus. With over 20 days until the exploration module is complete, the ship will jump to White Light and back to verify that everything is in working order. Calculations begin for a jump to the White Light system.
61.087
The CMS Flitter arrives at Clarion Station (White Light). After a final inspection, it is added to the Clarion Royal Marine roster and enters official service.
61.088
Initial calculations complete, the UPFS Elanor Moraes begins accelerating for the jump to the White Light system.
61.089
After a couple of weeks of discussions the CDC delegates reach an agreement with the new Consolidated Nebula Energy Group to supply resources to the new company’s power plants.
61.090
The Gullwind, having not slowed down upon entering the Cassidine system, completes its astrogation calculations and makes the jump to the Madderly’s Star system. It doesn’t slow down here either.
61.091
The CMS Swallow arrives at Clarion Station (White Light). After a final inspection, it is added to the Clarion Royal Marine roster and enters official service.
61.092
The HSS History’s Hope successfully returns to the YS03. While the engineers work on the drives, the astrogators begin plotting the jump to the next system, a white dwarf-M star binary 11 ly away. This will be the longest uncharted jump yet of the trip.
61.093
A Flight patrol in the outer Kazak system stumble upon the patrolling sathar cutters. One of the cutters is destroyed but the other escapes. One of the Flight assault scouts was also destroyed.
61.094
With reports from agents in the Frontier that Strike Force Nova has recently left Truane’s Star to return to Prenglar, the sathar decided to stand down in OFS019 and start preparing for a major push on the Frontier.
61.095
The newest Saurian ark ship completes its shakedown cruise and begins loading passengers and supplies for its journey into the unknown.
61.096
Having left the remains of Patrol Group Virgo in Truane’s Star, Strike Force Nova arrives back at Morgaine’s World (Prenglar).
61.097
– The UPFS Eleanor Moraes arrives safely at Clarion Station (White Light). After a full checkup of the ship, they begin the jump back to Minotaur (Theseus).
– The surviving sathar cutter in the Kazak system makes the jump back to the OFS019 system.
61.098
After double checking the jump calculations, the HSS History’s Hope begins acceleration to jump speed. Their destination is designated YS05.
61.099
After an extensive debrief of the crews, Strike Force Nova stands down for maintenance. Almost all of the ships enter the PGC SCC at the same time. Several civilian ships are removed from the shipyard to make room, upsetting their owners.
61.100
– After completing overhauls on the ship’s engines, the Gullwind departs the Madderly’s Star system for White Light.
– Repairs at the PGC shipyard (Gran Quivera, Prenglar) restore capacity to 95%.
61.101
Owners of ships ejected from the PGC shipyards lodge a formal complaint with Starfleet and the Council of Worlds. However, the UPF charter grants Spacefleet this power during “times of crisis” which the CoW has invoked after receiving the reports of SF Nova and the sathar buildup in OFS019.
61.102
Encouraged by their reception by CDC, the Consolidated Nebula Energy Group (Groth, Fromeltar) send delegates to Terledrom (Fromeltar) and Inner Reach (Dramune) to meet with energy suppliers there.
61.103
– The HSS History Hope attempts to jump to YS05. Unfortunately, the calculations were off and the ship misjumps to an unknown star system with a small M dwarf instead of the binary system they were aiming for.
– They designate the system YS06 and start working on figuring out where they are at.
61.104
The ship bearing the Consolidated Nebula Energy Group delegates headed to Terledrom (Fromeltar) suffers an in-flight explosion, three of the four delegates are killed. No other passengers are injured but the ship is disabled. Rescue ships from Terledrom dispatched immediately.
61.105
Repairs of the Triad Starship Construction Center (Cassidine) bring it up to 95% capacity.
61.106
Sathar begin what they expect to be a final push on the Sauria system. A massive fleet, dwarfing anything seen since the attack on Truane’s Star 60+ years ago, leaves the SCC at OFS228 and heads to Tischen via OFS177.
61.107
The UPFS Eleanor Moraes arrives back at Minotaur Station (Theseus). All systems working flawlessly. The crew takes three days of leave while waiting for the exploration module to be completed.
61.108
Investigation of the damaged starliner reveals that the damage was deliberate sabotage and not an accident. Star Law takes over the investigation.
61.109
– The Gullwind departs the White Light system for it’s final destination at Minotaur Station (Theseus)
– After six days of around the clock work, the astrogators on the HSS History’s Hope determine their location. They overshot their target by nearly 8 light years. The good news is that this system was to be the next one on their trip. The bad news is that they have two uncharted jumps back to a known system.
61.110
The UPFS Eleanor Moraes’s extended exploration module is complete at the Minotaur starship construction center (Theseus). The ship’s crew docks with the exploration module and pull it into a holding orbit as they begin final preparations for their first jump.
