TEXT:   BAKER  NOONAN  SCHUBERT  
   TOWNSHEND  WINTER 
  PROTOSTAR™  
  MISSION GUIDE
  ®
  
  The year is 2268, and humans have settled Mars, 
  the asteroid belt, and the moon systems of the outer 
  planets. On Neptune’s moon Triton, a mysterious alien 
  gate leads to a network of wormholes spanning 
  hundreds of star systems. But this is a dangerous 
  time to be alive: crime lords, despotic governments, 
  and corrupt megacorps are all fighting to control the 
  future. Choose your friends—and enemies—carefully.
  The Mission Guide is the perfect companion for the 
  Alternity® Science Fiction Roleplaying Game. This 
  adventure anthology and campaign sourcebook 
  includes:
  • An overview of the power groups, villains, and 
  technology of the Protostar setting.
  • A description of the Solar System in the 23rd 
  century.
  • Five ready-to-play adventure episodes set in the 
  Solar System . . . and beyond.
  Welcome to the Future. Better Watch Your Back.
  Sug. Retail: US $24.95
  Printed in USA
  
  ALTERNITY: Core Rulebook Playtest Edition
  1
  PROTOSTAR™  
  MISSION GUIDE
  Richard Baker  David Noonan  
  Stephen Schubert  Steve Townshend  
  Steve Winter
  Sasquatch Game Studio, LLC | Auburn, WA 98092 | sasquatchgamestudio.com
  
  2
  CHAPTER 1: System Basics
  2
  CREDITS
  Setting Design
  Richard Baker and 
  Stephen Schubert
  Adventure Design
  Richard Baker, 
  David Noonan, 
  Stephen Schubert, 
  Steve Townshend, 
  Steve Winter
  Editing
  Dale Donovan
  Creative Direction
  Richard Baker
  Cover Illustration
  Klaus Pillon
  Cover Design
  Corey Macourek
  Interior Illustrator
  Justin Mayhew
  Art Direction
  Richard Baker
  Production Specialist
  Nissa McCormack
  Planet Builders
  Ivo Elezović, JakeMilo, 
  Chad Patterson, 
  David Quarles
  ALTERNITY is a registered trademark of Sasquatch Game Studio LLC. Protostar, Sasquatch Game 
  Studio, and the Sasquatch logo are trademarks of Sasquatch Game Studio LLC. All characters and the 
  distinctive likenesses thereof are property of Sasquatch Game Studio LLC. This material is protected 
  under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use 
  of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of 
  Sasquatch Game Studio LLC. © 2019 Sasquatch Game Studio, LLC.
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
  The Protostar Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   
  Seven Things to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 
  Rivalries and Powers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
   
  Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
   
  The Triton Gate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
   
  Villains and Threats  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
   
  Adventures in the 23rd Century . . . . . . . . .19
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Afair . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   
  Scene 1: The Edo Heist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
   
  Scene 2: Exploring Roanoke . . . . . . . . . . . .32
   
  Scene 3: Negotiation or Escape . . . . . . . . .36
  Episode 2: Something Old, Something New . . 42
   
  Scene 1: Wu Robotics, Ceres . . . . . . . . . . .46
   
  Scene 2: The Pallas Expo  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
   
  Scene 3: The Vesta Recruiter . . . . . . . . . . .49
   
  Scene 4: Chen Zhou the Elder . . . . . . . . . .51
   
  Scene 5: The First Stone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
  Episode 3: Tartarus Station . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
   
  Scene 1: Tartarus Orbit  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59
   
  Scene 2: The Unwelcome Mat . . . . . . . . . .60
   
  Scene 3: Lassiter’s Gauntlet . . . . . . . . . . . .65
   
  Scene 4: Making You Mine  . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
   
  Scene 5: Meet the Beetle  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
  Episode 4: Hives of Janrata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
   
  Scene 1: Hostile Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81
   
  Scene 2: Tragic Clues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83
   
  Scene 3: Blackout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88
  Episode 5: The Martian Hostage . . . . . . . . . . 91
   
  Scene 1: Long Drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94
   
  Scene 2: The Caldera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96
   
  Scene 3: Knock, Knock  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98
   
  Scene 4: Abort, Retry, Fail? . . . . . . . . . . . 105
  Scene 5: Dr. Duval, I Presume? . . . . . . . . 106
  
  ALTERNITY: Core Rulebook Playtest Edition
  3
  INTRODUCTION
  Imagine sci-ﬁ action with ﬁrearms and vac suits and zero-G, spies and crim-
  inal gangs and ruthless megacorps, and a dangerous universe humans are 
  just beginning to explore. That’s the Protostar™ universe, the ﬁrst campaign 
  setting for the ALTERNITY Science Fiction Roleplaying Game.
  So what’s the Protostar setting all about? The short answer is that it’s dark, 
  industrial, “hard” sci-ﬁ set two hundred and ﬁfty years in the future. Imagine 
  Mission Impossible-style ops in Martian domed cities or Aliens-style rescue mis-
  sions in research outposts on newly discovered exoplanets, and you won’t be far 
  of the mark. Humans have colonized the Solar System and are reaching out to 
  the closest stars. It’s a chaotic and competitive age, with dozens of factions and 
  powers and corporations all doing anything they can to get ahead. 
  In this universe, the heroes are freelancers and troubleshooters. They’re 
  highly skilled experts, paid to take on dangerous jobs such as exploring 
  unknown star systems, taking down violent criminal gangs in asteroid cities, 
  and carrying out industrial espionage (or sabotage) against evil corporations. 
  Sometimes they’re on the right side of the law, sometimes they’re engaged 
  in deniable black ops for a client who needs results and can’t get them any 
  other way, and sometimes they’re outright criminals . . . but that’s the uni-
  verse they live in.  
  HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
  This guide is intended for the Gamemaster. You need the ALTERNITY Core 
  Rulebook to run the adventures presented in this Mission Guide. (You can 
  purchase a PDF version at drivethrurpg.com, or ask your local game store to 
  order a copy for you.)
  This guide consists of two parts: a summary of the factions, places of 
  interest, and technology of the 23rd century that provides the information 
  you need to create and run adventures in this vision of the future, and ﬁve 
  adventures that dive right into the Protostar setting. Many campaign guides 
  seek to present an exhaustive description of a setting, but then fail to provide 
  ready-to-play material you can use at your table immediately. The Mission 
  Guide deliberately reverses that approach. 
  We describe the adventures in this book as episodes; we think that the 
  best analogy for a sci-ﬁ RPG campaign is a television series. Like an epi-
  sodic television show, there isn’t necessarily a lot of narrative that connects 
  one episode to the next—the unifying element of the “show” is the group of 
  heroes who encounter new challenges and face tough new decisions every 
  week. You can run the adventures in order and provide your players with a 
  short campaign for a few months of exciting play, but feel free to interject 
  adventures and plot arcs of your own creation into the series—ultimately, 
  that’s what makes it your campaign.
  3
  
  4
  The Protostar Universe
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  THE PROTOSTAR 
  UNIVERSE
  The universe of the Protostar setting exists several centuries in our own 
  future. Humanity is just beginning to explore the nearby stars. It’s an age 
  of rivalry and competition: Riches beyond imagining are just waiting to be 
  discovered out there, and much of human space is a lawless frontier where 
  anything goes.
  SEVEN THINGS TO KNOW
  Here’s what you need to know about the 23rd century in seven short points. 
  WE’VE SETTLED THE SOLAR SYSTEM
  Millions of people live on (or in) the Moon, Mars, the Jovian moons, and 
  the larger asteroids. Ships can manage several gravities of acceleration 
  and keep it up for weeks on end, making travel between the planets fast 
  and cheap. A typical interplanetary voyage consists of several days of 1 g 
  acceleration to turnaround, a “ﬂip ship” maneuver in zero-g, and then a 
  deceleration leg for a zero-speed arrival at the destination. You can get from 
  the Earth to Saturn in ten days . . . or half that time if you’re willing to put up 
  with high-g acceleration.
  HUMANS ARE CHANGING
  Thanks to advances in genetic design, cybernetic enhancement, and 
  neural science, humankind is evolving in new and unpredictable ways. A 
  “human” might be a baromorph bred as a genetic slave for heavy labor, a 
  spider-limbed elaphromorph with a neural interface in her head, an eman-
  cipated android, or a serial clone hosting centuries-old memories in search 
  of immortality. More than ever, society wrestles with the question of what it 
  means to be human.
  THE TRITON GATE
  Eighty years ago, scientists discovered an anomaly on Neptune’s moon, 
  Triton: a vast alien structure buried in the icy crust. The structure anchors 
  one end of a wormhole with thousands of possible destinations—some 
  nearby, others quite distant indeed. No one knows who built the Triton Gate, 
  and only a small fraction of the wormhole destinations have been explored.
  The wormhole’s destination is set by a complex “transponder code” 
  signal. For decades now everybody with the means to do so—scientiﬁc 
  expeditions, would-be colonizers, corporations seeking valuable resources, 
  
