Tag Archives: Star Frontiers

Legends and Lore – Yazirians

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This is the second part of my post on the history, legends, and lore of the yazirians in my Star Frontier universe. Part one, Yazirian History, was posted last week. Both of these posts are part of February’s RPG Blog Carnival, Legends and Lore, being hosted by the Enderra blog.

In last week’s post, we looked at the history of the yazirian species in relation to their arrival in the Frontier region and colonization of the worlds they now occupy. Most of the material presented there is both fact and general knowledge in the Frontier that most characters would either know or be able to discover with just a little bit of research. In this post, we look at things that may be true but unknown, true but hidden, rumor, speculation, or conjecture, the latter three may be true or false. I’ll try to flag each of these items as I discuss them.

Some of this information is part of the ideas I have for an major campaign where the PCs go in search of the yazirian homeworld, the fate of those that remained behind, and the Warhon’s ship. They are definitely spoilers for anyone that may play in that game if I ever run it.

I think the best way to do this will be to organize the ideas by general topic, possibly with a miscellaneous section at the end. In each section, I’m just going to provide a bulleted list with the relevant information. Let’s get started.

The Fate of Yazira

  • The last exodus ship that arrived in the Frontier departed Yazira some ten years before closest approach of the interloping brown dwarf. (fact, known)
  • Millions of yazirians remained on Yaziria unwilling to leave their world. (fact, known)
  • No ship has ever returned to the Yazira system. (fact, known)
  • In the early days after yazirians arrived in the Frontier, several ships attempted to go back to Yazira to see what happened. None of these ships have ever returned. (fact, obscure)
  • Most of these ships that failed to return were destroyed by agents of the Family of One. (fact, deeply hidden) Some simply disappeared and their fate is unknown, but none made it to Yazira.
  • There is no known jump route data back to Yazira. (false rumor). Deep within the archives of Clan Anglann and the Family of One, there is a stored set of routes back to Yazira. They are known only to a few yazirians and heavily guarded and obscured. They are also nearly a century out of date at this point and may not be valid.
  • Modern yazirians don’t even know which star is their homeworld, just the general direction in the sky. (fact, known) There are some members of the Family of One who know, but this knowledge is a closely guarded secret as well.
  • Predictions of Yazira’s fate, based on the path of the brown dwarf, indicated that the planet would be hurled out of the system into deep interstellar space. (fact, obscure)
  • Instead of being spun out into interstellar space, Yaziria was actually captured by the brown dwarf as it passed through the system and now circles that object in a wide orbit as it continues on its journey. (fact, unknown)

Fate of the Warhon and his Guard

  • Of all the exodus ships, only the Warhon’s ship failed to make the trip to the Frontier (fact, known)
  • The Warhon’s ship was sabotaged by agents of Clan Anglann so that it wouldn’t arrive and they could seize power. (discredited rumor, but true). There is no evidence to support this anywhere in the Frontier but Clan Anglann did sabotage the Warhon’s ship. All records possibly relating to this were lost in a computer “crash” early after the exodus. Only two living yazirians, seniors elders in the Family of One, know the truth and they aren’t saying anything.
  • Most of the Warhon’s personal guard that were part of the early exodus died soon after arriving in the Frontier. (fact, obscure) Most of these deaths were “accidents” caused by Clan Anglann (obscure rumor, fact). Most modern yazirians have moved on and just don’t care.
  • Some of the Warhon’s Guard survived the purge and quickly emigrated to the Prenglar, Triad, and Truane’s Star systems where they went into hiding from the Family of One. (fact, obscure)
  • The survivors of the Warhon’s Guard formed a secret society named “True Yaziria” that word to oppose or diminish the influence of the Family of One (fact, obscure)
  • Despite the sabotage of the Warhon’s ship, it was not destroyed and managed to survive long enough to make planetfall on an unknown world. (fact, unknown) Rumors exist that it is still out there, spread by True Yazira, but it is all speculation. No facts exist to support it.
  • The genetic Ark on the Warhon’s ship survived and is completely intact in the remains of the ship. (fact, unknown)
  • All of the conspiracy against the Warhon was a very small slice of Clan Anglann. (fact, unknown/hidden) Most clan members were not involved and would be horrified to know the truth.

The General Population

  • Very few living yazirians actually remember their homeworld as most were born in the Frontier. There is a small and dwindling population (maybe 10%) of older yazirians that actually lived on Yazira. (fact, known)
  • There is a fairly large generation gap between this older population and the next wave of yazirians. In the final years leading up to the exodus, the birthrate dropped off significantly. (fact, known)
  • The yazirians of the Frontier, while aware of Yazira, don’t give it much thought except as it is used in holovids and expressions about how things used to be. (fact, known)
  • The problems with terraforming operations on the worlds in the Scree Fron, Athor, and Gruna Garu systems are intentional problems caused by the Family of One and the General Overall Development Corporation (GODCo) to keep those systems in line. (false, rumor). The problems truly are technical and result from GODCo being overextended trying to work on five different worlds instead of just the one they original planned for. Despite having nearly a century to grow, they still don’t have the resources and manpower they need. These issues provide openings for rumors to be spread by the True Yazira society in their effort to undermine the Family of One.
  • Interaction with the other species of the Frontier dealt a serious blow to the yazirian cultural identity as a warrior species. (fact, obscure) They discovered that despite their history, they were neither the strongest nor the nimblest species in the area. Although it is slowly fading away, ripples of this are still seen throughout yazirian culture, especially among older yazirians.

Lost Scoutships

  • There were many scout ships sent out from Yazira shortly after FTL travel was discovered, most of these never returned. (fact, obscure)
  • Several of these lost starships made it to systems in or near the Frontier, including Volturnus in the Zebulon system. There may be survivors, possibly descendants of the crews, in primitive societies to be discovered. The crew that made it to Zebulon did not survive. (fact, unknown)
  • Some of the scoutships penetrated into sathar space and were captured or destroyed. (fact, unknown)

Family of One and GODCo

  • All of the upper management of GODCo are members of the Family of One (fact, discoverable).
  • All of the upper management of GODCo are members of Clan Anglann (false, rumor). While a significant portion are, not all of them are from the same clan.
  • The Family of One is using the work done by GODCo to attempt to control all of the yazirian populated worlds. (false, rumor). While the upper leadership of GODCo are members of the Family of One, they are not ideological power-mongers. At least not any more than leaders of other mega-corps. While some fervently believe in the idea of a unified yazirian species according to the Family of One precepts, many are only interested in helping their fellow yazirians and are members of the Family of One out of necessity – they couldn’t hold their position if they weren’t.
  • Many members of the Family of One are members in name only and only minimally hold to many of the tenants of the religion. (fact) They are members because you need to be to hold any significant position on Hentz (Araks).
  • Family of One members on worlds other than Hentz tend to me more fervent as membership is optional on those worlds. (fact)
  • The Family of One is watching all aspects of yazirian culture, everywhere. (partially true, rumor). While the Family of One tries to keep abreast of everything going on, they don’t have nearly as many spies, inquisitors, and informants as the rumors (spread by the True Yazira society) would have you believe.
  • The Family of One is preventing GODCo from deploying all of its technology and releasing all the flora and fauna from Yazira on the worlds other than Hentz. (fact). Debates about this practice arise regularly in yazirian society. GODCo claims that it is because the environment are not ready or suitable, but most of the restrictions come from the Family of One and their effort to ensure that Hentz is the only “New Yazira”.

HSS History’s Hope

In my Detailed Frontier Timeline, one of the story threads is covering the travels of the HSS History’s Hope, a small exploration ship registered on Hakosaur (Scree Fron) that is currently trying to chart a route to a star system believed to be Yazira. If you want to use this little storyline in your campaign, there are some rumors about it, even though the project has just started.

  • The Family of One tried to cover up and suppress the discovery of the star system with the nearby brown dwarf because they knew it was Yazira. (fact, rumor) This rumor popped up almost immediately and is based in fact. The star system is Yazira and the Family of One doesn’t want people poking around because no one knows what they will find.
  • The HSS History’s Hope is being financed by True Yazira. (partially true) While many of the original supporters of the expedition, and and many that provided initial funding, are members of True Yazira, not all of them are and it isn’t a project being directed by the secret society. It just aligned with the society’s goals and many members independently jumped on the opportunity.
  • Most of the entire crew of the HSS History’s Hope are members of True Yaziria (fact, obscure rumor). Since the society’s membership is very obscured, it is hard to tell for sure who is and who isn’t a member. The rumor circulates among upper members of the Family of One. Most others don’t know about the secret society or don’t care. The fact is that about 80% of the crew are members of the society simply because they have an interest in finding Yazira. It wasn’t intentionally planned.
  • The Family of One has sent ships to eliminate the HSS History’s Hope. (fact, hidden). This one is a spoiler for the timeline. As I’m writing this, the History’s Hope has had a bad string of calculations and made some misjumps. When they finally get back to the known space lanes, they are going to have to deal with this.

Outstanding Questions

The points above provide some ideas and background but they also raise a number of questions. These are either things I’m going to flesh out in the future as I develop the storylines more or things that someone using this information could expand upon as well. Some of these are:

  • What exactly happened to the Warhon’s ship?
    • How did it fail? What was the damage?
    • Did the crew survive? All enter freeze fields?
    • What happened to the Warhon’s family?
  • If they made it to a planet surface, what is their current state?
    • Another yazirian colony?
    • What tech level are they at?
    • What happened to the genetic ark?
  • What is the “True Yaziria” society doing?
    • How to you become a member?
    • How well known is it?
    • What resources does it have access to?
    • I invented this organization just recently as I was working out the detail of these two posts so this is an area I plan on expanding on. This may very well show up as an entry in June when I’m hosting the Blog Carnival.
  • What events and consequences will the HSS History’s Hope expedition trigger? What will they find?

Final Thoughts

That’s what I have for now. There is still a lot of legend and lore for the yazirians that could be explored. I intentionally didn’t cover much in regards to the daily life of a typical member of the species and current events in the Frontier, just items that are part of their cultural heritage. Some of these other ideas will undoubtedly show up in future posts. Other bits may show up in the pages of the Frontier Explorer.