Welcome to June! Regular readers my have noticed that this post is a day early as I usually post on Tuesdays. That’s because this month, I’m hosting the RPG Blog Carnival and we need to get this month’s topic, Organizations, kicked off. This post will replace tomorrow’s regular post as the first post of the month. But don’t worry, the next installment of the Detailed Frontier Timeline will be up next week.
If you’re new to the Expanding Frontier, welcome. After you’ve read today’s post, maybe you’ll stick around and take a stroll through the archive and hopefully find something else of interest as well.
The Topic – Organizations
When I volunteered to host a month of the blog carnival, I had already had in my mind to do some development of new and existing organizations in my game. I had already done a few posts on the topic and thought it would be a great topic to get input from other creator on how they handle different organizations in their settings. Plus it would give me the motivation to flesh out a few more of my own.
I’m using the term “organization” here very loosely. It could be anything from a megacorp, like I detailed in my post about the Streel Corporation, a small private company (e.g. Obar Enterprises), a religion, a governing body of a planet or city, or a band of adventurers. It could be a single business, a sports team, or a knitting club. Guilds, cults, and secret societies are other examples. Anything that has two or more people involved and some sort of order or hierarchy counts. The sky is really the limit.
Maybe like me, you want to flesh out one or more organizations in your setting an share them as part of the carnival. What makes the organization unique? How does it stand out in your world? How do the player characters interact with the organization, if at all?
I remember a business from a fantasy game I played in when I was in high school. It had been created by a retired character in an earlier campaign run by the GM, he wasn’t part of our game. It was a chain of establishments that were a combination of high-end tavern, inn, casino, and other attractions. You could find them in almost every major city. But they only accepted silver coins. You could not pay in gold, copper, nickel, or brass (the various other coins of the world). Only silver. Apparently, the retired PC who set up the original inn, which he created as a safe house, had something happen to him that made him leery of every other coin type. It was a great, safe place to stay, you just had to have a lot of silver on hand to pay your bills.
Or maybe you have a unique set of rules for handling the way various organizations interact with one another. I remember when I read Stars Without Number, the faction rules were so interesting I almost wrote a little mini game based just around that set of rules.
Another topic that comes to mind is how you keep track of all the organizations in your game and what they are up to. Do you have lists of all the projects they are working on? Or maybe you just have short descriptions of their aims and goals and when something happens, you attribute it to the organization most likely to have done it.
Those are just some ideas I’ve had of things to write about as I’ve contemplated this topic the last little while. I’m sure you’ll have others. Share your ideas by linking to this post in yours, and posting a comment here once your post is up. At the end of the month, I’ll gather up all the posts from the comments and consolidate them in to an organized list to provide a handy reference.
And with the kickoff out of the way, it’s time to turn our attention to a semi-secret society in my game universe, the True Yazira Society.
The True Yazira Society
True Yazira Society Logo, a stylized tree shaped like the leaf of the major tree species from Yaziria with the society’s initials forming the branches.
I teased this organization back in my posts for the February Blog Carnival, whose topic was Legends and Lore. As part of that month’s posts, I did two posts on the legends and lore of the yazirian species in my Star Frontiers game universe. The first, Yazirian History, I covered the background of how the yazirian race came to be in the Frontier. Most of this is general knowledge to yazirian characters. In the second, Legends & Lore – Yazirians, I covered more less known information including things the characters may not know. It was in this post that I introduced the True Yaziria society.
Creation
The True Yazira society was formed about ten years before the first sathar attack. It was created by surviving members of the old Warhon’s guard, supporters, and retinue.
When news reached the yazirian colonies that the only ship to be lost in the exodus was the one carrying the royal family, many believed that foul play by the Family of One was involved and that they didn’t want to give up control of yazirian society on the new worlds. This was most strongly vocalized by members of the royal court and the Warhon’s personal guard that were already in the Frontier.
It was at this point that the “accidents” and disappearances started happening. Many of the most vocal dissidents died or simply vanished. Fearing for their lives, many of the royal court and royal guard took the opportunity to emigrate to the Prenglar, Cassidine, and Truane’s Star systems were there were multi-species worlds and where they would be out of the direct influence of the Family of One.
As part of this second exodus, these yazirians formed the True Yazira society. The members initially consisted of those fleeing the yazirian worlds but that would change over time.
Aims and Goals
The initial aims of the society were really just mutual protection and support. Coupled with a desire to preserve as many of the traditions of their homeworld as they could in their new environment. First and foremost in the beginning, the members of the society worked to keep track of each other in order to keep them safe from the Family of One and alert one another if someone went missing. The other major aim was to support one another as they settled in these new worlds among aliens species. Contact with the humans, vrusk, and dralasites had started only a few years before and the society provided a social outlet for yazirians to meet and just be themselves.
