This image is composited from a great many sources, combined in various ways.
stars-7249785 by Gerd Altmann, ngc-2264-11176 by WikiImages, black-hole-7734792 by Bjørn Bråthen, star-trails-1846734 by Pexels, galaxy-3608029 by Lumina Obscura, silhouette-5465124 by Evgeni Tcherkasski, moon-3031977 by vivek, photographer-1674177 by 51581, night-927168 also by Gerd Altmann, planet-1497205 by AstroGraphix, mars-153566 by OpenClipart-Vectors, moon-1817885 by PIRO, space-681638, a third image by Gerd Altmann, all from Pixabay, plus
A_galactic_maelstrom_(20406319363).jpg from Hubble ESA, CC BY 2.0, ESO-Centre_of_the_Tarantula_Nebula.jpg from ESO, CC BY 3.0, and White_Star_1.png from Viktor Hahn (Viktor.Hahn@web.de), CC BY-SA 3.0, all via Wikimedia Commons…. — hopefully into one seamless whole! ALL of these images were changed or transformed in some way. This small image doesn’t really do it justice, so there is a large verion that you can open in a new table by , or on the smaller image above.

Okay, so here we go with #2 of three locations generated for my campaigns. This is definitely sci-fi in nature, and would especially suit Traveler campaigns, though it can be used more generally.

As usual, a bit of a preamble, but I’m setting it off in a text box so that those with no interest in it can skip to the good parts.

This world – Mydas – was created for my Warcry campaign, and the similarities in fundamental concept between it and Azuria (Strange Place #3, created for the “Dr Who: Vortex Of War” campaign, to be presented in another post) are too strong to ignore, and mostly coincidental – though it seems clear to me that Azuria served, at least partially, as inspiration for Mydas.

The final deciding factor – this world is scary, Azuria is not. And it is Halloween today, after all!

Reflecting on the choice has given me to muse upon the stylistic and tonal differences between the two campaigns.

For all that it’s a more “pure” Sci-Fi campaign, with lots of material that rooted in the real world cosmology that’s in our night skies, “Dr Who: The Vortex Of War” plays a lot faster and looser with the finicky details. It’s more “Soft Sci-fi with pretensions” than “hard”.

The Warcry Campaign has it’s roots in a blend of Superhero and Soap Opera and Space Opera. It takes occasional strange excursions into Sci-Fi oriented Fantasy, but the Sci-Fi strand within is also very strong, and much harder than that of the Dr Who campaign in many respects.

But that doesn’t preclude me from using Unobtainium or anything else necessary to get a plot over the line when necessary. Nevertheless, that’s the tonal difference between the two, and it will be important to keep it in mind when appraising both Mydas and Azuria.

Credit Where It’s Due Dept:

Parts of thie content below were inspired by the Gamma World Module, “Gamma Base”, by Kim Eastland, and especially the cover art by Clyde Caldwell.

Believe it or not, Amazon still has a few copies for sale (at exhorbitant prices, as you would expect when it comes to a module from 1987, 36 years ago!) Click on to contemplate purchase – I may get a small commission if you do.

Or, you can get it as PDF or even a physical copy at reasonable prices from Drivethru RPG – click on the cover or on .

Background

Space is big, like really, really, really big. And that means that it contains an awful lot of stars, like really, really, really a lot.

Galactic surveyors determine the targets that will be investigated according to a strict set of protocols.

  1. Systems with indications of sentient life.
  2. Systems that pose a potential threat to surrounding systems.
  3. Systems with indications of life.
  4. Systems with the potential for colonization.
  5. Systems with unconfirmed or unassayed natural resources of value
  6. Systems of specific scientific interest
  7. Targets of opportunity.

If a system doesn’t land on that list, it might as well not exist. If exploring a system would bypass or delay the exploration of a higher-value target, it stays on the list – but the higher-value target gets visited by the galactic survey.

So it was not at all unexpected that System SG-134-12-158 came in for absolutely zero attention from anyone – at least at first.

SG-134-12-158 – remote observation

Just because no interstellar probe or galactic survey ship ever graced the system with a personal visit prior to the discovery of Mydas, it doesn’t mean that nothing was known of the system.

SG-134-12-158 is located near the inner end of one of the galactic spiral arms. It was regularly observed when astronomers studied the black hole at the center of the galaxy, without much attention being paid.

The primary is a white Dwarf star, a stellar type that is a dime a dozen. This particular example is located on the far side of an interstellar nebula, screening it from detailed observation. So far as could be determined remotely through this cloak of interstellar gas, the system had no significant planetary bodies, certainly nothing on the scale of a gas giant. Given the frequency with which stars have been found to have at least some planets orbiting them, this made the system a minor anomaly – enough to keep an eye on, but nothing more.

