Where's Ghosts of the Past
I moved Fortunae's adventure to its own thread - it seemed awfully long for a seed (not at all a reflection of its quality).
The adventure can be found at:
http://216.40.212.6/forum/showthread...&threadid=3171
And to keep people interested in it....
Quote:
Name: Ghosts of the Past
Type: Mystery / Horror
Era: TNG/DS9/VOY/+
This is an adventure that I ran for my group last Summer when we were needing a change of pace type adventure.
What you need:
One Psionic Character or one character whose player has been making noises about wishing they were Psionic.
Prelude: The MacGuffin
It's a courtesy call away mission, Perfect chance for your PC captain to get off the ship if you have one, but this works well regardless as long as you use your highest ranking Command Branch PC or Line Officer if you lack one of those. The Gam'C Uffins are a pleasant minor member world of the Federation near the bend of the neutral zone that heads for the Black Cluster in the Alpha Quadrent. Aside from sending cultural arts and the occassional representative to the Federation Council, the Gam'C Uffins really don't interact too much with the rest of the Federation. Their planet supplies them well with thier material needs still, and there isn't anything so dramatically viable that they offer that can't be had somewhere closer in the Federation. Due to this, Starfleet has directed the crew's vessel to send a curtosy stop by the planet which is about to celebrate its 15th anniversary of Fed Membership.
The problem is, the ship is already carrying time sensative materials to yet another planet, so the solution is to launch a warp shuttle to carry the envoy team on 7-8 day flight (better if your ship packs runabouts) and then will return to pick them up enroute back the way they came.
Let your crew talk about the mission, dazzle them with promises of goods times to be had, after all, they aren't ever going to make it to the planet anyway, so promise the Moon!
Full adventure can be found at:
http://216.40.212.6/forum/showthread...&threadid=3171
A Blatant Ripoff Production...
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poster
Outright stolen from "Stardoc" by Viehl
Title: The Measure of a Mind
Setting: Planetside/Medical Conference/Starbase
Era: Any
Good for a solo player episode, or for a "getaway" ep where the other characters tag along when the Doctor goes to a medical conference*, everything begins as planned, and the conference is underway. One doctor, a pretty young woman with a rather stern and acidic demeanour, outshines a doctor or two in the same seminars as the PC Doctor, while the other crew are off enjoying themselves or the like.
Strange militaristic people who are out of place on a resort planet, the other crew start to notice these soldiers trying to "fit in" (ie: they're undercover).
The woman doctor is a fugitive. From a non-federation world, she is actually a clone of a male doctor who did some genetic tampering with his clone (among which was to change her gender, sharpen her wits, etc). On that world, however, genetic experiments are considered non-sentient, and she has no rights, is considered the property of the doctor who created her - who, you guessed it, is as the conference and has hired those mercenary soldier types to get her back into custody.
She'll ask the Federation Doctor crewmember for help, and the moral dilemma will kick in for the crew: just because her planet says she's not a sentient, should they help arrest her, or help her get away? (Or some other third option they'd undoubtedly come up with that derails your plans)?
As a plot complication, she has a medical idea that might save the life of a terminal patient in the medical facility, but if captured, she won't get to use her proceedure, and an innocent cute little child will die an agonizing and slow death. How's that for a tug on the heartstrings... makes a nice tension-packed climax if she's operating on the child when the mercenaries finally catch up with her...
The Doc
* You'd think Starfleet would assign a Defiant class ship to keep doctors safe when they try to go on vacation, they always end up kidnapped by someone...
An idea born of "Persistance of Vision" (VOY)
Title: Vision
Era: Any
Setting: Starship
Begin this episode with something mundane, like the mapping of a star system where a trinary star with an orbiting nebulous cloud of anomalous matter/gas. The matter/stuff is putting out an odd radiation, but the shields manage to cut most of it off.
While studying, have the crewman you most often associate with being the strongest mentally or the most "pigheaded" start to have minor mental glitches. They turned the wrong way in the corridor, or they meant to go one way, and ended up somewhere else. Or they think they see Crewman X, but they're talking to Crewman Y. Oops.
Then, make it a little worse. Visual hallucinations that are starting to border on more than distracting. At the same time, start hitting some of the rest of your crew with the more mild effects. The Doc should be involved by this point, and the doc will discover that the energy radiation might contain a low-level psionic resonance/disturbance, and might be the cause of this problem. Indeed, except for the first person affected, the disturbance eases off, and ends, when the ship moves away from the system.
