rattraveller wrote:There are quite a few inconsistancies in the background material with the Volturnus module. These are not the module's fault since when they were written they should have been the basis but SF went in different directions. Since we are doing the module we just need to keep things constant within our setting.
Quick examples
1) the already pointed out misnamed Truane's Star government not Pale government
2) the deckplans being drawn for a horizontal layout not a vertical one
3) the mention of the police action on Cygnus Omicron IX which is never mentioned anywhere ever again
4) Of the first four expedition members two were listed as having only computer skills even though one is supposed to have been in the military for 22 years
5) supposedly the Truane's Star spaceships have set off the Sathar artifact. Which one the probe 20 years ago (very slow Sathar) or the two ships which never made it to the planet? Obviously it was the pirates but that's not what it says.
6)800PF The evolution of the Mechanon race begins on Volturnus. OK that is from Zeb's but it is all I had to work with. The Mechanons are supposed to be former servants of the Eorna. This is all fine but given the time line what happened to all the infrastructure? The Eorna had space travel. This means a good deal of technology and the infrasturcture to support it. So where did it all go? You would think if the Sathar destroyed it all there would be massive ecological damage.
7) Back to the ship the Serena Dawn was create before the hull size three rule was so it was supposed to land.
8) Just a personal note and I understand it was supposed to be so the party size was managable but does anyone think 4 or 6 beings is a large enough party to survey an entire planet? We should have been a few dozen in several teams and then most could have been killed or fate unknown after the attack. Could have used them for replacements or NPCs
1.) i missed the misnamed government- I'll have to look at that. its a minor consideration though
2.) I've posted the deck plans Sam said we would be using- they are incomplete but there is a Serena Dawn 2 thread for you to view them here. I cannot open the original Dunjini files and bang out the missing decks as they became corrupted otherwise I would have done this long ago. these are in the Khs vertical layout. though climbing up a ladder to storm a defended airlock is not going to be pretty for the first guy up the ladder thats for sure.
3.) yes Cygnus Omicron is an enigma and its been debated much in the forums I've taken the position that CO9 is New Pale (ninth moon of a gas giant) I like shadows solution in his posts in this game that its a small fuel processing station at a gas giant where the workers are rioting against their corporate masters- that is probably a better solution than mine. I've heard no other solution that makes sense or would be viable other than to make CO9 one of the plague planets and the Blue Plague a future event not a past event.
4.) NPCs dont have to have all their skills listed, we can assume they are more skilled then whats represented.
5.) this is a tricky issue: 1 automated probe, two ships from Truane's star and countless numbers of visits by what we must assume are multiple pirate vessels, that doesn't include the Dragon mag article "Volturnus Connection" with Captain Zebulon who misjumps his freighter to find the system and names it. Logically he must chart the route in both directions to sell it to the government so that means two trips to Zebulon by him. I take the stand that when the sathar, as a general strategy, wipe out a civilization instead of enslaving it like some other examples, and leave the obelisk device that this device is an alarm system to warn them if that wiped out civilization is rebuilding Terl Obar's numbers of actual troops in a sathar task force suggest they tend to just occupy one city and nuke the rest because they just dont have the on hand assets to control a whole planetary population. The obelisk acts like a motion sensor that wont trigger for every little critter (like a mouse or sparrow) but looks for larger things moving. I its not about one ship in particular triggering it but rather a level of space activity.
6.) yes bits and pieces of eorna tech and infrastructure still exist and the pcs get to explore some in the course of the adventure. Ruins of Volkos which is a capitol city not the eorna cape canaveral as well as a defense installation at the mechanon mounds. We can presume more is out there off the supplied map which is only a small area of the planet's surface. However, nothing last forever and 900 years is a long time so that whats out there that has not been maintained is scrap unless preserved in some way- stasis field technology?
7. ) Serena Dawns hull size is not supplied if we go with the SD2 deck plans and the sketchy 5 decks then its not that big and could land though I'd nix the tail boom that I envisioned. I think making it an ion powered ship like the other KHs freighters with a tail boom and hvy lift atomic powered HS 2 shuttle on loan from the Pale government riding piggy back at one of the tail boom cargo connectors then i think its all good. If Sam goes with it landing and having atomic drives than I dont think thats a big deal either.
8.) I quite agree and actually had Kahn addresses that point in character with Kriss. I think what you have here is too small of a team with too large of a mandate thus making it impossible for us to properly complete the mission even without the presence of pirates. So even if we survive the pirates and the sathar we may still be rated failures for not accomplishing our mission.I think would can chalk this inconsistency up to bureaucratic bean counters deciding policy limiting expenses (paring down the actual team numbers) without actually changing the mission parameters. OR we can say that our primary mission is to locate and rescue (or recover) the first team with secondary goals of survey and establishing a semi permanent base of operation (we have to presume we brought shelter and i tend to rule that the small pirate outpost was our pre fab buildings and that after the pirates took them off of the Serena Dawn they set up a satellite outpost to be near the kurabunga and Ul-mor for the purpose of expanding their program of control that they have pioneered with the edestakai.