Over time, other anomalies began to crop up and stack into something more interesting. Gamma-ray observations showed that the nebula in question was being bathed in excessive gamma-ray radiation. Infra-red telescopes, at the same time, reported that the star seemed to be burning far hotter than was usual for stellar bodies of that size, for no reasons that could be identified casually.

The system itself was on a cometary orbit around the central black hole; so populated with stars is that region of space that it seemed extremely likely that the orbit was unstable, and the star would either end its days in the infinite well of the central hole, or would break free and escape to tell the tale.

So it was that SG-134-12-158 graduated from galactic background noise to ‘star of scientific interest’ – and stayed there for a century or so.

The Star at the heart of SG-134-12-158

A bored young cosmologist, afflicted with an excess of idle time on his hands, came across the different reported white-dwarf anomalies and realized that they were probably talking about the same system. It can sometimes be hard telling small stars apart from one another in that region of space.

Putting 2+2+2 together, he came to the conclusion that – impossible as it might seem – the primary of the star had to be composed of antimatter, not normal matter. That probably meant that it was actually an intruder from outside the galaxy, and the most probable path to reaching where it was found was coming in from Galactic North.

This theory explained all the anomalies by wrapping them into a far bigger anomaly, and raised all sorts of troubling questions – where there more like this out there? How many? What was their normal motion, relative to the galaxy? What kind of risk to the Empire did this example represent?

Many tried to lampoon the theory, but the improbability wilted in the face of the perfect fit between observations and theory. Soon, not only was SG-134-12-158 the subject of intense remote scrutiny and deep thought, it was reclassified to category 2 – potential threat – and earmarked for galactic survey at their earliest convenience.

Still, there seemed to be no urgency about that. The star had been there for thousands of years, it would be somewhere nearby for hundreds if not thousands more – it wasn’t going anywhere that they couldn’t watch it like hawks. There were always more demands on Galactic Survey Missions than they can hope to satisfy, anyway!

Calculations suggested that the star had to be constantly flirting with going nova. If it weren’t for constant radiation pressure limiting the influx of material – pushing it aside – it would undoubtedly explode catastrophically. But since that hadn’t happened, it had to be presumed that the radiation being put out by the star was at least enough to moderate the reactions to a tolerably-sustainable level. There might not be much safety margin – predictions differed – but clearly, there was enough.

The heat of SG-134-12-158

Slowly, theoretical models were built up. Assumption one was that any planetary system would be composed of the same elementary matter as the primary unless the rogue star had managed to pick the pocket of some other stellar systems along the way.

If they were made of antimatter, they would have been eroded into non-existence a long time ago. Just like a star has a solar wind, the Galactic Hub has a ‘galactic wind’, gasses and alpha- and beta- particles accelerated to a significant portion of the speed of light by falling toward the black hole but not quite crossing the event horizon. The passage past and break-up of stellar bodies created this particle soup, and gravity flung them away at varying speeds. Those that didn’t achieve significant velocity were doomed to fall back and re-accelerate; it was like a cat playing cruelly with a mouse.

But some would be slowed, but would escape, and would blast through nearby solar systems as sheets of particle radiation – which would bother no-one very much; they either had protective magnetic belts and ionizing upper atmospheres to deal with the problem, or they were a dead world anyway. The stars would experience somewhat accelerated life-cycles, ‘heated up’ by the extra gas and radiation, but it would not be all that significant – unless the system was made of antimatter, of course.

If that were the case, then things would get funky. Not only would the star burn a LOT hotter (as was already known), but even the occasional stray particle penetrating those planetary defenses would annihilate a particle of the planet, so it would be hellishly hot in both the thermal and radioactive senses, and would – over time – be completely erased from existence. Calculations gave such planets a lifetime of 10,000 years or so – at best.

Captive planets?

Ah, but what if the planets were captives, liberated from normal-matter star systems? Well, either they were gas giants in size, or they weren’t, and it was already known that there were no gas giants in the system.

And what of smaller bodies? Well, without a gas giant to sweep excess hydrogen and helium out of the system, any planetary body of significant mass would start picking up extra mass, and – over time – would become a gas giant (a smallish one, perhaps) whether it had started out that way or not.

And there weren’t any planets of such size – the orbital wobble would have been easily detectable. So, science decreed, there were no planets.

Expedition

Another cosmologist, going by the name Normal Huxley (don’t ask!) demonstrated that it was entirely possible for SG-134-12-158 to have substantially-larger asteroid belts than were normal, and – what’s more – those with certain desirable ores would possess unusually strong magnetic fields that would ‘warp’ particles and radiation away, an effect that should be detectable, making it easy to cherry pick the most desirable targets.

