The Village of Rosegard

Originally, I had planned to have one more Mapping Rosegard video here that covered adding in the labels for the roads and making the black and white version of the map you’ll see below but for some reason, the audio didn’t record, only the video. Since I didn’t want (or really have the time) to do a voice over, and it’s not that important of a topic, I decided just to drop it. Also, it is something I can easily cover in a future series.

So instead, you’re getting the post that I had originally planned for the beginning of next week, the final maps along with the write-up on the town proper.

Rosegard

History

Rosegard is located about 400 km northwest of Point True. It was founded shortly after the Great Sathar War as part of the resettlement effort initiated by the Pale government. It originally consisted of six human families that set up homesteads in the valley using the agriculture subsidies the government provided to encourage development of farming to supply food for the population. Over time, the small village has grown to include 13 families, many of the additional families are children of the original settlers that went away to school and then returned.

While there is no shortage of technology in the village, it is still primarily an agricultural center. Most of the actual agriculture work is done by robots but supervised by the towns inhabitants. The technological specialists in town keep the robots, vehicles, and computer systems running to manage the farm production. Every week, trucks arrive to pick up crops to take into the larger population centers to sell.

About 18 years ago, one of the villagers was up exploring in the mountains and discovered a vein of gold that had been revealed by some recent erosion. Lacking the infrastructure to properly mine the valuable resource themselves, the village brokered a deal with Streel (formerly known as Streele Mining before the war) to lease the company the rights to the mine. The mine proved to be more lucrative than either party imagined and is still active to this day.

The village’s income from the mine amounts to several million credits every year. That money is held in trust and used to maintain the village infrastructure, pay for primary and secondary education for all of the village youth, and other expenses as needed.

There is a very good relationship between the workers at the mine and the city. In addition to providing additional revenue to the village, the mine employs the village’s technical workers (the technician, roboticist, and computer specialist) to help assist with work at the mine in addition to their own staff. The mine staff also takes advantage of the medical facilities provided in the village. Reciprocally, the village invites the mine staff down for any town activities and has integrated them as part of the community. The youth often go up to the mine to see operations there and the mine staff often come down to teach mini-lectures in the village school.

Inhabitants

Original Homesteading Families

These are the senior members of the community who originally founded it. Their houses are located around the circular loop at the north end of town. These families primarily work the agriculture portion of the village’s activities.

Genio & Kathy Washy – Genio is the town mayor. They have two older children living at home. They live in the home on the same plot as the General Store. Kathy is a horticulturist and is responsible for tending the rose hedges in the central part around the gazebo. It is these rose gardens that gave the village its name.
Martin & Jenne Lexand – They have two children living at home. They live in the home on the same plot as the Technician shop/Garage.
Steven & Janie Hite – They have three kids living at home.
Matthua & Julie Colly – They have three kids living at home.
Jon & Jessa Smeson – They have a single child living at home
Reme & Kayelyn Marte – The youngest of the original settlers, they still have four children living at home

Newer Families

These families are younger, many of them being the older kids of the earlier settlers. Their houses are built around the block on the west side of town.

Rickern & Mikaela Bennez – Mikaela is the second child of Jon & Jessa Smeson and the town’s roboticist having studied at Pale University. Rickern helps manage the Smeson farm. They have three children.
Mese & Braealyn Washy – Mese is the oldest child of Genio & Kathy Washy. They run the town’s General Store and have three kids, ages 17, 14, & 12 who also help out at the store when not in school.
Larroy & Camryn Tinnett – Camryn is the daughter of Steven & Janie Hite and is the town’s computer specialist having studied at the Triad Institute of Technology. Larroy is a veterinarian and works with the village doctor. They have a single daughter, Allyssa, age 12.
Rickey & Ilana Cooker – Rickey and Ilana met Camryn at school and she convinced them to move to Pale when she returned home. Ilana is the town doctor and also has some veterinarian skills. Rickey helps work the Hite farm with his in-laws. They have four kids.
Benjoe & Abbil Leray – Benjoe is a childhood friend of Rickern Bennez and became enamored of the quite life in Rosegard when visiting one year. Both he and Abbil are teachers and work at the village’s school. They have five children
Joshua & Miya Welley – Josh and Miya are the newest members of the village and the only ones that didn’t have an immediate connection when then arrived. As the village grew, the need for a city clerk arose and Miya was hired to handle the administrative affairs of the growing village. She works in the City Center handling a wide variety of tasks for the town. Joshua is a teacher and works with the Leray’s in the town’s school.
Mikkel & Danielle Lexand – Mikkel is the son of Martin and Jenne Lexand and is the town’s technician running the garage/tech shop in town. Danielle helps out on the Lexand farm. They have one child.