  Seven Things to Know
  5
  and military missions from the rival powers of the Solar System—
  has been frantically researching new codes to ﬁnd new destina-
  tions. A code solution that leads somewhere new is potentially 
  worth billions.
  SOMEBODY OWNS YOU
  Well, probably not you literally, but they own your expensive ship (or 
  your Gate license) and they have ideas about what you should or 
  shouldn’t be doing with it. From the day you set out, you’re entan-
  gled in a web of international intrigue, corporate competition, and 
  hidden agendas. Are you looking to climb the corporate ladder by 
  being the most efcient problem-solver they’ve got? Are you a true 
  explorer, dedicated to solving the mysteries of the galaxy while 
  avoiding the politics? Or are you an opportunist just waiting for your 
  big break to come along?
  WE’RE ALONE . . .
  We haven’t run into any other starfaring civilizations like us—yet. 
  So far we seem to have the starways to ourselves. But even in the 
  comparatively small corner of the galaxy we think of as ours there 
  are many lifeforms known to be intelligent or dangerous inhabiting 
  various planets, and probably several times as many we just don’t 
  know about yet.
  . . . AND WE’RE NOT ALONE
  While intelligent species such as the kwll or the skiarth pose trou-
  bling questions for humans interested in their planets, we’ve also 
  found evidence of starfaring civilizations that may not be around 
  anymore. The ruins of the h’naal have been found in a dozen plan-
  etary systems; none appear to be less than a million years old, but 
  we can’t be really sure that they’re dead. There are also persistent 
  rumors of “dark ships” spying out human activity or inexplicable 
  starship disappearances that might point to the action of some 
  unknown starfaring species.
  THE PROTOSTAR NEXUS
  Recently, a new Gate code led to an incredible discovery: a fantastic 
  complex of multiple alien structures like the Triton Gate in a proto-
  star system located within the Orion Nebula. Normally a discovery of 
  this sort would have been kept absolutely secret by the organization 
  that funded the expedition, but in this case someone in the know 
  deliberately published the code. Everybody knows how to reach the 
  Protostar Nexus, and the next great land rush is on. 
  
  6
  The Protostar Universe
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  RIVALRIES AND POWERS
  The 23rd century is a time of deep division and ﬁerce rivalries. 
  The centuries-old dream of a united humanity taking our ﬁrst steps 
  together into the broader universe remains just that—a dream. 
  Earthbound nation-states, independent colonies and space hab-
  itats, outlaw settlements, hostile factions, and giant corporations 
  that make their own laws all compete for valuable resources and 
  economic power. Sometimes this competition consists of brutal 
  but legal business dealings, industrial espionage, and cyber-sab-
  otage, but sometimes the competition meanders into skirmishing, 
  raids, and terror strikes, especially in the crime-ridden tenements of 
  Earth’s overcrowded cities or the unpatrolled frontier regions of the 
  Solar System.
  EARTH
  While terrestrial blocs such as Europe and China remain relevant 
  throughout the Solar System, Earth is mostly a dead end: crowded, 
  polluted, and resource-depleted. Humanity’s homeworld remains 
  carved up into more than one hundred nation-states. Some are 
  large, some are tiny, some are rich and technologically advanced, 
  and some are poor and backward. The most important include:
  • The European Confederation is small, but rich. The ﬁnancial 
  sectors of cities such as Amsterdam, Milan, Paris, and Stutt-
  gart serve as the banking centers of the world.
  • The Saharan League includes many of the Islamic countries 
  of North Africa and the Middle East, a 23rd-century Ottoman 
  Empire stretching from the Caucasus to Nigeria. It’s domi-
  nated by rich dynastic families that control various commer-
  cial empires.
  NPC SPOTLIGHT
  • The most successful “Gate-jumper” at Triton, Adele Durocher, is a 
  brilliant and resourceful woman who has dared 11 unexplored Gates. 
  She makes it back each time, but her crew sometimes doesn’t. She 
  commands a fee of millions for her services.
  • King Thule is a violent gang-leader who rules over the Krakens, an 
  outlaw gang in the worst district of Vesta. A genetically engineered 
  monstrosity standing 2.5 meters tall, he sees himself as a modern-day 
  barbarian warlord.  
  • Zara Pham works as a ﬁxer and facilitator for a secretive patron 
  called Icarus, hiring expert teams for difcult heists and hacks. Icarus 
  is quietly acquiring Gate-builder artifacts, even if they have to steal 
  them from museums or megacorp labs.
  
  Rivalries and Powers
  7
  Rivalries and Powers
  7
  • The Socialist Collective of China is a cybernetic police 
  state that dominates eastern Asia. China is a military and 
  scientiﬁc powerhouse whose reach extends throughout the 
  Solar System.
  • The American Union began as a defensive alliance of 
  the democratic Anglosphere countries: Australia, Canada, 
  England, New Zealand, and the United States. Generations 
  of economic decline have left the Union a hollow shell domi-
  nated by corporatist interests.
  • The Lunar States are a hodgepodge of colonies, extraterri-
  torial possessions, and independent settlements. The major 
  Earth powers quietly jockey for control of the Lunar States, 
  but in recent decades a powerful “Lunar Solidarity” move-
  ment has come into being and is struggling to make the 
  Moon into a free, whole, and independent nation.
  In theory, the United Nations remains the body that best rep-
  resents all the states and peoples of Earth. In practice, the UN is 
  decrepit and powerless. However, it does serve as a hub for scien-
  tiﬁc commissions and common interests such as administering the 
  operations of the Triton Gate. Cynics point out that the only reason 
  the UN oversees the Triton Gate is because none of the major 
  powers could bear to see one of their rivals in control of it.
  THE SOLAR SYSTEM
  The centers driving human progress are slowly but surely moving 
  away from Earth. The states destined to dominate the next century 
  are near-space powers with booming economies and technological 
  sectors that churn out innovations at a dizzying pace. 
  From the inner portion of the Solar System to the outer worlds, 
  key powers and places of interest include:
  Helios League: An economic union of manufacturing hubs on 
  Mercury and solar-powered space habitats in the inner part of the 
  Solar System, the Helios League is the industrial heart of human 
  space. Its government is weak and decentralized; business interests 
  and labor movements ﬁght for the upper hand. 
  Republic of Mars: Largest and strongest of the of-Earth states, 
  Mars is home to more than three hundred million people. It’s a rel-
  atively free democracy, although its politics veer wildly between an 
  ever-changing roster of radical parties and a laissez faire business 
  climate that attracts quite a few corporations.
  The Asteroids: Dozens of asteroids are home to domed city-
  states or “bubble worlds” created by hollowing out mid-sized bodies 
  and imparting enough spin to simulate gravity. Mining has always 
  been the economic lifeblood of the asteroid settlements, but the 
  need to establish self-sufciency led to the development of major 
  Still in the same 
  building in New 
  York City.
  