What legends and lore do you have for the yazirian species? Share your ideas in the comment section below.

Yazirian History

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The RPG Blog Carnival this month is being hosted by the Enderra Worldbuild & Role-playing Games blog and the topic is Legends and Lore. You can follow that link to find all the other posts people have made on the topic.

When I read this topic, my mind immediately went to the Yazirians in the Star Frontiers setting. They were a natural choice to pursue in greater depth, especially based on much of the fan material that has been developed for that species. And while I’ve been thinking about these ideas for all of the Star Frontiers species, the yazirians are particularly relevant to me right now since part of my Detailed Frontier Timeline (most recent post as of this writing) is currently dealing with a plot line exploring this history directly, namely a ship, the HSS History’s Hope, that is headed toward a system that they think might be Yazira, the yazirian homeworld.

A lot of the foundation for this background is set in two articles that we published in the Star Frontiersman nearly a decade ago in issue 16, back in December 2010. The first is an article written by my friend Tom Verreault entitled “Origin of the Species & the UPF” on page 34 of that issue. In this he gives his version of how the various species in the Frontier got there. The second article, which I wrote to support the ideas he presented for the yazirians in that article, is entitled “Interstellar Interloper (Brown Dwarf)” (p. 46), and discusses what could happen to a planetary system if a brown dwarf sized object passed close through the center of a star system. I recommend you grab issue 16 and read both articles.

This is going to be a two part series. In this first post will look at the background and history of the Yazirian race as I conceive them when running games. The next one will look at the Legends and Lore as it exists at the current point in the campaign. Some of the material is fact, some is common knowledge, some is belief, and some is propaganda. I’ll be looking at it from all those angles.

The Loss of Yazira

The yazirian homeworld, Yazira, orbited a K4 star that is located some 100 light years “west” of the Frontier in an area known as the Vast Expanse, so named because of its low stellar density and large distances between neighboring star systems. Interestingly, very, very few yazirians living today actually know the location of this star system. More on that in the next post. To start let’s go back to about 200 years ago.

It was a time of relative peace and growing industrialization and prosperity for the world. The world had been united under a single government for several centuries and was beginning to develop spaceflight and really start looking into the universe beyond the Yazira system.

A Threat Discovered

It was at this point, as they began to survey the cosmos, that the yazirian astronomers noticed something in the sky that would completely change the course of their specie’s history. When it was first discovered, it was a curiosity. An object extremely bright in the infrared but extremely faint in the visible, even with the yazirian’s definition of visible light that extended somewhat into the infrared. It wasn’t long before a theoretical model was developed for the object, something we today call a brown dwarf.

The astronomers were excited. Based on the observed characteristics, they realized it had to be very close to Yazira. It would allow them to study this type of object up close. As the object was studied more, the distance, a mere 1500 AU, was established.

However, what was also established was that it was coming closer. Over the next few years, the orbit of the object was refined and it was realized that the brown dwarf was falling nearly directly toward their star and would pass very close to their world in the process. Simulations showed that depending on the mass of the object and its exact path, their world and species was in for a major catastrophe ranging from severe and drastic orbital and therefore climate change to complete ejection from their solar system. If something wasn’t done, they were probably doomed as a species.

The bad news was that they were in trouble. The good news was that they had nearly 140 years to prepare. To the Warhon’s credit (the leader of the yazirians), he took the news in stride and neither dismissed it since it wouldn’t happen in his lifetime, nor panicked. Rather he understood the issue for what it was and began charting a course for his people.

The general populace wasn’t so stoic. Many denounced the scientists as alarmists. Others claimed the discovery to be a hoax. Still others used it to as an excuse to hoard survival gear, food, and other essentials and drop out of society. Many just ignored it due to the long time scale. The most troubling, however, were those that took the news to mean that society was over and reverted to lawlessness and anarchy. It was these latter groups that would plague yazirian society for the next century.

A Plan Takes Shape

Over the next decade, as the Warhon’s troops dealt with the anarchists and the astronomers worked to refine the object’s trajectory even more, the government began investing heavily in space technology. While yazirians had already visited their two moons and had many low altitude orbital flights, the extra push from the government allowed them to set foot on other worlds in the system for the first time before the decade was over.

With the development in space technology well under way, the government also started a few other projects. One was increased medical research, especially related to long duration spaceflight and how the yazirian body would adapt and change under different conditions (gravity, stellar flux, etc).

The other was called the Ark Project. This had two areas of focus. The first was to catalog the genomes of every species on the planet, plant and animal, and collect this into a large database as well as collecting samples of as many species as possible. The second was a push into cloning technology that would allow the recreation of those species from the database.

The ultimate goal was to move the yazirian population off of their homeworld to somewhere else. Where was yet to be determined. The initial plan called for the creation of huge generations ships that would travel to likely star systems looking for a world to inhabit. Astronomers had already begun looking for worlds around other suitable stars.

A Change of Plans

Some thirty years after the original identification of the brown dwarf, a discovery occurred that would change the very foundation of what had come to be called the Exodus project.

Using a variety of propulsion technologies, a major break through had been achieved that would allow them to accelerate small probes fast enough to reach some of the nearer star systems before the generations ships would have to leave the Yazira system. The first probes were launched, and as they achieved speeds of about 1% the speed of light, only a fraction of their final velocity, they vanished.

At first it was believed that the probes had broke up or otherwise become inoperable. However, deep radar scans of the region of space they should have been in returned no data. And having five probes, all going different directions, vanish in exactly the same way was more than mere coincidence.

Another set of probes were launched as a test which ended with the exact same result. Yazirian scientists realized that this was some fundamental aspect of physics that they had not suspected or known about. Hundreds of researchers started working on the problem.

It was nearly a decade before a breakthrough was made and a theory of hyperdimensional travel was discovered. In the mean time, work had been going on to improve technology to the point that a crewed vessel could achieve the speeds necessary to invoke the effect.

It would be another decade before a ship was ready to make the first attempt at testing this theory. With a total delta-V of 5% of the speed of light, the ship should be able to achieve the hyperdimenional travel speed, slow down and do it again. Thus is should be able to make a trip and return. In theory.

A Historic Flight

With an all volunteer crew, the YSS Grand Voyager set out on its maiden voyage in an attempt to make history. It took a month of acceleration to get up to near the 1% speed of light threshold and then another agonizing month of small bursts of thrust to precisely measure and cross the threshold. Then just like the the probes, the Grand Voyager vanished.

It would be months of anxious waiting before the fate of the Grand Voyager would be learned. Most people had given up hope when a faint radio signal was received from the ship coming from high out of the orbital plane of the system. They had survived the trip and hyperdimensional travel, which would come to be called Void travel when they met the other species in the Frontier, was possible. There was still much to learn about this new form of travel, but the travel time for the exodus had been greatly reduced.

Looking for a Place to Call Home

Over the next two decades, propulsion technology was innovated and improved and more and more ships were launched to scout out the nearby star systems looking for a world that they could move the population of Yazira to. Most of these ships would eventually be lost as they explored further and further from Yazira. It was not known if there were troubles with the Void travel, mechanical failures with the ships, or they had suffered misfortune in the systems they visited.

As ships did return, they learned much about the nearby stellar systems but no suitable world was found. Finally, after nearly two more decades of searching, a ship returned from a two year journey reporting that a suitable world had been found, nearly 100 light years away. The star was significantly brighter and yellower than Yazira but the world itself was nearly Yazira’s twin in climate and gravity.

During this time, the designs of the exodus ships were rebuilt from the ground up to use this new mode of faster than light travel. With a destination finally established, exploration ceased and construction began on the first ship, the YSS Yazira’s Ark, that would take a select crew, along with a copy of the genetic archive, to this new world to start preparing it for the arrival of the rest of the population.

The Exodus Begins

It took five years for the YSS Yazira’s Ark to be completed. Crewed primarily by members of Clan Anglann, it departed for the new system which had been dubbed Araks to colonize and begin yaziriforming the planet Hentz.

By this time, the brown dwarf was visible to the unaided eye on Yazira and was year by year growing brighter. The world began to focus almost completely on the construction of the exodus ships. While there were some that decried the damage being done to the environment due to the industrialization of the planet, most understood that the world was doomed and so accepted the changes.

Five years after the YSS Yazira’s Ark left, five more ship were completed with nearly twenty-five more in some stated of completion. These later ships were gigantic, nearly ten times the size of the Yazira’s Ark. It would take nearly two hundred more to move the entire population. With the first five ships complete, the exodus of the yazirian population to Hentz began in earnest.

It had been decided early on that when the time came, ships would be populated by clans. While the crews were often from Clan Anglann, the passengers were drawn from a single clan or possibly two. Depending on the size of the clan, it could take two or three ships to hold the entire clan population.

Over the next two decades, a steady stream of ships departed the Yazira system. Finally, the last ships were completed, three of the giant colony ships and a final, smaller ship modeled on the original Yazira’s Ark. This last ship contained the Royal Court, the Warhon and his family, who was the son of the Warhon who had started the project, 120 years earlier. It also contained a final copy of the genetic database including all the additional data that had been collected since the Yazira’s Ark had left. It was the last ship to leave their doomed world. The interloping brown dwarf was clearly visible in the night sky and only 18 years away. It was the last ship to leave.

Trouble at the Destination

As the second wave of colony ships were arriving at Hentz, the yazirians detected signals from other spacefaring species not too far from their new world. Concerned that they might be hostile, Clan Anglann, which had been organizing the exodus, diverted ships from waves three and four to several new worlds in systems nearby. These ships went to the Athor, Gruna Garu and Scree Fron systems. The worlds there were not as desirable as Hentz, but the yazirians wouldn’t have all their eggs in a single basket if these new species proved to be hostile.

