Blue Giant:Scenario Hangover

Synopsis

The PCs receive a twenty year old distress call from a settler ship. The settlers crashed on a planet that looked like a bloodshot eye and were barely able to survive. Two years ago one of the settlers apparently went mad and murdered his family, but his home was three thousand miles away from the main settlement. The settlers do not have the resources to pursue the crime and have done nothing about it. The victims sister asks the PCs to investigate. The killer is still alive and symbiotically linked to a sentient alien weapon. The merging of minds has sent them mad.

Setting

The story is set on the planet of Hangover, an almost empty planet circling Baker Star. There are five principle locations, a damaged settler ship in orbit called the Daisy Green, the homestead of Brett and Babs Ramsay, the main settlement 'Town', the settlement of Sam Thorne and a crashed alien spaceship.

Main Characters

Brett Ramsay is a settler who specialises in engineering and cultivating medicinal plants. He is thirty eight years old. He is married to Babs Ramsay. He's a big placid farmer who is relieved to see the PCs.

Babs Ramsay is a mineralogist and soil botanist. She is thirty nine years old. She will be extremely happy to see the PCs.

Josh Baker, at forty nine he is the oldest surviving settler. He is the de facto headman of the community because no-one can be bothered arguing with the big windbag.

Glenda Baker is his forty two year old wife and the real political power on the planet. She is pragmatic almost to the point of callousness. Without her guidance and matchmaking the colony would not have survived.

Rose Alexander is the bereaved sister of Heather Thorne and Doctor Ferdinand Alexander. She's forty. She has been harassing the townsfolk to do something about the deaths of her family and she sees the arrival of the PCs as a way to get some answers.

Derry Phillips is a fourteen year old boy. He witnessed some of the events two years before and has been working on his own investigation since then.

Sam Thorne is thirty six years old. He's a loner who never got on well with the rest of the townsfolk. Two years ago he killed his wife Heather and his two daughters Daisy and Maisie and later killed Heather's brother Ferdinand.

Heather (Alexander) Thorne was thirty four when she died. She was the loyal and loving wife of Sam Thorne and mother of Maisie and Daisy.

Maisie & Daisy Thorne were eight and four years old respectively when they died.

"Doc" Ferdinand Alexander was thirty five years old when he died. He was the only medical doctor the settlement had.

Billy Wu, Jacob Fletcher, Franklin Griffin, Tiffy Gallagher & Linzi Gallagher are all fine strapping young settlers, they're about eighteen years old and they hang around Town adding to the crowd scenes. Billy is really smart, the other four are just big dumb bags of teen hormones.

Theme

The point of the story is to introduce the players to the role of the characters as not just officers of the law and investigators. The settlers need help surviving and the characters are capable of helping. How the players treat the settlers and the killer should help define the style of the campaign.

Events

Action

There are only three areas of physical action.

Investigating the wreck of the Daisy Green in orbit inside an unstable debris belt of asteroids and ejecta from the planet. Various skill contests involving moving from ship to ship and opening hatches.

Fighting Sam Thorne in a gouge in the terrain made by the crashing alien spacecrafts. Sam will ambush the party as they move towards the craft. There's plenty of cover for all involved and after taking a hit or two, Sam will retreat to the choke point of the starship's entrance.

Confronting Sam within the alien vessel. He has cover, several retreat points and is close enough to start ranting and raving.

Role Play

Brett and Babs Ramsey will be overjoyed to meet the PCs and will drop the story of how they crash landed on the planet and as much exposition as the players can stomach. The first contact should be an overwhelmingly positive experience for the players, who will be made to feel wanted.

Glenda and Josh Baker will greet the PCs with enthusiasm but will want to know what the PCs can do for the colony. They will try to secure information about the surrounding region, some form of fabrication and communication technology and an agreement for the PCs to assist in the return of the Daisy Green. They will prioritise this over any potential murder inquiry.

Rose Alexander will interrupt the PCs negotiation with the Bakers and demand a murder inquiry over the death of her sister and nieces, and the disappearance of her brother. She will with a great deal of barely repressed anger, demand the death of Sam Thorne.

Derry Phillips will add material to the investigation. He is a young teenager and the rangers are the most exciting thing he's ever seen. Any positive reactions from the rangers will cause him to become their biggest fan and he is anxious to share his data about the weather satellite images with them.

Sam Thorne is insane and befuddled. His consciousness has been merged by an alien weapon that is suffering from PTSD. Their combined memories are thoroughly scrambled and Sam believes himself to be under attack from Imperial forces, forces (and a war) that the settlers should know nothing about. Once trapped in the spaceship, he will accuse the PCs of war crimes and confusingly babble and weep at the death of his family. He should jump from one topic and accusation to another, completely reverse his position of things and be fairly easy to talk down if made to analyse his behaviour. Violent actions are close to the surface.

Problems

The Daisy Green is still broadcasting a distress call from a hazardous location, inside an unstable asteroid belt. The rangers job is to board the abandoned ship, turn off the distress beacon and log the event in all relevant star charts and with all local authorities as a 'solved' problem so that no-one else responds.

The Daisy Green is salvageable. It needs a new cockpit screen, some patches on the hull and straightforward repairs to a damaged power generator. It can then be landed.

The Daisy Green was towing two chains of eight re-entry capable cargo pods. The cargo pods contained vital settlement equipment and families. One of the chains of pods has been cut free by a crewmember who died while trying to cut the second set of pods free, presumably so they could de-orbit and land. There is no sign of the pods in the asteroid field. The crew member died when a cable under tension that they cut sliced through their spacesuit. The eight remaining pods have dead settlers inside. They froze to death because the Daisy Green was not powering them.

