Episode: That’s not a Moon, it’s a…
Captain’s Log: “Stardate (Insert date) the (Your Ship) is en route to Meleon, fourth planet of the Procyeon Beta III system (Or whatever system suits your campaign). The Meleon are probationary members of the Federation and our presence has been requested by the Consulate there in response to some unusual seismic activity on Melon’s moon. Supplementally the Consulate has requested our assistance with a local Medical matter. This visit should also allow for our crew to rotate down for some shore leave giving our younger crew members a chance to experience a new civilization and culture firsthand.”
Act I: A Fair and Pleasant Planet
Scene 1: Senior staff meeting to discuss the upcoming mission. Break PCs into Plat A, Plot B and Plot C teams, excellent place to use your established shared NPCs to fill out teams and let players enjoy all the things. If this is your first adventure/session, then this is a good time to generate some of these shared NPCs with your players.
Plot A: Shipboard – Survey the Moon and analyze anomalies. (Possible Crew: Operations Manager, Helm Officer, Chief Science Officer, Chief of Engineering – supplemental some Engineering, Medical and Security lower decks personnel.
Plot B: Consulate Team – Diplomatic Mission and Focus on Medical Issue (Counselor priority but M.D. okay). (Possible Crew: Captain, XO, CMO, Counselor, Chief of Security, lower decks Yeoman (command branch), Social Sciences and security personnel.)
Plot C: Shore Leave Party – Explore the Local Flavor and Culture (Possible Crew: Senior officers not involved above, really junior Command officer, senior Enlisted personnel, at least one security personnel, any other lower decks types who need some screen time. If the XO is not with Plot B, then Plot C would be a good place for them if a PC.)
Scene 2A: Commence study of the moon; this involves establishing an orbital pattern that allows deep sensor scanning over the entire surface which will take several hours. This provides activity of a Helmsman, Command coordination for whomever was left with the Conn, and sensor rolling for a Science type
Challenges: Unstable Gravimetric issues destabilizing orbital patterns requiring adjustment of course; Meleon vessel is destabilizing and requires a rescue (tractor beam is the easiest); the outer layer of the moon is standard lunite composition but there is a layer beneath that accumulation that is resistive to the sensors. Engineering/Science to come up with a sensor adjustment to compensate, sensors and power systems will need realigning to produce expected result.
Scene 2B: Shuttle down to the Consulate, Shuttle required because this is a diplomatic function, and the locals want a small welcome ceremony at the landing port before they group moves on to the Consulate. This requires a few moments of bumpy ride as they cross through an offshore storm in their approach glide plain. Meleon officials welcome the Starship and the Bridge Crew, give out some minor gifts as tokens of their esteem, one gift is a purple furred primate – it takes a liking to the crewmember most likely to NOT want anything to do with it and will be clingy as often as possible henceforth. The most senior officer on this team is expected (without warning) to make a small speech to the gathered media and politicos about Meleon and the Federation. When they get clear they are transported by ground vehicle to the consulate complex. En route It is explained that several of their personnel, all who are psionically sensitive, have been having difficulty for several weeks with severely disturbing dreams that have left them increasingly unrested and reticent to try to sleep at all. Two days ago, an Andorian member of their team slipped into psychosis and injured three others before he was brought down, and he is being kept in a medical coma currently.
Challenges: Shuttle piloting check to fly from ship to surface, complicated by the storm. Insight based test to read the crowd and their hosts. Roleplaying the speech to give a bonus to the actual test to present it. Finding a way to fend off the purple primate without offending their hosts OR to smooth out relations with same primate. Science or Medical tests to get a preliminary start on the situation with the Consulate staff.
Scene 2C: Beaming down to the civil transporter center. Uniforms are required for this shore leave, but as they off duty, only officers may go armed and even then, only with discrete phaser ones. The Meleons have not fully converted over to the Federation Credit, obviously so there is a currency exchange/disbursement at the Transporter station. Enlisted personnel can draw $100 x Years in Starfleet in the local currency, officers can draw $1000 x Years in Starfleet. A fifteen-year enlisted Chief is going to get $500 more than an Ensign in his first year. This should allow crew to buy local food, drink, rugs etc. There is a large open-air market beyond the transporter center, with places to eat and drink and the like. After the shore leave team has had some time to shop and partake of the local flavors, they witness an incident where a small group of Meleons in green hooded robes began proclaiming that the time of their (the crowd not the crew’s) redemption is at hand, and now is the time to reject their sins and make their souls ready. If the Starfleet crew move closer, the robed ones proclaim that they are witnesses, called to the planet to bear testimony to the Meleon’s redemption after they are gone. Before the crew can learn much more of this, civil guards arrive and break up the scene, taking the robed ones into custody for an unlawful civic disruption. One robed one grabs the arm of the youngest member of this team (by appearance if not by fact) inviting them to come learn more of their roles as Witnesses and giving directions before the speaker it taken away by the civic guards.
