Illegal Passengers - Combining Troll Lords The Starship Warden & Empire of the Petal Throne With Gary Gygax's S3 Expedition To The Barrier Peaks

 

The alien races aboard the Warden have been there since the mid point from the interstellar journey. If we're crossing Troll Lord Starship Warden rpg  over with  the early past of  The Empire of the Petal Throne' rpg. The Human Space Empire was on a jag of exploration & discovery as well as colonization. This jag of exploration also brings up the Warden's science vessel from S3 Expedition To The Barrier Peak by Gary Gygax. 

This vessel has been collecting alien lifeforms throughout the Warden's mission. And these life form later on cause havoc on Greyhawk or within  your campaign. A great example of this is the Frogmouth who is one of the more infamous lifeform. The jungles of the Warden are infested with mutant life forms & those alien life forms blend right in.  Now an advanced adventure option might be Goodman Games 'The Captain's Table' to bring this to the table. 

The Slann or the 'enemies of mankind' are only one example of aliens aboard the Warden. The life forms are absolutely alien & another possible visitor that the Warden or its vessels may encounter is James Ward's Dark Visitor adventure. This could be a pre crash Warden Science Vessel continuation adventure. Since the Dark Visitor adventure is system agonistic its a simple matter to include it as a part of a Warden campaign loop. 

We know that the 'Slann' had an extensive planar gate & tunnel system. The Human Space Empire may have inherited this system or tapped into it. The collapse of the system when Tekumel disappeared also affected the Warden as well. This could also account for the trapped alien life forms on Dark Outpost & Dark Colony as well.  All of this jumps back to the circumstances aboard the Warden. 

These lifeforms go hostile as soon as they realize on an instinctual level that they are trapped! And trapped well beyond the point of return. This may lead to becoming an invasive species or worse settling in as the boogey men of another world such as the bullette from S3. 

The Darkest Cargo - Combining Troll Lords The Starship Warden & Empire of the Petal Throne With Gary Gygax's S3 Expedition To The Barrier Peaks

 

So last night I was messing around with Grey Elf's Classic Edition website, for our Halloween gam, The  Halloween game has been moved because of work scheduling. So let's talk about planar echoes & times from the Starship Warden which have allowed a number of alien races through the gates before they've collapsed. And its actually S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks by Gary Gygax that may hold some of the keys of this dark end of the Warden.

 The recent Goodman Games Classic Reincarnated #3 S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks had some interesting additions to the original module which gave alternative & addition materials. And there's the fact that we have no idea what may have happened aboard the Warden Science spacecraft. But one theory that  recently floated across the table was the fact perhaps ' the Mihalli' of Empire of the Petal Throne rpg fame from Dragon magazine issue #4 may have something to do with the crash into the Barrier Peaks. The Mihalli are ancient aliens who were some of the Human Empires oldest allies; 
"The Mihalli are an ancient nonhuman race which came with humanity to Tekumel — but not with humanity’s knowledge or blessings! When the planet was cut off from interstellar humanspace, the Mihalli, who had set up a small spy post beneath the planet’s surface, were cut off as well and could not return to their original world." 

 The Mihalli are also absolute enemies of the mind flayers one of the alien races aboard the science & ecological vessel of the Warden. These horrors are thought to be the root cause of the crash as the player's PC's try to stop their machinations. 

Illustration by Jeff Dee and used without permission 

Recently while plying through Tekumel.com's forum I came across this post by Master Fulat's form post  regarding his reading of  Phil's Pe Choi essay, relevant sections of which follow; "  Long before Man had stretched out his hands to the stars the Pé Chói had developed space flight and the torque-stress interdimensional drive.

... It was on the advice of the Pé Chói that Man steered away from the deadly worlds of the Hlutrgú, then a localised but ferocious and powerful spacefaring species. They were again instrumental in keeping human ships away from Pelagus (sigma Sagittarii), which was inhabited by a race so dangerous and inimical that no species could approach them with impunity. [who are these inimicable beings???]

I've also found some intersting snippets in the blue room archive. This section on races for instance.
...Humanspace included other citizens as well: the Pe Choi (whose scientific abilities had made intersteller travel feasible), the Ahoggya, who built great, boxy, bumbling merchant ships that bought stuff that other races treated as vile waste; the Shen, whose own fleets ranged far from their home system; the Pachi Lei, Swamp Folk, and Hlaka, whose cultures were smaller and less technological, but who had the capability to take Pe Choi technology and construct their own merchant fleets' the Tinaliya, who were intensely curious but who were so logical that they never developed an aesthetic or spiritual understanding at all. Etc. Still other races may also have existed within this sphere, including some that were hostile to Humankind." 

There question is are there far more deadly beings in the void between places where the Book of Ebon Bindings talks about?! The answer to this is that I believe so.  So are the froggies that we talked about last blog entry & the mind flayers only the tip of the ice berg?! The answer is yes. 

For Troll Lords Starship Warden this means that there may be far more dangerous horrors lurking in the shadows of the ship then even the mutants & cyro passengers release!  Perhaps the only ones who might be answering are the demons spoken of in the 'Book of Ebon Binding' and they may not be talking to the PC's. 

Classics & Chaos - Combining Troll Lords The Starship Warden & Empire of the Petal Throne With Gary Gygax's S3 Expedition To The Barrier Peaks

 So let's get a bit froggy today & start thinking about 'the enemies of mankind' for a moment again with some inspired Empire of the Petal Throne madness. We did a bit on this back in the middle of September here on the blog. Thanks to Wayne's Books I was doing more of  EPT rpg  back reference. But let's bring this back to the Starship Warden again.

Several alien races may have snuck aboard the Warden including 'the enemies of mankind' from the Human Space Empires universe using the planar warp gates. This stops because of the disappearance of the planet Tekumel. What happens aboard the Warden then?! A number of alien races are stuck and over the eons forget their origins as aliens completely. There may actually be the Slann & the enemies of mankind on different decks or complete unaware of their origins. Now I'm looking at this using Troll Lords Starship Warden which works very well for this. 

An encounter with some throw back Slann is definitely a high end encounter especially aboard the Warden! This style of encounter would possibly be a sacrifice raid & or a slavery run. And this is a very common style of encounter for mutant PC's. Now an advanced adventure option might be Goodman Games 'The Captain's Table'. 

This is especially true of those players who have read every Metamorphosis  Alpha rpg article or 'The Captain's Table' adventure. All that's needed is a swamp like encounter area add in Aztec inspired temples. The if PC's run afoul of these foggy  bastards then they may be in for more of a nightmare inspired by the other demon goes lurking beyond the threshold. And these froggy cultists might be responsible for the Frogmouth in Gary Gygax's S3 'The Expedition to the Barrier Peaks' module. 

Here's where it might get interesting with the PC's having to crash the Warden Ecology & Science vessel away from the main Starship Warden. Think of S3 as a reverse dungeon with the PC's having to go aboard & take on the froggies in an all out bid to take down impeding crash! The Warden Ecology & Science vessel then crashes into your favorite classic AD&D game campaign setting. 

 Now let's imagine that there are several alien species aboard the Warden including the 'enemies of man' & that before the hyperspacial planar gates collapse these alien races came aboard the Warden.  Things get very interesting from here.