Silent Running Adventure Hooks
Been trying to sleep and can't, so I'm going to post some stuff I wrote at work today in hopes that it'll help. One in what will hopefully be a series of adventure hooks for my Silent Running campaign world, in the hopes that someone somewhere someday will use them.
1. The Isandlwana Crisis: Long story short, wannabe conqueror has actually managed to conquer someone else and is more or less daring the Confed to do something about it. They pretty much have to, but it's a slow process getting spooled up since it means summoning up actual large units of combat power, something the Peacekeepers aren't normally set up for.
In the meantime, the Navy has the planet cordoned off and is enforcing an embargo of all but basic food and medical supplies to the colonies Gordon Habila controls. In recent months, ships have begun to run the blockade, dodging missiles and mass cannon fire to run supplies through to Habila's government. There's also an active network of on-planet smuggling, where goods are legally imported into the other onplanet colonies and then moved overland into Habila's territory. The Peacekeepers and the other local governments have been trying to cut down on this, since nobody on planet really wants to help Habila, but haven't managed to stop it yet. Things have gotten bad enough that the other on-planet governments have taken the unusual step of banning all weapon imports and asking the Navy to help them enforce it by inspecting all ships coming in to their spaceports. The Confed executive has also pressured START to release some of its captured Crashers to destroy Habila's military systems and allow them to move in sooner.
Possible Hooks:
a) START generally doesn't concern itself with on-planet smuggling, but a team might be sent to try to infiltrate a particularly successful organization. This could either be to take it down as a favor to the Confed and the other local governments or to secure a safe "pipeline" for other START teams to enter Habila-controlled territory for various reasons.
b) Habila's government has been digging extensively in their newly captured territory, a vast series of exploratory excavations and deep-radar scans. Nobody seems to know just what they're looking for, and START records don't show anything of interest in the area- but maybe Habila knows something START doesn't. You might be the lucky team tapped to covertly enter Habila's new little kingdom and find out what he's up to.
c) Despite quite a bit of trying by the Navy, the Diplomats, and Confed Intelligence, nobody's been able to trace the blockade runners back to any planet. The best guess at this point is that they're using an uncharted, unexplored planet or asteroid as a base, transshipping goods quietly from legitimate ports and then shifting them to their fast blockade runners at the secret base. Yep, you read that right. They're using a planet, moon, or asteroid that START hasn't cleared, and they're mucking around in there with unsecured spacecraft, electronics, and computer systems. Oh, and all of the weapons making it onto Isandlwana these days have been there. Wherever it is.
If you're not slapping your forehead yet, you'll never make a STARTer.
A START team will need to find this place, fast, and check it out to make sure that it's safe and isn't sending horrible computer viruses, alien creature eggs, or nanobugs in with those weapon shipments. They can work with the Confed on this one, somewhat, but things could get sticky if they decide to infiltrate the organization and are pressured to share what they've found. Their priority is to shut the smuggling down- yours is to make sure that the smugglers aren't carrying anything nasty, which means you don't really care whether they're shut down or not and would rather they not be forced to disperse too soon. Enjoy working with your new allies. Of course, once the team finds the place, any GM worth his salt can pull out a bug hunt against whatever's been hiding there, followed by frantic improv as the team tries to intercept and neutralize whatever it's been sending along in those shipments.
(Come on, you really don't think the universe is going to pass up a chance like that, do you?)
d) The Confed Executive is not happy with START's refusal to release their captured alien tech at their command. They're believed to have sent infiltrators in Class 130, the newest Basic School class to start on Glengarry, tasked with either allowing Recondo teams to land on-planet and retrieve the viruses they want from START's sealed "vault" systems or doing it themselves. Some experienced STARTers will have to go undercover as Basic School instructors and try to root out the spies.
e) A recently deciphered bone computer system has pointed to a major artifact being buried on Islandlwana somewhere on the border between Habila's and a native colony. START teams are recognized as sufficiently neutral that a straight-up exploration mission will be agreed to by all parties to the dispute, but the situation will naturally create complications. There may be competing military parties around the site, and each side may insist they be allowed to send "observers" along on the mission. The team will have to worry about prying eyes, not touching off a war...and oh yeah, whatever it is that's actually down there in the first place. Job gets better every time you turn around, doesn't it?
2) The Beixing Colony Naval Buildup: Beixing Colony was originally founded as an offshoot of the People's Republic of China early in the first wave of colonization. It separated early on, and China grudgingly let it go- the other colonies were in favor, and China's leaders knew enough about the true nature of the universe to realize that keeping humanity together and protected was more important than hanging onto some dissidents. Along with other advanced colonies such as Belleisle, Shin-shima and Alexandria, Beixing has recently begun to assemble its own Navy.