City Buildings

General Store

This building contains a wide variety of goods that are used regularly by the small village. While a lot of the supplies are foodstuffs and farming supplies, there are a number of small high tech wares as well. Larger items, such as robots, most weapons, and vehicles, have to be special ordered in from Point True but the store has access to the full Streel and PGC catalog and anything ordered will arrive in 2-4 days.

Technician/Garage

This is where Mikkel keeps all the village’s vehicles and equipment running. It has room inside to work on three vehicles at any one time. It is a fully equipped and modern repair shop and any Technician skill checks performed using this area gain a +10% bonus.

City Community Center

This large building consists of two stories, unlike all the other buildings in town. The lower level is a large gathering hall used for town activities and celebrations. The upper level contains the city offices where Miya works as well as the village’s central computer system. There are also half a dozen guest rooms that function as the village’s inn when they have overnight visitors. While most of the rooms can be used by any race, one of them is specifically appointed with furniture designed for the Vrusk anatomy. Across the street to the north, and directly east of the building are large grass fields used for outdoor activities as well.

School

The village’s school is where the younger kids spend their day getting their primary education. It is divided into several small classrooms where specialized classes can be presented dependent on age and ability level. Because of the small number of children in the village, there are not really “traditional” classes and each child has a workstation where they receive individual and tailored instruction based on their needs and interests. The school is very high tech and state-of-the-art. A lot of the village’s mine revenue has gone into its education facilities. As such the children in the village are often smarter and sharper than would be expected for their age.

Computer/Robotics Shop

Mikaela and Camryn share this building to work on the villages computers and robots. While the building is mostly given over to tech space to work on the various agriculture robots used by the village, there is also some space given over to computer repair as well. This building also houses a backup computer system for the village. If PC’s are looking for computer or robotic parts, they are more likely to find them here than at the General Store. The facilities here are top notch and any computer or robotics repair or upgrade attempts receive a +10% skill bonus.

Doctor’s Office

This small office has a small operating room, and three patient rooms in addition to the foyer and waiting area. Dr. Cooker has a small office here as well. The building is designed for patients of the core four races and while they do handle veterinary duties, those occur on location outside the office. Like the other areas in the town, the facilities here are of an higher than average grade and all medical checks made in the facility gain a +10% skill bonus.

Alternate maps

In addition to the main map above, I created one with no labels and another one in black and white. These two maps are presented below.

No Labels

Final full color map with labels removed — Final map with the labels removed. Click for full sized image (~6MB)

Black & White

Black and white version of full map with labels — Final Rosegard map in black and white (with labels) – Click for full sized image (~2MB)

And that’s it for Rosegard for now. Next up I’ll be shifting gears back to the Ghost Ship Osiris module and you’ll be getting some information on the star system the adventure takes place in.

Mapping Rosegard – Part 4

In this segment we finish up the map by adding in some small details such as driveways, a fence around the school yard, a scale, and then add in the labels on the public buildings. The earlier videos can be found here: part 1, part 2, part 3.

With the map finished we export the final finished version.

I will be doing one more video related to this map and then will post the final map for everyone to use if they wish.

Mapping Rosegard – Part 3

In this segment, I show how I add in the textures for the lawns, asphalt for the road, farm fields and some gravel paths and borders around the grass to keep the lawns and the farm fields separate. I also add in a couple trees (more will get added later.