Challenges: Haggling/Bartering at a merchant stall; tricorder scanning food or drink before trying it; the problems of NOT scanning food or drink before trying it lest it clash with one’s physiology; exposure to a public relief facility after trying local food or drink that doesn’t agree with one; determining if this police intercession is legal under Federation Law as well as local law (The Meleon are probationary members of the Federation after all); following the directions given. If the PCs are disinclined to go learn more, have any NPCs along encourage doing so for reasonable reasons – security types want to assess if this is a threat or dangerous cult, Social Science officers or Vulcan’s would like to learn more (IDIC), etc.
Act II: In Legend Does Portend
Scene 3/A: With the modifications now in place the ship begins its more penetrating scans of the planet. Perhaps in relation to this or a complete coincidence another lunar quake hits. This one if stronger than the previous ones, but on track with the incremental progress since the first incident more than a Terran month ago. In addition to the lunar quake another gravimetric disruption occurs, much sharper than the previous one. The ship must stabilize their own position then race around the moon to aid the research base on the surface.
Challenges: Sensor rolls to begin the deeper scan, this layer reveals inexplicable bio-silicates in the layer beneath the more expected stellar dust and stone of the upper layers, and some sort of radiological interference with the scan getting deeper that will require further modifications to the sensors and perhaps the forward deflector being brought into the scanning. Daring based Conn rolls to recover the orbit of the ship in response to the gravimetric disruption. Engineering based analysis of the damage to the Moon facility; and then Reason based Command checks to manage the rescue operations which require starship personnel to beam down through the transporter disruption caused by the gravimetric disruption or shuttle landing to perform emergency damage control; while simultaneously beaming up the crew of facility providing medical triage. Possibly stabilizing the fusion power plant of the base to prevent critical overload. To be clear there is not time/availability to beam up any of the crew down on the planet in the other two plot lines, they will have to inform them of things after they can catch a breath.
Scene 3/B: The team can consult directly with the coherent members of the afflicted personnel; medical team members can assess their physical conditions and those of the insensate afflicted personnel. Vulcan, Betazoid, or other Psionic members of this team might gain further insight by directly seeing into the memories of these dreams. Meanwhile other members may review the security footage of the Andorian’s attacks. Speaking with the Consul of the Consulate may reveal the “dream issue” started around the same time as the moon situation, but no connection between them was considered by the Consulate staff nor investigated. Some of those affected created artistic renderings of images from their dreams that were disturbing them, these can be remotely compared to the Ship’s library to gain bonuses to analyze even while the ship is responding to the crisis around and on the moon.
Challenges: Medical tests including psychology, neurology and the like which if successful can reveal the psionic portions of the brain have been “overworked” and the bodies have not been getting proper REM rest leading to an overall deterioration of the body and mind. Determining the source of this psionic stress and blocking it is essential, or they will need to be evacuated from the Consulate to recover at a Starbase. Records checks of the Andorian indicate he has a strong Psionic potential quotient, but not high enough to suggest development or training within the Federation’s guidelines for such. It would be suggested though that something about Andorian physiology made him more sensitive to the psionic stressor affecting them all, and his lack of training made him unable to cope with the input which lead to a psychotic break. In his current state he is a danger to himself and others and he may need long term recuperative care at a psychiatric facility. The results of researching the images created by those effected lead to archaeological findings on three different “tomb” worlds in this quadrant but in very disparate sectors. Common factors of these three worlds aside from recovering similar remains that match the graphics created by the Consulate Staff are: In all three cases the world, an otherwise Class M planet, is circled by a ring of planetary debris suggested the destruction of a moon or perhaps rogue planetoid or similar body, like ring of Saturn; ruins of a nearly warp or just warp capable civilization are present on the world but evidence as to why or how the population moved on or was destroyed remains; analysis of biological remains recovered lead to the conclusion that these worlds were likely products of Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development or seeding by a species such as the Preservers.