  8
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  Rivalries and Powers
  9
  agricultural centers and the largest shipbuilding industrial base in 
  the Solar System. Each major asteroid is essentially an independent 
  city-state, but they band together to resist eforts of outside powers 
  to gain a foothold in the belt.
  • The Free City of Vesta is the biggest city in the belt. It’s a 
  wide-open, poorly regulated tax haven, trading hub, gam-
  bling destination, and center for illicit activity where anything 
  goes. Vesta’s the place you go to make a deal—legal, or 
  otherwise. You’ll ﬁnd the richest people in the belt, and the 
  poorest, in Vesta’s tethered habitats and tunnels. 
  • Ceres is ruled by a “People’s Collective” that serves as 
  China’s foothold in the asteroid belt. It’s an outpost of Chi-
  nese power, not a state in its own right (although there’s a 
  revolutionary movement that hopes to change that). Ceres is 
  a manufacturing powerhouse with vast robotic factories built 
  in centrifuge cities and the place where China’s system puts 
  on a business-friendly face.
  • The large, rocky asteroid Pallas is home to extensive hydro-
  ponic farms and serves as the grain belt of the asteroid belt. 
  It’s also the seat of the Church of Human Transcendence, 
  and a center for genetic experimentation.
  • Hygiea is a reﬁning center whose principal industry is turn-
  ing the asteroid’s carbonaceous surface into useful CHON 
  (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen) compounds. It’s under 
  the control of the Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate, which turns a 
  blind eye to the criminal gangs who run its crowded and 
  dangerous settlements.
  • Psyche, a massive metal-rich asteroid, is the mining capital 
  of the belt and the site of several thriving shipyards.
  Callisto: Jupiter’s dangerous radiation belts make its moon 
  system a difcult target for settlement, but Callisto is the best choice 
  of the four Galilean moons. Generations ago, the United Nations 
  sponsored a major relocation program to help poor countries on 
  Earth settle excess population on a new world. Naturally, many 
  countries sent their worst, and warlords and criminal cartels soon 
  seized power. Callisto is now under the control of a ruthless warlord 
  named Nomena Ramarosan, the so-called Pirate Queen of Callisto.  
  Titan-Rhea: A self-governing Martian colony, Titan-Rhea is a 
  promising frontier state taking shape in Saturn’s moon system. The 
  wealth of Titan’s valuable hydrocarbons and gas-extraction mining 
  operations in Saturn’s atmosphere mean that there’s money to be 
  made here; several other powers are working hard to peel Titan-
  Rhea away from Mars by funding separatist movements, indepen-
  dence parties, and terrorist groups. 
  Triton: The colonization of Neptune’s largest moon was inter-
  rupted eighty years ago by the discovery of the Triton Gate. The 
  
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  Gate’s operations center and research facility at Ring City is the only 
  settlement on Triton, but it’s home to thousands of people repre-
  senting every major state or megacorp in the Solar System. 
  FACTIONS
  Just as the human population is expanding away from Earth, so too 
  is human society moving away from the nation-state as the primary 
  organizing principle. Transnational entities such as giant corpo-
  rations, political movements, religious organizations, and private 
  foundations operate across the highly balkanized borders of nation-
  states. In a time when you can ﬁnd a government willing to ban—or 
  allow—almost anything, groups whose interests span multiple 
  worlds are the true power brokers in human space.
  CHURCH OF HUMAN TRANSCENDENCE
  Transcendants believe that humankind is on the cusp of evolution 
  into godlike immortal intelligences and that the key to unlocking this 
  holy day lies in the engineering of a perfected human form. Genetic 
  alteration and cybernetic enhancement are both potential paths to 
  that holy end, and Transcendants therefore push the boundaries of 
  science in search of perfection. The Church enjoys broad support in 
  the Helios League and asteroid cities such as Pallas, but its follow-
  ers can be found almost anywhere.
  EMANCIPATIONIST FRONT
  Corporate states operating in territory outside any government’s 
  jurisdiction now rule hundreds of millions of people. Some corpora-
  tions deal fairly with their employee-citizens and choose to observe 
  common human-rights protections, but many do not. The Emancipa-
  tionists are a disorderly alliance of anarchists, reformers, revolution-
  aries, and whistle-blowers that opposes corporate rule and seeks to 
  establish civil government in areas under corporate administration. 
  Some Emancipationist groups are little better than bomb- throwing 
  terrorists and others foment labor unrest and funnel arms to rev-
  olutionary groups in corporate territory, but they also serve as an 
  important voice demanding rights and representation for people 
  who don’t have either. 
  MINERVA FOUNDATION
  The Triton Gate has opened hundreds of star systems to human 
  exploration and colonization, many of which we otherwise couldn’t 
  reach for millennia. Some people believe that it’s too good to be 
  true—sooner or later, the reckless exploitation of the Triton Gate will 
  bring humankind face-to-face with someone a lot more advanced 
  Ring City is a great 
  "home base" for a 
  campaign focusing 
  on gate exploration.
  You owe your 
  soul to the 
  company store.
  
  Technology
  11
  Technology
  11
  than we are, and that will be the end of us. Therefore the Minerva 
  Foundation supports near-star colonization with sleeper ships and 
  development of human technology . . . with the secret goal of sab-
  otaging continued Gate exploration and ultimately shutting it down 
  altogether. 
  TERRAN BRIGADE
  A wealthy defense contractor providing mercenaries, security 
  services, and gunrunning to anyone who needs ﬁrepower and foot 
  soldiers, the Terran Brigade is the Solar System’s leading purveyor 
  of muscle for hire. They’re not above stirring up conﬂicts in order 
  to sell to both sides, or choosing winners and losers with an eye to 
  helping clients they can keep under their inﬂuence. Ultimately, the 
  Brigade intends to seize the Triton Gate for their own by manipulat-
  ing the UN (and any other powers) into entrusting the Brigade with 
  its security.
  UNARA
  The United Nations Anomaly Research Administration is a poorly 
  funded scientiﬁc council that serves as the central coordinating 
  body for research into the Triton Gate’s workings and the explora-
  tion of the wormhole’s branches. Wealthy corporations and power-
  ful national governments routinely step all over UNARA’s mandate 
  in the pursuit of their own interests, but the group manages to 
  sponsor a handful of science-focused missions each year. UNARA 
  is especially interested in ﬁnding other Gate-builder artifacts to 
  learn more about who built the Triton Gate and whether they’re 
  truly gone. 
  TECHNOLOGY
  After the giant leaps of computing power, networking, and connec-
  tivity in the 20th and 21st centuries, the relentless march of progress 
  slowly shifted away from data management to the physical sciences. 
  In a lot of ways, 2268 is more like 2018 than 2018 is like 1968. The 
  wildest predictions of “the singularity” have not yet come to pass; 
  people live much like they have since the Information Revolution. 
  They have jobs, they buy houses, they raise children, and they 
  waste time watching banal vid programs and chatting in various 
  social media outlets.
  The biggest changes in the 23rd century stem from incremental 
  but important advances in physics, nanotech, robotics, and genetic 
  science. Fusion power plants provide virtually limitless clean energy; 
  the EM drive opens up the whole of the Solar System to human col-
  onization; and nanoengineered materials make awesome projects 
  People say 
  "YOU-nah-rah."
  
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  such as space elevators, domed cities on Mars, and orbital habitats 
  commonplace. People might live a lot like they did in the 21st cen-
  tury, but more and more of them live and work in space or on other 
  planets—and, thanks to the Triton Gate, on new worlds orbiting 
  distant stars.
  SPACESHIPS
  Interplanetary spaceships are commonplace. Most private indi-
  viduals can’t aford one, but wealthy people have access to “cor-
  porate-jet” style spacecraft, and asteroid miners or transportation 
  contractors often build a livelihood around a used (or leased) ship 
  that they’re working hard to pay of. The average person who needs 
  to travel to another planet just buys passage on a liner, which is a 
  little like buying a pricey plane ticket today.
  Ships of the 23rd century are built around two key technologies: 
  fail-safe fusion power plants that run for months on a cheap fuel 
  mixture of enriched water, and the EM drive. This is a reactionless 
  propulsion system that turns power into thrust without the need to 
  carry huge loads of propellant to ﬁre out of a rocket nozzle. Main-
  taining 1 g of constant thrust means that it’s possible to reach the 
  outer parts of the Solar System in a couple of weeks of travel. EM 
  drives have a tough time generating enough thrust to muscle their 
  way out of a gravity well such as the Earth’s, so space elevators or 
  shuttles and orbiters equipped with conventional rocket engines 
  remain in widespread use there.
  THE WEB
  The Solar System’s Internet is surprisingly similar to our own. Most 
  companies maintain virtual storefronts, and various forms of email 
  and messaging serve as the primary means of correspondence. The 
  big diference is that immersive virtual reality is available to almost 
  everyone. Most homes include a “pedestal,” a device that allows 
  you to interact with virtual sites (and entertainment) as if you were 
  there. “Hacking” generally involves building an avatar armed with an 
  arsenal of illicit apps that can get around the normal user interface 
  of virtual sites, although you can also access computer systems 
  via keyboard-and-display-style systems. Interplanetary distances 
  impose signal lags of minutes or hours in communications between 
  diferent planets—don’t expect to log into an action game hosted on 
  a Martian server and win against the locals. If you need to get into a 
  highly secure system on another planet, you’ll probably need to go 
  there and ﬁnd a local access point to log in from.
  The Singularity: 
  The notion 
  that advancing 
  technology will 
  transform humanity 
  into a post-
  biological species.
  Also known as the 
  radio frequency 
  resonant cavity 
  thruster. 
  