Loss of the Warhon

The trip from Yazira to Araks was a long one requiring nearly twenty Void jumps along the way. As the final fleet of ships made the journey, disaster struck. On the 5th jump, the Warhon’s ship didn’t arrive in the destination system. The other three ships waited for nearly two months but the Warhon never reappeared. Finally, they completed their journey and delivered the news to the yazirians on Hentz and it was related to the others in the Athor, Gruna Garu, and Scree Fron systems.

A week of mourning was held for the Warhon’s family. And then political chaos erupted. With the entire royal family gone, a power vacuum was created. In the end, Clan Anglann and the Family of One, who had been organizing the exodus on behalf of the Warhon, took control of the yazirian government.

Fallout

Many suspected foul play. Of the nearly 250 ships built, only the newest ship with the most up to date technology was unable to make the trip. Coincidentally, it also happened to contain the Warhon and his family. The most vocal opponents of the Family of One’s rule was the Warhon’s personal guard that had arrived in advance. Their voices were quickly surpressed. Many just vanished. Others emigrated to the Prenglar, Cassidine, and Truane’s Star systems, integrating with the other races in the Frontier who the yazirians had established contact with some years before.

It wasn’t too many years later that the sathar first appeared in the Frontier. This effectively put an end to the inter-clan conflict as the species in the Frontier united to fend off his new foe. With the formation of the UPF, the yazirian race started looking forward instead of back. Some still remember the old days but most have accepted the new order and are working toward the future.

Next Time

That represents the history of the Yazirian people as most people know it. There are a few things in that narrative that are not widely known (such as the suppression of dissension by the Family of One, but that information should be familiar to most yazirian characters and many non-yazirians as well.

Next week we’ll look at lots of details behind the scenes and outside the Frontier that impact the store and contribute to the lore of the yazirian species.

Pirate Frigate Model and Miniature

It’s the second post of the month and, as is becoming somewhat of a regular feature, it’s time for a new miniature. This time around we are looking at the Pirate Frigate.

This model is another recreation of an original TSR miniature. The original Pirate Frigate was include in the Sathar Ships box of miniatures along with the Corvette and Pirate Assault Scout and the three sathar ships (frigate and light and heavy cruisers).

The Pirate Frigate completes the set of models from that box. It’s only taken me three and a half years. When I first started this 3D modeling hobby, I began by creating a sathar destroyer miniature to start to fill in the gaps in the miniature line and to make a model for the ship that I had created a full set of deck plans for. I then went on in short order to do every other ship in the Sathar Ships box except for the Pirate Frigate.

The main reason was the guns mounted on the side of the ship. At the time, I knew that the 3D printer I had access to was not able to print that fine of detail. The other reason was the finer detail itself. I was just starting out and didn’t have the skill needed (or maybe it was the patience) to actually build that model. I did try scanning the miniature with a 3D scanner we had just acquired at work, and which I was testing, in an attempt to create a model that way, but that never really worked out. It turns out that the shininess of the metal miniatures make the laser scanning beam give weird results. And so this model languished on my todo list for many years.

But now that I have a high resolution printer that can print the detail on the miniature, the wait is finally over. And after tackling the UPF ships, modeling the details on this one was actually fairly easy. I’ve gotten more confident in my skills and more willing to take a little artistic license instead of trying to make an exact copy, although this one is really close.

The Model

3D render of the pirate frigate model. It has a cylindrical fuselage with a tapered, conical nose cone and two large gun turrets sticking out from the side.

Here’s the finished model. There isn’t a lot to say about this model. Other than the guns, the shape of the model is fairly straightforward with only a few simple details added to the surface.

One bit that you can’t see from the image but is quickly apparent if you are holding the miniature is that the body of the ship is not perfectly round. Rather it is squished somewhat so that it is largest along the axis where the guns are mounted (about 8mm across) and smaller perpendicular to that (about 7mm). I modeled the ship round and then applied a scaling factor to the fuselage to squish it slightly.

The hardest part of the fuselage was actually the nose of the ship. That tapered, pointed shape at the ship’s bow is not a shape my modeling program can create natively. I can stretch out spheres, and I can make pointed cones, but that rounded cone shape is not part of the core system. There might be a library out there that someone has written that will do it, but I haven’t found one (or looked very hard).

For those trying out OpenSCAD, it needed to be a series of short straight lines instead of a simpler smooth curve because OpenSCAD doesn’t work with the spline() object that a smooth curve creates in the exported .DXF file. So you have to go and make a series of small straight segments to approximate the curve. The model is so small that you can’t even see the small segments and it looks smooth.

Instead, what I did here is similar to what I did for the body of the sathar destroyer. I took an image of the original miniature and, in Inkscape, modeled the curvature of the nose by a series of short, straight lines. Once I had the shape correct, I exported the curve as a .DXF file which I could import into my modeling program (OpenSCAD) and then create the nose of the ship from that imported shape. (Using the rotate_extrude() command). I then had to scale it a bit to get it to be the right size.

The final bit of difficulty was the guns. This is what held me off from creating this model years ago. But now, armed with my calipers, rulers, magnifying glasses, and a lot more experience, I was able to make short work of the gun. It didn’t hurt that I have several of the original miniatures so I could look at all of them and use the ones in the best condition to make the measurements and understand the details. Like the fuselage, the guns are compressed slightly along the same axis but to a different extent. So they are scaled and added separately to the main fuselage.

Overall, this model took about four and a quarter hours. At least an hour of that was getting the nose cone right and remembering that I needed to use small line segments instead of a curve to define the shape.

Printing

3D printed miniature next to the original.

The image to the right shows the printed miniature next to the original metal one. I forgot to include a ruler for scale but he miniature is 53mm (2.1″) tall, tip to tail. The white residue on the printed model is from evaporated isopropyl alcohol that I use to clean the excess resin off the print. I’ve since started flushing the models with soft water before curing them and don’t have that residue any more.

The guns I created are not quite as skinny s the ones on the original metal minis but are pretty close. I could make them skinnier but don’t think it necessary.

Up Next

That completes the Sathar Ships boxed set. You can order any and all of these models on the Order Miniatures page here on the site and I will print and ship them to you. If you want just the 3D model files, they are available on my 3D Models page on DriveThruRPG. Since this model recreates an old mini, the file is just a pay-what-you-want product and can be downloaded for free if you desire.

Now that the Sathar Ships box is done, it’s time to finish the models from the Federation Ships box. The only remaining model from that box is the small freighter model. That will be the subject of my next Model and Miniature post, either late this month or, more likely, the second week in March. After that, I’ll be starting in on the ship models from the Privateer boxed set.

As always, leave your thoughts, comments, or suggestions in the comment section below.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY60.360 to FY60.390

This is a busy month in the time line with lots of events happening simultaneously. If I had realized how much overlap there would be in some of the story threads, I might not have started the Bugs in the System (SFAD5) thread last month. The timing of the Warriors of White Light events, however, have been scheduled since the beginning of the project.

Things are coming to a head relative to the Sathar Starship Construction Center in OFS019. I haven’t really decided how that will resolve out yet so we’ll just have to wait and see. Also, the HSS History’s Hope is making regular, if slow progress toward it’s goal. They’ve been lucky recently. I roll with each newly charted jump to see if they make it and they’ve made a few by just a couple of percentiles. Moving into the Vast Expanse the jumps are going to get significantly longer with much lower probabilities. At some point I’ll post a star map with the systems in what I’m calling the Yazira Sector.

If you follow along on Twitter (@StarFrontiers) you may have noticed that I fell behind a bit a couple of times this month as well as dropping some of the story lines and having to get caught up. That’s what I get for just working a few days ahead recently. I’m going to try to get a bit ahead of this again in the next few days. Anyway, on to the timeline.

Date (FY)Event
60.360 – The TransTravel assault scout arrives at Terldrom (Fromeltar)

– Strike Force Nova, joined by the ships of Patrol Group Virgo, leaves orbit around Volturnus (Zebulon) and starts accelerating for their jump to the Capella system in the Rim.
60.361 Sathar SCC#2 (Liberty) completes a destroyer.
60.362 Discovery Squadron successfully jumps into the OFS017 system coming in high out of the plane of the system.  With two near misses, they decided to take some downtime in this system to allow the astrogators to rest.
60.363 Just 10 days after the buyout, the Groth Energy Corporation (GE) has reopened all their operations. They also announce a major hike in energy prices. There is much grumbling but due to the nature of the Groth (Fromeltar) infrastructure, most customers are locked into to GE as their only provider and must pay the higher prices or be cut off.
60.364 The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps to the system designated YS001 and begins deceleration in preparation for their return jump to OFS222.  They are the first ship to leave the Outer Frontier Sector into the Vast Expanse in over five decades, none before have ever returned.
60.365 Repairs on the starship construction center orbiting Triad (Cassidine) restore capacity back to 80% of maximum.
60.366 Sathar SCC#4 completes 5 fighters
60.367 Confident now that the danger to the newly hatched eorna is past, another cretch of fifty eggs is hatched.
60.368 – A freighter, the HHSS Sojourner, traveling from Scree Fron to Araks, stops over at Snobol (Belnafaer) due to engine trouble.  The freighter has several passengers in addition to its regular cargo (SFAD5)

– After several days of rest and time for some needed maintenance, the ships of the Discovery squadron begin accelerating for a jump back to Kazak.  This will be their last uncharted jump.
60.369 Strike Force Nova arrives at Faire (Capella).  Fleet officers meet with leaders of the Flight and the Rim Government to discuss plans for the OFS019 system.
60.370 – Responding to a mayday call from the PSS Prenglar Doll, the CMS Osprey engages the pirate ship PVSS Raven, a Streel manufactured corvette that was attacking the PSS Prenglar Doll. The Raven escapes the battle after damaging the Osprey’s engines but the crew and cargo of the Prenglar Doll survive the encounter. (SFKH0)

– Having completed their deceleration, and jump calculations, the HSS History’s Hope begins acceleration back to the OFS222 system.
60.371 Captain Akizk of the Moneyspider recruits some of the passengers of the HHSS Sojourner to remain in the system and help him get Jetsom working again and rescue any crew still trapped there.
60.372 Sathar SCC#5 completes a light cruiser
60.373 Discovery Squadron successfully jumps into the Kazak system and begins decelerating toward Stenmar Station.  They transmit all their navigation data to the UPF and Rim Coalition forces.
60.374 Construction of second assault scout for the K’aken-Kar militia is completed at the Terldrom (Fromeltar) shipyard.  It begins it’s journey to it’s home system.
60.375 – The GLLR-5 recreation robot on the Moneyspider goes haywire attacking Daqor Klarr (vrusk) and Fiator Geauis (dralasite) in the rec room. A symptom of the Matrix infecting the Moneyspider, it is considered a simple programming glitch. (SFAD5)

– The HSS History’s Hope arrives back in the OFS222 system and begins deceleration.  They transmit jump data back to the UPF.
60.376 – The team recruited by Captain Akizk of the Moneyspider descend to Jetsom to investigate the problems there. They find the platform operating but the life support is keeping the temperature very cold (-10 C). (SFAD5)

– After a week of discussion, no consensus has been reached between the Rim and Strike Force Nova as to how best deal with the sathar in OFS019.  Strike Force Nova leaves Faire (Capella) to continue on to the Kazak system.
60.377 – Construction completed on the UPF light cruiser in the Gran Quivera (Prenglar) starship construction center, replacing the one lost at the Battle of Zebulon.