The first individual affected now begins to see alien shadows among the crewmembers sometimes, odd round-ish shaped creatures, which seem to be stalking the other crewmen, and are nearly omnipresent. He feels an odd pain in his head, and especially sees the aliens around the various telepathic crewmen on board.
Things get worse for our intrepid crewman, and soon the visions are nightmarish. The "things" are all over the place, coming at him, and even though the crew aren't nearby the system, things are starting to get wierd again among the crew that listen to the crewman: the reemergence of the strange visual hallucinations. Particularly strong-willed individuals start to notice the dark shadowy roundish aliens.
So then a full investigation/lockdown/alienhunt begins, and proof is found of an alien ship that must have been hiding in the rings. They're either using some sort of energy weapon or are a telepathic species, and the crew now start to work out a plan to strengthen shields and blast the ship. After some technobabble tension, they blast the ship, and it retreats... Everyone recovers. Everyone is happy.
In his quarters later that night the Crewman's visions redouble, and the blurred round entities are back, attacking in full force. Fighting them off isn't possible, they don't seem to be physically present, and he should undoubtedly freak out, major. The crew examine him and see that he has suffered permanent brain damage as a result of the radiation and/or alien projections.
At this point, the CMO should clue in that something isn't right: the radiation shouldn't have done what it did, didn't seem to do it to anyone else, and out of the corner of his eyes, he notices elevated levels of neurotransmitters involved in telepathy - but looking directly into the display, the readings aren't there... The Aliens are back?
Here's what's actually going on: one of the telepathic crewman on the ship picked up a virus that is causing his telepathic abilities to project a kind of visual distortion. As more and more crewmembers picked up the virus, those telepathic have evolved this outgoing psychic static into a group hallucination. There was no alien ship, and no radiation from the gaseous nebula ever got through the shields. Basically, as the crew come up with hypotheses, their hypotheses are being integrated into the collective hallucination. The crew need to think straight long enough to find a way to block telepathic input - the reason the crewman is having such horrible visual hallucinations is that he's strong-willed enough to not be sucked all the way into the vision, which makes what he is experiencing (including large round "virus" representations) more in tune with reality than what the rest of the ship believes they are seeing. (Think of the one sane man in an insane Kingdom).
This one would be creepy, and based on the one 'insane' guy knowing he's not sick, he's just seeing things, finally convincing someone that there's telepathic incomming something, and then the rest cluing in and avoiding their own collective unconscious delusions and finding the cure to the virus, after nullifying it somehow...
What's fun about this is that whatever theories the crew come up with at your table, you integrate. If they think Romulans, Romulans shall show up, for example. :eek:
The Doc
This is what I thought the answer would be on "Enterprise" last night...
Title: Patient Zero
Era: Any
Setting: Starship
The crew come to a world where there two humanoid races have evolved. They live in a harmony, though the larger majority tend to be a bit condescending to the smaller group of humanoids (who are built a little smaller, a little weaker, and have a reallly soft and gentle disposition).
The larger majority are technologically advanced, have warp drive, and are new to the space scene. The smaller population have some technology, but tend to live in harmony on the edges of the civilization, though sometimes one species marries into the other. They cannot have cross-breed children without a great deal of medical intervention.
When the larger community gets hit by a mutating virus, and have been dying for years, approaching the millions, the crew could easily become involved. No matter the treatment the larger group try, nothing works for long, and the virus just shows up later, mutated again.
The cause is the smaller group: their immune system doesn't suffer from the virus at all - they pretty much fight it off in a day or two and suffer no symptoms at all. Unfortunately, every time they fight it off, the virus mutates in an attempt to hit them harder, and these mutated strains are what are killing the larger group.
How will the society react when they find out that merely containing - or killing - all of the smaller species would end their disease with their next "Cure"? Anarchy, death camps, isolation communities? S'up to you, but it'd be an interesting ride...
The Doc
Idea stolen from the jacket of "Chronoliths."
D'oh! Did this thread die? Rats.
Title: This Flag Planted...
Era: Any
Setting: Starship
A large "monolith" style object appears in close orbit of a colonized world, and immediately enters the upper atmosphere. The players are members of the crew rushing to evac the planet, or get the colonists to somewhere safe before the big monolith slams into the planet and deals a heck of a lot of damage to the ecosystem. But it lands very much like a marker - and its covered in strange writings and odd languages.