That speculation somehow reached the ears of Lord Maxwell Windsor-Brighton, Duke of a small cluster of stars on the safe side of the planetary nebula. The Windsor-Brighton domain wasn’t the only one that could lay claim to the system, but none of the others appeared to have heard of Huxley’s work, which suited Windsor-Brighton just fine.

In order to claim the system, and its potentially-valuable resources, the system had to be surveyed, any resources being claimed assayed and enumerated, the appropriate taxes and kickbacks paid to the right people, and if the claim landed on the right desk at the right time, the Emperor might be so moved as to grant the request, maybe – by proxy, of course. The trick was always to make a resource seem worth exploiting without making it so attractive that an Imperial Bureaucrat decided to expropriate it on behalf of the Emperor. A fine art that few mastered.

So Windsor-Brighton decided to commission a personal survey of the region – theoretically scouting out potential new colony worlds on newborn stars within the nebula (of course, none would be habitable, but he pretended that everyone knew it was a waste of time except him) – as a cover for the real expedition.

The sensitive nature of the potential trade coup demanded the highest discretion. so he placed his promising young son-in-law, Byron Windsor-Smythe, in charge.

Planets? At SG-134-12-158? You’re kidding, right?

Nope. Not one bit. Against all odds, the expedition to SG-134-12-158 discovered a dwarf planet, with a significant moon, orbiting contentedly within the goldilocks zone of the star. Not in what should have been the goldilocks zone if it had been a normal star, but in exactly the right orbit to be capable of sustaining life with this particular unique star.

They named the planet Mydas, a deliberate variation on the name of the King whose touch could turn anything to gold, for reasons that will shortly become obvious, and the moon, they named Goose – after the mythic layer of golden eggs.

Goose was almost exactly 1/7th the mass of Mydas, and showed evidence of repeated asteroid bombardment, and signs of having been heated to the point of having a molten surface any number of times. It was exactly what they would have expected a solid body of normal matter to look like in a system of this nature.

Introducing Mydas

Mydas was more remarkable. It’s magnetic fields were 1,200 times as strong as would be expected of a comparable planetary body. Virtually the entire core of the slightly smallish planet – about 78% the physical size of the earth – must be made of rare earth alloys and ores.

The crust was somewhat thinner, and seismic probes suggested that the mantle was somewhat thicker than would normally be the case. The mass and size made it clear that it was constructed with rather less iron in its makeup than would be expected. All of which meant that mining the ore would be a (comparative) doddle.

Jumping-off point #1

GMs can take everything above and stop at this point if they want this to be a world to be exploited by the PCs and or their patrons, without any of the complications that are about to be introduced. Make Mydas virtually atmosphere-free and it becomes a wild fluke, the results of one trillion cosmic monkeys typing at one trillion word processors, a world so improbable that there can only possibly be one of them in the Galaxy (and even that is not guaranteed). A curiosity, of great value – but nothing more.

Even if you choose to jump off the bandwagon at this point, it could still be worthwhile to finish reading, though – there are solutions to the improbabilities that the GM jumping off at this point may want to try to incorporate.

But there were complications. It had a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, and – in some areas – a vibrant green biosphere. It was human-habitable. And it’s exceptionally rare to find such worlds without some form of indigenous inhabitants – sentient or otherwise.

The planet was heavily cratered – even more so than Goose – and many of those craters were clustered in improbable distribution patterns that made it near-certain that they were the results of a major exchange of weapons of mass-destruction at some past time.

Entering orbit created new complications; the magnetic field was so intense that any ungrounded metal became electrically charged, shorting out systems all over the ship. Emergency Jury-rigged repairs (that fail on a regular timetable) enabled the mission to continue – and there was no way in heaven that Byron Windsor-Smythe was going to let anywhere as extraordinary as this fall into anyone else’s hands if he could possibly avoid it. Not only was this going to be a grand adventure, it was the stuff of legends – none of the crew present would ever have to pay for a meal anywhere ever again!

Mydasians

Details scans from orbit revealed a number of decomposing ruins, blackened swamplands, and pockets of greenery. No electronic signals were directed at the explorer craft, which suggested that whatever civilization had been there had wiped itself out long ago. Degenerate remnants of the native population might or might not still exist somewhere, but they could be using nothing more sophisticated than stone axes.

There’s speculation (not entirely unfounded) that the Mydasians were humanoid and bipedal, and culturally not all that dissimilar to the citizens of 2023 earth. They were clearly slightly more advanced in some respects, based on the weapons signatures found on the surface.

Squeeze Bombs

In particular, they seemed to go in for subspace implosion devices (Commonly nicknamed Squeeze Bombs or Pinch Bombs), weapons that compress a region of space (and the matter accompanying it) out of local space-time, causing it to cease to exist; where it goes, no-one can say.