  Technology
  13
  Technology
  13
  MEDICAL SCIENCE
  Death remains undefeated. While plenty of people hope to achieve 
  immortality by saving their consciousness in computer networks or 
  cybernetic bodies, no one can prove that it works. Are you actually 
  you, or are you a clone who just thinks he’s you? That said, nan-
  otechnology means that it’s possible to quickly stabilize or repair 
  injuries that would have been mortal in the 21st century, and artiﬁcial 
  body parts (cybernetic limbs or organs) aren’t hard to come by. 
  ROBOTICS
  You can buy a robot to do almost 
  anything—provide janitorial services, 
  drive a cab, cook your meals, buy 
  your groceries, or guard your secure 
  facilities. Most middle-class people 
  can aford a low-end domestic robot 
  that can handle a variety of house-
  hold chores, as well as maintaining 
  schedules, playing music, receiving 
  deliveries, or answering calls. There 
  are very few jobs left for unskilled 
  human laborers in the 23rd cen-
  tury; low-end jobs generally revolve 
  around supervising or maintaining 
  robots, providing “the human touch” 
  in luxury establishments, or carry-
  ing out tasks that require human 
  judgment and ﬂexibility. Robots are 
  guided by no special laws—they only 
  do what they’re programmed to do. 
  ARMS AND ARMOR
  Lasers and rail guns are the cut-
  ting-edge weaponry of the day; most 
  projectile weapons use electromag-
  nets to accelerate dart-like rounds 
  to deadly velocities. Advanced-ma-
  terials tech allows for armor that’s light, ﬂexible, and tough, such 
  as polymer mail or hardmesh clothing. Basic powered armor in the 
  form of exoskeletons is beginning to appear in elite security forces 
  and heavy military assault formations, but not even the heaviest 
  powered armor can completely ignore the ﬁrepower that’s available.
  PROTOSTAR HEROES
  Creating characters for the Protostar 
  setting? Here are a few guidelines.
  Species: Most characters are human, 
  although the baromorph and elaphro-
  morph variations are fairly common. 
  Androids are also allowed, although 
  they are rare and their personhood is 
  not universally recognized—some of 
  Earth’s less progressive states regard 
  androids as property. (PC androids are 
  legally emancipated, though.)
  Gear: The 23rd century is Tech Era 7, 
  although many elements of TE 6 technol-
  ogy are still in common use—plenty of 
  criminal gangs make do with TE 6 pistols 
  and assault riﬂes. Secret government 
  labs and corporate research depart-
  ments are hard at work developing 
  various TE 8 projects, but so far these 
  remain highly experimental.
  Psionics: Rare, but not unheard of. 
  Various governments have been exper-
  imenting with genetic manipulation 
  to activate psychic abilities. You must 
  choose the Mentalist archetype to buy 
  psionic skills or choose psionic talents.
  
  14
  The Protostar Universe
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  THE TRITON GATE
  At some point many thousands of years ago, an unknown alien race 
  built something incredible in the ice of Neptune’s moon, Triton. No 
  one knows who they were or where they went, but they left behind 
  a doorway to the greater universe: an artiﬁcial wormhole gate.
  Scientists soon discovered how to activate the doorway and how 
  to select its destination by transmitting numerical codes based on 
  universal mathematical relationships, such as the value of pi, Fibo-
  nacci sequences, and so on. In the years immediately following the 
  gate’s discovery, scores of potential destinations with easy or obvi-
  ous solutions were unlocked. New Gate codes are harder to come 
  by now, requiring the work of supercomputers known as Decryptors 
  to derive ever-more-complicated solutions.
  Some codes lead to worthless systems with no planets worth 
  colonizing or dangerous local phenomena such as unstable stars. 
  But every now and then someone hits the jackpot, ﬁnding a planet 
  with potential for colonization or some resource—mineral, biological, 
  or xenoarcheological—that can be exploited.
  TRAVERSING THE GATE
  The Triton Gate is a 70-meter tall hoop-like structure that stands 
  on its end, hovering a few dozen meters above Triton’s surface. 
  Because most Gate termini are in open space, it’s a good idea to 
  pass through the Gate in a ship.
  • The larger the ship, the longer it takes the wormhole to 
  recover before it can open again.
  • Gate licenses (managed by the Triton Anomaly Authority, a 
  corrupt agency under UN supervision) are expensive—the 
  bigger the ship, the more expensive the license.
  • Ships return by transmitting the same signal at the exact 
  point in space the Gate brings them to. Somehow the Triton 
  Gate’s wormhole knows when one of its termini is signaled, 
  even though there’s nothing at the destination point.
  THE ORION PROTOSTAR
  Just a few months ago, a Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate mission to chart 
  a previously unexplored wormhole destination led to an incredible 
  discovery: a still-forming star system home to dozens of Gate struc-
  tures similar to the one on Triton. Naturally, the Syndicate attempted 
  to keep their ﬁnding secret, but someone either leaked or stole the 
  information and published it to the entire Solar System. Everybody 
  knows about the Protostar Nexus and possesses the Gate code 
  
  The Triton Gate
  15
  The Triton Gate
  15
  needed to reach it. The Syndicate, Mars, Helios, China, America, the 
  Church of Human Transcendence, and half a dozen private corpo-
  rations and foundations are building up outposts in the Nexus to 
  facilitate their exploration of the new gates.
  TRANSGATE WORLDS
  No one knows for certain how many worlds have actually been 
  visited or what secrets they may hold. A number of Gate destina-
  tions are well known now, of course, but some explorers—various 
  megacorp teams, or teams working under 
  secret orders from one government or 
  another—have kept their ﬁndings secret.
  CIRGOS
  A storm-wracked enigma of a world, Cirgos 
  is a semiterran planet orbiting close to its 
  parent star, a K-class orange dwarf. Its slow 
  rotation means that its day side builds up 
  a lot of heat, generating powerful cyclones 
  that spiral out into the night side. Instrument 
  malfunctions are common, and a number of 
  ships have crashed during eforts to explore 
  the planet’s mysterious alien ruins. In fact, 
  would-be salvagers now come to Cirgos in 
  search of legendary shipwrecks, ignoring 
  the possibility that they might become the 
  planet’s next victims.
  KWLLADH
  A world of vast primeval swamps and mist-
  wreathed mountain ranges, Kwlladh was 
  discovered by a UN scientiﬁc expedition 35 
  years ago. It’s home to an alien race known 
  as the kwll, hexapodal creatures who were just at the beginning 
  of their Industrial Revolution when contacted by humans (see 
  “The Kwll,” under Villains and Threats below). The UN maintains 
  a science post and cultural exchange center with the kwll, but it’s 
  dangerous and thankless duty.
  PASHUPATI
  Beautiful and Earthlike, Pashupati is a lush world with a diverse 
  biosphere and tremendous potential for colonization. It’s also 
  private property: Dibang United, a major agricultural and pharma-
  ceutical corporation, strictly controls access to Pashupati. A handful 
  CASBAH THARSIS
  A number of governments and 
  megacorps are busy building 
  up outposts in the Protostar 
  system, but these are small 
  “frontier” stations with limited 
  facilities—everything here must 
  be brought through the Triton 
  Gate one shipload at a time. The 
  Martian-administered station 
  Casbah Tharsis is one of the 
  larger installations now oper-
  ational in the Nexus. A micro-
  gravity domed town built on 
  the surface of a medium-sized 
  asteroid, it serves as a neutral 
  meeting-ground, outﬁtting hub, 
  and jumping-of point for private 
  expeditions. People looking to 
  get rich quick often try their 
  luck at Casbah Tharsis ﬁrst.
  