Unfortunately, Beixing's habitual distrust of China has always led it towards innovation in its military hardware. This time, they've come up with the Zheng He, a cruiser-sized warship without side drive that has no human crew but is instead essentially a giant body for a sapient artificial intelligence. Without the need to care for a cumbersome crew, the theory goes, the ship will be much more efficient, and the AI is perfectly safe since the ship will never enter sidespace and expose it to psychosis. Get that, kids? AIs are perfectly safe otherwise in this universe. Aha. Ahahahaha.
This has put START in a bit of a jam. They really, really don't want the He to go into commission, because they can already see the roulette mission where it catches a big crasher and goes berserk. At the same time, they can't really explain why they don't want to see it in commission without using no-no words like "leftover alien computer virus". So they're left with less direct ways of stopping construction.
Possible Hooks:
1. The team gets tapped for a dirty little mission somewhere- spying, stealing information, maybe even assassination- as part of a quid pro quo between START and Beixing for quietly dropping the He project.
2. The team is assigned to discreetly sabotage the Zheng He to make it fail its upcoming service trials. Don't get caught.
3. The team is on alert during said service trials, when the ship needless to say goes completely whacknuts for some reason and decides to attack the planet. Guess who gets to stop it before millions die?
3) Playalinda: Playalinda is one of the more extreme examples opened to colonization of a planet that really shouldn't be Earthlike but is anyway.
[There are a couple that are more extreme, but START hasn't admitted to finding them. They don't feel like explaining how a planet with the orbital distance of Saturn is nice and sunny, or why a planet has twice the surface gravity it should.]
Playalinda is just a bit too small and far away from the sun to really be habitable- it ought to be like Mars, but with more violent weather due to axial tilt and less liquid water. Fortunately, someone did a really bang-up job of terraforming it a few million years back, so START saw little harm in claiming the credit and moving people in. It's currently occupied by an Argentine colony, a Spanish colony, and Costa Rica. No, not a Costa Rican colony. Costa Rica. They got fed up with being the only Central American country that cared about ecology about 85 years ago, packed up, and left.
Now the terraforming is starting to fail. Dust is starting to kick up into the atmosphere, interfering with electronics, making transport difficult, and damaging crops. If it continues, insolation may drop, temperatures may plummet, and massive loss of food crops may occur. The three colonies are starting to squabble over resources already, despite the best efforts of the Diplomats to work out agreements and the Peacekeepers to help people adapt and prevent fighting. And START has gotten appeals from all three governments, plus the Talking Heads and the Navy- you people terraformed this place. You fix it.
Pity that they didn't actually, isn't it?
Adventure Hook: You're a START science/exploration team. Find the original terraforming equipment, figure out how it works, and fix things. Quick-like. Have fun!
1. The Isandlwana Crisis: Long story short, wannabe conqueror has actually managed to conquer someone else and is more or less daring the Confed to do something about it. They pretty much have to, but it's a slow process getting spooled up since it means summoning up actual large units of combat power, something the Peacekeepers aren't normally set up for.
In the meantime, the Navy has the planet cordoned off and is enforcing an embargo of all but basic food and medical supplies to the colonies Gordon Habila controls. In recent months, ships have begun to run the blockade, dodging missiles and mass cannon fire to run supplies through to Habila's government. There's also an active network of on-planet smuggling, where goods are legally imported into the other onplanet colonies and then moved overland into Habila's territory. The Peacekeepers and the other local governments have been trying to cut down on this, since nobody on planet really wants to help Habila, but haven't managed to stop it yet. Things have gotten bad enough that the other on-planet governments have taken the unusual step of banning all weapon imports and asking the Navy to help them enforce it by inspecting all ships coming in to their spaceports. The Confed executive has also pressured START to release some of its captured Crashers to destroy Habila's military systems and allow them to move in sooner.
Possible Hooks:
a) START generally doesn't concern itself with on-planet smuggling, but a team might be sent to try to infiltrate a particularly successful organization. This could either be to take it down as a favor to the Confed and the other local governments or to secure a safe "pipeline" for other START teams to enter Habila-controlled territory for various reasons.
b) Habila's government has been digging extensively in their newly captured territory, a vast series of exploratory excavations and deep-radar scans. Nobody seems to know just what they're looking for, and START records don't show anything of interest in the area- but maybe Habila knows something START doesn't. You might be the lucky team tapped to covertly enter Habila's new little kingdom and find out what he's up to.
c) Despite quite a bit of trying by the Navy, the Diplomats, and Confed Intelligence, nobody's been able to trace the blockade runners back to any planet. The best guess at this point is that they're using an uncharted, unexplored planet or asteroid as a base, transshipping goods quietly from legitimate ports and then shifting them to their fast blockade runners at the secret base. Yep, you read that right. They're using a planet, moon, or asteroid that START hasn't cleared, and they're mucking around in there with unsecured spacecraft, electronics, and computer systems. Oh, and all of the weapons making it onto Isandlwana these days have been there. Wherever it is.
If you're not slapping your forehead yet, you'll never make a STARTer.