There is a second, fainter signal detectable from orbit. It is coming from a settler dome on the Ramsey stead. A year ago, the Ramseys lost communication with the main town and tried to use an emergency comms system built into the dome to communicate with town. They failed and now the system broadcasts static. In order to switch it off, Brett is demolishing the dome with a sledgehammer when the PCs arrive.

The Settlers are surviving and the colony is growing, but they lost a lot of supplies and are building resources from the ground up. The colony needs help, communications and trade.

Sam Thorne is infected with two alien lifeforms The first is a very young sentient living gun that was forced into a war with the Empire before it was mature. It is in shock and regards humans as enemies. The second is an alien living interface, meant to merge several species together as a gestalt entity. the interface is not sentient, it just links alien brains together. It has even found a way to link Sam's brain to the weapons. Sam's memories are extremely confused as his trauma at killing his own family is mixed with the alien's trauma of the war.

The aliens are a gestalt race of oddly shaped creatures, some sentient, some not, and older, wiser parts teach younger replacement parts skills and control the combined personality. There are many different dead body parts (actually full creatures) on the spaceship. There are parts that look like cockroaches, headless monkeys, hammerhead shark heads, spiders and other tube-like weapons and many more. The aliens assembled parts as needed and no two were quite the same shape. This species are called Puppeteers and the Empire fought them secretly at the same time as they warred with the Federation. The Empire is paranoid about Puppeteer infiltration and spies. They will act with extreme prejudice to destroy possible sources, perhaps even breaking terms of the treaty. The Puppeteer ship that crashed was investigating the Daisy Green signal and was struck by debris. It was a medical spy ship on it's way home after discerning the war was over. The ship is also organic and it's records were lost when it died. If the ship is reported to the treaty organisation, the Imperial rangers will get wind of it and be requested to check the planet for infection, leading to another scenario of hostile rangers and a possible purge of the colony.

If Sam is captured alive, it will require very high tech surgery to separate the various organisms. Utopia 7 can do it easily, but other planets would need to put their best people on it.

Flexibility

This is an open ended scenario. The players could skip the Ramseys and go straight to town or Sam Thorne's settlement. They may or may not choose to file a report about the aliens. Sam may die in a firefight or get spaced by rangers worried about alien infection rather than being imprisoned or treated. They may or may not choose to help the settlers or recover the Daisy Green.

Story exposition can happen in town or at the Ramseys. Sam may or may not have time to rant, in which case the evidence of the crashed ship may lack context. If the PCs head straight for the crash site, the abandoned flier will contain a monologue from Doc Alexander about spying an alien shipnear the stead abd wondering if it had anything to do with Sam's violence.

If the PCs are wondering what to do with a captured Sam, you may want to introduce the Utopia 7 distress call from the second scenario early so the Utopians can make the PCs aware of their advanced medical technology that could be used to treat him.

Presentation

This is a fairly linear scenario with a good deal of exposition before the PCs get to the good stuff. Individual sections can easily be skipped and added to the a different scene.

Rewards

Recover the Daisy Green & help the settlers: +1 CP Investigate the murder: +1 CP Save/cure Sam Thorne: +1 CP Save the biogun and return it to its people: +1 CP but gain 1 point of Wanted or Skeleton in the Closet or Nemesis with the Empire.

Scenario Order

The PCs pick up the radio signal from the Daisy Green. The signal is on the route they have to take to reach the rest of the sector.

Two light years on they pick up a second radio signal from the Ramsey stead.

They reach the system, witness how dangerous it is and see the Daisy Green and weather satellite.

If they investigate the Daisy Green they find evidence of an accident and many dead bodies. The ship itself is repairable. The flight recorder confirms the accident, the launch of the satellite and the history of the expedition.

They may meet the Ramsay's who will be very excited to see them. If the PCs don't suggest it, the Ramsay's will beg a lift into Town.

Baker will greet the PCs, beg for supplies, and tell the PCs things are going fine. He may request help with the Daisy Green. As the PCs are about to leave, Rose will kick up a fuss and ask the PCs to find out what happened to her family, the missing aircraft and Sam.

The PCs travel to the Thorne stead, find the missing doctor dead, the flyer and evidence of the murder. There are some very odd energy weapon blast marks.

The PCs find the crash crater of the alien ship where they are attacked by Sam, who rants a bit then escapes.

The PCs pursue him to the ship and defeat him, he will fall down, but he won't die.

They then have to deal with Sam and the alien weapon and the parasite in his brain. They will deal with the alien spacecraft.

They will also have to deal with the settlers and the clean up operation.

Statistics

The Sam Thorne gestalt

Body 7, Mind 5, Soul 3, ACV 5, DCV 5 Plasma Burst att 9 dam 30+5 Gamma Beam att 9 dam 45+5 Force Field 30 (note, adjust force field so whatever weapons the PCs have can do some damage through it) Listen 9, scan 9, hide 7, camouflage 8, sneak 9 Heightened Awareness 1, Biogun- Item

Stealth (camouflage) 2, Wilderness survival (temperate) 2, Mechanics 1, Electronics 1, Biology (genetic engineering) 2 Wanted -2, Marked (bioweapon fused to r arm) -2, 1 arm 1, Recurring nightmares 2

BIOGUN Toughness +20, Extra Attacks 1, Forcefield 30 Weapon attack Plasma Burst 6 (accurate, spreading, short range 50m) Weapon attack Gamma beam 9 (accurate, penetrating 1 limited shots 6, slow)

Actual Play

You are invited to record how the scenario went for you. Let's hear your variation of it.

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