You can check out part 1 and part 2 if you haven’t watched them yet.

I’ll finish up the landscaping before recording part 4 where I’ll add in the labels and any finishing touches to the map.

Mapping Rosegard – Part 2

This is part 2 of the video series outlining the creation of the final Rosegard map. If you haven’t watched it yet, here is part 1.

In this segment, I create a custom pattern to use for the roof tiles of the buildings and then create a few of the buildings in the town to show how it will be done, including one of the buildings around the loop at the top of the map that is not aligned NS-EW like the others.

Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions below.

Mapping Rosegard – Part 1

This is going to be a multipart video series showing how I use Inkscape to turn my hand-drawn sketch of the Rosegard village map (the map shown in the Outline of the Death at Rosegard Adventure Project) into a final polished map.

It will probably be full of fumblings, mistakes, and other ramblings as I get back up to speed with using Inkscape as well as get used to narrating out loud what I’m doing, as I’m doing it. This is my first foray into this type of presentation so be patient.

In any case, here’s the first video:

I’ve created an Expanding Frontier playlist as part of my YouTube channel. Feel free to bookmark it or just watch for new posts as I make them here.

Please let me know what comments or suggestions you have in the comment section below.

Back from Vacation

Just a quick status update post. I’m back from vacation and have mostly clawed my way out from under the pile of backlogged e-mails and other detritus that builds up when you are off-line for an extended period of time.

I didn’t get any time on my vacation to work on projects (too busy driving, hiking, playing on the beach, and herding cats, I mean kids, to get anything done) so I don’t have anything immediately available to post (hence the update). I’m probably going to work on a production ready version of my Rosegard map next and record the process to post as a video.

Anyway, it’s time to get back to work.

Pursale [Work in Progress]

I was working on the one of the sections of the Ghost Ship Osiris module and it includes an alien robot. I realized that to do the alien robot justice, I needed to know the race that created it. So I busted out the Alien Species rules from the FrontierSpace Referee’s Handbook (p. 98) to give me some ideas. I didn’t need a completely functional race as they are all dead (at least the ones you encounter in this adventure) but only a rough physical description. The write-up below is what I came up with.

The following is the Referee’s write-up on the race to be included in the module. It’s a working draft, hence the work in progress flag in the title. It will probably go through some revisions as we flesh the module out a bit more and Bill chimes in. I’ll also probably add more to the physical description as we go.

Pursale

Physical Description

The Pursale are a large omvinorous species. They are quite massive, over 3 meters in length (front to back) with six legs, two arms, and a short squat “head”. Their main body is typically 3-3.5 meters in length, 1-1.5m in width and about a meter in height. They weigh in at about 2-3 tons.

The Pursale’s head, which sits at the front of the body, contains its mouth, another set of olfactory organs, and is where the sensory stalks are attached. The mouth sits low on the head which can be bent downward to touch the ground. It has no upward range of motion beyond the horizontal.

Rising up from their head are two slender, long (about 1.2m) appendages that end in their sensory clusters. Each cluster contains an eye as well as olfactory and auditory organs. The sensory stalks are also flexible and can be positioned as high or as low as they can reach. Typically held high and wide, the Pursale have excellent depth perception and directional hearing.

Their legs are relatively short (about 0.7m long) keeping the body low to the ground but each one ends in a four-toed foot.

The Pursale’s brain is not located in its head but rather further back in the body just behind the creature’s arms. The arms themselves are attached just behind the neck. The arms look like longer skinnier legs, 1.2m in length each ending in a hand with three fingers and an opposable thumb. The Pursale’s shoulder joints have a full 360 degree range of motion.

History

The Pursale are descended from large plains-grazing animals on their homeworld. For millennia, their technology developed slowly and was primarily focused on food-production and medicine. Over time they slowly developed spaceflight and colonized the other semi-habitable planet in their star system which they terraformed into a food production world.

They had just recently discovered FTL travel capabilities when one of their outposts was discovered by the Thazzar, a war-like race bent on conquering known space. Luckily for the Pursale, a ship managed to escape the Thazzar attack and warn the home world of the pending danger.

