Cha'alt Dream Crystals & Bad Times In the Wretched Spaceverse - Session Report Three

 So this afternoon has been a fun time dealing with irrate phone company, the USP, & the facts of an increasingly complex Science Fantasy campaign landscape. It's enough to make someone long for the pirate's life specifically the space pirate's life! So there's one group of my players who love to play the 'bad guys' & the last time we got together was about six weeks ago. They were playing smugglers & intergalatic cut throats from the Wretched Spaceverse. They had ripped off a cargo of Cha'alt dream crystals. 

The fact is what the group has is in point of fact the crystalized fetus of a Great Old One so the clock is ticking. And it's ticking fast for our party of idiots erm adventurers. The fetus is being to influence the party's thoughts as they bought weapons & ammo on one world & brought those over to another world. They gave said weapons to both sides and proceeded to tape the entire war & solid it as a 'pay per view' to within the Federation's bounties for a couple of million credits. I keep calling for rolls for slight and temporary losses of intelligence, wisdom, etc. as the clock keeps ticking. 

What the party is not aware of is the number of bounty hunters on their tales. And why?! Because the PC's "stole" this crystal fetus from the cult of demon clowns who proceeded to burn the cash the PC's gave them. 

The party was going to hose the clowns but their shaman told em not to. These weren't really clowns folks & are somethings best left alone. The party found a bag of drugs the clowns left behind & proceeded to get high until the next morning. They found themselves tied to the hood of a clown car waiting for a demon worm to take out the whole party. With a knife, a razor blade, and some luck the idi erm party managed to get away just before the demon worm took the car. They found their equipment stacked up for Cha'alt sirens to take their place. 

The PCs rogue Milly the Murauder lost his life after having half of his face eaten by one of the sirens. The rest of the party ran to the shuttle & managed to make it back to their ship the Dolly Parton! They blasted off into deep orbit & hit hyperspace. 
Then it was a close call at the space diner with a skip tracer and his band of literal law hounds! There wasn't any blaster fire as the party eluded the hounds. They made it back to their ship as they were had fuel and food! One of the hounds made it aboard their ship after shaking a psionic blast by their mind wizad Rufus. 

The fetus inside the crystal absorbed the hound in one quick flash of eldritch green light! And charmed the mind wizard easily. We ended with the party coming to investigate the flashes  commotion in the ship's hold 

The players are firmly convinced that their PC's are going become full cultists going forward!? I'm not sure their going to live that long. 

The throbbing green crystal keeps giving of alien radiations & the party things it might be a good idea to hold on too it instead of selling it!? 

Wretched Space Empires -Space Gamer issue#71(1984), Empire of the Petal Throne, & The Wretched Space rpg

  So let's pick it up where we left off the otherday with a bit more Wretched Space & Empire of the Petal Throne. Back in the day we were lucky to even find some EPT throne information. And that's where Space Gamer issue#71 comes into play. They had a nice little introduction to EPT, an interview with Professor Barker, and an overview for the  Swords & Glory rpg. And this was when Game Science was at it's height of power in the hobby. 

So why is Space Gamer issue#71 important?! Because it reveals three facts the enemies of mankind for the Human Space Empire all converged on Tekumel. Why?! Sure the Human Space Empire were terraforming the planet & displacing the native Ssu and others. 
What if the Vancian system of magick is actually breaking the universe?! We know that ritual magick doesn't cause issues. But in Empire of the Petal Throne the artifacts, devices, & eyes are all take on very dangerous aspects of the planes. What if the Human Space Empire has been dipping it's toes into areas it shouldn't have?! And the aliens are trying to stop this segment of mankind from 'breaking ' the multiverse?!  In the Wretchedverse we know that things lurk outside of time & space of our normal space time continuum. 

Items, artifacts, & black technologies have been filtering into the Earth Sector now for more then a hundred years. Eyes & other technological innovations have allowed the 'things from  outside' to gain a foot hold. 
And let's take this back to Space Gamer issue#71(1984), the first signs of the cracks in the foundation of reality have started to appear.And from here things are only going to get worse allowing pirates & other space scum to gain some advantages. 