As word reached the members of the actions being taken by the Family of one on Hentz, as well as the other yazirian colony worlds, the True Yaziria society’s goals expanding to opposing the actions of the Family of One. Many members returned to the yazirian worlds, either permanently, or as regular business visitors, to both monitor and actively work against what they felt were encroachments by the Family of One on the true yarziran way of life. These early efforts were quite fruitful, and the society was gaining momentum, most rapidly on the worlds other than Hentz where the Family of One was centered.
And then the sathar attacked. While the actual devastation was confined to the Truane’s Star system, the repercussions would be felt all over the Frontier. Most of the membership of the society living on Pale were killed in the sathar attack, as whole cities and towns were obliterated in single strikes from space. In the decade after the attack, when everyone thought a fresh attack could occur at any moment, the focus of the entire Frontier shifted and the concerns of the True Yazira society were far from the concerns of the average yazirian citizen. The Family of One worked efficiently and effectively during the crisis and people just came to accept their leadership.
In the intervening decades the aims of the society have shifted somewhat. They still oppose the Family of One, but their efforts are much more behind the scenes. Openly, they focus on cultural preservation and teaching about traditional yazirian values from their homeworld. But behind the scenes, many members still work to limit the power of the Family of One and to get equal treatment for yazirians everywhere regardless of world or clan. These efforts have been much more effective on the worlds other than Hentz. They have given up on completely ousting the Family of One from its position in yazirian society but rather now focus on neutralizing its influence as much as possible.
Membership and Organization
Initially, members of the True Yazira society were all members of the royal court or royal guard and refugees from the yazirian colony worlds living on the mixed-species worlds or the worlds of other species. With the return of some of these yazirians to the colony worlds, the society began to grow there as well. Anyone who expressed displeasure with the operations and ideals of the Family of One would often find their way to True Yazira. On the non-yazirian worlds, many joined simply for the comradarie of fellow yazirians in their new alien homes.
Today most of the membership of the society is fairly old and consists of first generation colonists who still remember Yazira itself. While there are new recruits of the younger generations, their numbers are relatively few but growing. Some of these younger members are truly interested in preserving and sometimes restoring practices from Yazira, most are there for the opposition of the Family of One and its policies and practices. The old world doesn’t mean as much to this younger generation as they have never seen it.
The society is organized in to chapters and councils. The chapters are the local organizing body and typically cover a single town or small region. Although in the larger metropolitan areas such as Port Loren, or Point True, there might be multiple chapters each covering a part of the city.
Councils are the higher level organizations. Each world has a single council that coordinates activities across all the chapters of the world. Each chapter has a representative that attends council meetings and votes for the interests of the chapter. This representative also has the responsibility to make sure that the chapter members adhere to any decisions of the council. Typically, the council representative is the head of the local chapter.
There is also a Frontier wide council consisting of two representatives from each of the world councils. This is the governing body of the society. All current members of this council are former members of the royal guard or royal court.
Activities
In the early days of the society, the members openly opposed the actions of the Family of One although they did so as individuals or groups and never in the name of the True Yazira society. And in return, the Family of One actively hunted down these members of the society, although that was done clandestinely as much as possible.
Openly, and in the name of the society, the early members organized activities and cultural events for yazirians on all the worlds of the Frontier where chapters were organized. They also welcomed any visitors of the other species in the Frontier to the events as a way of teaching them about yazirian culture.
After the sathar attack, the opposition to the Family of One became much more clandestine and behind the scenes. They supported organizations that opposed the practices of the Family of One with money and manpower but took much more of a supporting role than active involvement. They have worked extensively, especially on the worlds in the Athor, Gruna Garu, and Scree Fron systems, to get equal treatment from GODCo on those worlds and limit the control the Family of One exerts on the govenments of those systems.
At the same time, the society has actively stepped up the cultural and historical activities on worlds all around the Frontier, working hard to preserve the cultural heritage of the species and the histories of their homeworld. In the last decade they have launched a major effort to interview and record all surviving members of the species who actually lived on Yazira and participated in the Great Exodus. All of these stories are available for anyone to listen to.
As the society is slowly recruiting younger members, many dissatisfied with the actions and policies of the Family of One, the opposition is becoming more vocal and open once again.
