Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Stars Without Number & Cities Without Number - Mind Your Elder Things! Session Report II

 We picked up with our party of adventurers picking up another job from the Elder Things. The job was taking non terrestrial biological material to another Elder Thing colony world. This job picks right up from where in the last session ended on September 12th. 

The Elder Things communicated through  the Circeans  psychic witches are under contract to the Elder Things. The players are nervous  because of the bio logical material taking out their space hauler because of time constraints. 
However, the party dived through the hyperspace corridor in earnest!  The party had a  Circeans psychic witch on board with them. and in the middle of the job they encountered a number of sealed hyperspace fighters. These fighters weren't easily identified and with a number of rolls it was revealed to be Mi Go fighters which had been surgically modified into space craft. These were driven by alien brains! These were full on space pirates! 

 The party wasn't taking any guff & decided too open up with the weapons systems they'd traded with the aliens from The Cube. The party opened up on two of the fighters and blew them out of the sky. The adventurers dropped plasma bombs to deal with the other fighters and disrupt their navigation. We ended up at the coordinates that were provided by the Elder Things and this is when a dimensional portal opened up. The space hauler entered into a dimensional portal to a planet in a triple star system located "between Hydra and Argo Navis", which is populated by Elder Things. We entered the star system and came face to face with a planetary sized Shoggoth guarding the system.  We ended here with sanity rolls. 

Old One by Tom Ardans.

Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Stars Without Number & Cities Without Number - Mind Your Elder Things! Session Report

The party got it's trade in with a really alien race of former humans but the party of adventurers have been placed deep into hyperspace gateway. The space gateway corridors weren't created by humanity. These deep gateways were remains of the Elder Thing's passing through the universe.  This picks right up after the encounter with the Cube! 

These were deep waters the adventurers found themselves in. They found themselves hauling a cargo of alien fruit too a strange facility that was miles long. Our party began trading with the Circeans psychic witch trading partners who stood in for the Elder Things .  The priests of the Elder Things were speaking through the witches & we dropped off our cargo. We got paid and left just as the Shaggoth workers were appearing and we wanted none of that. More to come as we picked up another job from the Elder Things 

The Cube By Joseph Mohr & Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Stars Without Number & Cities Without Number Session Report Part 5 - Jericho Station

 We picked up our normal Trey Causey's Strange Stars/ Stars Without Numbers campaign. right from last session here.  Our party ended up deep within the Cube and our time aboard was coming to and end because the Cube was leaving the local planetary system. 

Our party communicated with the A.I. & it seemed to get very difficult very quickly when we wanted to leave. 
Then the security bots got very handy with us. This was our singal to engage in communication with our cybersneaks who disengaged the locks on the trading room which suddenly became our prison! 
Our party fought our way back to our ship wih a few cleverly disguised grenades and side arms. 
Things were going from bad to worse as we came across more alien remains of past alien traders and travellers. 
We made it to our ship and had the cybersneaks open the Cube star ship bay doors. With a few successful rolls and some role playing we got the doors open and our ship off of the Cube. We got some scrapping laser fire from the Cube. 
We were in the middle of unexplored space as the Cube took off at high speed outta of the solar system. We were at the edge of unihabited space. This morning I picked Joseph Mohr's Jericho Station & this afternoon it got an excercise as the station is one of the last places along one of the last hyperspace gates in that sector. We entered cryo sleep for two years and made our way to the nearest hyperspace gateway to get back Jericho station. Several rolls and two short jumps we entered cryosleep 

Everything came off without a hitch and we made it to the gate & ran straight into a party of Star Folk Nomadic hedonists in living ships.
They were curious about our experience with the Cube. We warned them from pursuing the Cube. And engaged in three days of trade and refueling with thier  living ship. 

Then we made Jericho station that lawless den of inquity that we were very glad to see. Our spacehauler is in bad shape but we've got  tons of intel to trade about the Cube and it's A.I. cybernetic organism inhabitants! 
So we're trading the info for repair work. Our party ran into the 3 Moravecs Robo-sophont poet missionaries. They were looking for Jas 7 who went missing over three centuries ago. Jas 7's fragmented A. I. personality was found aboard the Cube. We gave the personlity remains to them and started to get medical attention for our party. We'd experienced genetic degeneration from radiation aboard the Cube. 