– Exploration of the Jetsom platform reveals one crew member in a freeze field, the body of another in a freeze field whose power failed, and the remains of a third that was killed by the sapes on the platform.  The sapes are still alive and the fourth crew member is missing. (SFAD5)
60.378 – The body of the fourth Jetsom crew member (Akord Zon – vrusk) is found, dead and slumped over her computer terminal in the reactor room.  A tear in her insuit resulted in a radiation overdose that killed her. (SFAD5)

– After two days of work, the rescue team can still not get control of the life support system on the Jetsom. While attempts to correct the system seem to work, they always revert to the very cold temperatures after a few hours. (SFAD5)

– Discovery Squadron arrives at Stenmar Station.  The commanding officer of Patrol Group Flint deputizes the ships to be part of the patrol group until Strike Force Nova arrives and decides the next course of action
60.379 On its one year anniversary, the Yazira Dome has received over 5 million visitors. During a special celebration, GODCo announces its intent to build a second dome on Hakosaur in the Scree Fron system. Many believe that this is in response to the pressures to allow non-yazirian visitors into the dome on Hentz (Araks).
60.380 – A wildcat miner in the White Light asteroid belt reports the location of a pirate base in the asteroid Planaron to the Clarion Royal Marines.  Plans begin immediately to neutralize the base. (SFKH0)

– Deceleration complete, the HSS History’s Hope begins acceleration back toward YS001 to continue their voyage into the uncharted space.
60.381 – On board the Jetsom, hatches start randomly locking and alarms start randomly going off reporting dangerous conditions when none exist. (SFAD5)

– Strike Force Nova arrives in the Osak system.  They maintain velocity near jump speed and begin plotting jump to Kazak.
60.382 The four Clarion Royal Marine militia vessels (1 frigate & 3 assault scouts) engage the pirate forces (3 corvettes) at the pirate base.  The CMS Wasp is destroyed in the fight and all the militia vessels take damage. The frigate, the CMS Leo, is nearly destroyed as well. The pirate vessels and base are all eliminated. (SFKH0)
60.383 An order is placed at the Minotuar starship construction center (Theseus) for two new assault scouts for the Clarion Royal Marines, the CMS Flitter and the CMS Swallow.
60.384 Construction completed on fifth Saurian Ark Ship which begins its shakedown cruise.
60.385 Based on Akord Zon’s notes and their experiences over the past week, the rescue crew on the Jetsom establish that the computer and electrical failures are due to the action of a semi-sentient computer virus that Akord had named “the Matrix.” (SFAD5)
60.386 Using Akord Zone’s notes and after much experimentation, the rescue team on Jetsom are finally able to wrest control of the life support system from the control of the Matrix.  They reset the temperature on the platform to a more comfortable 20 C. (SFAD5)
60.387 Construction of the CMS Flitter begins
60.388 The rescue team on Jetsom start experiencing issues with their equipment that they brought with them, especially any power packs that they have recharged recently.  They register as charged but provide no power. (SFAD5)
60.389 Having arrived back in YS001, the crew of the HSS History’s Hope begin maintenance work on the ship while the astrogators work on plotting the jump route for the next leg. The target is a small M dwarf 5 lightyears away.
60.390 Strike Force Nova arrives at Stenmar Station (Kazak). Patrol Group Flint is merged back into the Strike Force.  Together with Discovery Squadron and the Flight forces in the system, the warships represent the greatest collection of ships since the Second Common Muster to face the sathar six decades previous.

Download the full file :

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

Worlds of Origin for Star Frontiers Races – part 1

This week we’re going to begin looking at determining the origins of any given character or NPC in the Frontier. I’ve labeled this as part 1 in a series as it is a preliminary draft that I plan to tweak and expand on in the future. This is really a preliminary, first pass but still quite usable in its current form.

This is the post I had planned for last week but didn’t quite have it ready in time so you got the UPF Minelayer a week early.

RPG Blog Carnival Logo

This project is something that’s been kicking around in the back of my mind for years now and I was inspired to look at it again as part of the RPG Blog Carnival this month which has the topic “Random Encounter Tables“. While this isn’t necessarily a random encounter table per se, it can be used to randomly determine information about someone you encounter in the game. It’s a bit of a stretch, but still relevant. I encourage everyone to visit the main topic page for this months carnival and read all the posts linked to in the comments. I’ll be hosting the blog carnival in June so I’m going to make an effort to write a post each month for the carnival this year and become more active. It tends to be more focused on fantasy gaming so sometimes I’ll really need to stretch the topic but we’ll see how it goes.

We’re going to start right with the table and then I’ll talk about how it was generated. If you’re interested in a slightly different take on this same topic, we published an article, “Star Frontiers Birth Locations” by ExileInParadise, in issue 19 of the Frontier Explorer back in Jan 2017 as part of our Star Frontiers 35th anniversary issue. This article will be a first pass at my take on that same topic.

Where Are You From?

To randomly determine the world of origin of one of the “Core Four” Star Frontiers species, roll d100 on the following table. Find the value rolled in the column for the species in question and the line tells you the origin world and system for that character. This version of the table is ordered by system and not the name of the world.

Planet (system) Dralasite Human Vrusk Yazirian
Hentz (Araks) 1 1 1 1-12
Yast (Athor) 2-3 2-3 2-3 13-19
Rupert’s Hole (Cassidine) 4-6 4-10 4-5 20-22
Triad (Cassidine) 7-18 11-20 6-17 23-33
Laco (Dixon’s Star) 19 21-22 18 34
Inner Reach (Dramune) 20-27 23-24 19-21 35-37
Outer Reach (Dramune) 28-35 25-31 22-28 38-44
Groth (Fromeltar) 36-40 32 29 45
Terledrom (Fromeltar) 41-52 33-35 30-41 46-49
Hargut (Gruna Goru) 53-56 36-38 42-45 50-61
Ken’zah Kit (K’aken-Kar) 57-59 39-40 46-52 62-63
Zit-Kit (Kizk’-Kar) 60-62 41-42 53-59 64-66
Kawdl-Kit (K’tsa-Kar) 63 43 60-64 67
Kdikit (Madderly’s Star) 64-65 44-50 65 68-69
Gran Quivera (Prenglar) 66-78 51-61 66-76 70-81
Morgaine’s World (Prenglar) 79 62-63 77 82
Histran (Scree Fron) 80 64 78-79 83
Hakosoar (Scree Fron) 81 65 80-82 84
Minotaur (Theseus) 82-85 66-75 83-86 85-87
Lossend (Timeon) 86-87 76-79 87-88 88
Pale (Truane’s Star) 88-95 80-86 89-95 89-95
New Pale (Truane’s Star) 96 87-90 96 96
Clarion (White Light) 97-100 91-100 97-100 97-100

If you just want to use the table, you’re done. Enjoy. If you want to learn a bit more about how I created it, read on.

Building the Table

First off, this table just covers the original systems presented in the original (Alpha Dawn) ruleset, and doesn’t include Volturnus (Zebulon) as there is no indigenous core four population there in that rule set. Also, that rule set left Kawdl-Kit (K’tsa-Kar) out of the data table so I’ve used the values from Zeb’s Guide for that system.

Design Decisions

One of the decisions I made in creating the table is that it is possible for any of the core four races to be from any planet, although the chance may be very small.

Another decision I made was that I didn’t want either a d1000 table (although that’s easy enough to do in Star Frontiers that only uses d10s) and I didn’t want a series of sub-tables. One roll and you would be done.

The result of those decisions is that the smallest probability of having a race/homeworld combination is 1% and for certain situations this is probably a bit (or even a lot) higher than it would really be given the demographics and politics of the Frontier. An example is a non-Yazirian race from Hentz, a world controlled by the Family of One where non-yazirians are second class citizen. There just aren’t that many there. Similarly, vrusk from Kdikit (Madderly’s Star) after most vrusk were driven off world by the Freeworld Rebellion. Although you could also argue that those situations drive up the chance that those beings would be off-world and increase the chance. So in the end, it’s all good.

Getting the Base Numbers

The rules give a dominant population and a population density for each world in the Frontier. The dominant population could be one of the core four races, a mix of two (Terledrom, Fromeltar with a D/V designation for dralasites and vrusk) or an asterisk (“*”) meaning relatively equal mix of all species. The population codes were either outpost, low, medium, or high.

To determine the relative number of each species on each planet I used the following formula. First, an outpost was given a value of 1, low population given a value of 3, medium population a value of 5, and high population a a value of 8. Next, if a species was not listed as a dominant population on a world, it just received the value above. If it was the dominant population, I multiplied that value by three. For the systems marked with an asterisk, I gave all the species the x3 multiplier. Since these planets are the core planets of the Frontier, typically with high populations, this just helps to concentrate the population density there.