Once recent activity which the society is indirectly a major supporter of, is the voyage of the HSS History’s Hope, a small exploration craft currently trying to chart a way back to the system that they believe to be Yazria. The Family of One suppressed the location of Yaziria shortly after the yazirans arrived in the Frontier claiming a computer crash wiped all details of the location and routes there. With the recent discovery of a system that might by Yazira in the right direction from the Frontier, many members of the society were quite excited. The support for the mission was quite spontaneous and not an organized event. However, most of the crew of the ship are members of the society and much of the mission’s funding comes from members as well. While unintended, this means that the mission has the ability to call on the society for assistance if needed. You can expect to hear more about this relationship in an upcoming post and in upcoming events in the Detailed Frontier Timeline.
Closing Thoughts
That’s my first organization for this month’s carnival. I intend to do at least one more later in the month and have new organizations be a regular feature on the blog. I created the True Yazira organization as part of the Legends and Lore blog carnival entry and have since tied it in to several events in my setting. It hasn’t come up with any games I’ve ever run but that is sure to change in the future.
I can’t wait to see what other organizations my fellow bloggers come up with and other aspects of using organizations in games they discuss. Be sure to check back regularly to see what new posts have been added to the comments and come back at the end of the month for the wrap up and summary post.
What do you think of the True Yazira society? How would you use an organization like this in your game? What more would you like to know about this society? Feel free to share your ideas in the comment section.
I realized about halfway through the month that my April State of the Frontier post should have been the two year retrospective as that was the end of the first two years of the blog. Can I just say I can’t believe I’ve been going that long. This has been my most fruitful and long lived blogging streak. And it looks like it will be going for a while to come.
Since I missed the yearly retrospective last month, I think I’m just going to skip it for this year and try to remember to do one next year. There really isn’t that much to say. This is post 145 for the blog. Since we were at 72 at the end of the first year, we nearly doubled the number of posts in the second year which means I’ve been posting apace. And it seems that the audience is growing as the number of visitors, sessions, and page views grew by 45-75% depending on the metric. So more people are visiting the site which is great to see.
The focus of the blog has almost completely shifted over the past year from my original intent but the pendulum is starting to swing back now that I’m running a game again. More on that below.
Looking Back
This month was the first in a while that I didn’t have a new miniature model to share. With all the COVID-19 changes, I just haven’t had the time to sit down and work on models. I’ve actually been busier than before the pandemic.
We had the usual Detailed Frontier Timeline post at the beginning of the month which was followed by a two part article looking at the economics and logistics of starliners, first from a ship and passengers numbers perspective and then at the economics of a single ship. This kicked off an “Economics of Spaceflight” series that I intend to revisit occasionally in the future.
Behind the scenes I started up a new on-line game, “Skills for Hire.” This will be an episodic game with a different cast of characters each session to allow anyone available to play on a given night the chance to participate. The PCs are mercenaries working for Galactic Task Force, Incorporated and are assigned out to various jobs that GTF contracts for.
Which brings us to the last few posts of the month. Given the start of the game, I decided to showcase my game prep as blog entries, although after the game sessions are complete. To that end, I launched a series of posts with the “Skills for Hire” tag that will be outlining everything I’m creating and using for the game. I began with an introduction to the game and the impact it will have on the blog, then two creatures: the young sathodragon and the Pale mountain lion, and finally a write-up of the adventure and how it played out.
This will start a new style of posting going forward where there will be lots of little posts spaced out among the regular Tuesday posts. I may not post up all the write-ups of all the sessions, but I’ll try to get at least one in a month. And I’ll try to post the small bits like creatures, items, and locations. We’ll see how it goes. The write-up of the scenario was, I believe, the longest post I’ve done yet and it took a while to get it all written up.
Also behind the scenes I got the VM running my mail server moved over from the old server to the new one. So everything is now running on the new server and I can shut the old one off. Next up is to begin upgrading and improving the sites. Probably starting with my mail server as it is using a different technology (VMWare intead of Docker) than all the other sites and requires a bit more manual intervention in the case of a crash.
That was my month. Let’s look at what’s coming up.
Looking Forward
I’m hosting the RPG Blog Carnival in June. So there will be a post launching the month’s topic, Organizations, tomorrow on the first of the month so that all those participating in the blog carnival can get their cue for the month. This will take the place of the regular Tuesday post, which would normally be the first post of the month. Instead it will come the following week on the 9th. I’ll be talking about the True Yazira secret society in that kick-off post. Keep an eye on that post to links to other blogs taking about organizations created for their games and worlds. Most of the blog carnival posters write for fantasy settings and games but I’m sure the material created can be adapted to a sci-fi setting if you desire.
I’ve been asked about the stats and design of the HSS History’s Hope, so maybe this month I’ll whip up a more detailed description of that ship and post an updated map of their travels. They recently attempted a long jump and got lost again.
Beyond that, I don’t really know what I’ll be posting about. I’ll probably do a second organization to go with the theme of the blog carnival, probably on Galactic Task Force, Incorporated to go along with my game. And there will probably be several small posts related to the game and a scenario write up.