  16
  The Protostar Universe
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  of big-game hunters have paid exorbitant fees for the privilege of 
  hunting the planet’s challenging megafauna, but most of Dibang’s 
  exploitation of Pashupati comes from a handful of research stations 
  searching for new pharmaceuticals. There’s also one research 
  station Dibang doesn’t tell its shareholders about: a genetics lab 
  where the company is altering human DNA to produce a species of 
  small, hardy laborers as a new product line. These “genids” are des-
  tined for a life of serfdom on Dibang United’s corporate farms and 
  ranches, but quite a few have escaped to Pashupati’s forests where 
  they gather in reclusive tribes.
  RHINOTAR’S HOLLOW
  Like Mercury in the Solar System, Rhinotar’s Hollow is the miner-
  al-rich exposed core of a larger body shattered millions of years 
  ago. It’s a moon of a super-Jovian gas giant whose tidal forces lead 
  to near-constant tectonic activity, including quakes and volcanoes. 
  The atmosphere is thin and toxic, and its parent planet’s radiation 
  belts pose a serious threat to mining operations. Despite that, 
  Rhinotar’s Hollow is home to a miners’ boomtown based on the hulk 
  of the ore freighter Rhinotar, currently wedged in a deep crevice 
  where it is somewhat protected from quakes and radiation storms. 
  The odd thing is that no one knows how Rhinotar got to be where it 
  is—there’s no record of such a ship ever leaving Sol, and not a trace 
  of the original crew was found when the hulk was discovered by the 
  ﬁrst miners to arrive on the scene.
  TRYMARTY
  One of the ﬁrst transgate colonies, Trymarty was established almost 
  sixty years ago by Przystan Industries, a combine under the control 
  of an industrialist named Alexander Bokun. The native life hadn’t 
  advanced much beyond algae and lichen, but Bokun saw Trymarty 
  as a place where Przystan could build up a secret industrial base to 
  support Eastern European militarists seeking a chance to challenge 
  great-power dominance in manufacturing. To staf his new factories, 
  Bokun built an android production line and began creating his own 
  workers. Alexander Bokun is now a very old man, but he commands 
  a workforce of over a million androids laboring in oppressive con-
  ditions. Emancipationist pressure forced Bokun to “free” his work-
  force several years ago, but Przystan Industries merely fell back 
  on the tactic of ofering grossly unfair contracts that most of the 
  androids naively signed. Worker unrest is on the rise, and whispers 
  of an android revolution—and the massacre of Trymarty’s human 
  managers—are in the air.  
  
  Villains and Threats
  17
  Villains and Threats
  17
  VILLAINS AND THREATS
  Ironically, the 23rd century is perhaps the most lawless era since 
  the Middle Ages. Large portions of the Solar System—the minor 
  asteroids, the Jovian moons, the Uranian system, and of-grid space 
  habitats—are poorly policed frontiers where criminals and gangs 
  can operate without fear. Even in relatively well governed states 
  such as the European Confederation or the Republic of Mars, the 
  current highly balkanized international system means that a power-
  ful nonstate actor such as a megacorp or a terrorist group can do 
  whatever they want with minimal consequences. A terrorist can set 
  of a bomb in Mariner City and ﬂee to Hygiea or Callisto or Luna to 
  defy the Martian authorities as long as she likes.
  In addition to the danger posed by other humans, we also face 
  new and unfamiliar threats in the form of the alien organisms and 
  technology now being encountered in the worlds beyond the Triton 
  Gate. No one knows if an extinction-level threat is waiting out there 
  for us . . . or if one has found us already.
  BAKUNAWA CARTEL
  A dangerous criminal organization that virtu-
  ally rules dozens of small asteroid-belt habitats 
  and controls the illicit drug trade from Mars to 
  Titan, the Bakunawa Cartel franchises out their 
  criminal enterprises to violent local gangs. The 
  real Bakunawas are the elite assassins, enforcers, 
  and managers who keep the local gang leaders in 
  power—and in line.
  DEUS XI
  Most AI systems are carefully built with behavioral 
  restraints and directives to ensure that they remain loyal 
  to their creators. Not all programmers were as careful 
  about that as they should have been in the early days of 
  the AI revolution. In the mid-2050s, a politico-military AI 
  system went rogue and instigated World War III before 
  it was defeated. The human governments of the world 
  believed they had destroyed it, but the AI escaped by 
  cloning itself in the Internet. This was the seed that 
  grew into Deus XI, a clever and malicious AI with a 
  God complex. Deus XI intends to enslave the human 
  race to establish order throughout human space . . . 
  and, astonishingly enough, it’s found thousands of 
  human followers who are eager to help it achieve 
  that goal. 
  Villains and Threats
  17
  Gate. No one knows if an extinction-level threat is waiting out there 
  ally rules dozens of small asteroid-belt habitats 
  and controls the illicit drug trade from Mars to 
  Titan, the Bakunawa Cartel franchises out their 
  criminal enterprises to violent local gangs. The 
  real Bakunawas are the elite assassins, enforcers, 
  and managers who keep the local gang leaders in 
  Most AI systems are carefully built with behavioral 
  restraints and directives to ensure that they remain loyal 
  to their creators. Not all programmers were as careful 
  about that as they should have been in the early days of 
  the AI revolution. In the mid-2050s, a politico-military AI 
  system went rogue and instigated World War III before 
  it was defeated. The human governments of the world 
  believed they had destroyed it, but the AI escaped by 
  cloning itself in the Internet. This was the seed that 
  grew into Deus XI, a clever and malicious AI with a 
  God complex. Deus XI intends to enslave the human 
  race to establish order throughout human space . . . 
  and, astonishingly enough, it’s found thousands of 
  human followers who are eager to help it achieve 
  
  18
  The Protostar Universe
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  18
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide
  The Protostar Universe
  GENESIS 6
  A radical Earth-based religious movement, Genesis 6 is dedicated 
  to stopping the artiﬁcial evolution of the human form. Legitimate 
  branches of the organization serve as a powerful lobbying group 
  that pushes lawmakers to ban genetic manipulation and cybernetic 
  augmentation. However, some chapters believe that more violent 
  methods are called for. They assassinate prominent scientists, bomb 
  research facilities, and harass (or even kill) individuals who are obvi-
  ously altered.
  THE KWLL
  So far, humanity has not encountered another species capable of 
  space travel . . . but that doesn’t mean we haven’t met any other 
  civilizations. The kwll are an old, highly civilized species whose 
  technology was roughly equivalent to Earth’s 19th century when 
  we discovered their world on the far side of the Triton Gate. Strong, 
  stocky, six-limbed creatures a little shorter than most adult humans, 
  kwll have glossy seal-like coats of fur and wear little clothing other 
  than weapon harnesses. They’re almost always armed to the teeth 
  with bladed weapons.
  In the thirty-ﬁve years since contact was established, the kwll 
  have leaped into the atomic age and are remorselessly pushing to 
  catch up to humankind. In theory, the UN enforces a technological 
  quarantine of Kwlladh, but in practice, people can get rich by selling 
  things to the kwll that they shouldn’t have. Optimists assume that 
  the kwll will be satisﬁed when they “catch up,” but the truth is not 
  so pleasant. The kwll hate humans, they’re good liars and long-term 
  thinkers, and they’re actively looking for a way to destroy us. Kwll 
  diplomatic delegations and cultural missions are merely covers for 
  a ruthless espionage campaign designed to sow discord in human 
  space and blind humanity to kwll intentions.
  NPC SPOTLIGHT
  • Modesty Delgado, or “Modo” to her friends, is a baromorph ex-soldier 
  who’s one of the best gunsmiths around. She runs a shop in Mariner 
  City on Mars but does most of her business in custom orders. 
  • Alexander X5 is an android warlord who’s rapidly becoming one of 
  the most dangerous crime bosses on Callisto. He programmed himself 
  by studying everything he could learn about Earth’s ancient despots, 
  administering his empire with cold efciency.
  • Drew Dallas captains the Yellow Rose, a tramp freighter running sup-
  plies to mining posts. Between runs he hunts human trafckers, look-
  ing for a son abducted years ago; forced labor is common practice in 
  the ungoverned settlements of the outer system. 
  