For example, Inner Reach, Dramune, is listed as a medium population and the dominant species as Dralasites. So for this world, humans, yazirians, and vrusk all receive 5 points while dralasites receive 15.

This was done for each planet in the Frontier which gave me a large table that listed points for each race on each planet.

Calculating the Table Percentages

Next I tallied up the points for each race. Depending on the species, those totals ranged from 190 to 226. Using those values I scaled the points for each species so that the total came to 100. This effectively gave me the percentage of each species that came from each planet. Some of these, especially on the outpost worlds, end up with percentages less than 1 but given my assumptions, those all get rounded up to 1%.

After that, it was just a matter of tallying up the percentages to make the table. I built a cumulative table first by just adding up the percentages. Due to the small fractional percentages of the low probability planets, this resulted in some planets having the same value.

To fix this, I fixed some of the percentages to 1. This in turn, pushed the totals above 100 for some of the species. To fix that, I then adjusted the percentages down on a few of the worlds based on physical characteristics and game lore.

I started by reducing the percentage of non-yazirian races on Hentz to one. This reflects (as mentioned above) the fact that that world is very rigidly controlled by the yazirian Family of One and non-yazirians are practically, if not in fact, second-class citizens. Next I reduced the percentages of yazirians on high gravity worlds. This is based on the idea that those worlds are less desirable to yazirians because their gliding ability is greatly diminished on these worlds and so the populations would be smaller. For the vrusk, I set the percentage on Kdikit (Madderly’s Star) to one to reflect the expulsion of the vrusk after the Freeworld Rebellion. Finally, I reduced the percentage of non-yaziran races on the worlds in the Scree Fron system because it is far from the core of the Frontier and deep in yazirian space.

After making these changes, and a few other small tweaks, I ended up with the results presented in the table above.

Thoughts and Discussion

This is definitely a first draft. It will probably get tweaked a bit as I flesh out the lore of the worlds a bit more. I may change the relative populations of the the various species as well as the overall population numbers for any given world (i.e not making all medium populations a value of 5 or every high population world a value of 8) That said, this is definitely usable to get a rough idea of where any given member of each species is from. Future versions will also include the Zeb’s Guide systems as well as generate tables for the Rim races, at the very least.

One thing that this doesn’t do is show the relative percentages of each species on any given planet. Since I renormalized the values for each race, that changed the relative percentages of the races on any given planet. As I refine those relative values a bit more, they will get reflected into the raw data used. I may start presenting that information in separate posts on each world.

What are your thoughts on the table? What other information would you like to see? What is missing? What would you do differently? Let me know in the comments below. And be sure to head over to the Random Encounter Tables post to check out the other posts in this month’s RPG Blog Carnival.

UPF Minelayer Model and Miniature

This is not the post I had planned for this week, but since I’ve been up to my ears getting the next issue of the Frontier Explorer ready to go, I didn’t have time to do the post I had planned. You’ll probably get that one next week.

With the Assault Carriers (UPF & Sathar) completed, it was time to tackle the last of the UPF ships needed for the Second Sathar War game: the UPF Minelayer.

Now, this is a bit of an interesting ship to do the mini for. If we look at the counter from the game (shown at right), those familiar with the miniatures produced by TSR will realize that a miniature already exists with that silhouette.

This is the miniature labeled on the blister pack as the Sathar Cutter. This particular one is missing one of it’s cannons but it’s a really close match for the shape on the counter.

This isn’t the first time that TSR messed up the labeling of ship images as the counters and the “Ship Identification Guide” in the Tactical Operations Manual don’t match up. We can probably assume that they had this miniatures and its silhouette and since the cutter doesn’t have game stats (until fans created them – see Frontier Explorer issue 2 – Friend or Foe), they used the image for the UPF Minelayer but didn’t change the name on the blister pack. In the blister pack, it is sold with the Sathar Frigate so my guess is that it was supposed to be a sathar ship but the silhouette was used for the UPF Minelayer by accident.

In any case, it poses a bit of dilemma. We need to make a ship that at least sort of looks like the counter to continue with the theme of the miniatures I’ve been creating but it also can’t look exactly like the sathar ship. This is also why I saved this miniature for last as you could always use the Sathar Cutter mini as the UPF minelayer in your game as it matches the game counter. So with that background out of the way, let’s look at the ship.

UPF Minelayer Miniature

Since I’m not planning on matching the shape of the silhouette on the counter exactly, I want to look at the broad features of the silhouette for inspiration. In my mind there are four main features to be considered:

  1. The body should be somewhat roundish and elongated
  2. There should be two side lobes off the main body
  3. There should be two guns mounted forward on the main body
  4. The engines should be long and skinny.

Now that last one doesn’t match with any of the engines on any of the other UPF ships. However, I’ve always felt that the minelayer, unlike the mainline ships, used ion engines instead of atomic engines. It’s really more of a system ship that does its work before the battle starts so it doesn’t need the performance of the main warships.

And the game stats bear this idea out. Ion engines are limited to an ADF of 1 and that is what the minelayer has, unlike all the other ships which have an ADF of at least 2. So these long skinny engines can be the UPF ion engines instead of atomic ones.

The two guns really aren’t an issue either as the minelayer sports a pair of laser batteries in addition to the mine and seeker missile dispensers. And the other features are just things to keep in mind while designing the ship. The minelayer is listed as hull size 7, so in the end, the ship should be a bit bigger than the UPF Destroyer when it is all done. With those design constraints, let’s get to work.

The image to the right shows the finished model. Instead of the smooth rounded body of the Sathar Cutter, I chose to go with a more angular squashed cylinder and then add cylindrical lobes to the side somewhat like the UPF Assault Carrier.

The two laser batteries are mounted on the front of the ship and the engines are long, tapered to the back, and, although you can’t easily see it in this image, angled slightly inward at the back as are the engines on the silhouette.

Beyond that I added some surface features reminiscent of the other UPF vessels and then a bunch of small cylindrical indentations on the back of the fuselage to represent the mine dispersal system. In the model, they are all at different angles so that mines are spread out as they are ejected.

Printing the Miniature

With the model made, it was time to print. Since this is a relatively small miniature, the print only took about 5 hours. Here is the UPF Minelayer next to the sathar cutter and UPF frigate, as well as a ruler for scale.

The engines didn’t come out as straight as I’d like. I’ll need to add some more supports to them on future prints to get them to hold the right positions.

As you can see, the ship is a bit bigger than the cutter and the body is bigger than the main part of the frigate as well. It’s also bigger than the destroyer although I don’t have a picture of that one. While it’s not as long, it is about as thick and much wider so I feel that it came in at right about the correct size to be just a bit bigger than the frigate and the destroyer.

This model just about used up all of my grey resin so I’ll probably be printing in the black or white resins until I get some more grey ordered. The grey (and white) take longer to print as they are opaque resins and need more curing time but I definitely like the look of the grey miniatures. At least they photograph better than any of the others.

Up Next

I finished this model a couple of weeks ago so my Patreon supporters already have the model file. I’ll be posting it on DriveThruRPG shortly with all the other models on my 3D Models page. I’ve also added it to the Miniatures Price List here on the site.

That completes all the UPF and Sathar ships. I’m probably going to revisit the fighters soon as I need to make those models more friendly to FDM printers. The models I created work on an SLA printer but the wings are too thin (by about a factor of 5-10) to print on a regular FDM printer. I want to make the models easier to print on FDM printers (or at least versions that are) before I post those models on DriveThruRPG.

But before I do that, I’m going to tackle the last military vessel that I haven’t reproduced from the original miniature sets, the pirate frigate. That’s a ship that came in the Sathar ships box of miniatures along with the pirate assault scout which I have already reproduced. I’ve already started on the model, so once I get issue 27 of the Frontier Explorer out the door, I’ll get back to it.

Once the pirate frigate model is complete, I’ll be in a position to start offering “module packs” of printed miniatures that contain all the ships needed for the Knight Hawks scenarios from the various modules as well as the UPF Task Forces. I may need to make a few more models for some of those (the Gullwind and Elanor Moraes come immediately to mind) but that will give me some direction for future builds.

After the pirate frigate, there are just 7 ships from the original sets left to recreate: the freighter from the Federation Ships box and the six ships from the Privateers box. Those will be my next projects, interspersed with the models needed for the module packs, after reworking the fighters.

What are your thoughts on the minelayer model? Let me know in the comment section below.

Sathar Assault Carrier Model and Miniature

With the UPF Assault Carrier completed, it was time to tackle the Sathar Assault Carrier. This would complete all of the capital ships for both sides.

Now, way back when I started this blog, I posted the outline for a sathar assault carrier project. This is not the model that project was intended to create. When I made that project outline, I never imagined I’d be this heavy into creating miniatures. Although if I ever get around to actually doing that project, the end result might be fairly similar. One major difference, however, would be that all the surface features would be actual scale rather than selected for aesthetics as they are on this model. But that’s for some undetermined future date. Let’s look at the model I have created.

Building the Model

Like the others, for this model I’m working off the silhouette from the game counter, pictured to the right. As you can see, this ship is a bit more bulky and angular than the other sathar vessels which tend to be more bulbous and curvy.

That said, there are definitely some features that fit the typical sathar ship style. We have the long skinny engines with the spherical tip, long, extended nacelles for the engines struts, and a round head separated from the body by a skinny neck. The other features that stand out are the guns on the head of the ship and the rectangular shape of the lobes on the side of the ship. I’m going to assume that the latter are the location of the bays for the fighters.

image showing a small assault carrier being approached by an assault scout and exploration vessel

Now, there is another reference for the sathar assault carrier in the rules. The image to the left comes from the module SFKH3: Face of the Enemy. This ship (bottom) is described as an older, obsolete, and smaller assault carrier no longer in main-line service by the sathar fleet. In the module, it has been converted by the sathar to serve as a mobile base for larger scout craft instead of fighter craft. So while I will probably model this ship at some time in the future, I won’t be using this image as a reference for the assault carrier model.