I’m planning on making the game sessions available as an audio podcast, and possibly videos, I just haven’t gotten everything in place for that yet so those will probably launch this month as well.
There are five Tuesdays this month with the last Tuesday being the last day of the month. That would normally be another one of these posts but since I’m hosting the blog carnival, that final post will be the wrap-up post for the carnival. I’ll do the State of the Frontier post on the first of July.
The other major thing happening behind the scenes is that June also means the start of editing on the next issue of the Frontier Explorer. I think a few of my blog posts might make it into the issue as articles this time around as they have been suggested by my co-editors. We’ll see.
There is also another FrontierSpace module in the works as I’ve been contacted about editing it and it’s almost about time for me to start writing my science nuggets for the Space Kids RPG.
Your Thoughts
Do you have any ideas or suggestions on things you’d like to see in the blog? Anything I’ve mentioned, you don’t want to see? Let me know in the comments below.
For the first session of the game, I wanted to keep things fairly simple as we’re still getting a feel for the format, and how much can be done in a single session. So we started with a fairly basic scenario, a young girl has gone lost in the mountains near her home and the PCs are hired out to find her (hopefully alive) and bring her home.
Long time readers of the blog, and those that listened to the beginning of the “A New Can of Worms” actual play, will recognize some of the setting and characters. I’ll start with an outline of the adventure, and then talk about the players and how they handled things.
Lost in the Mountains
Background
Alyssa Tinnett, a young woman in the village of Rosegard, went out “adventuring” in the region around the village after school last day-day. She took her “adventuring pack”, which included a small tent and sleeping bag, rations, water, rope, an all-weather blanket, and a pocket tool. She also took her sword, a gift from the yazirian Talnor at the Streel mine compound, which he has been teaching her how to use. She’s done this in the past and typically returns before it gets dark and the next night-day cycle starts. This time she didn’t return.
It’s late fall on Pale and as a farming village, the citizens are quite busy bringing in the harvest. Her parents and grandparents went out searching for her but were hampered by the darkness of the Pale night. They put out a job request to several mercenary companies in Point True and the contract was picked up by Galactic Task Force (GTF). The PCs were assigned to the job.
What happened
Alyssa’s Campsite. Click for larger image.
Her adventure started out like all her other ones. In this case, after playing in the woods with some of her friends for a while, she went north from the village while her friends returned home. She intended to check out the artificial dome that the sathar agent at the Streel compound was using as a drop point and then continue further north to the small canyon in the mountains to the north. She got to the small camping site that some of the older kids had once set up in the canyon and got her tent set up. After that, she shouldered her pack and started further up the canyon.
A short time later, she heard the sounds of something behind her but nothing was immediately visible. A few minutes later, she got to the top of a small rise in the canyon and looking back saw a pair of large bird creatures, something akin to a giant (1m tall) chicken. She recognized them as Nuks from some that had been killed around the village several months ago. With her way back to the campsite cut off, she began hurrying up the canyon looking for a place she could hide out.
The entrance to the cave. The ramp is about a 45 degree slope. Click for larger image.
After a while, she came to a steep rock formation that she thought that the nuks wouldn’t be able to scramble up and climbed to the top of it where she found the entrance to a cave. Exploring a bit into the cave, the slope on the inside was even steeper and extended nearly 100 meters into the mountain. Turning back to the entrance, she saw the nuks at the base of the slope. One of them jumped up trying to get at her but slipped back down. She retreated further into the cave but after a half hour and the nuks not leaving, she got bored and decided to do a little spelunking.
Carefully descending the steep interior slope, the cave opened up into a wide long cavern with some side passages branching off to the left. Following one of these side passages, she discovered another large cavern, although not as big as the first. However, as she moved out into the center of that cavern she must have disturbed something as she passed the entrance because there was a large crash and several tons of boulders tumbled down nearly completely blocking the entrance. There was a small opening, but too small for her to fit through.
After searching around for an hour or more, she couldn’t find any way out of this room back the way she had come. There was a passage to her left, and another straight ahead. The first was on her level but the second was up a 20 meter cliff that angled back out over the ground beneath it that she couldn’t find a way up. Exhausted, she curled up in her all-weather blanket and went to sleep, planning to continue looking for a way out in the morning.
Adventure Outline
The adventure consists of several small steps and encounters that I outlined as follows:
Area around Point True. The locations to the NE of Rosegard are locations from the A New Can of Worms game. Click image for larger version.
This occurs in the GTF headquarters at Point True. The PCs are given the basic information from the Background section above and allowed to requisition any equipment (within reason) that they feel they will need. They are told that they will receive their regular daily pay rate (20 cr/day for my new players) and a 100cr bonus each if the girl is found.