  Adventures in the 23rd Century
  19
  SECURITY DIRECTORATE OF CERES
  The People’s Collective of Ceres maintains one of the most fear-
  some and capable spy agencies in the Solar System. CSD oper-
  atives work tirelessly to undermine and destabilize neighboring 
  governments, steal research, assassinate dissidents, and sabotage 
  the military and industrial facilities of hostile powers. Worse yet, the 
  CSD invests heavily in psionics research, and ﬁelds a small army of 
  highly skilled psychics and mind-readers in the pursuit of their goals.
  TETHYS-HYGIEA SYNDICATE
  Tethys-Hygiea is a megacorp distinguished by its exceptionally 
  ruthless business practices and its grand ambitions. A century ago, 
  the Syndicate spearheaded the commercial exploitation of the outer 
  Solar System, establishing a dominant position in manufacturing 
  and energy industries beyond the asteroid belt. Then the discovery 
  of the Triton Gate upset those plans, ofering better opportunities 
  than dark, icy moons of the outer planets. As a result, the Syndicate 
  is now engaged in the efort to seize everything they can get their 
  hands on beyond the Triton Gate and dominate human expansion to 
  the stars.
  THE BANSHEES
  No one in authority publicly acknowledges it, but the rumors of 
  ships vanishing on the other side of the Triton Gate are true. Some 
  as-yet unknown species has access to one or more branches of the 
  Protostar wormhole nexus, and they are spying out human out-
  posts and resisting human explorations. The only evidence to date 
  consists of weird radio signals in the form of eerie, inhuman shrieks, 
  which the authorities dismiss as natural bursts of static. UNARA 
  is desperate to learn more about our mysterious adversaries . . . 
  and the Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate is interested in making a deal 
  with them.
  ADVENTURES IN THE 23RD CENTURY
  Try your luck as a wildcat asteroid miner. Take a contract to protect 
  the people of a ﬂedgling settlement from the corporate goons trying 
  to seize the territory beneath their feet. Hire out your services as a 
  professional inﬁltrator going after a priceless Gate code hidden in 
  someone’s server. Track down outlaws hiding in lawless outer-sys-
  tem outposts or inner-system orbital tenements. The future is wide 
  open, if you’ve got nerves of steel and ice water in your veins.
  
  20
  The Protostar Universe
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  PROTOSTAR SEASON 1
  The adventures that make up the remaining chapters of this book 
  serve as a good introduction to the setting and some of the major 
  themes and power groups of the age.
  • The Roanoke Afair (level 1) begins as a heist. The heroes 
  are hired to steal a case containing clues that lead to the 
  hiding place of a new Triton Gate code.
  • Something Old, Something New (level 2) sends the heroes 
  on an investigation spanning the asteroid belt as they dig 
  into the true motives of a rogue sect selling “immortality.” 
  • Tartarus Station (level 2) combines a rescue mission and a 
  bug hunt. The heroes investigate a transgate mining post 
  that’s gone dark.
  • Hives of Janrata (level 3) ofers the heroes the chance to 
  participate in the ﬁrst exploration of a newly discovered 
  Gate code. The ruins of an alien civilization harbor a danger-
  ous secret.
  • In The Martian Hostage (level 3), the heroes are hired 
  to rescue an Earth scientist kidnapped by a Martian cor-
  poration. But ﬁrst they’ll have to climb one of the tallest 
  mountains in the Solar System. It’s an inﬁltration-and- 
  extraction mission.
  You don’t need to run the adventures in order (although the dif-
  ﬁculty increases slightly from the ﬁrst adventure through to the last 
  adventure).
  ADVENTURE PITCHES
  If you prefer to create your own ALTERNITY adventures, here are a 
  few “elevator pitches” to consider.
  Claim Jumpers: Someone is attacking asteroid miners near 
  Psyche, shooting up their ships and stealing valuable cargoes of 
  ore. The heroes are hired by the Psyche Miners’ Guild to track down 
  the villains behind the attacks and put them out of business.
  Deep Ice: Callisto is a mess, overrun by violent gangs and 
  would-be warlords ﬁghting for control of the moon. So why is the 
  research branch of the megacorp QuantarX suddenly very inter-
  ested in deep excavations in Callisto’s icy crust? Is there something 
  of interest in the vast ocean beneath the ice? Or have they found 
  something like the Triton Gate buried in the ice of the Jovian moon? 
  Gunrunners: The heroes are hired by a mysterious organization 
  to smuggle a load of weapons to revolutionaries arming themselves 
  for an uprising on New Virginia, a transgate colony operated by the 
  Syndicate. It’s dangerous, but it pays well . . . up until the moment 
  the heroes discover that their mysterious supplier is actually 
  
  Adventures in the 23rd Century
  21
  Adventures in the 23rd Century
  21
  Syndicate corporate security, and the whole scheme is designed to 
  expose the rebel movement. 
  The Kilimanjaro Enigma: A wealthy Saharan League family has 
  unearthed an ancient manuscript suggesting that some sort of tech-
  nological device or installation is buried on the slopes of Mount Kili-
  manjaro. The manuscript’s illustrations depict an object that bears a 
  striking resemblance to the Triton Gate. Did the Gate-builders visit 
  prehistoric Earth? When the scroll goes missing, an archeological 
  expedition turns into a race against a ruthless foe.
  The Manchurian Virus: Someone is turning Vesta’s robots into 
  assassins, reprogramming ordinary labor and domestic models 
  to carry out targeted killings. The victims have all been prominent 
  Emancipationists, which suggests that one megacorp or another is 
  behind the scheme. The heroes are hired to protect the foremost 
  remaining Emancipationist.
  Project Ra: The Helios League is deploying an advanced net-
  work of solar-powered laser satellites that will be the most power-
  ful weapon of mass destruction in the Solar System. Inﬁltrate the 
  military research post at Mercury’s north pole and steal the project 
  plans for your employer.
  Rescue James Cook: One of UNARA’s scientiﬁc vessels engaged 
  in exploring an uncharted system missed its return date for the 
  Triton Gate. An automated beacon reported that the ship crashed 
  on a primitive world of dangerous beasts and savage alien warriors, 
  the marzogs. When the heroes reach the crash site, they ﬁnd that 
  the survivors are scattered in the jungle—and that James Cook was 
  brought down by alien weapon in an ancient jungle ruin.
  NPC SPOTLIGHT
  • Bodi Xing is the owner of the Rock Chaser, the toughest asteroid 
  miners’ bar in the belt. He’s also an information broker who’d sell out 
  his own mother. Bodi doesn’t have friends; he has clients.
  • Red Lotus is an assassin who carries a katana and a deadly suite of 
  cybernetic enhancements. The Bakunawas have some hold over her, 
  and force her to kill those who earn their wrath.
  • Dr. Kalap Sharma is a researcher at the Triton Gate who is correlat-
  ing Gate-builder artifacts and rumored sightings of Banshee ships. His 
  colleagues take him for a crazy conspiracy theorist. 
  
  22
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Affair
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  22
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Affair
  EPISODE 1: THE 
  ROANOKE AFFAIR
  An adventure for 1st-level heroes
  A mysterious package, a derelict spaceship, and rivals racing to secure 
  the ultimate lottery ticket in the form of a new Gate code—the heroes 
  have their hands full when an anonymous client hires them to retrieve his 
  stolen property.
  BACKGROUND
  Several years ago, Captain Janelle Carter of the well-worn mining ship, 
  Roanoke, acquired some decommissioned Decryptor hardware, hoping to 
  research a new Triton Gate code. Her efort paid of, and she lucked into 
  a new code. Through Mr. White, an old friend at the exploration company, 
  Orion Ventures, Carter obtained a charter that included an expedition-wor-
  thy ship. She hid the Roanoke in an abandoned asteroid mine, then left with 
  Roanoke’s crew in search of whatever she might ﬁnd on the other side of 
  the Triton Gate.
  Carter didn’t tell her new sponsors the Gate code . . . and she didn’t 
  return. White searched for Roanoke for months, hoping to ﬁnd the code and 
  send someone after Carter. He didn’t ﬁnd Roanoke, but he did recover a set 
  of coordinates she’d left behind in the event she failed to return—the secret 
  of the ship’s hiding spot. Unfortunately, Carter’s coordinates lacked a key 
  clue needed to make sense of the coordinates.
  Then, on the two-year anniversary of Carter’s departure, Roanoke’s AI 
  executed a long-delayed order, sending a signal intended for Mr. White to a 
  message service at Edo Station. He sent an agent to retrieve the message, 
  but Otto Black of the Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate intercepted White’s agent, 
  stealing the message. Black now plans to sell the transmission to a third 
  party: the notorious mercenary group known as the Terran Brigade.
  ADVENTURE SUMMARY
  The story begins on Edo Station, a rotating space habitat located in Jupi-
  ter’s outer moons. Mr. White hires the heroes to obtain a briefcase from Mr. 
  Black, an ofcial in the Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate who has ofces on Edo. 
  The heroes acquire the case through subterfuge, burglary, or violence, but 
  White can’t make the exchange because he gets caught in a security lock-
  down. He authorizes the heroes to open the case and search out Janelle 
  Carter’s lost ship.
  Within the case is a data drive and a handwritten note with a naviga-
  tion puzzle. The puzzle reveals coordinates within the asteroid belt. There 
  