While not a war-like race, they learned quickly. However, with only a single industrial star system, they were no match for the much larger Thazzar forces. In the last years of the war, Pursale scientists developed a new technology, the phase shield, that allowed material affected by the shield to pass through normal matter and remain unaffected.

Unfortunately for the Pursale, this discovery came too late to turn the tide of war. However, it did provide a way for some ships to escape damage from the Thazzar weapons. In an effort to save their race from destruction, a number of colony ships were built and equipped with this new, although unperfected, technology. These ships were launched in many directions in the hope that some would escape and be able to rebuild the Pursale society.

Relation to the Module

The ship embedded in the Osiris asteroid is one of these colony ships. Unfortunately, the second system it arrived in, now known as Duergan’s Star in the frontier, was occupied at the time by a Thazzar battle cruiser that detected the ship and pursued it. Using its phase shield, the Pursale vessel attempted to hid inside the Osiris asteroid which they discovered to be partially hollow.

That was when the final tragedy struck. While hiding, the phase shield temporarily failed, fusing the ship with the rock and permanently disabling it, dooming the crew and colonists. Not all of the ship was destroyed and there are portions that are not fused with the surrounding rock. The ship lay dormant and entombed for millennia until it was discovered by the miners on Outpost Osiris.

When the ship was entered, some of its security systems were activated prompting the call for help. The scavengers’ activities on the ship have also activated more of the defenses that are now threatening the lives of the outpost’s crew.

Robots

Once I had the physical description of the Pursale, I was ready to create the robots. There are actually two different robots (at least) that the PCs will encounter as part of the adventure. The first is the basic combat robot. The scavengers took one (or more depending on play balance) of these and activate them in an attempt to drive the PCs off their ship. The second is a command and control warbot that is coordinating the efforts of several combat robots within the confines of Outpost Osiris itself.

Pursale Combat Robot

Frame: Medium
STR: 50
AGL: 45
CRD: 60
PER: 45
INT: 50
BP: 100
INIT: 2
Move: 12, Walking
Docking: 4CU

Skills: Marksman +5, Warrior +0

Equipment: Audio/Visual, IR, motion, & lifeform scanners, communicator, military grade reflec & sonic screens, laser rifle, distruptor, 2x 100 EU backpack.

Weapons: Laser Rifle, Distruptor

Description: This robot is like no other you have ever seen in the Frontier. It has a short squat body with six legs and two arms extending from the sides of the body near the front. Extending up from the front of the body are two long slender stalks, about 1.2 m in length that end in sensor clusters. Attached to the back, are what appear to be power packs. The arms end in manipulator hands that have three fingers and a thumb. Each arm has some sort of weapon built into it.

Referee Notes: The left arm has a built in laser rifle while the right one is sporting a distrutpor. These robots look like miniature, metallic versions of the Pursale and are designed for front line combat.

Pursale Combat Coordinator Warbot

Frame: Huge
STR: 100
AGL: 60
CRD: 70
PER: 65
INT: 65
BP: 500
INIT: 3
Move: 13, Walking
Docking: 15CU

Skills: Commander +10 (Violent Plan), Marksman +0, Warrior +0

Equipment: Audio/Visual, IR, motion,, vocal & lifeform scanners, communicator, computer link, military grade reflec & ballistic screens, 800EU power source, military grade armor, comm jammer

Weapons: Heavy Laser, Devastator, Grenade rifle with 4 EMP, 4 tangler, 8 smoke, & 8 frag grenades

Description: At first glance, this robot is basically a larger version of the combat robot, roughly the size of the Pursale themselves. It is heavily armored and has a number of large weapons mounted on (and into) its “arms”.

Referee Notes: The left arm has a built in heavy laser while the right one is sporting the devastator and grenade rifle. It has a computer link to allow coordination with a central control point but can operate independently. It can coordinate the operations of up to 64 Combat robots at any given time.

When directing the robots it controls, it has the equivalent of the Commander skill benefit Violent plan (+5 to hit, +2 damage) and uses it effectively during its operations.