Unfortunately, this creates a short-lived discontinuity in reality, sometimes described as a ‘naked’ singularity, and that (combined with quantum uncertainty) meant that there was a chance that something would emerge from nothingness to replace the matter destroyed. It probably wouldn’t be Cthulhu – but there was no certainty of that.

Because of this unpredictability, the Empire banned such weapons long before they became obsolete; they were simply too dangerous.

To judge from the crater patterns, the Mydasians not only embraced Squeeze Bombs, they fought a war that utilized such weapons with gleeful abandon. An Armageddon, if you will.

Radiation signatures from the craters suggest that this final war (from the Mydasian perspective) was fought between 10,000 and 100,000 years before Byron and his team arrived – long before Humans were anywhere near this part of space.

Pathogen Payloads

Given that amount of time, the biosphere should have reasserted itself far more thoroughly that is the evident case. Speculation is that Bio-weapons were employed that sterilized large tracts of the surface, slowing the regeneration. It might be possible, following samples and analysis, to determine from the rate of reclamation, exactly how long ago the party kicked off.

The devastation was too wide-spread for a single pathogen to be responsible; multiple bio-weapon payloads must have been involved, to the point where it was fortunate that any life survived. Whatever was left would have to be much tougher than most in order to survive the devastation wrought on the ecosystem. Even non-sentient animal life might pose a significant threat.

These possibilities were factored into all mission planning forward of its being expressed – just in case something viable survived down there and could infect expedition members.

Mydas City

One structure appeared to have survived mostly intact – and detailed scans showed possible low-level energy use, suggesting that there may be surviving technology. Having ‘grown up’ on the planet, the Mydasians would have known a lot more about it than the expedition, and some answers could save lives or shed years from the exploitation schedule. Some intelligence regarding the weaponry that had been deployed – and in particular, anything that might still be dangerous – would also be exceptionally useful.

That structure was named Mydas City. It had been built on the top of, and probably into, a medium-sized mountain. Multiple enemy Squeeze Bombs had detonated on all sides of it, slicing great holes out of the mountain itself, but somehow, perched on the top of the apple-core that used to be a noteworthy peak, this structure had survived – or had been built afterwards.

In shape, it somewhat resembles a castle, and somewhat resembles a modern fortress the size of a small city.

Jumping-off point #2

There are a number of alternative plot destinations possible from this point.

It’s entirely possible that there are Mydasian survivors living underground beneath the fortress.

It’s also possible that those survivors are all in cold-sleep, awaiting only the arrival of an energy signature of sufficient magnitude to inform them that rescue is at hand.

Again, it’s worth reading on, even if you choose to take things in a different direction.

Planetfall

To investigate these matters and determine what could be gained in terms of knowledge of the original natives, and what threat they might still pose, House Windsor-Brighton obtained Imperial permission to send an expedition to the surface of Mydas.

All appropriate precautions were to be taken – full hazmat suiting for all, and as much of the work as possible to be carried out by remote-operated vehicles and drones.

Landing right on top of the fortress, with it’s suspiciously turret-like structures, was deemed too risky. Instead, a location a couple of kilometers away was selected, because it was close enough to a number of areas of interest to permit investigation, but shielded from all of them by intervening wasteland.

Jumping-off point #3

Again, this is a point at which different choices can be made by the GM to those that I have outlined, in whole or in part.

For example, you might decide that the fortress is far more ruined than it appeared from overhead, and center interest on the inhabitants of the Green Zone.

Or perhaps the swamp isn’t as black and dead as it first appeared. There are numerous possibilities.

Expedition Planning

The landing party split into a number of teams, each focusing on a different aspect of the environment. Daily briefings were scheduled at which each group would update the expedition as a whole with their findings and further plans.

Team one were the Atmospheric Research & Climatology team. They were to verify that the atmosphere was breathable (the work of less than a day), investigate any airborne contaminants or bio-threats, feeding any findings into the medical department, and then focus their attention on the climate and local weather events.

Team two gave their attention to the water sources. There was a river running not too far from the landing site – was the water potable, was it contaminated or home to pathogens, and so on. After that, there were the waters of a seemingly-dead swamp 2 km away. At the edge of that swamp was a lake fed by a different river with a waterfall; this was running out of one of the nearby ‘green zones’, where vegetation survived, and possible animal life.

Team three were to focus on the land, and on as many soil types as could be found. They were initially to retrieve rock and soil samples for later analysis from orbit if the whole expedition went pear-shaped.

That green zone and it’s plant life were the targets of Team four, while Team five searched for any animal life.

But the greatest activity was to revolve around teams Six and seven – Six were to conduct surveys and test digs into some relatively-intact ruins, while Team Seven devoted their time to the fortress and what lay within.

