Thursday, September 15, 2022

New Starforged campaign

 Its been a year since my last Starforged campaign, so I decided to start a new one.

This time, it all begins in Agora, artificial moon orbiting Jovian ringed planet of the same name.
Moon was one of the first settlements in the Forge, used as entry point for arriving colonists.

Our hero is called Spinoza, call sign Nerd. He is PhD student at local university for xenoarcheology, working under his mentor Dr. Aristotle.
Spinoza selected for his thesis history of precursors vaults, expecting it to be a safe theoretical subject since his chances of seeing one in life were slim.
But it all changed after an accident including some kids doing illegal space ship races among planet rings.
Hidden between space debris, strange precursor's machine was discovered. It seems to be still operational, as its parts moved relative one to another.

So the government decided to send someone from the university to investigate the thing. And who would be better suited than our hero who studied precursors for so many years...

Travel to the machine passed without issues. Furthermore, vault had a clearly marked docking area for spaceships, as it was inviting people to visit it.
But behind the docking gate our hero was met with impenetrable darkness. As if all power was diverted from less important systems to maintain vaults purpose.
Spinoza fired the light on his suit, knowing that it has limited energy and that light may soon disappear.


Here, I decided to start the 6 segment clock representing power in the battery supplying the light. 

 
Next room was filled with some kind of boxes, and Spinoza had a strange wish to stay in this area longer and study them. Just as if some voices in his head wanted to keep him there forever. As his lamp used more and more power and the clock rushed forward, our hero had to fight urge to stay which seemed to come from the vault itself. Finally, he snapped out of it and managed to continue the journey.
Spinoza finally reached the core of the vault and was able to understand its purpose - vault was some kind of ice storage, a vehicle that carried bodies of dead predecessors to their final resting place.
Are the bodies still in the containers? Who knows. At the moment Spinoza had no resources to find out. It might be a good goal of some future expedition.
At that moment, our hero's main mission was to return to university alive and tell the tale. On a way back, battery finally died, light went out and our hero had to stumble through the darkness of this ancient cemetery for a while, which seriously messed with his mind. But at the end he managed to reach his ship and return home - stressed, but with no permanent consequences.