Like the UPF assault carrier, the sathar assault carrier should be significantly larger than the light cruiser but not quite as big as the heavy cruiser. That gave me a bit of a scale to shoot for when building the model. Once that scale was decided on, I used the counter to get the rough shape of the head and body of the ship.

Here’s the final model (pictured to the right). The size of the body, neck, and head are taken directly from the dimensions on the counter.

Given the positioning of the guns on the counter, I assumed there were three evenly spaced around the head. Since the stats for the Assault Carrier include a laser battery, a rocket battery, and a proton battery, I figured that wasn’t too much of a stretch.

The size and shape of the rectangular lobes around the center of the ship are based on the counter as well. The height of the lobes from the center of the ship match the profile height from the counter and the size of the rectangle that forms the outer face, along with the width where it intersects the hull match as well. What is different is the detail on the face. The counter shows one large rectangular shaped detail that I decided to break into three smaller ones on each lobe. each of these represent a fighter bay giving the assault carrier the capacity (per the rules) to hold up to a dozen fighters.

The other major difference is the engines. Instead of the single, long engine depicted on the counter, I went with pairs of smaller engines, similar to the ones used on the heavy cruiser. Unlike the heavy cruiser, which mounted the two engines in each cluster in-line with the engine strut, for the assault carrier, I chose to mount them perpendicular to the engine strut. Additionally, these engines are slightly shorter, a bit thicker, and have a bit more spacing between them than the ones on the heavy cruiser. Otherwise, they are similar to the heavy cruiser engines and modeled on those engines.

It’s not obvious from the image of the model, which is the intention, but I started using a slightly different technique when modeling this ship. For all the ships in the past, I’ve set a global level of detail for round objects that was fine enough for the larger bits of the ships to look smooth. This resulted in way more detail on small objects (like the spheres around the upper body) than was needed and caused the rendering time of the model to be really long. Starting with this model, I’ve been specifying the detail at the individual part level, allowing me finer control and reducing the rendering time significantly since I don’t have to put as much detail into the smaller pieces.

Printing

With the model done, it was time to print the miniature. As it turns out, this model is fairly massive. In fact, physically, it has more volume than any of the models I’ve created to date, even the UPF assault carrier. Here’s a picture of the sathar assault carrier along with the sathar heavy cruiser and light cruiser (and a quarter for scale).

The light cruiser looks kind of glowy because it was printed in a translucent resin and this particular print was hollow so the translucency really shows.

It sits right in there between the light and heavy cruiser but it is much fatter. It ended up weighing a couple of ounces, compared the ~1 ounce for the heavy cruiser and ~1/2 ounce for the light cruiser. It actually has some heft to it. I may consider printing these slightly hollow to save weight and bring the cost down. Here’s another picture with it next to the UPF assault carrier.

The two assault carriers side by side. One of the features chipped off of the aft fuselage of the sathar ship when I was trimming off the printing supports attached to it. I don’t think those supports are actually necessary and will remove them next time I print one.

As you can see, it ended up being a bit bigger even though they are supposed to be roughly the same sized ships. I probably made the sathar one a bit too big, but I like the way it turned out so I’m going to leave it be. It’s not too out of proportion to the other sathar vessels. Any downsizing I need to do will come with the next round of ships, which I’ll be designing to all be to scale with one another. However, with it being this massive, it makes sense that one of the sathar conditions for retreat in the Second Sathar War game is the loss of too many of these ships.

Up Next

That’s it for the Sathar Assault Carrier. I’ll be adding it and the UPF Assault Carrier to the Miniatures Price Table here on the site as well as uploading the model files to my 3D models page on DriveThruRPG. My Patreon supporters received the model files for both of these ships a while ago.

The next ship I’ll be tackling will be a new model for the UPF Minelayer. That may be ready by the end of the month.

Let me know what you think about the Sathar Assault Carrier in the comments below.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY60.329 to FY60.359

A new month and new set of events in the Frontier. This month’s timeline includes events from the Warriors of White Light module (SFKH0), the beginnings of events from the Bugs in the System module (SFAD5), and more exploration beyond the edges of the known Frontier Sector.

Date (FY)Events
60.329 Patrol Group Flint arrives make the jump to the Kazak system and begin decelerating toward Stenmar station
60.330 The TransTravel corvette is completed at the Terldrom (Fromeltar) starship construction center.
60.331 – The TSS Dark Shadow is detected smuggling weapons provided by Streel to the Liberation Party on Clarion (White Light).  A firefight breaks out between the new boarding party of the CMS Osprey and the Dark Shadow’s crew. The smugglers are taken into custody and the ship impounded. (SFKH0)

– Deceleration complete, Discovery Squadron, realizing they are no match for the numerous sathar and other unknown vessels in the system begin accelerating for a jump out of the system back to OFS031 system. Luckily, they seem to not have been detected.
60.332 The HSS History’s Hope successfully makes the jump to OFS222, a bright blue main sequence star, even more massive than Belnafaer.  They begin decelerating to prepare for the return jump to OFS221.
60.333 Patrol Group Flint arrives at Stenmar station (Kazak) they spend two days refueling and preparing for the jump to OFS019.
60.334 – Strike Force Nova departs Laco (Dixon’s Star) for the Truane’s Star system.

– The TSSS Searcher departs Pale station with a shipment of titanium to attempt charting the return jump from the Truane’s Star system to the Cassidine system.
60.335 – Patrol Group Flint departs Stenmar station (Kazak) for their jump to OFS019.

– Discovery squadron successfully jumps back to the OFS031 system completely charted the route between OFS031 and OFS070.  They begin plotting a return jump to the OFS030 system
60.336 – Sathar SCC#4 completes a frigate

– Shakedown cruise complete, the fourth Saurian Ark Ship begins loading supplies and passengers
60.337 Having killed their velocity, the HSSS History’s Hope begins acceleration for the return jump to OFS221.
60.338 The TSSS Searcher successfully jumps into the Cassidine system completing the jump route between the Cassidine and Truane’s Star systems.  They decided to not report the jump to the UPF immediately and exploit the shorter jump times to move cargo between the two systems for higher profits.
60.339 – During a magnetic storm, the Matrix infection on Jetsom mutates and takes over the ship’s computer system, killing or incapacitating all members of the Alpha team on the ship (Belnafaer) (SFAD5)

– Patrol Group Flint arrives in OFS019 on high alert.  They immediately detect sathar radio signals and begin cataloging the sources.  Deceleration starts along a vector away from the inner system.  They begin the calculations for the return jump.
60.340 Four crew members from the Moneyspider are killed in an attempt to reach the crew on the stricken Jetsom when their shuttle is damaged in the descent and destroyed.  Only six crew remain on the Moneyspider. (SFAD5)
60.341 – After two days of data collection, Patrol Group Flint has identified nearly 20 different ships in the OFS019 system including two each of frigates, destroyers, light and heavy cruisers, and assault carriers.  There are numerous fighters and two of an unidentified new class of ship.

– The HSS History’s Hope successfully jumps back to the OFS221 system completely charting the jump between OFS221 and OFS222.  Details are relayed back to the UPF to collect the bounty.  They begin decelerating in preparation for returning to the OFS222 system and continuing their exploration.
60.342 – Sathar SCC#5 (OFS019) completes a cutter

– The 4 sathar destroyers from Liberty system arrive in OFS019.
60.343 – Deceleration complete, Patrol Group Flint begin accelerating back toward jump speed to return to Kazak as the jump calculations are finalized.

– Strike Force Nova arrives at Pale (Truane’s Star).  They will have a five day layover to cross train with the Pale militia before heading out to Zebulon.
60.344 – The PGCSS Marionette, which vanished from Terledrom (Fromeltar) without its crew 28 years ago, suddenly appears in the White Light system headed directly for Clarion Station (SFKH0)

– The decelerating sathar destroyers pass very close to the accelerating Patrol Group Flint. Relative velocities are too large to allow for an engagement but there is now doubt that the sathar are now aware of the presence of the UPF ships.

– Discovery Squadron successfully jump back to the OFS030 system completely charting the route between the OFS030 and OFS031 systems.  Work begins on engine overhauls and plotting the jump to the OFS026 system.
60.345 – Attempting to approach the PGCSS Marionette, it repeatedly veers away and the the CMS Osprey is forced to disable its engines and maneuvering jets in order to board the ship.

– The crew of the CMS Osprey find that the ship is being controlled by a deranged cybot calling itself the Puppetmaster.  After a zero-g battle with robots controlled by the Puppetmaster, the cyborg is destroyed and the crew takes control of the ship. (SFKH0)
60.346 Repairs to the PGCSS Marionette’s engines allow it to be diverted from its collision course with Clarion station.  The ship is impounded for inspection.
60.347 Loading complete, the fourth Saurian Ark Ship departs the Sauria system for destinations unknown
60.348 – Training with the Pale militia complete, Strike Force Nova departs for the Zebulon system.

– Patrol Group Flint successfully jumps back to Kazak.  Flight forces in the system go on high alert.
60.349 TransTravel corvette arrives at Terldrom (Fromeltar)
60.350 After an amazingly long string of bad luck in several of its ventures, the Groth Energy Corporation, the major power supplier on Groth (Fromeltar) declares bankruptcy.  While they maintain power generation, all other corporate activities are frozen.
60.351 After nearly half a year of investigation and the death of seven more of the young eorna, the cause of the mysterious deaths is finally uncovered. One of the “Great Plan” eorna had been sabotaging the endeavor and subtly poisoning the children. He is taken into custody.
60.352 Patrol Group Flint arrives at Stemnar station where they will remain on alert with units of The Flight until Strike Force Nova arrives.
60.353 Three days after declaring bankruptcy, the Groth Energy Corporation (Groth, Fromeltar) is purchased by an undisclosed off-world organization for a fraction of its actual value. The new owners immediately begin restoring complete operations.
60.354 Discovery Squadron successfully jumps back into the OFS026 system although they end up much further out in the system than intended. The decision is made to try to get to OFS017 directly and not take the detour caused by their misjump to OFS025.
60.355 Sathar SCC#3 (OFS138) completes a frigate.
60.356 The HSS History’s Hope arrives back in the OFS222 system and begins plotting their next jump. This jump will take them beyond the Outer Frontier Sector.  Their target star is a white dwarf, 6 light years away.  They designate this region of space as the Yazira Sector and their destination as YS001.
60.357 Strike Force Nova arrives at Volturnus (Zebulon) and joins up with Patrol Group Virgo.  The crews are given three days shore leave on Volturnus before they leave the Frontier.
60.358 After several days of investigation and analysis, the eorna responsible for the poisoning of the children is diagnosed with a subtle mental illness that caused him to be unable to accept the new direction the species was going with the discovery of the egg ship.
60.359 In light of the subtle nature of the discovered mental illness, all eorna associated with the eorna egg project undergo a deep psychological analysis.