The Cube By Joseph Mohr & Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Stars Without Number & Cities Without Number Session Report Part 4

 The party aboard the ' The Cube'  by Joseph Mohr has been trying to cope with the alien nature of the structure. The whole cube is filled with lots and lots aliens and strange automatons. This session picks up right from here on the blog.  The party also has found the wreckage from past merchant party expeditions aboard the cube! 
 

The party has spoken with the cube's A.I. in cyberspace and it's been very elusive about the fate of other merchants who have contacted the cube in the past. 

The massive interior of the cube is oppresive and alien with strange coloured lights that are the alien's language.We used our android A.I. to communicate with the aliens. The area that we are in is wall to wall Jack Kirby style machinery. We traded technologies with the cube's bots and odd alien cybernetic biological  organisms. We're not sure if these are the actual aliens!? 
The deeper we get into the cube the more biological cybernetic giant insect like aliens we run into. They seem too fit niche roles aboard the cube. There's thick haze alien atmosphere aboard the cube. We've only got a limited time until the cube exits the system we're in. Once we trade and get our information from the cube then we've got to leave. Or we're going to be stuck aboard as it hits hyperspace for it's next stop. 

We had to take trips back to the trade room to refill our heavy space suit's air supply. The cube's interior atmosphere is highly poisonous & we found several areas where the atmosphere was acidic or immical to our PC's. 

We copied every shred of alien data we could get our hands on from other alien traders. And we found the remains of an alien trade ship that the cube's inhabitants had stripped and used for repairs in this area. 

We took holographic scans of the ship and made a copy of it's insane A.I.. The ship was stuck there about three hundred years. We're keeping an eye on our own space rig. 

Then the security bots were watching us and this made us nervous and in sense like we were trespassing around this ship. But we got deely into the craft. 

The Cube By Joseph Mohr & Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Stars Without Number & Cities Without Number Session Report Part III

 The party has been let aboard the Cube but the cube is huge. To qoute ' The Cube by Joseph Mohr ; " The cube is huge. It is the size of a dreadnaught. It dwarfs the size of smaller vessels like scout ships or merchant traders." Last session the player's ship was almost blown outta of the sky. We're using a combination of Stars Without Numbers and Trey Causey's Strange Stars . This session picks rights up from where the last session left off.  The cube stopped for a meeting with the PC's but it warned them it wasn't stopping for long. 

The Cube has been making it's way through the Nicodimus sector and has been doing so for at least three hundred years. And the cube had blown two United Space Crusiers from space. This is after the wreckage our party had found. The PC's communicated with the cube using coloured lights after the party's A.I. analyazed the alien's language. 
Now the party's cybersneaks have been meeting with the cube's xenophobic A.I. in cyberspace. The A.I. let the party onto the cube but has been evasive as to what the status is on the cube's inhabitants. The PC's climbed into heavy space suits and brought thier own A.I.'s android body with them. The interior of the cube was completely alien as the outside is! There was a sense of forboding aboard the alien craft. 

The cube's interior was a mass of Jack Kirby style machinary with a foggy pea soup atmosphere. There was a psionic feeling of foreboding. The party came across several weird alien engineering bots going around doing repair work. 
The lights flickered and came back on twice in strange hues that hurt the human's eyes. 
There was old  evidence of energy fire and  carbon scoring exchanges along  the walls were the PC's were within the landing bay. The cube is massive and is highly intimidating. The party came across a huge security bot and it escorted the party into a secure trade room. 
There was a psionic illusionary alien that our party's psionic saw. It faded fast as we made our way to the alien's trade room where an atmosphere had been prepared for our party. We came across a holographic display of another alien trader who was the last visitor to the cube. This alien trader was of the same type that we had seen within the Stars Without Number rpg adventure Hard Light! 

The cube has been travelling a very,very, long time. What other mysteries are aboard the cube!? 