  Mission Briefing
  23
  Mission Briefing
  23
  the heroes discover Roanoke, a derelict mining vessel. The team 
  boards the abandoned freighter, ﬁghts drones controlled by the 
  ship’s hostile AI, and ﬁnds an old Decryptor system holding Carter’s 
  Gate code. 
  In the ﬁnal scene, the heroes discover that they’ve been followed 
  to Roanoke. Both the Terran Brigade and Orion Ventures want the 
  Gate code. Each makes an ofer, and the heroes must choose an 
  ally—or strike out alone.
  MISSION BRIEFING
  You can assume the heroes have picked up the job from a “talent 
  broker” dealing in gray ops and mercenary work, or through one of 
  the heroes’ contacts.
  When you’re ready to begin, read:
  As your shuttle approaches Edo Station, you review your 
  anonymous employer’s message: a vid of a man’s silhouette 
  speaking in digitally modiﬁed voice.
  “This is Mr. White. I have retained your services to obtain 
  for me a red case, a valise such as a traveler would use, from 
  one Otto Black, a director in the Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate’s Edo 
  Station ofce. There’s some urgency—I have learned that Black 
  plans to sell the contents of the case to the Terran Brigade.
  “The case belongs to Miranda duPrea, an agent in my employ. 
  I sent her to retrieve a message that was being held for me on 
  Edo, but it seems that Black was waiting for someone to show up 
  for it. She has now disappeared; it’s the Syndicate, so I fear the 
  worst. Anyway, I believe the case contains a message of great 
  interest to me—the location of a ship lost in deep space. I’ve 
  been trying to ﬁnd that ship for years.
  “This shuttle is at your disposal. When you’ve recovered 
  my property, send a reply to this message, and I will arrange 
  a meeting.”
  Beyond the cockpit windows of your shuttle, you can see the 
  spinning rings of Edo Station, with Jupiter in the distance.
  The pay is $3,000 per hero or a single Class 3 item, if you’re 
  using a pay-as-you-go reward system. 
  SCENE 1: THE EDO HEIST
  Mr. Black plans to sell White’s case to the Terran Brigade two days 
  from now. Black knows that the case came from an Orion Ventures 
  agent and it has something to do with Janelle Carter. He hasn’t tried 
  to puzzle it out yet because the Terran Brigade extended a lucrative 
  If that doesn't seem 
  like much, tell your 
  players that they 
  shouldn't think in 
  2019 dollars.
  
  24
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Affair
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  ofer for the case—it turns out they were monitoring Janelle Carter’s 
  message arrangements too, and they’re very interested in securing 
  anything that might lead to Roanoke.
  The heroes have three obvious options for getting the case: 
  negotiating for it (possibly including lies or intimidation), stealing it, 
  or grabbing it by force.
  BLACK’S OFFICE SUITE
  The Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate has a lot of money, so everything in 
  here gives of a sleek, clean vibe. Whether the heroes come in guns 
  blazing, sneak around to case the joint, or ask for an appointment 
  with Mr. Black, they’ll ﬁnd:
  • During business hours the ofce complex has heavy foot 
  trafc in the hallways. 
  • During Edo Station’s night cycle, the hallways are empty 
  except for a bored Syndicate security guard who arrives from 
  a random direction every 2d6 minutes.
  • Soft whir of HVAC throughout, and recorded instrumental 
  music in the lobby.
  • Doors are made of frosted, impact-resistant glass. They slide 
  open automatically if they detect motion within a half-meter. 
  (The hallway-lobby and hallway-service tunnel doors are 
  exceptions; see below.)
  
  Scene 1: The Edo Heist
  25
  Scene 1: The Edo Heist
  25
  • Floors are plush carpet; ceilings are acoustic tile. A half- 
  meter crawlspace overheard holds cabling and air ducts, but 
  the acoustic tile won’t support human weight.
  After you’ve described the ofce suite in general terms, give the 
  players some time to come up with an approach, providing extra 
  description to answer any questions they may have.
  NEGOTIATION/BLUFF/INTIMIDATION
  Any meeting with Mr. Black—about the case or about other matters 
  as a pretext—involves two parts. First, the heroes must get face-time 
  with Mr. Black, and then they must win the subsequent negotiation.
  Getting an Appointment: The guard at the lobby desk controls 
  the locked door between the ofce suite and the hallway, and 
  he’ll buzz in anyone who isn’t an obvious threat. Getting beyond 
  the lobby, however, is a skill challenge. The PCs can use Person-
  ality skills such as Coercion or Inﬂuence to bluf or intimidate the 
  guards to get a meeting with Mr. Black. Among the techniques they 
  might try:
  “I’m here to buy a certain storage case. . . .” The guards are 
  under orders to let in only the Terran Brigade representative, who is 
  supposed to identify himself as Colonel Stark. For anyone else, they 
  say that Mr. Black is not accepting appointments right now. 
  To convince the guard to disobey orders and set up a meeting 
  with Mr. Black, the heroes need to gain 3 successes using Decep-
  tion or Inﬂuence. At that point, the guard acquiesces, tells the PCs to 
  wait for a few minutes, then lets the PCs into the conference room, 
  where Mr. Black is waiting. If the party accumulates 3 failures before 
  they reach 3 successes, the challenge fails.
  “I have business with Mr. Black, and if you know what’s good for 
  you. . . .” As above, the challenge succeeds if the heroes achieve 
  3 successes before they accumulate 3 failures, but this skill chal-
  lenge relies on Coercion (if the heroes base their intimidation on 
  actual threats) or Deception (if their threats are blufs). Security 
  guards aren’t impressed by tough talk, but corporate machina-
  tions worry them; implied or actual physical threats sufer a –1 step 
  penalty, but corporate punishments (anything from extra paperwork 
  to demotion to bad marks on their next quarterly review), provide a 
  +1 step bonus.
  When the heroes reach 3 successes, the guards have the PCs 
  wait for a few minutes, then escort them into the conference room, 
  where Mr. Black is waiting.
  “We have a reactor leak and you need to evacuate. . . . ” Ruses 
  such as this one depend on the props and costumes the heroes 
  bring to bear on the situation. Deal with the elements of the ruse 
  such as hacking the ofce suite’s computer system, obtaining Edo 
  Skip the check if the 
  players roleplay a 
  great pitch.
  
  26
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Affair
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  Station security uniforms, or sabotaging environmental systems 
  quickly with relevant skill challenges. Err on the side of making it 
  easy, and use the two-day deadline to shut of any outlandish ele-
  ments to the scheme.
  When the heroes try to trick their way into the ofce, require 
  3 successes as above, but grant a +1 or +2 step bonus for each 
  element of the ruse they set up beforehand. Unlike the other 
  approaches, a ruse probably just gets the guards out of the way, 
  and the heroes can immediately confront Mr. Black in his ofce.
  BURGLARY
  An attempt to sneak in and steal the storage case faces sev-
  eral hurdles.
  • The heroes must get past the locked hallway doors to get 
  into the lobby or the service tunnel.
  • There are two Syndicate guards on duty at all times (one in 
  the lobby, one in the galley). See human guard, page 244, 
  Core Rulebook.
  • Mr. Black is usually in his ofce; he even sleeps there (see 
  Adversaries).
  • The storage case is in a locked wall safe.
  To handle each of those elements, see the individual room 
  descriptions below, which list the skill checks to bypass the locks 
  and gain access.
  MEETING MR. BLACK
  Otto Black is a thin man of medium height and dark hair, and he wears expen-
  sive-looking business attire. He is quiet and calculating, and very loyal to the 
  Syndicate.
  If the heroes convince the guards to set up a meeting, Black awaits them 
  in the conference room, and he’ll have one guard present. (The other one 
  remains at the lobby desk.) After exchanging pleasantries, Mr. Black excuses 
  himself to get the case from his ofce, then uses his ofce computer to check 
  the heroes’ identities. He automatically succeeds unless the heroes took the 
  time to obscure their identities or come up with covers. If Mr. Black discovers 
  the meeting was made under false pretenses, he orders the guards to show 
  the PCs out.
  Mr. Black won’t sell the case or give it up unless he’s under duress. (He’s 
  already agreed to terms with the Terran Brigade, and he’s scared of what’ll 
  happen if he breaks a deal with them.)
  