And here’s the updated full timeline file:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

UPF Assault Carrier Model and Miniature

Unsurprisingly, December has been kind of hectic and I didn’t get as much time to work on this miniature as I had hoped earlier in the month but I managed to finish it in time for Christmas.

This is a model for which there is no original miniature so this one comes completely out of my imagination. Well, almost completely. Like the others I’ve created from scratch, we at least had the silhouette from the counter. Now this shop deviates significantly from the cylindrical shape of the the other capital ships in the UPF roster and actually looks a bit more like the UPF assault scout. It’s also radically different from the silhouette given in the UPF Campaign book that I’ll use for a different version. In any case, this was the basis I used for the model.

Building the Model

The first thing I needed to do was figure out a scale. According to the rules, the Assault Carrier is supposed to be hull size 16-18. This makes it a bit bigger than the light cruiser but smaller than or on par with the heavy cruiser. We’ll see how well I did with that later but based on the size of those models, I picked a scale and got started.

The first order of business was to get the basic body shape down. I knew that I didn’t what to make it as thick as it was wide since that would make it very, very massive. So while I matched the silhouette, I made the fuselage flattened rather than as thick as it was wide. I didn’t have any good idea what that circle on the silhouette was supposed to be so I just left it off. I suppose it could be a really big dome but it was right where I wanted to put the fighter hangars so I ignored it.

I again reused the standard UPF class C engine that I’ve used on all the other capital ships That makes it differ somewhat what from the silhouette as they are longer than depicted but that’s not really a big deal. The gun batteries at the nose are also a bit bigger than depicted on the counter.

With the basic shape done, it was time to add surface detail. The first thing I did was add in hangar bays for the fighters. Since an assault carrier can hold 8-12 fighters, I decided that this one would have 12 bays. There are three on each “face” of the fuselage. They are the three rectangular structures sticking out toward the back (thicker) part of the ship. Each one represents a bay for a single fighter.

After that it was just a matter of adding details to give it some character like the other ships. I turned out that there was a lot of surface to cover on this model, more than on the others. I reused some of the surface detail structures from the other models and created a few new ones for this model. I’m starting to build up quite a collection of objects.

The angled surfaces of this model provided some interesting opportunities to play with the relative rotation of the details having some parallel to the surface and other (like the hangars) not rotated to be at the same angle. For each face of the model, I composed all the surface features on a flat, vertical plane an then rotated it to be flush with the surface of the ship. This make positioning everything much easier.

When adding in all the detail, I struggled between how much regularity to include (e.g. identical, regularly spaced features) versus applying a bit of randomness. You can be the judge of whether I hit a good balance or not.

All told this model took about 8 hours of works spread out over a month of time, often in 15-20 minute increments here and there when I could find the time.

Printing

This post would have been up a bit sooner but there were some issues in getting the model printed. Well, printing was straightforward, but getting the final model rendered ran into some problems.

There is a lot of detail on the model and in the end, my laptop that I do the modeling on was unable to do the final render to the printable file at the high detail level I wanted. It kept crashing due to running out of memory. In the end I had to render it on my big computer (which I’ll probably do as a matter of course from now on as it has more memory and a faster CPU). And even then there was a weird problem in the rendering that I had to figure out. Since it took 2.75 hours to render, even on the big computer, that was not a fast process.

From this I’ve learned that I need to start being more selective and assign rendering detail at the individual element level instead of globally. The issue is really on the round pieces as you get lots of vertices in those parts that really are needed on the small parts but if you don’t have it on the larger pieces, you notice the individual faces. I’ve been setting the detail level high so the big pieces (the lobes and weapons balls in this model) look good but that’s been serious overkill on all the small parts. In the end, the raw model file for this ship was 381 MB. The next largest ones were the space station at 239MB and the battleship at 215MB. So that’s something I’ll be looking into on future models.

I finished the model Sunday afternoon and thought I’d have a print by Monday morning but all the rendering problems resulted in me not getting the print started until late Monday afternoon. It takes twelve hours to print so it just finished this morning. But it printed and it looks great. Here’s a picture of the side not shown in the model image above. It still has the printing supports on it as it’s not done curing yet. They will all get removed once that is done.

It’s still curing so I haven’t removed the printing supports yet.

I was very happy to see out it turned out. The details in the model image looked a bit over powering, maybe because of the color scheme the software uses. But printed, they looked just right.

Earlier I mentioned that we’d check in on how I did on picking the scale. Here’s a picture comparing the assault carrier with the battleship (left) and heavy cruiser (right). I probably should have included the light cruiser as well but didn’t. This image shows the side of the assault carrier that was in the model image.

The assault carrier should have roughly the same volume as the heavy cruiser. It’s shorter but much fatter. And going by the volume of resin needed, more than double the size. So on an empirical basis, I probably made it a bit too big but I actually think it looks just about right aesthetically. So I’m happy with it as it is. However, it’s way too wide to use as a chess piece if I do make a chess set with the ships so I’ll have to think about that.

Coming Up

I’ll get the model posted up on DriveThruRPG in the coming week (and updated this post with a link) as well as getting it added to my Miniature Price List page.

This finishes all the UPF models except for a new minelayer. I’m holding off on that one as you can use the sathar cutter miniature in a pinch since that one matches the silhouette of the counter in the game. I’ll revisit that model soon but next up is the Sathar Assault Carrier.

A year and a half ago when I started this blog, the Sathar Assault Carrier was one of my original projects that I’ve managed to not spend any time on. This will not be that version of the assault carrier as I wanted to create a full set of deck plans and a model that matches them like I did for the sathar destroyer. That’s a very large project. This version of the miniature will be created just as I’ve done with the UPF Heavy Cruiser and Assault Carrier – using the counter silhouette to give its shape and adding surface details based on the existing miniatures. The sathar ships are less cluttered so this should go faster.

What do you think of the UPF Assault Carrier? Let me know in the comments below.

Obar Enterprises

I don’t have the UPF Assault Carrier done yet so this week you’ll be getting a new organization you can use in your game.

Obar Enterprises Logo – a stylized freighter with three engines

Those of you who follow along with the Detailed Frontier Timeline, either on the monthly posts here on the site or via the @StarFrontiers Twitter feed, may have noticed the introduction of a new organization into the timeline: Obar Enterprises.  Anyone that has played in my online games in the last few years has also probably run into, or worked for, Obar Enterprises.  And anyone that participates on any of the old online Star Frontiers forums might recognize the name since my handle on those forums is Terl Obar, the name of one of my early Star Frontiers characters and one of the founders of the company.

Obar Enterprises in My Games Today

The following description is the basis I use when players encounter Obar Enterprises in game, whether just in passing or as employees.  This is not how the characters were originally created, as that involves the module adventures and the PCs might run through those.  The section at the end of this post, entitled “The Real Story”, tells how they were created and advanced in real life. 

Background

The company is owned by two couples: Terl and Yala Obar and Leelab and Reesta Lar.  Terl and Yala are yazirians while the Lars are dralasites.  It’s an unlikely pairing given their races, but they form a tight group.

Terl and Leelab, or Lee as he typically goes by, originally met years ago when they were hired as troubleshooters for the Cassidine Development Corporation (CDC).  Terl was a medic with psycho-social skills and Lee was a weapons expert.   Lee would often joke that he “took ‘em apart and Terl put ‘em back together.”  Despite the general prejudices of their races, the two hit it off and were often assigned on the same team.  Over time, Reesta became part of their core team bringing environmental skills and Yala joined as a technician and computer expert.  Others came and went from the team to fill in needed skills but the four of them formed the core.

Over time romance blossomed and the two couples were married.  While this could have potentially been an issue, CDC was willing to bend the rules due to the effectiveness of the team.  Had their performance dropped, they might have been split up, but since their performance stayed high, and even possibly improved, they had no problem staying together as a unit.

CDC, especially after very successful missions, allows its employees to purchase stock in the company.  The four took advantage of that to greater or lesser extents over their time with the company.  CDC has done well over the years and this allowed the Obars and Lars to build up a very sizable nest egg.  After many years with CDC, the four decided that they were ready for something else.  They had made many contacts over the years and decided it was time to work for themselves. 

While at CDC they had picked up starship skills:  Yala was a capable Pilot, Lee an Energy Weapons gunner, Terl had picked up the Rocket gunnery skill, and Reesta had picked up a lot of computers over the years and had become a passable Astrogator.  They lacked an engineer but figured they could hire one. 

Cashing out a small portion of their CDC stock, combined with a sizable chunk of their savings, they were able to purchase an old, used hull size 7 tramp freighter, the TSS Searcher, and get it up and running.  Hiring a pair of engineers, they started hauling freight primarily between Dramune, Cassidine, and Prenglar with the occasional run out to Truane’s Star as well.  They organized their new endeavor under the name Obar Enterprises, Leelab and Reesta not wanting to put their name on it.