The Cube By Joseph Mohr & Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Stars Without Number & Cities Without Number Session Report Part II

The player's PC's were dealing with the Nicodemous Corridor & were looking for opportunities for thier crew. Then they found that there were lots of emergency calls from the outer edges of the Corridor. This was the Cube making it's enterance into the sector. Spacecraft, stations, etc. were being destroyed after encountering the Cube. 

 

The PC's were dealing with the Nicodemous Corridor and the PC's cybersneaks got a work out tonight. The party was  trying to take out the defenses, weapon systems, shields, and locks that The Cube by Joseph Mohr . This adventure was originally made for the Cepheus Engine Rpg. However Cepheus Engine is easy to adapt to Stars Without Number because these rpg's share thier skill systems. This session report picks right up from the last session  on the blog. 

The PC's found the remains of two United Space Cruisers wrecks that had encountered the Cube hundreds of years before. The PC's cybersneaks were trying to calm down the Cube's xenophobic A.I. but the party had to deal with the fact that the Cube was trying to blow them outta of the sky! 

The rest of the party was pressing thier employer/patron as to what he knows about the Cube. He has been evasive and cagey about his knowledge.After about 2 hours of play and dodging attacks. The PC's were able parley with the Cube's A.I. & get it to stand down. 

  The Cube questioned the PC's as to whom they had trade with. What thier relationships were with several alien races that the PC's had crossed paths with in the past. The Cube also copied thier data banks and wanted to know what the party's intentions are. They wanted to know if the party had been gene sculpted and how long they've been trading. The A.I. also analyzed thier course charts and full on trading contracts. The party made notes of various factions that have appeared in Trey Causey's Strange Stars but that haven't appeared in our game. There's also the fact that the Cube wanted to know if the party has had any interactions with alien bioroids. The players were taking notes after notes as to many factions and powers that the Cube named off. All of this came about in virtual space. We ended tonight with the Cube's A.I. considering on letting the party aboard or blowing them outta of space. 

The Cube By Joseph Mohr & Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Stars Without Number & Cities Without Number Session Report

 The Nicodemous Corridor was a campaign that I had written ages ago as a deep alien trade zone adventure setting.This came about as a result of our playing around with Trey Causey's Strange Stars campaign dealing directly with thier alien trade partners. So this picks up with our commentary from the other day on SWN M1 Hardlight on the blog.  And this came about as a result of our player's dealing with Circus in Strange Stars. 

Of course there's there's a wrinkle to the Nicodemus Corridor and that's the cube! The Cube by Joseph Mohr is a brand new Cepheus Engine adventure; " Strange sights and occurrences in space are often the norm in the Sonora sector. Both aliens and humans live together in close proximity. Hostilities do arise from time to time. But for the most part these groups manage to live together in relative peace and prosperity."

The nearby border sectors, however, are a different matter entirely. Many of these are virtually unexplored by humans. Alien civilizations live in those sectors and many have never been encountered before. Many human scout vessels that venture into those sectors never return home again. It is a hostile and dangerous environment.

Recently the Frontier Scout Service has reported encountering something alien and deadly in a border sector to the Sonora referred to as Sector XZ-205. More than a dozen scout ships have disappeared in that sector recently during attempts to explore."  The player's PC's are approached on Circus to look into what's happening within Sector XZ-205 aka the Necodemus Corridor within our campaign. 

Santino Cohen is representing the powers of the Necodemous Corridor and offering 300,000 credit. Our space hauler has been reequipped and ready to take on something like this. I want to let the PC's do a bit of wheeling & dealing within the corridor. 

The Necodemus Corridor is filled with extremely modified life forms who have formly a human basis. The party has been dealing with the Blesh from whom they've learned about the Corridor. 

The Cube won't be showing up for a bit of time. This makes the appearance of the Cube very disruptive on the party's jobs. The party's cybersneaks and runners have been probing the Corridor's cyberspace which is as alien as the rest of the trade zone. 
There's also the fact that there's information that came off the United Planet's wreckage that the party's cybersneaks about the Corridor. There's some dark things that the player's found.This includes the fact that the  Slavers have deep investiments within certain worlds within  the Necodemous Corridor itself. 