If none of the PCs ask for it, their handler issues them an radiophone in addition to any other gear they request. Once they have their gear, they are flown by aircar to Rosegard. As each aircar can take 3 PCs, there may be more than one. It’s a 30 minute aircar ride but a 4-5 hour drive. The aircar drivers will remain with the aircars at the city center while the PCs are out exploring.
Meeting with the family
This part of the adventure mostly occurs in the city hall building of Rosegard. As they land they are met by the mayor, Genio Washy, Alyssa’s parents, Larroy & Camryn Tinnett, and Alyssa’s grandparents, Steven & Janie Hite.
During this discussion they PCs can learn any of the “What happened” information that the parents might know as well as anything about Alyssa from her background. They know she went north as she told some of her friends and they told the parents when Alyssa didn’t return. They can also learn about the connection Alyssa has with Talnor from the Streel compound.
Tracking Alyssa
This bit of the adventure occurs in the valley surrounding Rosegard as depicted in the map below. I drew the map with Inkarte which doesn’t really have sci-fi assets so it has a bit more of a fantasy feel but I whipped this up in about 30 minutes (mostly relearning the interface as I haven’t used it in years). I then added the annotations in GIMP.
This is the referee version of the map with all the relevant locations marked. Click the image for a full sized version. There is a player version with none of the annotations as well.
The sathar dome is the natural place to start and the villagers can give exact coordinates for its location. It’s about 10 km from the village. The PCs can either walk there (a couple of hours) or have the aircar(s) drop them off (a few minutes). The dome itself is a light-weight, fiberglass pole frame, with a cloth covering. It looks like it was once naturally camouflaged but the grasses and such on it have died and it now stands out against the terrain. It is very light-weight and is about 3 meters in diameter. It is staked down to prevent blowing away but lifting it up reveals that there is nothing under it.
The terrain north of the sathar dome. Click for larger image.
Alyssa’s tracks are easy to find and the PCs can start tracking her north. The terrain is very wild and untouched as only the villagers occasionally come up here. There are small game trails in places and Alyssa seems to be following them and making for the small creeks running through the valley. She’s not trying to hide her tracks so they are relatively easy to follow as the paths have pockets of sand where the tracks are very visible. The waterways are 1-2 meters wide and at most a few tens of centimeters deep. They flow north to south on the map (into the valley from the canyons and then down out the bottom of the map).
Some time after the PCs leave the sathar dome, but before the reach the creek, they will encounter a young sathodragon. As they come up over a rise, it will be on another rise about 150-200 meters away. The sathodragon will see them and rush to attack. If it drops below 50 STA, it will try to retreat and escape.
Shortly after they cross the creeks for the first time, Alyssa’s tracks will be joined by those of two nuks. This will continue until they find her campsite and the destroyed tent with lots of nuk tracks around. As they follow her tracks from the campsite, the nuk tracks will continue to follow her prints.
A bit further on, she seems to become aware of the nuks behind her and the tracks indicate that she’s moving faster and at one point, as the path goes right along the edge of the creek, they vanish. She jumped sideways into the water and then went 20-30 meters upstream in the water before emerging. The nuk tracks are confused at this point but they eventually found her tracks upstream and continued to follow her.
Sometime after the campsite but before the PCs reach the cave entrance, they have an encounter with a pair of Pale mountain lions. On is waiting in ambush near the path and the other is another 20-30 meters up the mountain waiting to pounce as well. If either is reduced to less than half stamina, they will both retreat and try to flee.
Fighting the nuks
Eventually the PCs will arrive at the entrance to the cave. The two nuks are milling around here still not having given up the pursuit even though it’s been nearly 20 hours. When they see the PCs they will immediately rush to attack and will continue attacking until killed.
Exploring the cave
With the nuks dispatched, the PCs are now free to enter the cave. It should be obvious from the lack of tracks leading away and the fact that the nuks were hanging around trying to get up the slope, that Alyssa went in.
I based the cavern roughly on Carlsbad Caverns in Carlsbad, New Mexico. I downloaded a map of the Carlsbad Caverns and then modified it slightly for use in the game. The original map can be found here. Below is the map I used for the game with the relevant locations marked. I took some liberties with the elevations but otherwise used the map as is. If you’ve never been to Carlsbad, you have a long steep decent into the main cave. It’s fairly open in real life, and I closed it up in the adventure, but the blue path is the switchback path you take to get down to the bottom as it is very steep going straight down.
The map of the cave system. Click for full sized image.
As the PCs are exploring, remember that the only light they have is what they brought with them. They are not going to have large vistas and in some cases may not be able to see the other end of the cave.