The medical group, Team Eight, were to have the greatest workload, and hence were bolstered in numbers beyond the trained medical staff. All the other teams were to feed bio-samples to them, and it would be their responsibility to determine how dangerous anything was, whether or not innoculants could be prepared, how to treat anyone who came down with anything and so on.

Finally, Team Nine were the vulcanologists and geoscientists; they were to carry on with a variant of the original mission, determining what ores were available, how much of them there were, how to extract them, what their values would be, and how to refine the ore.

Team Ten, command, were to keep track of everything that was going on, fix any problems with these plans as they arose, make sure everyone was working harmoniously, and pitch in anywhere that they could help out.

Survey Problems

Right away, there was a problem to be overcome: the magnetic fields were even stronger here at the surface. Anything metallic that moved through them quickly acquired a static charge that could only be dissipated through electrical displays that wrought havoc with electronics; the control systems needed substantial reinforcement to be able to cope.

This would limit the number of drones available to do this work, creating a bottleneck that would slow results, at least at first. Maintenance cycles that should have been completed annually were planned for every second day, to be adjusted once the expedition had actual data on the drone’s reaction to the environment.

It should also be borne in mind that this was the first planetary body ever found with such a high concentration of rare earth metals, and no-one knew even theoretically what impact that could or would have.

Another factor to be reckoned with was the fact that since no planetary bodies were expected, the expedition had not been equipped to deal with such – they were cobbling together bits and pieces to make do with what they had.

Initially, there were just two drones available, to be shared by all nine active teams. More would be brought online over the first week or two, but limited manpower resulting from the heavy maintenance cycle would chew up a lot of their time.

Communications soon proved to be another headache; there was enough radioactivity and ambient radio noise from the interaction of radiation and magnetic field that the ranges of their equipment were only 1/10th of what they should have been, at best, and a few hundred meters, at worst. That meant re-tasking one of the two survey drones to emplacing communications relays along a direct route between base camp and the area being surveyed.

Some time was saved by erecting some of these manually, creating a ring around the base camp and spokes leading out from it.

Initial Findings

Team Four quickly determined that the biosphere was slowly recuperating from the unnatural cataclysm that had engulfed the planet – so slowly that it must have been a hairs-breadth away from complete annihilation.

Certainly, no higher life-forms had survived. Team 5 was re-tasked to profiling the inhabitants and whatever could be learned about them.

The atmosphere was clean and viable. The water in the swamp was contaminated by heavy-metal oxides and nitrates and other nasties, and so was the river water nearby – but the water flowing out of the green zone was potable and reasonably safe.

There were a number of deposits of rare earth metals of sufficient magnitude to permit industrial-scale mining. Many were somewhat radioactive, but that could be dealt with.

Jumping-off Point #4

Different choices are possible here, particularly in regards to higher animal life. I chose not to distract the PCs with a side-issue.

Drone Failure

One of the drones detected a weak electronic signal coming from a small hillock at the edge of the swamp while on a flyby. It was immediately re-tasked to investigate – and immediately stopped reporting back to Command.

The other drone was sent out to retrieve the downed unit and bring it back for analysis. It, too, picked up the signals – some sort of digital data-stream – but was instructed to ignore them. Someone on the engineering team suggested plugging the good unit into the bad so that they could at least get some diagnostics to work on in the meantime, but this was vetoed as too risky; the engineers could wait the hour or so required to bring the faulty unit back.

As soon as the faulty unit was plugged into the diagnostic maintenance bay, systems began to go haywire. Activity levels shot up to 100% of capacity and stayed there, making the systems unresponsive to commands, and the problems spread from one system to another, even across supposedly air-gapped protections.

It’s getting way ahead in the story, but that story will make a lot more sense to GMs if I jump the gun on what was happening.

Most antivirus systems feature some sort of heuristic learning capability, permitting them to recognize threats that are similar to, but not the same as, a threat that they have already been designed to counter.

I combined that concept with the notion of emergent properties to create a computer virus that weaponized the antivirus software itself into the viral payload.

This not only got around any differences in computer architecture or programming, it essentially made all systems exposed completely vulnerable. A truly nasty idea that is, thankfully, well beyond our current capabilities – and I hope that remains the case for a very, very long time.

So this super-virus gets into the diagnostic software, jumps across into some bookkeeping / system resources software, into the common interface systems designed to give everything a similar look-and-feel, and from there is into the operating system.

It’s scorched-earth as applied to computer software.

Expedition Failure

The operators quickly realized that they were under attack from a worm / virus of some sort, and started shutting down systems, especially those that were critical, then reverting to backup copies and reinstalling. In the meantime, anything that used computer assistance – like maintaining a comms link back to the mother ship in orbit – was reduced to hit-and-miss manual methods.