OSR Commentary M1 Stars Without Numbers Rpg Hard Light By Kevin Crawford For The Stars Without Numbers Rpg

 ' Hard Light takes a band of young adventurers to a system blazing with the murderous light of a red giant star. The hard-bitten novium miners of the Brightside mining station maintain the only outpost of civilization in a system filled with lethal light and stellar outlaws on the run. Will the players find the riches of the ancient asteroid sky tombs and their alien makers, or will they fall prey to the seething rebellion that boils beneath Brightside Station's steel skin?'

I dug out the Stars Without Number rpg adventure Hard Light because it's been a very long time. Hard Light is a thirty six page lower tier Science Fiction  adventure that for 1-3 level PC's. This adventure has a bit of everything for encounters with Stars Without Numbers adventurers and spacers. Jordan R has a great review on Drivethrurpg from 01-25- 2017 ; "A very solid "adventure hub", perfect to start a campain, but that can also be easily integrated into an ongoing one (especially if the PCs don't have a spaceship). The 3 "sky tombs" are very different (a pirate base, a relatively lightly guarded sunken tomb, and a big one where two groups fight one another). The layout is simple yet highly functionnal : the backstory and key to a 37-rooms sky tomb fits on 4 pages, plus another one for the map; all NPCs are described on a single page (another one gets you all the combat stats) with their important motivations and ties stated (useful in play to help you recall the more in-depth descriptions given before); lots of plot hooks and complications to throw at players while they are on Brightside station; etc. The background provided, both for the tombs and the station, is just long enough to be useful to a DM : the information provided is meaty enough to help playing the NPCs and improvise when needed, but not so much that you lose yourself in details and minutiae."

Bright Station is a great adventure location for the PC's to get thier feet wet within Hard Light. The alien skytombs are great for PC's who want to do some dungeon crawling within these interstellar relics. There's also the pirates who are lurking around the station. Also there's a rebellion brewing under the surface of the adventure. 

Hard Light is a perfect adventure to drop into Trey Causey's Strange Stars OSR campaign setting. The fact that the Hard Light adventure is an rpg tool kit & easily adaptable to the world of Strange Stars  campaign setting. 

There's literally nothing that can't go into the Strange Stars campaign setting. Bright Station is a great little location for a beginning group of PC's. This station has enough weirdness, encounters, etc. to keep a party busy for years. I'd throw the Bright Station right around a hyperspace gateway. 

Back Track on Trade Part I - Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Session Report

 We're picking right up from two week's ago session here on the blog.  After tracking back on the Old Earth blasters & our map. We began investigating several leads on the whereabouts to the system the blaster had come from. Had any more of these been sold on Circus?! 

We learned about the alien trader who'd traded the blasters on Circus. We tracked him to the space station orbiting the hyperspace gate. 

He or it had gotten the blasters off a party of adventurers for cheap. They'd needed fuel for thier space rig badly and were willing to deal in cash or trade goods.
They were in a bad way after catching a senient disease or micro lifeform. 
That meant that they were probably in the  decontamination wing of Circus. We didn't want to go all of the way back to the giant trade venue. 
So we made our own trading with a flock of Wanderers.  Who had crossed paths with the adventurering party after leaving Circus. They provided us with thier route and we provided them with VR 'entertainment' of thier species. 

And then we'd found what we were looking for a United Planet cruiser's wreckage. We didn't want to go in because of the micro life form that was living on the interior of the wreckage. 

We had a few tricks up our sleeves as the UP cruiser was equipped with a reactor that was good for a few hundred years. Thier computer systems were still active. And with our hackers we were able to down load thier data banks. We wanted the cruiser's departure point. After dropping a beacon warning of the micro life form. We departed the wreckage. There was no way we were going near that thing. We dived deeper into a local station to look at the data. 

We did a bit of horse trading at the station unloading some farm animals and animal stock to the local colonists. We made a small profit on that trade but more importantly we had time to translate the data aquired from the wreckage. We ended the session here. 