If they are calling out as they explore, Alyssa will respond when they are by the cave-in location. There is a small opening, about 15-20 cm in diameter that they can look through and see her once she comes over to it. They will not be able to move the rocks as several of them are quite large (read tons). They can move some but not make the opening any bigger. Given time and effort, a dralasite without any gear could squeeze through the opening to get to her but she still can’t get out.
Alyssa will explain to the PCs about what happened and tell them about what looks like an exit at the top of the cliff on the other side of the room she is in. She hasn’t explored the large room in the upper left of the map yet as she will have just woken up when the PCs arrive.
Eventually, the PCs will find a way to the cliff face and can get her out. It’s 15-20 meters down and an overhang above the room floor where Alyssa is located. They will need to figure out a way to get down to her and get her back up (hopefully they brought rope).
Returning home
With Alyssa safe, the PCs just need to get back to Rosegard with her. If they think of it, they can simply call for the aircar(s) to pick them up. If they think to do this, the aircars will arrive in about 15 minutes and there is enough room for one to land at a time and load them up.
If they decide to hike back, they will have an encounter with either a quickdeath (from the AD rules) or a pack of lesser quickdeath. It’s up to you based on the abilities and strengths of the party. Obviously, their main objective should be to protect Alyssa. The quickdeaths will retreat if severely wounded or if one of the pack is killed.
Once returned, the village and family will be quite thankful. Alyssa will get a serious scolding from her parents. If the PCs wish to stay for the evening, there will be an impromptu celebration party in their honor. Several of the Streel mine employees, including Talnor, will come down for this. Talnor will also give Alyssa a talking to which she will appear to take more seriously than the warning from her parents. While a bit shaken by her ordeal, the resiliency of youth will quickly kick in erasing the worst of teh adventure and her natural xenophilia will kick in. She will spend a good portion of the party trying to talk to any of the non-human PCs and find out more about them, where they are from, etc.
Rewards
The PCs will get the 20cr of their pay and the 100cr each for returning Alyssa. In addition, there is a 250cr bounty on each nuk that they can split between the group. If they managed to kill the young sathodragon, that is worth another 1000cr to split between the PCs. Finally, if they managed to kill any quickdeaths, those carry a bounty of 2000cr each.
Of course they need documented proof to claim the rewards. Photographs of the corpses (taken with their chronocoms) will suffice. If they don’t have any documentation, the villagers are willing to send someone up to the locations the PCs give them to get pictures for them. GTF will give them the money immediately even though it will take a few days for the Pale government to issue the reward, which will then just go straight to GTF.
Additionally, the PCs should receive 1-3 XP for the adventure depending on how well they did.
How It Played Out
When I ran this, we had three PCs: Dhuggo (dralasite), Arzdran Garvox (yazirian), and Joey Rufus (humma). They picked up some weapons and gear at GTF HQ and headed out.
After meeting with the parents, they also talked with Alyssa’s friends that had been in the woods with her. After stern words from Joey to Alyssa’s folks about their parenting techniques, the team head up to the dome where they picked up Alyssa’s trail and started off. None of the PCs actually had a tracking skill but two of them had Scout as a secondary skill area so they only had minor penalties since the trail was easy to follow.
The fight with the sathodragon went fairly quickly, Joey used his jumping ability to good effect to get behind it and keep it at a distance while Arzdran and Dhuggo fired on it with their lasers. Wounded, the sathodragon fled into the trees and escaped leaving a trail of blood. The sathodragon didn’t do too well only scoring a single hit on Joey. Joey applied first aid to himself (he’s the medic) and was nearly back to full STA. They marked the spot and continued on. The idea was that if Alyssa’s trail ended and looked like the sathodragon had gotten her, they would come back and track it to its lair to try to find her body.
Continuing to follow Alyssa’s trail they found the nuk tracks and the destroyed tent. Getting a bit worried, they hustled on. Luckily, Joey made a INT roll and noticed the closer mountain lion waiting in ambush for them. Again employing his jumping racial ability, he sprung over the lurking cat landing a few meters beyond it and unloading into it with his laser rifle. Then he notice the one further up the mountain beyond him. He was now between them with his teammates some 20 meters away. However, startled by his jump, and wounded by the laser fire from Joey and Arzdran, the mountain lions decided this was too much work and bounded off, leaving the PCs alone.
The fight with the nuks didn’t go as well. As the creatures rushed the PCs, Arzdran got a shot off wounding one. Joey jumped over them again to the base of the slope up to the cave entrance. The wounded one went after Dhuggo (wielding his nightstick) and the other one turned around to go after Joey. The PCs were doing well, severely injuring the one attacking Dhuggo, but then Dhuggo got a little cocky and started showing off (the player said he started pointing to the mountains, Babe Ruth style, before making his attack) and missed horribly (rolled a 97). The nuk on the other hand didn’t miss and took a bite out of his arm. They managed to finish off the nuks but Dhuggo took a total of 30 STA damage and Joey was wounded a bit more.