Scene 3/C: The Shore Leave party navigates its way through the old city away from the more modernized area where they arrived. Streets are narrower here, buildings clustered closer together, eventually the path is more like narrow alleys where vehicles could not pass. Stairs down under a foot bridge lead to a stolid looking door. Scanning ahead reveals local lifeforms inside but not power sources that would be considered modern, energy and chemical scans suggested chemical combustion lighting. Knocking will gain them immediate friendly entrance by more of the Hooded locals. They are again declared witnesses, some combination of a prophesied or ordained role in the belief system of this group. The group will insist they have existed for centuries, since the beginning of their civilization and that they have worked in the background to prepare their people for this coming day of redemption and that it was known that others might come to bear witness from the start. The redeemer they claim is with them, but not yet arrived; but it can see them all and has born witness to their acts in preparation for this great day. They reveal to the witness “documents” and artifacts as proof to their assertions.
Challenges: Engineering (civil engineering) or Science (Anthropology) or (Architecture) to pick up on the notion that the design of the civic infrastructure denotates a rather rapid ascent to the current state of technology – too much remains of pre-vehicular architecture let alone space faring technology for the rise to the current state to have been a slow crawl up where renovation would occur in a relatively blanket fashion around the planet. While we are still talking many centuries Rome in the 21st century still has elements from BCE butmost of the city reflects being at least part of the 20th century in plumbing and power structures and things rebuilt due to wars and fires and etc. This may suggest there was outside pre-warp interference or that this world had a technological dark age and climb back to a higher state, like a colony that stopped getting support and the like. Scanning and carbon (or Chroniton or what have you) dating the documents which are actually impressed “concrete” tablets dating back around 4 to 5 thousand Terran years; Science (Anthropology) or Science (Sociology) or Science (Linguistics) would also pick up the language in alphabet and vernacular shows almost no deviance from current norms as used by the species, but the writing is the same age as the tablet in general. Insight and Reason tests of the conversation and the materials suggest a Rapture-like Doomsday religion where the population is encouraged to build and thrive their populations until the day of Redeeming, when all shall be redeemed for the investment by the creator(s) in them and the focus for their success is parsed in relation to their state of thriving. To the most faithful, such as the hooded ones, there is the potential promise to be the seeds to start this cycle anew. The being that will Redeem them is nearby, perhaps above, watching.
The Turn:
The Storm the shuttle flew down through in the opening act reaches the city. The Municipal shield activates to keep the devastating wind and debris from damaging the city or the population. This does make immediate departure with the shuttle of the Consulate team or the other shuttles at the consulate impossible without some player activity. The Ionic elements in the storm also provide severe difficulty for transporter use, only pad to pad transport is possible and even then, at an extremely difficult level. This storm and the shield also combine to end any casual use of communicators, PADDs or tricorders back up to the main ship. The Main ship can break through the interference to communications if they choose to devote power and time to adjusting the comms system. This may be necessary if they wish to coordinate with the planetary government to get the shield frequency so they can modulate transporters to attempt any beaming; though this does not deal with the difficulties caused by the storm.
Scene 4/A: The ship sensors indicate that the storm has moved inland over the city, and Mission Operations quickly reveals that they have lost direct contact with their away team and their shore leave parties. Still coming off their rescue operations, this may seem like a back-burner issue as they still have their survey to complete; but before that becomes a real factor another gravimetric event occurs. Their sensors note that this is in time with another massive, very catastrophic, seismic event as well as a release of radiant and thermal radiation from massive cracks erupting across the surface of the moon. Main sensors, having been adjusted for the scanning, are blinded by the effect almost immediately. Feedback from the navigational deflector shields and maneuvering sensors suggest that the moon is likely breaking apart, putting the blinded vessel in the middle of a sudden close cluster asteroid field. A lateral collision occurs causing a hull breach and the need to send damage control teams while the ship tries to regain its visual sensors.
Challenges: Any complications still ongoing from previous scene (medical treatment, dealing with civilians from moon facility; if shuttles used on moon rescue and flown by Players and not recovered, deal with the gravimetric disruption while trying to recover to ship; Helm adjusting for yet another massive gravimetric disruption, some systems knocked offline by gravimetric impact and needing to be recovered; trying to re-establish communications with crew and/or planetary government; trying to repair and restore “friend” sensors; helm flying blind through the debris cloud; managing power between all these tasks and the necessary sealing of the hull with shields; managing Damage Control teams sent to the numerous situations arising during all of this.