Debts of Honor & Cash - Part II - Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Session Report

 We pick right up from part I of the last session with our party having going on a series of  trucking and cargo runs to get our former party member out of debt. During these runs we did a bit of trading along the way at the hyperspace gate waystations. 

Our group came across two blasters that were from Old Earth's United Planets & therefore very rare. The trader had a map to ship laden with treasure from the same empire. We bargained our trade goods and some fire gems for the map. 
We were able to secure the map for a small fee and then transmitted our completing the cargo run for the debter. We knew that our friend would soon be freed of his debt so it was time to take a quick VR trip to the local representive of the Library of Atoz-Theln about map. The representive didn't want payment per say but a favor back on Circus for the library. They varified the interstellar map being legit and from an earlier time period. This might be a rare coup. 
We ended the session here and then for the next five days I came down with whatever form of the 'plague' was going around. I was in bed & got very sick. As quickly as I came down I recovered! 

Debts of Honor & Cash - - Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Session Report

 One of the pleasures of using Stars Without Number is being able to make the game work for you as a DM to keep the players engaged. The player's PC's are on Phase World's Grand Arena level looking for a Thrax warrior who was a part of thier crew many moons ago and they heard rumors that he's in the Grand Arena fighting, again. This session picks right up from where we left off last time. 

In Darthx The Destroyer's off hours he's been an instructor and gladiator coach within a seedy Gladiatorial school. He's been working at the Blood  Moon School from Citybook III Deadly Nightside. 

There's  got to be a reason because Darthx had gotten free from his old gladiatorial patron. So what's drawn him back?! Our party has been speculating on this as they made thier way to the Blood Moon school. The connection is that half of our party's fighter types was trained there and came up the ranks as gladiators. 
Darthx is on a suicide path because he's been going against mecha. We dodged   Cabilan mercenaries who wanted our hides quite literally. 
A few ambushes and traps took out four mercenaries with little fanfare. 

Inside the Blood Moon school we made our way to pay our respects to our old coaches & called over Darthx. We found out his old patron had his Thraxu blade  for ransom! Thrax warriors who have such a blade covet them as honor debts for a sum or money.  We pulled our cash and went to the patron. But such a debt was not easy to get out of. Because now we've got to make a cargo run for this guy to get out of the debt. 

Circus Cargo Haul - Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Session Report

 My player's PC's picked up a cargo haul from Circus to Phase World through the hyperspace gateways. The player's PC's have ditched the cannibal Scavenger Fleet that they engaged with two or so sessions ago. We're still in the middle of our Trey Causey Strange Stars Campaign using Stars Wihtout Number Revised. This session picks right up from last session here on the blog. 

 The player's PC's picked up three tons of ore & were to deliver it to thier contacts on Phase World. The Gnomes seemed very nervous around the PC's & they were not up to chit chat with the PC's. The party checked over the cargo twice with scanners to make sure that there weren't extra devices through thier cybersneaks. The party found an extra radiation signature that didn't belong in the ore haul. A low grade radiaoactive isotope had been secreted among the ore. The party suspected Cabilan mercenaries! 

 They began to look into homing & tracking devices on thier space hauler. They found none. Then they found another bit of the isotope that had been secreted onto thier hauler via a cyberspace scan! They had no doubt that the Cabilan mercenaries were laying in wait along thier route to Phase World. And so they took the long way around via the secondary gateway. 

The  Cabilan mercenaries want the party's space hauler, the party, and the honor of consuming them. The party has been giving them a merry hunt so far. They've got drone ships now scowering the systems along thier route to Phase World because they aim to get paid. 

OSR Commentary - Cannibal Scavenger Fleets & Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Session Report

 

Chris Floss artwork used without permission 

During tonight's Stars Without Numbers game centered around Trey Causey's Strange Stars campaign setting things got really nasty really fast. This blog post picks up from a few days ago on the blog here. 
Alright so the PC's got it in thier heads that they wanted to seek out a Scavenger Fleet & trade ancient parts and pre Scream artifacts with them. 
After some very good cyberspace rolls the player's cybersneaks were able to catch a deep interstellar scavenger fleet not too far from thier location. A jump into the hyperspacial gateway and a trip to an old system netted them an ancient looking scavenger fleet. They communicated and were able to make a parley. What they got wasn't what they were expecting when they encountered Cabilan mercenaries! 