As Arzdran examined the cave entrance and kept watch, Joey did a bit of rough field surgery getting Dhuggo patched up and back on his feet.
They then entered the cave and decided to go left once they got to the cave floor. So they almost immediately found the cave-in. Having been calling for Alyssa, she responded to them and they were able to talk to her through the rockfall. She told them about the cliff on the other side of the room she was in. As Joey and Arzdran set off further into the cave complex to try to find a route to her, Dhuggo passed Alyssa all his gear through the small opening and started squeezing his way through.
After taking some twists and turns the others found their way to the top of the cliff where they could see Dhuggo sitting and talking to Alyssa down below. Using rope they brought with them (they had asked about climbing gear back at the GTF HQ and I had told them they shouldn’t need it so I retconed them having it since the reason they didn’t have it was my fault), they hauled Alyssa and Dhuggo up and made their way back to the cave entrance where they called the aircar to come pick them up. It was a little tight with five in a vehicle built for four but Dhuggo and Alyssa were both small and so they made it work.
Getting back to the village, they learned about the bounty on the sathar creatures and one of the villagers offered to go back to where the nuks were to get pictures as proof. They stuck around for the impromptu celebration and the after a while, with a few hours to kill before the day was over and they needed to head back, had the aircar drive fly them up to where they had the fight with the young sathodragon.
Tracking it back to it’s lair, they tossed in a couple of doze grenades which knocked it out completely. They tied it up and called back to HQ to ask if they wanted the thing alive. Receiving an affirmative, they were told that a flying transport truck would be there in an hour to collect it and to hang tight. In the mean time the doze gas wore off and the creature struggled to get free but they had done a good job with the knots (I believe someone rolled a 01) and in its weakened state it couldn’t escape. Joey injected it with a StayDose to try to knock it out which seemed to work. Securing it in the bed of the airtruck when it arrived, they followed the truck back for a while to make sure everything was good an then flew ahead to base to get back home.
All told it took us about 3 hours to play through this.
Thoughts
That’s the adventure and how it played out. I’m still working on getting the audio and video of the game session on-line. So at some point in the future, you’ll be able to listen (or watch) how it ran.
What I’d be interested in is what you think about the information presented for running the adventure. How was the format? Would it be helpful to me organized differently? If you were running this, is there information you would want that wasn’t there? Are there details missing? On the flip side, did I include too much in places? Is there anything too constraining?
Tell me what you think and how I could improve these write-ups in the comments below.
This is a young sathodragon, the creature that the sathar use to make cybodragons. This young specimen doesn’t have the cybernetic implants. These sathodragons stand around 1 meter at the shoulder and are 2-3 meters long.
These creatures are offspring of the cybodragons that were seeded on Pale during the sathar invasion. A female sathodragon will lay a clutch of 3-7 eggs (1d5+2) but the first one to hatch will eat the others so these creatures are typically found alone as they are fairly territorial without sathar influence.
As with all sathar bioconstructs on Pale, there is a bounty by the Pale government for the killing and/or capture of sathodragons. The bounty for a young cybodragon offspring is 1,000 cr.
Type:
Medium Omnivore
Number:
1
Move:
Fast (60 m/turn)
Stamina:
120
Attack:
70 claws / 55 bite
Damage
3d10 claws / 4d10 bite
Special Attack:
None
Special Defense:
None
Native World:
Unknown, found on Volturnus and Pale in the Frontier. Typically found in the mountains, plains, and forested area of a world.
Iguana image by Rjcastillo. Click image for original file
The Pale mountain lion is a large feline-like creature similar to mountain lions on Earth. Typically 1.4-1.8 meters in length, these creatures stand about 1 meter at the shoulder. Stealth hunters, they like to ambush their prey and can move quietly through their native terrain. They typically hunt either singly or in pairs.
Their claws are toxic to most creatures. A successful attack that does damage injects a venom that is S5/T10 in strength. Antitox will neutralize the poison with a successful Neutralize Toxins skill check. The venom effect lasts for the first four successful attacks of an encounter, after which the creature must wait several hours for the venom to build back up.
Type:
Medium Carnivore
Number:
1-2
Move:
Fast (70 m/turn)
IM/RS:
8/75
Stamina:
100
Attack:
70 claws / 60 bite
Damage:
2d10 claws / 1d10 bite
Special Attack:
venomous claws – S5/T10 poison if claw successfully attacks