Scene 4/B: Personal comms and the Public Address system in the Consulate chime the players or can be heard announcing that a major tropical storm event has commenced. The announcement informs them that the meteorological defense system has been brought online and may interfere with travel or communications outside the municipality. Planetary Safety Bureau has grounded all flight and surface-based travel in the region until the storm has passed or moved on. The crew can easily determine that they have been severed from contact with their Mission Ops support aboard their vessel, and any activities tying into the ship’s facilities are cut off. (Losing the bonus, not prevented from trying without this.) All the effected psionic Consulate personnel begin, each in their own style, losing control, dissolving into inconsolable weeping, a fugue state or other incapacitation as is appropriate for their powers and racial proclivities. Psionic members of the away team are struck by an incoherent wave of psionic energy as well as projecting outburst from the Consulate psionics. The Andorian comes awake despite the medical precautions and the crew must secure him safely before others are hurt. The Kohlinar trait does provide benefit against the psionic wave. If the crew has kept the Consul in the loop about the research they did regarding the symbols, the Consul initiates a Consulate shutdown and an evacuation to the Starfleet vessel. While the Consulate has enough shuttles on hand to evacuate personnel and records if the Starfleet members share their shuttle and agree to take up the piloting duties, they will need the crew to help them acquire the shield frequency of the defense field over the city so they can slip through it without triggering a panic among the locals
.
Challenges: Dealing with the Psionic burst and its effects; subduing the Andorian; organizing the evacuation and pilot assignments; helping shut down the consulate and moving secure materials; acquiring the shield resonance through diplomacy or more covert method such as using the shuttle’s sensors to determine the frequency; managing panic among the consulate personnel, transporting all the patients safely, navigating through the city back to the location of their shuttle or remotely accessing it and piloting it to their consulate; convincing the Consul to evacuate – while the Consul feels obligated to secure the safety of his/her subordinates they also feel they must not abandon the locals and leaving would send the wrong message about the Federation’s commitment to their cause.
Scene 4/C: Any active utilization of their PADDs or Tricorders to utilize the ship’s resources suddenly lose connection as their communication badges chirp. The announcement informs them that the meteorological defense system has been brought online and may interfere with travel or communications outside the municipality. Planetary Safety Bureau has grounded all flight and surface-based travel in the region until the storm has passed or moved on. Their hosts become quite excitable, religiously fervent calling out for The Redeemer and praising the Redemption and encouraging the Witnesses to go forth and return to their vessel lest they become caught up in the Redemption themselves. As the crew leaves, just outside they are stopped by a female in a hood who pushes a swaddled infant into the most sympathetic looking crew member. “Take her,” the female insists “She has not lived long enough to earn redemption, and the Redeemer can spare one morsel.” If the crew presses her about the choice of the world morsel, the female tries to break away and flee into the twisting alleys. The crew can take the infant with them or return into the building they just left and turn it over there.
Challenges: Successful Insight based rolls may understand or identify the Apocalyptic Ecstasy the hooded celebrants are experiencing, ascertaining they aren’t welcoming the arrival of a benevolent deity as much as a nihilistic ending. Command Control tests may be necessary to get the team moving out, narrator played NPCs may want to stay and get the celebrants to explain more forcing the player-controlled characters to influence them leave. Insight into the female outside’s motive reveal desire to save the baby and resignation for her own fate. Players may have to convince each other whether it is more moral to take the infant with them or turn it over to the celebrants, give them some time to argue this factor if they like. Reason and Command will determine that legally they should turn the infant over to a local government body, but in the meanwhile its legal for them to have custody as they are Starfleet and this is a Federation member planet, if but probationally.
Act III Crescendo at Its End
Scene 5/A: With the sensors back online, the helm is in a much better position to navigate through the massive fragments that used to be the moon. This still requires shield power enhancement, selective phaser fire and even the occasional discharge of torpedoes in addition to tractor beam pushing and the occasional alarms regarding the SIF (structural integrity field) and inertial dampeners struggling to offset all that is happening. The officer with the Conn will have to be selective about tasks require priority of attention, personnel power and literal power. Moment to moment decisions require Daring, but planning even a few minutes into the future requires by Reason and Control. In this mix the crewmember at the Mission Operations station must try to re-establish contact with their personnel down on the planet, who may need to be evacuated before lunar fragments rain down on them.