It uses its grenades to attempt to disable or pin enemies and reduce visibility for its opponents. The robots can see right through the smoke from the smoke grenades and both the Combat Coordinator Warbot and the Combat Robot are shielded against the EMP blasts from the grenades the Combat Coordinator Warbot carries.

Images

The jury is still out on the final look for the Pursale. I handed off the physical description above to my resident biology artist (aka my daughter) and she came back with a few possible sketches of what these things might look like based on the description I gave her. Here are some possible options:

Insectoid:

Puffy:

Leafy:

(she actually called this one Butterfly)

The interesting thing is that I didn’t give her any direction at all. I was actually thinking more of a leathery, rough body like an elephant or rhino or a smoother leathery body like a seal or hippo.

In any case, work is progressing. I’ve basically finished section 3 of the module and have sent it out to my Patreon supporters. If you’d like to get the early releases, consider supporting me on Patreon.

What do you think about the race and robots? What physical description came to mind when you read the write-up above? Let me know in the comments below and it might get incorporated into the final version.

State of the Frontier – End of July 2018

This month did not go as planned. I had really hoped to get a little further along than I did. I managed to get the three Star Frontiers posts from Death at Rosegard out that I had planned for the month but did not get as far along on the FrontierSpace Ghost Ship Osiris project as I had hoped. I definitely made some progress but it was all behind the scenes and not anything that is in any condition to post here. I’ve put the Sathar Assault Transport project on hold for now simply because I know that if I get started on that, it will draw in all my time and attention and I really want to get the other two projects done first.

A major part of the delay is the fact that I’m currently teaching a computer science class at the local university and that has taken up more time than I anticipated (and will continue to do so for another two weeks). It’s the first time I’ve taught this particular class, and while I thought I was well prepared, there have just been a lot of things come up that have taken extra time to deal with and that has eaten up the spare time I had to work on these projects.

Another small part is that I’ve gotten distracted by another project that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time now – create a complete index of all the Star Frontiers articles published in the Frontier Explorer and Star Frontiersman fanzines, as well as all the original “official” article published in the likes of Dragon, Imagine, etc back in the 80’s. Once the initial compilation is done, I’ll be posting it here. After collecting the articles from the Frontier Explorer and up through issue 7 of the Star Frontiersman (of 25), I have nearly 450 articles. There will probably be about 600-700 once I’m all done. Eventually I intend to put all of that into an on-line searchable database. But that’s a longer term project.

And finally, I’ve picked up a commission to edit an upcoming FrontierSpace module by another author and working on the first part of that has eating a small slice of my time as well. Despite that I am making progress and we should see some new material appear this coming month.

So what’s coming up? Well, the very next item on my docket is an alien robot for the FrontierSpace adventure. Although in thinking about that, I realized that I probably need to flesh out the alien race that built it first. Once that’s done, I’ll have everything I need to finish one of the 5 sections of the Ghost Ship Osiris adventure and will get that all written up and shared with my Patreon backers. So the plans for August are:

Alien race description
Alien robot description
Adventure section (first draft – Patreon only)

If for some reason I finish that early, I’ll probably continue working on the FrontierSpace adventure and mapping out the next part of the adventure (literally, I need to draw a map). That section encompasses the PCs’ interactions with the Osiris mining complex.

So that’s were things stand. One thing that has really stood out the last few months is that there is much more involved in generating content for others to use than material just for personal use. I’ve always known this, but the work in getting the Death at Rosegard material ready to go has really driven it home. I’ve been converting bullet points in my personal notes into prose and formatted text and realized it’s going to take a lot of words to get it all down. But progress is being made.

That’s it for now. Remember to always keep exploring and expanding your frontiers!

Trey Mulden, Bounty Hunter and Breeder

This article was supposed to come out last week but work intervened and I was severely lacking in free time to get it finished and published. Sorry about the delay.