The Universal Translator takes some time to figure out what the monolith says... and when it does, there's a surprise in store: it's a marker denoting the victory of the great XYZ empire against this planet... in a year that's nearly fifty years away.
Uhoh.
Another monolith appears in orbit of another nearby planet where a colony is planned to begin construction. It lands with the same effects. The marker shows a date a year earlier than the one before it.
Another shows up near a nebula.
Extrapolation shows that the monoliths are likely to show up in some seriously habited spots rather soon, and its up to the crew to figure out who the progenitors of this XYZ empire are, and track down the people starting to form it. Of course, does it violate the temporal prime directive to stop them now to erase those monoliths from happening? Uhoh.
Michael Barratt
(I'm baaaaaaack.)
Stolen from "The Golden Fleece," by Robert J. Sawyer
Title: Murder
Era: Any
Setting: Starship
The crew's ship was investigating a planet that recently blew itself up in a nuclear holocaust, when suddenly -
- BANG! -
- The crew's ship, damaged by the passing of a ship using a form of gravity drive (basically a ship that creates a focused point of high gravity ahead of itself, thus "Falling" forward through space), make first contact with the Argani.
The Argani are coming from a system far away, toward a world they are colonizing for the first time. The journey, via Gravity Drive, will take nearly fifteen years, and they have an enclosed system inside their ship, which is basically an entire city, complete with holographic "beaches," transplanted forests, and so forth, and a faboo artificial intelligence that runs most of the city functions. It's a wonderful environment, and since the crew will be co-ordinating repairs for at least a week or two, the Captain allows shoreleave.
Alas, crew start having "accidents" that seem somewhat fishy, even a few deaths. The pattern is astronomers and stellar cartographers, and then, an Argani who was working with the chief science officer also shows up dead... What's going on?
Well, anyone in the know of the local sector looking at the star logs of the Argani's long journey will realize they're faked. The ship has been circling it's own system for ages, under the guidance of the artificial intelligence, who, along with the other world artificial intelligences, realized that a nuclear confrontation was soon coming to pass. So the Argani mission was put forth, the crew boarded, and set out - and then the war broke out on the planet behind them. The AI is also behind the killings - people who figured out the truth had to be offed.
Why? Because the AIs survived the war, as they planned to, and are even now beginning their "other" mission - they're going to launch automated terraforming devices, some with AIs of their own, to colonize the fourth planet of the next closest system. Once they're done, the ship AI will let the crew arrive, thinking they've travelled vast distances to another class-M planet they'd found so very far away, and colonize.
The Federation ship can be half-way through the confusion of the beginning attacks and murders when they get sketchy sensor readings (due to the damage and interference of the gravity drive) of massive launchings coming from the ruined globally-destroyed planet... uh oh! Weapons? Just the terraforming gear... and if the crew figure out what's going on, those "terraforming" AIs are quite content to keep the secret by terraforming the Federation ship into dust...
Prime Directive would apply: these are not warp-capable people, and the crew should have to have a philosophical discussion about whether or not to tell the Argani that they've not gone anywhere really... And that their whole world is gone...
Michael Barratt
Stolen from "Purity in Death," by J.D. Robb
Title: Deadlock
Era: Any with replicator technology
Setting: Ship or base, as above, with replicator technology
One by one, people on a starship or base currently dealing with a series of very tough negotiations are dropping dead. The source seems to be a medical outbreak: they have picked up a virus that is causing massive brain swelling, which leads to bleeding from the nose, eyes, ears, and major migraine attacks, before finally the person seems to "nest" and die.
Most crawl into their quarters, lock the door, and drug themselves up until they die or go nuts from the pain and kill themselves. A few take someone with them, lose their temper from the pain, and end up in murder/suicide.
Terrorists opposed to the continued negotiations have blended replicator, transporter, and computer technology. This is a computer virus they can send to your terminal and when you use the terminal for enough hours, it replicates the virus and beams it into your head, all unnoticed, and unlogged. Between the computer techs and security, they'll have their heads shaking over how to undo this, and how to cleanse the system thereafter...
The Doc
As usual, stolen from a book I just read ("Chindi" by McDevitt)
Title: Chindi
Era: Any
Setting: Starship
You are forewarned that this is outright theft of ideas from Jack McDevitt's "Chindi" novel, and as such, if you plan to read the book, stop now.