Challenges: A full boat of potential snippet montages of the crew desperately trying to keep their ship, and then by extension the planet intact. Recommend giving each Player controlled character a dynamic task to complete while also having another task they are trying to address over the length of scene. Example the Helm operator may take evasive action from an immediate hazard while also trying to plot a course to get the ship clear of the expanding the debris field that also keeps them in position to redirect or destroy chunks tumbling toward the planet below. This can be aided by the Sensor operator identifying threat hazards to the planet and ship while trying to calculate a course through the chaos of the debris field. The officer in charge of the Bridge meanwhile would be throwing assistance toward one project or the other, this time helping the Tactical officer fire, the next helping the communications officer or Mission Control officer punch a signal through the storm and shield. Put pressure on the players, if they take to long to decide what to do describe them freezing up at their station and move on to another.
Scene 5/B: Depending on what successes they had in the previous scene, the Consulate team should be in position to evacuate in their shuttles from the city. Either by the ship breaking through successfully to communicate with them or by notification from the planetary government, they are informed that the moon has shattered and fragmented and a potentially cataclysmic meteor shower is incoming. The weapons on the shuttles can help defend the planet from the bombardment so they must launch, intercept fragments and either push them back or tug them away with their tractor beams or use their phaser and micro-torpedoes to obliterate them.
Challenges: This scene then is a fast-paced action montage jumping from shuttle to shuttle making tests to intercept, fire or tractor beam the rocks away from the planet below. Players can succeed at cost in these engagements, damaging their shuttles or breaking up a big rock into smaller rocks where some don’t burn up in atmosphere and impact with detonation, or a tossed rock flies into the course of another player’s ship giving them threat and a Daring / Conn test.
Scene 5/C: The crew is still in the Old City when alarms begin to sound, like an air raid siren. The crew can ascertain why the alarm is sounding and discover a meteor storm is coming toward the planet and people are direct to emergency shelters. This drives panicked citizens from their homes and out into the narrow lanes and streets making it difficult for the crew to make progress back to the transporter center and even to stay together. Some citizens try to drag them toward shelters or demand they help with saving them by calling their ship to beam them out. At this time if the ship has re-established a communications link, they can apprise the crew of the situation and that they missed the chance to evacuate by shuttle. They are directed to the transportation hub which is their best chance to get beamed off the planet. It is imperative they hurry, and that they increased the transporter gain on their end before the beaming can be attempted.
Challenges: The crew will need to make fitness and security tests to push through the crowd and stay together; getting civilians to lay off them would be tests of Presence and command; they may consider borrowing a ground vehicle which would be a Control and Engineering test in the riotous streets. Arriving at the Transporter station they must convince the staff to let them in, or bypass the locks and let themselves in, taking control of the center as they enhance the transport buffer gain on their end and let the ship know they are standing by.
The Pinch:
The radiant and visually impenetrable ball of energy that remained as determined gravitational mass where the moon used to be pops like a soap bubble, sending out a radial wake of lambent energy and like being drawn into the creature that remains there. With the silicate “shell” materials burning and dissolving like flash paper when exposed the energy, the remaining and much less dense lunar crust and dust is caught to some degree by the gravity the being and that of the planet. Unfolding then is a multilimbed creature with fin like wings extending with delicate grace from its back and unfurling to capture starlight and gases. The luminescent being, decidedly larger than Starbase One, has a long slender body, reminiscent of the Asian Dragons of Terran mythology, with six limbs bilateral in symmetry placed along its sinuous fame. The ruff around its neck and head is a collection of tendrils suggestive of a jellyfish, energy starts at the body and pulses rhythmically to the tips which are darker in shade than the body. The head is more like that of a cetacean than a reptile, a row of eyes on either side of the snout arrayed in three lines smallest to largest, smallest nearest a front bilateral alignment and the largest highest up the head and widest spread apart. In is, to most aesthetics, a creature of ephemeral beauty.
Then it opens wide its mouth that would dwarf a Romulan Warbird and fires a beam of energy down toward the planet. The beam scours along one continent leaving visible mark on the surface despite the roiling atmospheric reaction, and then begins another sweep in a precise line as if it were mowing the lawn.
(continued in response)
Happy Halloween!