Trey was born on Lossend in the Timeon system. He came to Pale as part of the liberation force in the Great Sathar War. He participated in a few skirmishes with remnants of the sathar force on the planet but primarily was involved in efforts to eradicate the sathar bio-monsters. Like all members of the liberating forces, he was offered full citizenship if he stayed after the war. Trey decided to accept the offer and remained on Pale.

In the post-war years, he worked a variety of jobs to assist in rebuilding Point True but quickly became disenchanted with the work in the city. Deciding to put his wartime training to use, he joined a bounty hunting group that continued to search out and eradicate the sathar bio-monsters. While most of those he started with either gave up the hunt or became prey to the very creatures they were hunting, Trey excelled at the work and enjoyed it.

Trey has been hunting the sathar monsters for decades now and has been quite successful making a comfortable living from the bounties collected. However, in the last ten to fifteen years, the number of monsters has begun to dwindle, either because of successful hunting or some other process. Either way, Trey was beginning to seen his income drop to levels that he felt was unacceptable.

Rather than embark on a new line of work, he decided on another path. He had often joked with his companions that it would be easier to catch a few breeding pairs and raise their kids for the bounties instead of trying to hunt them in the wild. As his income began to drop, he decided to try just that.

Setting up a remote outpost in the mountains NW of Point True, Trey captured a number of the sathar creatures and instead of killing them for the bounty, began breeding them and raising them. Thus he could kill one of the captive creatures and collect the bounty whenever he needed additional income. He also began offering a live capture service to those who wanted live specimens to study. Since owning and breeding the sathar creatures was illegal, he has kept his operation in the shadows.

For decades he had been in contempt of the creatures as aberrations and was more than happy to hunt and kill them. That attitude persisted for the first few years of his captive breeding program. It was just a source of income. He even continued to hunt wild creatures in addition to collecting the bounties on his bred creatures. However, about six to seven years ago, his attitude toward the creatures changed. He no longer saw them as aberrations or with contempt but rather as amazing creatures with positive qualities. While he still bred the creatures and killed some for their bounties, he no longer hunted wild creatures and began to increase the number he raised, releasing those he didn’t kill for bounties into the wild.

Always fairly reclusive, he has become even more so since he started his breeding program and especially so since he started releasing the sathar creatures into the wild. He has had little direct, personal contact with anyone in several years beyond delivering proof when needed of his kills to collect the bounty income that supports him.

Trey Munden

Human, male, age 63

STR/STA: 55/45
DEX/RS: 55/55
INT/LOG: 45/50
PER/LDR: 30/30
PS: +3, IM: +6, Ranged: Beam 70%, Projectile 50%, Melee: 53%

PSA: Military
Skills: Projectile weapons 5, Melee weapons 2, Beam weapons 2, Technician 2, Environmental 3, Medic 2

Equipment: Military Skeinsuit, Auto pistol w/ 4 clips, autorifle w/ 4 clips, sonic sword w/ 2 clips, chronocom, toxy-rad guage, sungoggles.

GM Notes

Trey Munden’s change of attitude toward the sathar creatures is not an artifact of his close association with them through his breeding program. Rather it is due to an encounter he had with an actual sathar during one of his hunting expeditions. The sathar caught him unaware and successfully hypnotized him. Upon learning of his already existent breeding program, the sathar shifted his mindset about the creatures and set him on a path of breeding more and releasing them into the wild. Trey has no recollection of this encounter and firmly believes that the ideas and actions he has taken over the past few years are completely his own.

He is directly responsible for the creation of the lesser quickdeath. It was partially intentional, and partially a side effect of the selection of quickdeath to kill and turn in for bounties. Each year he would select the largest of the quickdeaths to kill as the size of the quickdeaths for which he collected the bounties figured somewhat into his reputation. Because of this, he was often breeding smaller and smaller specimens. After his encounter with the sathar, this became even more deliberate and focused. The larger pack behavior of the lesser quickdeath is due to the fact that they were raised together and naturally formed those bonds.

Encountering Munden

As part of the Death at Rosegard adventure, the PCs will not directly encounter Trey. However, they will have an opportunity to search his breeding compound, recently deserted, and learn about his activities. If the Referee wants to add additional encounters or the PCs want to chase him down, he provides an additional side adventure that they can engage in.