Nevertheless, a commlink was established for long enough to appraise the mother ship of this development and send through their findings to date, as a precaution. Unfortunately, the virus piggybacked its way onto that signal and started wreaking the same systems damage on board as was being experienced by the landing party.

Mothership woes

Worse still, there are all sorts of things that you can survive on a planet, surrounded by breathable (if suspect) air, that leave you completely vulnerable in space.

Without warning, all the airlocks opened, and all the containment bulkhead hatches that were supposed to isolate areas against exposure to vacuum failed to lock down. 90% of the crew aboard the mother ship were killed almost immediately.

Next, the onboard security systems went haywire. Half the remaining crew – those who had been wearing vacuum suits as a redundant safety measure – were killed before this could be manually disabled.

The commander on board – Byron was leading the expedition to the planet – set an emergency beacon and hastily scrawled a handwritten report of the problem (something along the lines of “Computer failure – virus – everything down” – before the virus found its way into their suits’ onboard systems, leaving the mothership an orbiting graveyard and the expedition cut off.

That was thirty days ago.

This image uses all the sources listed earlier, and adds
spacecraft-358996 by ntnvnc, woman-1146386 by 733215, spread-2904672 by Rogier Hoekstra, and hot-air-balloon-1747265 by efes, all from Pixabay.

Enter the PCs

The nearest vessel, by sheer coincidence, belongs to the PCs (or, at least, they are onboard). It gets commandeered by the Empire and sent to investigate, and rescue the expedition if at all possible.

Variations

Given the self-evident risks and dangers, it’s also possible that the PCs are NOT the closest help, but someone who has it in for them routes the assignment their way, anyway.

Any rivals out there? Anyone that the PCs have ticked off lately? Or who sees a potential advantage to getting them into trouble before they even know they have a hostile force against them?

For security reasons, they are given minimal information. Planetary survey, lost contact, nobleman and his expeditionary force in need of rescue, impossible star, improbable planet, details onboard the expeditionary vessel – and that’s about it.

I chose to break up the info-dump and give them everything down to “Planets? At SG-134-12-158? You’re kidding, right?”, and the first jumping-off point, which made it seem like the Empire was doing its best to be ‘helpful’.

PC arrival

When the PCs arrive, they should be in a state of extreme caution, for obvious reasons – the survey ship was a lot better equipped, with more resources and manpower and clever people on board to deal with any problems.

Any attempt to contact the mothership remotely will fail, it’s comms are offline. All they can get is the automated warning message, which tells them very little except that there’s something seriously wrong.

The onboard links to the ship’s computer are down. Any areas where suited individuals failed to manually compromise the security systems will attack the PCs. There are only a few places onboard where the mission logs can still be accessed, using computers that the PCs have brought with them. Wherever they choose to go, they will find that hand-scrawled warning.

Most people will respond by attempting to scan the computer system with the latest and greatest antivirus packages available to them. As soon as they plug in, the virus will attack those systems.

Unless the PCs are both brilliant and lucky, the computers they brought with them are now dead – but they may be able to get more / cannibalize more from the ship that brought them here.

Choices and Logic

Either the PCs choose to go in blind, not knowing where to look (unlikely), or they are stuck until one of them employs some logic – any manual backups to the mission logs that were made before whatever has happened took place should be safe.

This updates the situation with the discoveries made by the survey mission up to the point of failure of the first drone – that includes the first two paragraphs of “Drone Failure”.

Given their own observations, it should be possible to deduce what happened next.

There’s no-one left to rescue here – the PCs need to copy the mission logs and append their own investigations and deductions for safe keeping, forbid all attempts to contact the mothership (maybe even blasting it out of existence / out of orbit), and then head for the landing site on the planet.

Jumping-off Point #5

What’s happened below over the last 30 days plus PC transit time provides the next jumping-off point away from the main plot that I created to utilize this Strange Place.

They could all be dead. The computer virus may be the last remnant of a once-great (if planet-bound) civilization, equivalent to maybe 2050, maybe 2060, earth-equivalent.

They could be alive (mostly) and in need of rescue, their mission having ground to a resounding halt.

My PCs are of the ‘where angels fear to tread’ types, and the broader plot required that Byron be more capable, resilient, and resourceful than that; if that was all there was, it would have been very anticlimactic, and a waste of the opportunity presented by this location.

Alternative choices made earlier provide many alternatives at this point, too. Sleepers may have been awoken, for example, and the Citadel now an operating concern. They may have captured / rescued Byron themselves, or they may be hostile. These alternatives would certainly provide the ‘something more’ that I am suggesting is needed to complete the adventure.