After about a year, they decided to take a gamble and chart a route through the Xagyg nebula from Cassidine to Truane’s Star cutting the travel time between those two systems down from three weeks to just one.  This would allow them to move desired commodities between those two systems quickly and turn a tidier profit.  With that in mind, they loaded up the Searcher with a cargo at Triad, made sure the main and backup life support were topped off, and picked up several extra jumps’ worth of fuel, just in case things went wrong.  Ready to go they set off on this new adventure.

Luckily, nothing went wrong and they safely arrived in the Truane’s Star system.  Similarly, the return jump to Cassidine went off without a hitch.  With the new jump fully charted, they decided to keep the route as a “company secret” figuring they could make more money having the private jump route than they could from reporting the route to the UPF.  This turned out to be the case and they made a sizable profit over the years before someone else charted the route and reported it, making it a standard route on the UPF maps.

Not long after the new route was charted, Reesta decided that the merchant life was not for her.  They had had several close calls with pirates over the years and especially since they had struck out on their own and she wanted to do something about that.  She also missed the more structured life working for CDC but, not wanting to go back there, decided to use her starship skills to secure a commission as part of Spacefleet and help fight the pirate problem directly.  She retained her partial ownership in Obar Enterprises but left the day to day operations to enroll in Gollwin Academy.  Given her existing experience, she was fast-tracked through the program graduating in only a year.

In the intervening years, Terl, Yala, and Lee have continued to grow Obar Enterprises as Reesta has begun working her way up through the ranks of Starfleet.  While still primarily a freight company, having expanded their ship roster to include several freighters and escort ships, they have also diversified some of their endeavors to include mining operations and, drawing on their experiences at CDC, some for-hire troubleshooting teams.  It’s also rumored that they have an exploration branch that is cataloging the unexplored systems in the Frontier but there is no public mention of this portion of their business.  Reesta currently commands an assault scout as part of Task Force Cassidine.

Current Activities

Cross-section of the Morning Glory

Terl, Yala, and Lee still typically make the run between Cassidine and Truane’s Star, although now in their company’s flagship, mobile headquarters, and their home, the TSSS Morning Glory, hull size 20 freighter.  In addition to their freight hauling activities, they have a couple of mining operations on Pale and New Pale in the Truane’s Star system, as well as one on Rupert’s Hole in the Cassidine system.

From their time at CDC, they still have many contacts in that corporation as well as contacts in Spacefleet (through Reesta) and in the Pale government on Truane’s Star.  They will often contract with those organizations to do specific jobs that those organizations don’t want to be associated with directly or don’t have the manpower to pursue.  As part of this portion of their business, Obar Enterprises maintains a small band of troubleshooters that they can assign out to various missions and assignments much like a small mercenary company.

The rumored exploration activity is also a reality although it is not something they talk about.  OE has purchased a Moraes class exploration vessel and have a crew exploring all the systems between Truane’s Star and Scree Fron.  As part of this they have discovered a habitable, although uninhabited world, that they are working on a plan to develop and colonize.  The TSS Searcher often disappears from the Frontier for weeks at a time to deliver supplies to this system.  All of this is a secret company project.

Current Resources

Ships

Obar Enterprises has a number of ships operating around the Frontier.  In addition to the Morning Glory, they still have the TSS Searcher in operation, along with a hull size 6 Pacific class freighter, the TSSS Dark Rose.  They operate two Stiletto-class assault scouts, the OESS Courage and OESS Excalibur, that typically serve as escorts for the Morning Glory.

For their troubleshooting teams, they developed a small, hull sized 2 spacecraft.  The prototype, the TSSS Dart (StarFrontiersman issue 11) has now been in operation for about 3 years.  They currently have three of these ships commissioned, the Dart, Bolt, and Quarrel, with a fourth, the Flechette, scheduled to be built in the future.

Their exploration ship is registered as a yacht, the OESS Enterprise.

In addition to the ships above, they have another hull size 20 freighter currently under construction in the Triad starship construction center.  The OESS Dusk’s Radiance will be Lee’s primary ship when it is completed in the next year.

Installations

To support their shipping operations, Obar Enterprises maintains offices on the major stations in Truane’s Star, Dixon’s Star, Cassidine, Prenglar, Dramune, and Fromeltar.  Being a registered corporation on Pale, they also have an office in Point True but it is minimally staffed as their true headquarters is onboard the Morning Glory.

As mentioned above, they have mining operations on Pale, New Pale, and Rupert’s hole.  Additionally, they have a mine on an asteroid somewhere in the Truane’s Star system and it’s rumored they have a compound on Laco in the Dixon’s Star system.  There are also rumors of another complex built into an asteroid in the Cassidine system but nothing is know about that complex if it exists (GM Note: it does, but it’s in the Truane’s Star System, not Cassidine, and it’s different than the mine).

Finally, they have a small science installation on the surface of a planet in the FS42 system and are in the process of constructing a small station in orbit around that planet.

Responses

Obar Enterprises is a fairly typical small business but has very deep pockets when it comes to resource acquisition.  The nest egg from their time at CDC is very large although they don’t really need to tap into it for regular operations due to successful business over the years and careful resource management.

The Obars and Lars don’t need to work.  They have so much money that they could retire and live extravagantly at any time.  They work because they want to and endeavor to make sure that their employees are well taken care off.  Because of this, their employees are quite loyal.

Individually and as a company they are much more willing than would be expected to take on risky or adventurous endeavors just for the excitement of it.  Since money isn’t an issue, a material loss is not a major setback.  On the flip side, they don’t hold back when defending their own and will bring all available resources to bear on any threat to their assets and especially to their people. 

Overall, Obar Enterprises is a friendly, upright organization but are willing to take on risk and expend resources to achieve their goals.  They will not start a fight but if one breaks out, they will end it as quickly and overwhelmingly in their favor as possible.  I’ll probably go into more detail about Terl, Yala, Lee, and Reesta themselves in a future post.

Plot Hooks

PCs might interact with Obar Enterprises in a number of ways if you include the company in your game.  These include, but are definitely not limited to:

  • Employment – As former adventurer’s themselves, they look for those type of beings to fill the ranks of their workforce, especially their troubleshooter/mercenary division.  The PCs could be hired as a troubleshooter team for the company and assigned missions for the company or contracted out to other organizations.  Or they could be recruited in the exploration division.  They will have fairly wide latitude in how they proceed.  They will be given objectives, not processes.
  • Competition – Maybe the PCs will be going after the same cargo, target, or other objective as a team from OE.  They’ll have to use ingenuity and resourcefulness to win out as the OE team will be well funded and equipped.
  • Collaboration – Maybe the PCs work for an organization that has contracted OE for help and some number of NPCs from OE will be working with them.

These interactions could occur in any of the areas where Obar Enterprises have interests or activities.

The Real Story

So that’s Obar Enterprises as I currently use them in my games.  If we were playing D&D, the company would probably be considered Neutral Good.  They want the Frontier to be a better place and follow the rules when possible but are not afraid to color outside the lines when that gets better results.

While the history given works in a generic campaign, that isn’t how the characters got to where they are.  Terl, Yala, Lee, and Reesta were some of my earliest characters when I first started running and playing Star Frontiers, along with four others, a human couple and a vrusk couple, that I used sort of as test cases for all the modules.  As a group of eight, I ran them through all the published modules, very much in the order that I talked about in my Module-based Campaign posts.  They left CDC sooner than described (and joined it later), joined the Clarion Royal Marines, and participated in the Beyond the Frontier series.  I’ve removed those references from their current form so that those adventures can be used for PCs in the game.  If you don’t plan on using those adventures for the PCs, feel free to add those details back into the background of the OE crew and give them contacts and connections in those systems.  They might even be local celebrities in certain parts of the Frontier.

The CDC investment came from the Mission to Alcazzar module.  That module has a table you can roll on to see how their investment does.  It’s way too generous with only a 20% chance that something bad will happen (90% loss or 50% loss – 10% chance each), a 20% chance there will be no change, and the other 60% of the time the investments will multiply by 2 (20% chance), 5 (20% chance), 10 (10% chance), or even 50 (10% chance).  So if you invest the 5,000 Cr. the module allows and let it ride for a few years, you’re probably going to have a lot of money.  I’m sure I fudged some rolls in my early teens toward positive results.  The listed value of that “nest egg” on their character sheets is in the hundreds of billions of credits. Each.  But given the generosity of the table, that can be achieved in just 10-15 years of random rolling which is why I spread it out over more time in the write up.  They really can buy anything that they want if it is for sale.

In the character and ship sheets, the TSSS Dark Rose is really the Gullwind, acquired as part of the Dramune Run module.  That was the ship they started with and used to plot the jump from Truane’s Star to Cassidine.  The Searcher came later as their second ship.  Also, they have never cashed out their CDC stock.  Acquiring the Gullwind for free, plus the money saved from the other KH adventures where they were well paid, provided enough capital to get started and they’ve done well and grown their resources.  I used to play out running cargos around the Frontier.  Each ship sheet has a strip of cellophane tape across to top with its operating budget written in wet erase marker (dry erase wasn’t a thing).  I’d worn out the paper writing and erasing all the time that I hit on that as a solution.

I have a folder full of papers detailing the characters, their ships, and their installations.  A lot of those probably need revising from the wild imaginations of my teenage self and updated with a dose of realism.  There’s also a notebook containing the full plan for the FS42 system.  I had originally placed their system where Belnaefar is located on the Zeb’s Guide map but that was before I owned a copy of Zeb’s guide.  I had placed Benaefar in the system down to the left (FS22) originally.  With the move of Belnaefar, I’ve simply moved the location of the OE system (named Sadar in my notes).

Otherwise, the outline provided is pretty true to how I originally envisioned and ran the characters.  The only other major difference is that Reesta never really participated in the OE endeavor other than to be a part owner, she, plus the other four from the group, went right from the Beyond the Frontier series of adventures into Spacefleet.  They get together as often as they can when the Morning Glory is in Cassidine and she’s not on patrol.

That’s Obar Enterprises as it currently exists in my game and how it came to be.  I’m sure there are details or other information that I left out.  Let me know what you like about the write-up and where it could be improved in the comments below.