The Lesser Quickdeath

Here’s another critter that the PCs are going to have a run-in with while investigating at Rosegard. It’s a variation on a Star Frontiers classic.

Image showing head, neck, and tentacles of the quickdeath — Quickdeath by Don Freeman

Lesser Quickdeath
Type:	Medium Carnivore
Number:	2-4
Move:	Very Fast (120 m/turn)
IM/RS:	8/75
STA:	100
Attack:	60
Damage:	4d10 bite, claws
Special Attack:	Poison dart S10/T3, (RW 60, 10/20/30/40/50), attacks extra creature with maw (10 points damage)
Special Defense:	Immune to needler weapons; ½ damage from laser or projectile weapons, 70% chance will remain unseen until within 100m
Native World:	Sathar attack monster bred on Pale – all terrains

Description

The lesser quickdeath is a smaller version of the full-size quickdeaths which were originally released on Pale during the Sathar War and encountered on Volturnus. Where the full-sized quickdeath is about 5m long, the lesser quickdeaths are only about 3m in length. While individually smaller and less powerful, the lesser quickdeaths hunt in packs of 3-4 creatures instead of the solitary or breeding pair nature of the full-sized creatures.

While not as fast as the full-sized version (max speed is only 72 kph instead of 100 kph) they otherwise resemble their larger ancestors. Its great legs resemble those of a jaguar. They maintain the claws on their legs, keeping them razor sharp. These claws are used to attack prey and for climbing. Three sets of smaller, tentacle-like limbs which end in suction cups grow from the quickdeath’s sides. These limbs are used to catch unwary prey and stuff the victims into the quickdeath’s digestive maw. Any creature in the maw takes 10 points of damage until it frees itself (as if breaking free from a hold).

The quickdeath has a long, flexible neck that ends in a snout and large mouth. It has four eyes which are mounted on retractable stalks near the top of its head. The creature’s brain is located at the base of its neck. When the quickdeath strikes, it retracts its eye stalks making it nearly blind. With a successful attack, there is a 50% chance it will actually strike something other than its intended target if that object is roughly the same size as the target and within 2 meters of the target’s position.

The quickdeath also has a long, whip-like tail that can fling a poisonous dart once every four hours. It typically uses this dart as it first engages in melee to strike a secondary, more distant target if one exists.

The quickdeath’s hide is covered by a moist, reflective armor provides excellent camouflage making it nearly invisible until it approaches within 100 meters. Ouickdeaths are constantly on the move, seeking to appease their hearty appetites.

The female can lay hundreds of eggs each year, typically burying them deep in the sand or soil. Egg caches can contain up to 50 eggs (4d10 + 11). The first young hatchling eats the remaining eggs as its first meal, and then sets out to begin its lifelong search for more food.

Ouickdeaths are not native to Pale. The Sathar used advanced genetic manipulation to create them from a common type of cat found throughout the universe. During the invasion of Pale, they released hundreds of these in the area around Point True to terrorize any survivors outside the city. These lesser quickdeaths have only recently been sighted in the areas north and west of Point True in the last couple of years. Originally thought to be adolescents, examination of recently killed specimens show them to be a fully grown subspecies.

GM Notes

There are still many full-sized quickdeaths on Pale. You can use the normal stats for those from page 19 of SF0: Crash on Volturnus for other encounters on the planet. However, the full-sized versions do not figure into this adventure.

The lesser quickdeaths are a newly bred version of the larger creature. They have been bred by a former bounty hunter and recently released into the wild. He originally was simply breeding quickdeaths as a “safer” way to collect the bounties on the creatures. However, about 10 years ago, he had an encounter with some sathar on Pale and was converted to their cause. He has been working on this new version of the creature since then and has been releasing them into the wild for only a couple of years. The lesser quickdeaths are currently only found in the areas around his breeding facility.

Currently there are only about 50 lesser quickdeaths on the planet but their numbers are slowly growing and their range on the planet is increasing.