While exploring a planet, from orbit, where a nuclear holocaust destroyed the civilization, a small Nova-class vessel up and exploded. The crew's ship is sent in to figure things out, including picking up the twenty or so survivors who are floating around in escape pods who made it in time: but nearly no one has a clue what happened... One engineer says that the chief told him to get a good night's sleep, because they were bringing something into the cargo bay from orbit of the planet.
There aren't enough ruins, however, of the ship in orbit. After looking, they spot cloaked sattelites - very barely visible to sensors, and only if you're really looking. They also realize that one of htem is brand-spanking new, and the theory is this: if you turn one of them off, they release nanotech to try and replicate themselves, in the process likely destroying whatever ship took them aboard, if that's the case. If they just ran down normally, likely the nanotech would seek out a piece of an asteroid or something.
Then they find a signal, on a subspace frequency designed to be very difficult to locate.
The satellites work in a trio to send their signal outbound to another system, and they appear to be of a technology different than the obliterated planet. Warping there doesn't take too long, and sure enough, three more satellites are in orbit of a gas giant that will, in about a hundred years or so, smash into a planet that must have been yanked out of its orbit by the giant. No life here, just those sattelites - and the incoming signal is also outgoing to yet another system...
The signals sometimes point to life, sometimes to an interesting stellar event, and then finally to something really rather frightening: A pair of Gas giants locked in a gravity dance with each other, with rings around each of them and rings around the entire duet of them, and a moon that must have been artificially set into a polar orbit of the lot - which offers a spectacular view of the gorgeous display - from an abandoned observatory/small village-sized outpost.
With three sattelites around it, recording. Here we find, however, graves that have been freshly dug up and then returned to their natural state: but th ebodies were originally buried about four thousand years ago. No obvious reason as to why the outpost died - or had time to bury its dead.
The sattelites are aiming off in another direction, but as the ship is ready to go, a ship arrives in the system from the opposite side of the gas giants. And starts scooping into the atmosphere of them, refuelling. It's huge: an asteroid with engines, pretty much, and communications fail. No way to beam rigt in, but a shuttle could land on it and in suits, people could enter through the hatches.
Once they do so, they'll find themselves in a huge museum in motion: Full of mostly empty rooms, now and then a room has a very lifelike diorama, or a holographic representation, of a scene that the ship must have visited. Robotic minions wander about taking care of things. No people seem to live here.
Then, without much warning, the thing hits warp with your people on board. They have whatever supplies they took with them, and it might be necessary to come up with a seriously interesting "rescue" mission - their shuttle is blown off the hull by the accelleration, and in the meantimg, the people inside lose communication witht he ship and can go exploring.
They even find early pictures of Earth in one holosuite, and Andor. And Vulcan. And so on. These people have been watching for a long time. Inside the ship is environmentally null: vaccuum. If there used to be an atmosphere, it's gone, but it doesn't look like it ever had one.
On the ship, the flight path of the extremely slow vessel (which uses a kind of gravity drive warp system (about warp 2.3 or something like that) can plot ahead to find that in about eighteen years, the ship will arrive in its next destination, a system way out there. But a fly-by rescue at warp is necessary, with all manner of technical and scientific snafoos required to cope with the gravometic/warp disturbance and the speeds involved and no use of transporters, etc.
Once the people are off, the ship can warp to the next destination, where again, sattelites are orbiting a dwarf star that doesn't seem interesting in the slightest - why are they here? Until they find a remnant that might have once been a very termporary wormhole, and then find something really shocking: a pre-federation earth ship floating, now lifeless, with an automated radio distress call playing. This is where the ship is going next... it seems to jump around wherever its huge sattelite network finds things of interest.
End the ep with no real conclusion about the ship or its people, except that Starfleet Science is working on the signals in the satellites (tapping into them, however, tends to make the satellites turn themselves off - it's almost like a prime directive thing: they're switching off if they're noticed by anyone nearby). A husk of a sattelite that failed to self destruct is found in orbit of Andor, and seems to have been nonfunctional by its own design since just about the time ANdorians developed significant astronomical survey technology. It seems to have a faulty detonator. It also weighs in at about ten thousand years old.
Who these people are, and what they are doing is an unknown. The vessel itself is a scientific smorgasboard, though the Federation is going to wait 18 years to place people on it when it arrives at the site of the old earth ship. They're even tempted to find a way to put an atmosphere inside the ship itself, and so on and so forth.
IT's up to you to figure out if you want these aliens to ever arrive, or if this museum/ark/time capsule was their way to learn and share - is there a "recall" switch somewhere inside it? Or does it travel until it's full?
The Doc