A START team will need to find this place, fast, and check it out to make sure that it's safe and isn't sending horrible computer viruses, alien creature eggs, or nanobugs in with those weapon shipments. They can work with the Confed on this one, somewhat, but things could get sticky if they decide to infiltrate the organization and are pressured to share what they've found. Their priority is to shut the smuggling down- yours is to make sure that the smugglers aren't carrying anything nasty, which means you don't really care whether they're shut down or not and would rather they not be forced to disperse too soon. Enjoy working with your new allies. Of course, once the team finds the place, any GM worth his salt can pull out a bug hunt against whatever's been hiding there, followed by frantic improv as the team tries to intercept and neutralize whatever it's been sending along in those shipments.
(Come on, you really don't think the universe is going to pass up a chance like that, do you?)
d) The Confed Executive is not happy with START's refusal to release their captured alien tech at their command. They're believed to have sent infiltrators in Class 130, the newest Basic School class to start on Glengarry, tasked with either allowing Recondo teams to land on-planet and retrieve the viruses they want from START's sealed "vault" systems or doing it themselves. Some experienced STARTers will have to go undercover as Basic School instructors and try to root out the spies.
e) A recently deciphered bone computer system has pointed to a major artifact being buried on Islandlwana somewhere on the border between Habila's and a native colony. START teams are recognized as sufficiently neutral that a straight-up exploration mission will be agreed to by all parties to the dispute, but the situation will naturally create complications. There may be competing military parties around the site, and each side may insist they be allowed to send "observers" along on the mission. The team will have to worry about prying eyes, not touching off a war...and oh yeah, whatever it is that's actually down there in the first place. Job gets better every time you turn around, doesn't it?
2) The Beixing Colony Naval Buildup: Beixing Colony was originally founded as an offshoot of the People's Republic of China early in the first wave of colonization. It separated early on, and China grudgingly let it go- the other colonies were in favor, and China's leaders knew enough about the true nature of the universe to realize that keeping humanity together and protected was more important than hanging onto some dissidents. Along with other advanced colonies such as Belleisle, Shin-shima and Alexandria, Beixing has recently begun to assemble its own Navy.
Unfortunately, Beixing's habitual distrust of China has always led it towards innovation in its military hardware. This time, they've come up with the Zheng He, a cruiser-sized warship without side drive that has no human crew but is instead essentially a giant body for a sapient artificial intelligence. Without the need to care for a cumbersome crew, the theory goes, the ship will be much more efficient, and the AI is perfectly safe since the ship will never enter sidespace and expose it to psychosis. Get that, kids? AIs are perfectly safe otherwise in this universe. Aha. Ahahahaha.
This has put START in a bit of a jam. They really, really don't want the He to go into commission, because they can already see the roulette mission where it catches a big crasher and goes berserk. At the same time, they can't really explain why they don't want to see it in commission without using no-no words like "leftover alien computer virus". So they're left with less direct ways of stopping construction.
Possible Hooks:
1. The team gets tapped for a dirty little mission somewhere- spying, stealing information, maybe even assassination- as part of a quid pro quo between START and Beixing for quietly dropping the He project.
2. The team is assigned to discreetly sabotage the Zheng He to make it fail its upcoming service trials. Don't get caught.
3. The team is on alert during said service trials, when the ship needless to say goes completely whacknuts for some reason and decides to attack the planet. Guess who gets to stop it before millions die?
3) Playalinda: Playalinda is one of the more extreme examples opened to colonization of a planet that really shouldn't be Earthlike but is anyway.
[There are a couple that are more extreme, but START hasn't admitted to finding them. They don't feel like explaining how a planet with the orbital distance of Saturn is nice and sunny, or why a planet has twice the surface gravity it should.]
Playalinda is just a bit too small and far away from the sun to really be habitable- it ought to be like Mars, but with more violent weather due to axial tilt and less liquid water. Fortunately, someone did a really bang-up job of terraforming it a few million years back, so START saw little harm in claiming the credit and moving people in. It's currently occupied by an Argentine colony, a Spanish colony, and Costa Rica. No, not a Costa Rican colony. Costa Rica. They got fed up with being the only Central American country that cared about ecology about 85 years ago, packed up, and left.
Now the terraforming is starting to fail. Dust is starting to kick up into the atmosphere, interfering with electronics, making transport difficult, and damaging crops. If it continues, insolation may drop, temperatures may plummet, and massive loss of food crops may occur. The three colonies are starting to squabble over resources already, despite the best efforts of the Diplomats to work out agreements and the Peacekeepers to help people adapt and prevent fighting. And START has gotten appeals from all three governments, plus the Talking Heads and the Navy- you people terraformed this place. You fix it.
Pity that they didn't actually, isn't it?
Adventure Hook: You're a START science/exploration team. Find the original terraforming equipment, figure out how it works, and fix things. Quick-like. Have fun!