Oh, and Before I forget –

Oh yes. There are certain possibilities inherent in the in-game physics that I made use of to ramp up the threat to levels appropriate for this campaign. Since your game physics is almost certainly different to something designed to accommodate superheros, those would not be appropriate to inject – so I have left them out of what follows.

Base Camp -What’s left of it

Landing near the Base Camp reveals that it has been destroyed by some sort of particle-disintegration mortar, something altogether more advanced than the Squeeze Bombs used thousands of years ago.

In fact, this weaponry is either somewhat in advance of that available to the Empire or at the cutting edge of such weapons research.

This suggests that something survived the attack, thousands of years ago, and has been conducting advanced weapons research ever since, but let the PCs draw their own conclusions.

It’s clear that someone survived this attack – by luck perhaps – because a number of casualties have been buried with crude religious symbols erected that match the dominant religions of the Empire> If the burials had not been performed by one or more expedition members, whoever did it would not have known that symbology, and would either have used their own or none at all.

Putting themselves in the shoes of such hypothetical survivors, the obvious place to go is the citadel. If there is any help to be had here, that’s the place it would be found.

Robot Down

En route, the team can observe the communications relays that have been set up by the Expeditionary Force. Near one of them, they find another of the robotic drones used by the expedition.

The antigrav-based scout-droid lay twitching on the ground, electrical energy arcing over its body. These were obviously very primitive devices; created out of spare parts but deliberately robust to permit them to function in this hostile environment. Most units would have been fried long ago, but this one is still at least semi-active.

Plugging in a diagnostic tool results in the Virus doing it’s thing to the diagnostic tool, making it clear what happened to the droid and confirming Mydas as the source. The virus seems in this case to have sent the power supply running wild, which had shorted out key components of the device.

Everything indicates that the expedition had either woken something up, or discovered something that had survived the conflict.

Approaching the Citadel

As they get closer, and obtain line-of-sight to the Citadel and the “apple core” on which it stands, a vehicle can be seen in the distance, and (with suitable vision zoom technology), a set of climbing ropers set nearby up to make the ascent to the top of the “Core”.

That seems to make the next target of investigation obvious.

As the PCs move closer to the vehicle, it quickly becomes apparent that it is not as intact as it looked from a distance. The far side is still relatively in one piece, but the far side has been struck by some sort of missile or exploding drone – and subjected to ‘small arms’ fire for a considerable period of time – enough to make Swiss cheese of the engine block.

A human body, deceased, remains in the passenger seat, but there is no sign of the vehicle operator.

Immediately someone gets close enough to the vehicle to notice these facts, they cross some kind of threshold. Turrets of some kind erupt from the turf, where they had seemed to be tiny hillocks, and short barrels extrude from those turrets. Other turrets mounting small automatic weapons (blasters?) rise to protect the larger ones from interference.

A quickie that I put together for the players after the fact. And yes, I was inspired by Beaker from the Muppets.

These weapons fire on the PCs, who should have just enough time to dive for cover. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a wild man with several weeks of beard growth, and wielding an electrified whip, uses his weapon to disable the weapons platforms.

I used a photo of Indiana Jones (with whip) for a moment of light relief, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.

Byron Windsor-Smythe

In a cultured accent, and no little urgency, the figure yells,

    “Introductions later. Follow me, quickly – these weapons regenerate, but I’ll lead you through a path along which I’ve temporarily disabled them.”

Keeping low, moving quickly, and disabling more weapons as they emerge, he leads the PCs to a rock facade that proves to be a tarpaulin disguised with native rocks and dirt, concealing the entrance to a small man-made cavern.

Pulling the camouflage back into place once all are inside, he announces,

    “I was expecting a rescue party who would need to be rescued. I am Count Byron Bartholomew Windsor-Smythe, last survivor of the expeditionary force to Mydas.”

    “Call me Barry,” he adds.

Count Byron (Barry) then informs the PCs that the citadel above is vast, much bigger than it appears, and 90% underground. The fact that no ways in have been exposed by the Pinch Bombs (using their correct name), he explains, indicates that most of the complex was built after the initial bombardment.

Nevertheless, he – and three of his team – had made it to the entrance, forced entry, and managed to retrieve a data disc before being driven back by robotic security droids, obviously designed to operate in this electromagnetically-charged environment.

His three companions were killed during the escape, but he managed to create and conceal this cavern with a Plasma Disintegration Grenade, and use the covering and native materials laced with rare earth ores to shield himself from the sensors that detect approaching potential enemies.

Count Byron’s Story

The data disc was in an unknown file format, but digital is digital, and the Count had plenty of time on his hands. Most of the contents are indecipherable documents, but there were a number of video files; the alien language is completely unknown to him, but the video element could be played and interpreted.