The Cabilan were open to trade as long as they got to choose the crew member to be eaten for supper. They had not had any real non artificial humanoid meat in many months! The PC's were horrified but were able to trade some rare Earth cow meat for three minor artifacts! The Caliban were not completely satisfied and began to shadow the PC's space hauler! The PC's also noticed a sleeper ship among the fleet full of Caliban mercenary soldiers! 
The PC's took the space hauler into silent mode hiding in the shadow of a star until the scavenger fleet had passed or so they hoped! The cybersneaks then hid the star hauler's transponder signal and they quietly made thier way to the jump gate. The party wanted to get anywhere but this system. The problem is that the Caliban mercenaries are now aware of the party. 
The party dove randomly through the hyperspacial gatway & ended up coming face to face with a fleet of Gypsy ships. Randomly put together space junk that had become starships by clans of travelling Magi. 

The Magi were open for business and trade! So the player's began to trade some of the minor cargo finds that they had and found a spare hyperdrive. They trade food stuffs and some extra fuel that they had. The Magi insisted that they stay for a feast. The party's cybersneaks were looking deep into hyperspace to see if the Caliban mercenaries scavenger fleet were following. They had looked over the artifacts for any tracking devices. This is where we ended for now. 

OSR Commentary - Trey Causey's Strange Stars & Stars Without Numbers Scavenger Fleets

 

Chris Floss artwork used without permission 


"The year is 3200 and mankind's empire lies in ashes.

The Jump Gates fell six hundred years ago, severing the links between the myriad worlds of the human diaspora.

Now, the long isolation of the Silence falls away as men and women return to the skies above their scattered worlds.

Will you be among them once more?'

 Our player's PC's want two 'new' space haulers and getting into the deep dynamics of it. I turned back to Strange Stars setting's blog entry, 'From The Sorcerer's Skull Starships In The Strange Stars and this has to do with the hyper drive systems which the players are after; "One example of a lost technology is superluminal drives. The vast majority of modern craft are sublight vessels that utilize the hyperspace network to short-cut interstellar distances. The most advanced current civilizations have a rudimentary understanding of the science behind some FTL travel methods, but they are are currently unable to build them." A space hauler equipped with such a drive would have an incredible advantage. However, there might be far more going on then meets the eye. And hence why the hyperspace networks were used and relied on. 
Hyperspacial drives might be far more terrorfying then then the player's realize and the standard spike drive is the alternative which became industry standard. There are other technologies that the PC's want too salvage;"The salvage of ancient derelicts or wrecks is an important (and lucrative) activity. Gravity generators and inertial suppressors are only two of the important technologies than many civilizations are able to exploit, but not necessarily manufacture themselves. Intact data systems are a particularly spectacular find. There is always hope of engineering schematic files executable in modern nanofactories." This dives into the heart of Stars Without Number's rules and setting. Although the fantastic pretech & overtech are available the secrets to thier manufacture are almost certainly lost unless some space wreck or other ancient starship remains gives up thier secrets. 
Then there's the matter of the salvage fleets that are still flying in hyperspace and using the secrets of spike drives. These might seem like thier unlikely to be found in a Strange Stars setting but think again. 

Mandate Archive: Scavenger Fleets has the details on vampire fleets of stellar ships that swoop in & strip bare a planet that has any pretech technology. This could well be true of the Strange Stars setting or at least ours. Space is big & there's more then enough room for these scavenger ships to vulture themselves off of high tech planets. Thier presence a constant strain on the interstellar community who might simply chalk such invasions and visits up to space pirates. The scavenger fleets are simply another incarnation of this. Making deals with Scavenger Fleets could prove deadly or lucative depending upon the scavenger fleet's reactions. One group of whom I'm planning on using within thier own scavenger fleet is the Caliban.  All of this gets back to the fact that my players are hunting for hyperdrives & it look like it's going to be lots of space craft crawling coming up.