Beta Max Black - War Among The Stars - Stars Without Numbers & Cepheus Engine Rpg Campaign Dungeon Master Workshop Session Report #2

 Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
  Past the wan-mooned abysses of night,
I have lived o'er my lives without number,
  I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

I have whirled with the earth at the dawning,
  When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning
  Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.

I had drifted o'er seas without ending,
  Under sinister grey-clouded skies,
That the many-forked lightning is rending,
  That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible daemons, that out of the green waters rise.

I have plunged like a deer through the arches
  Of the hoary primordial grove,
Where the oaks feel the presence that marches,
  And stalks on where no spirit dares rove,
And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers through dead branches above.

I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains
  That rise barren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains
  That ooze down to the marsh and the main;
And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things, I care not to gaze on again.

I have scanned the vast ivy-clad palace,
  I have trod its untenanted hall,
Where the moon rising up from the valleys
  Shows the tapestried things on the wall;
Strange figures discordantly woven, that I cannot endure to recall.

I have peered from the casements in wonder
  At the mouldering meadows around,
At the many-roofed village laid under
  The curse of a grave-girdled ground;
And from rows of white urn-carven marble, I listen intently for sound.

I have haunted the tombs of the ages,
  I have flown on the pinions of fear,
Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages;
  Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.

I was old when the pharaohs first mounted
  The jewel-decked throne by the Nile;
I was old in those epochs uncounted
  When I, and I only, was vile;
And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.

Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
  And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,
  Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.

Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
  Past the wan-mooned abysses of night,
I have lived o'er my lives without number,
  I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.
Nemesis  (1917) 
by H. P. Lovecraft

So yesterday around about having a meeting with DM Greg & his wife (who murdered his PC) gave me a whole lot of  Mongoose Traveller material including Chthonian Stars rpg pdf a setting book from Wildfire. And its old news going back to 2012. 

But what we'd do is cut this setting back a bit by using Zozer Games Hostile rpg to run this setting but there'd be a few changes to boot  as suggested by Greg & Cathy: 

• Bring in psionics into the mix 
• Make adjustments to the Lovecraftian entities fit the setting we've been running so far. 
• Concentrate on both Earth side as well as other areas of the solar system.. 
• Use what's come before in our already established Eighties fueled campaign that's on going. 

And this brought up an pivot point in the Cepheus Engine/Star Without Numbers campaign of the Talon Sector . Earth has been cut off & fallen way down the technological ladder here cut off by massive psionic storms. Its been suggested by Greg that these aliens may know far more then their letting on to the Earthers. And this brought up our old Nineties campaign Dark Conspiracy rpg which will work with our Hostile rpg system. So in one fell swoop we've got two monster options as well as a slimmed down PC generation. The entire back catalog of DC material is available for sale on Drivethrurpg. So there's a lot of campaign notebooks to sort through. 

But there are plans within plans here as old ideas & new systems clash, we're still ironing out the details but campaign plans are moving ahead. One of the first things to deal with is the unexplored back adventure we had in DC about the Martian colonies that were cut off by the psionic storm. 
For this we're gonna be using Outpost Mars & going to be having a bunch of adventures on Mars coming up. 

For the Martian exploration we're gonna be using Roughnecks again & picking up right from the lower technology threshold. Mars isn't as unexplored as it might seem. There have been certain rumblings on social media but that's about it. More as this develops... 

The Talon Sector is starting to come together well, & that's thanks in part to the free resources from the Dark Conspiracy fan site here.