The Mydasians are humanoids, but beyond that, everything is up to the GM – everything is possible from the ‘humans with strangely colored skin” to something much stranger.

I suggest starting with a Google Image Search for “Alien Concept Art” and picking something you like – being prepared for the likelihood that whatever you find is probably subject to copyright.

You may also find

to be useful reference material.

The video footage shows:

    Two different populaces, obviously of differing political persuasions. Rallies and denunciations of the enemy are fairly easy to interpret. Footage of the war from the perspective of the aliens in the Citadel. Increasing food shortages are indicated by images of meals that become more meager over time. Suggestions that the purpose of the Citadel was advanced weapons research. An uprising by the surviving personnel.

    A leader emerges. Maps that suggest concern that occupying forces are potentially en route – clearly, the citadel-side won the war, but don’t know how total a victory was achieved. Footage of the devastated surface. Instillation of additional defensive systems as the leader looks on, smugly (or maybe you’re reading too much into his body language).

    Plans presented to a gathering of the survivors, showing a vast complex built into the mountainside, powered by the abundant geothermal energy available. A vast computer installation being created, and some graphics indicating some sort of division within the circuitry. Which is where the recordings end.

Count Byron has had many hours to think it over while he consumed his ration packs. Within the mantle of the planet is a vast computer installation, constructed after the overt end of hostilities and the destruction of surface life. The occupants of the research facility had no way of knowing whether or not their enemy had also survived, or in what numbers. Assuming the worst, they used their latest designs to install additional defenses and then went to work on a long-term plan.

The computer would project and conduct weapons research in a digital (virtual?) environment, would assume that the enemy’s computers were doing the same thing, and would then research defenses against those weapons. Once some sort of protection was devised, the computer would assume that the enemy had also devised these defenses and begin designing new weaponry to penetrate the protections. Those who had set the program in motion had long since starved, leaving their legacy protected by an artificial intelligence doing exactly what it was designed to do.

War-world

Count Byron would ordinarily be consumed with the desire to get his hands on one of the AI’s hard drives – 10,000 years of weapons research for the taking? Who wouldn’t be? – but there are bigger fish to fry.

There’s every indication that this star system entered the Galaxy from the top, but it has clearly had a number of close encounters in this part of the Galaxy, and it’s plane of motion has been twisted until it now lies within the galactic plane. There are indications in the astronomical observations that it has now achieved escape velocity relative to the central black hole, and it – and Mydas – will be heading toward more habitable parts of the galaxy, right through the Empire, in fact.

The aliens seemed to have had no conception of life outside of their own world. Hardly surprising if they thought such conditions were what was needed for sentient life to emerge. Therefore, everyone the computer encounters will either be an ally or an enemy – and the allies would have defining characteristics that would need to be matched precisely.

To the computer, the Empire would be cast in the role of “The Enemy”, and the products of all that weapons research would pose a direct threat to the safety of the Empire. Already, the computer would be aware of the possibilities of space travel and would be designing its own such craft.

Mydas was a loaded plasma-cannon, pointed straight at the Empire. And it was up to him, as a member of the Nobility, to stop it, and to that end, he was conscripting the PCs into his service for the duration. Together, you have to take down the Computer, against everything that it can (and will) throw at you.

The significance of whether or not the War-world has weaponry that merely matches the best that the Empire can bring to bear, or is somewhat – even a little – ahead of them now becomes obvious.

Further speculation

The improbability of a planet existing in exactly the right orbit, with exactly the right composition, for life to develop in this star system with all it’s unique characteristics, so so high that someone is bound to wonder if it can all just be so by accident.

The answer is yes, but it’s not very likely.

Is it more probable to conclude that someone orchestrated the existence of Mydas deliberately, then stocked it with appropriate life for it’s own reasons? Quite possibly.

If you had done so, you might have been content to simply watch life develop in such a unique environment. But it’s far more likely that you would meddle, at least behind the scenes.

Once it became clear that the planet’s citizens were headed for a self-induced Armageddon, if you were already interfering, would you not make every effort to put the culture onto a different path? The only reason you would not do so is if this was exactly what you wanted to happen – which puts an entirely new spin on that “meddling”.

So you’ve created an improbable world and pushed it into a global war with advanced weaponry. Why? Is the (extremely improbable) survival of the Citadel another clue?

Could it be that this entire world was engineered to create a weapons platform to be utilized against an enemy, and the inhabitants just pawns?

It’s ruthless, treats the inhabitants as pawns, wildly improbable – but it explains all the anomalies and the alternative isn’t that much more likely (if it is at all).

Which brings me to the end of the second of this trio of Strange Places. I hope it’s been a fun ride! The third one will follow in a couple of weeks time.


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