Wretched Space Empires - Dragon (Issue 31 - Nov 1979), Empire of the Petal Throne, & The Wretched Space rpg -Giving The Wretched Space Shaman Some Space Age Sorcery

 So let's pick up from yesterday's Wretched Space Empires blog entry here.  The Human Space Empires have spread throughout the universe possibly except old Earth. Mankind's technologies have made quantum leaps through Synapse & Synapse technological leaps after encountering alien species. These are the main races within Empire of the Petal Throne rpg. And this puts Dragon (Issue 31 - Nov 1979) into the cross hairs. Why because of the 'A New Profession for EPT: The Adventurer By Glenn Rahman - A new profession combining Warrior, Priest, and Magic User for Empire of the Petal Throne. The following is the article intro from The Dragon issue #31; "Those of us who enjoy EPT occasionally chafe at its scheme of society, which restricts player-characters to only three professions. A player may portray either a Warrior, a Priest or a Magic User. This is irrespective of the fact that the typical adventurer of heroic fantasy is not precisely any of these three professions. Michael Moorcock’s Elric combines the attributes of Warrior, Magic User and Priest in a fascinating mixture. Richard Tiemey’s Simon of Gitta is simultaneously a Priest and Warrior. Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane is a Warrior with access to magic. All these heroes differ widely in philosophy, motivation and personality. What they have in common is their personal independence and ability to master many disciplines for their own ends. These mavericks, for want of a better term, we shall call “Adventurers.” The Adventurer lives by his wits and owes allegiance to no professional caste. His objectives are easy riches, reputation and excitement. The Adventurer is multi-talented, but lacks the self-discipline to master any one of the other three player-professions. Drinking deeply of life and experience, he “picks up” things that will be useful to his escapades." 

Adventurers are the backbone of the Human Space Empire & the Old Empire of Humanity. They allow trade between the two interstellar powers because of the fact that in Wretched Space rpg the psi & magical powers are part of the same branches on the same tree. But the fact is that as a friend of mine & fellow DM  pointed out the Shaman & Conjurer don't have the teeth to take on some of the threats that we see in Empire of the Petal Throne.  Myself & James Garrison did a free  OSR supplement called Space Age Sorcery available here. 

Does this material fit the Wretched Space rpg?! Absolutely it does especially if these spells are actually rituals. And these rituals could theoritically be stacked into a conjurer or shaman's staff or wand or ritual tool. Say six spells that could be 'loaded' into a magickal tool. This allows the conjurer or wizard to compete with the horrors from beyond without breaking the Wretchedverse asthetic. 

And the adventurer from The  Dragon magazine  not fitting the Wretched asthetic here's a bit on the guile of such an adventurer; "The successful character is a clever fellow. To an Adventurer, wits on both hit and damage dice. are his most prized possession. Fritz Leiber’s Gray Mouser and Jack 96-100 Devilish. As above, but greater. 20% chance to detect Vance’s Cugel the Clever are past masters in cunning.
If Intelligence represents the conscious intellect and logical process, Guile is the subconscious, the “survival instinct.” The two are only tenuously connected. An intelligent scholar might be helpless when faced with survival in the woods. On the other hand, the fox is unintelligent, but his slyness is proverbial. Sometimes Intelligence and Guile achieve the same ends, but differently. A smart warrior learns how to fight well; one who is instinctively cunning gets in the effective, “dirty” blows without even thinking. A man with Guile is a slippery fellow, a natural confidence man. One without it is the type who lets out secrets unknowingly, one who buys too many bogus magic weapons and faulty Eyes. He will be hard put to prosper in the rat race of Jakalla." 

So we combined the Adventurer class from Dragon (Issue 31 - Nov 1979) with the one from Wretched Space to get the adventurer that we're looking for.