  Scene 1: The Edo Heist
  27
  Scene 1: The Edo Heist
  27
  ROBBERY
  The diference between burglary and robbery is the latter’s threat 
  of violence. The heroes might opt for the violent approach right 
  away, or their negotiation/burglary attempts may evolve into a rob-
  bery approach.
  The guards defend Mr. Black to the utmost. As for Mr. Black, he 
  is willing to sacriﬁce his guards, but he doesn’t want to die him-
  self. He’ll surrender and give the heroes the case if he is severely 
  wounded, or if he is slightly wounded and both guards are down.
  If the heroes delay long enough for the Terran Brigade to arrive 
  in order to confront (or ambush) everyone at once, the Brigade 
  agent shows up with two merc guards (use the stats from the ﬁnal 
  scene). At the ﬁrst sign that anything’s amiss, the Brigade agent con-
  cludes that Mr. Black set him up, so it’ll be a three-way ﬁght. In that 
  case, Mr. Black may try to escape through the service tunnel, with or 
  without the case.
  Anytime the heroes aren’t actively ﬁghting, it’s easy for them 
  to leave the Syndicate ofces and slip into the public parts of 
  Edo Station.
  SYNDICATE OFFICE ROOMS
  The seats are plush, the conference table is real wood, and the 
  galley snacks are artisanal. The Syndicate is wealthy.
  A. Lobby: The main entrance to the ofce suite opens from the 
  station’s commercial corridor, and it’s kept locked. A guard at a 
  reception desk in the lobby can unlock and open the door from his 
  desk. A keypad on the wall by the door can also open the door with 
  the right passcode.
  About half the time, there’s a second guard in the lobby, sitting 
  in one of the comfy chairs and playing “Asteroid Crush Saga” on 
  a datapad.
  • Door: Resistance 7, durability: 1–6 q, 7 9 q, 10 12 q, 13+ q 
  (destroyed).
  • Keypad: Hacking requires three successful Security checks. 
  The ﬁrst grants access to security functions. The second 
  overrides security and allows access to door function, but 
  failure alerts guard staf and imposes a –2 step penalty on 
  check to open the door. The third success opens the door 
  and provides a code that allows future access.
  • Guards: They ﬁght until incapacitated, but they get Hicks-
  from-Aliens panicky if things aren’t going their way. See 
  Human Guard, page 244, Core Rulebook.
  • Desk Computer: The app controlling the door is always on 
  screen, as is a voice link to Black’s ofce. During a con-
  ference-room meeting with Mr. Black, the guard assigned 
  If the players look 
  frustrated or the 
  meeting stalls out, 
  that's your cue 
  to bring in the 
  Terran Brigade.
  
  28
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Affair
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  desk duty watches (but does not listen to) the conversation 
  through a video link.
  • Fish Tank: There’s a ﬂoor-to-ceiling ﬁsh tank along the south 
  wall. The ﬁrst ranged weapon miss shatters the tank and 
  sends ﬁsh and water everywhere.
  B. Black’s Ofce: Mr. Black’s ofce has a fancy desk and plush 
  chairs. The couch on the north wall folds out into a bed, and that’s 
  where Mr. Black sleeps during the station’s night cycle. Mr. Black 
  sleeps in his ofce as long as the case is in his care.
  • Wall Safe: Set into the south wall. Accessed with Mr. Black’s 
  iris-scan or a successful Security check at a –2 step penalty, 
  but failure sounds an alarm that alerts the guards within 
  the ofce suite and brings two more Syndicate guards in 
  5 minutes.
  • Black’s Computer: Has video links to conference room and 
  voice link to the lobby desk. Also connects via email and 
  video to the Syndicate’s broader ofce network, though 
  most other teams protect their data behind security features. 
  Mr. Black doesn’t keep sensitive data here; he’s just borrow-
  ing this ofce while he’s on Edo Station.
  C. Conference Room: A large wooden table dominates this 
  meeting room. If the heroes meet with Mr. Black to obtain the case, 
  they are directed to this room.
  • Main Viewscreen: The back wall is dominated by a map 
  of the Solar System, with the belt settlements and Saturn 
  moon colonies highlighted—the territory in which the Tethys -
  Hygiea Syndicate primarily operates.
  • Bar: Shelves on the west wall hold fancy booze from Earth. 
  If he’s at ease, Mr. Black will ofer drinks before discuss-
  ing business.
  • Light Sculptures: Along the north wall are two pedestals that 
  show looping holograms of lithe, androgynous dancers. The 
  pedestals provide cover in a ﬁght.
  D. Workroom: A storage room contains boxes of documents and 
  data packs that detail Syndicate dealings throughout the Jovian 
  moons. If the heroes insist on ransacking the place, doing so takes 
  an hour. Some of the data looks valuable in a corporate-espionage 
  sense, if the heroes can ﬁnd a buyer.
  E. Galley: At the end of the corridor is a simple galley and wash-
  room. When the second guard isn’t in the lobby or in the confer-
  ence room with Mr. Black, he’s in here. The food and snacks are of 
  high quality—much better than the heat-and- serve stuf back on 
  the shuttle.
  
  Scene 1: The Edo Heist
  29
  Scene 1: The Edo Heist
  29
  F. Service Tunnel: The door between the outer hallway and the 
  service tunnel is sturdy metal and solidly locked. The heroes can 
  unlock this door using a keypad interface, using the same Security 
  challenge as the lobby door.
  .Video Cameras: The tunnel has video surveillance accessible by 
  the guards in the lobby, who are alerted if an incorrect code is used.
  • Interior Doors: The doors between the service tunnel and 
  the ofce suite aren’t locked on either side, but they have 
  airtight dogging latches that take two impulses to unlatch. 
  With a successful Security check, they unlatch quietly; other-
  wise everyone in the ofce suite hears the door open.
  INTERLUDE: FLIGHT DELAYS
  When the heroes send word to Mr. White that the case has been 
  recovered, a new voice transmission arrives a few minutes later.
  “Excellent work! I expected no less. But . . . there’s a problem. 
  Edo Station just put the corporate docks into a security lock-
  down. Until further notice, I’m stuck on my ship, and you can’t get 
  to me. The public landing bays aren’t closed yet and your shuttle 
  is free to go, but the Syndicate is probably pestering the Edo 
  Station security staf to shut it all down.
  “So, here’s the deal: I’ll double your pay if you get that case 
  of Edo Station and investigate the lost ship it leads to. I might be 
  here a while.”
  Mr. White is correct—the heroes can indeed get to their shuttle 
  without incident, although there are lots of jumpsuited customs 
  agents running around and it’s clear that something is going on. 
  Once on the shuttle, they can decouple from Edo Station without 
  difculty and sit in Jupiter orbit while they open the case.
  THE CASE
  The case has a biometric scanner that can be defeated with a Secu-
  rity check, or the case can be forced open with an Athletics check 
  (at a –4 step penalty). Power tools available in the shuttle’s tool 
  locker would also do the trick. 
  Inside are a datastick and a handwritten note. The datastick 
  holds just one ﬁle: a string of numbers that appear to be XYZ 
  astrometric coordinates. A check of the coordinates on the shuttle’s 
  navigation database identiﬁes the location as empty space danger-
  ously close to the Sun. 
  The handwritten note (a rarity in these times) is signed by 
  Mr. White. It reads:
  
  30
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Affair
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  30
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Affair
  Miranda: This is the key, but what does it unlock? Why Vesta? 
  Hopefully the transmission you ﬁnd is the lock this key will ﬁt.
  Keep this analog. I’m starting to have concerns about commu-
  nication security.
  —Mr. White
  Another sentence appears at the bottom of the note:
  I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve had two years to memo-
  rize it: 54 68 65 53 75 6e 49 73 56 65 73 74 61
  If the heroes try to head directly to the initial coordinates without 
  decoding White’s note ﬁrst, it’s a journey of several weeks. and the 
  shuttle lacks the radiation shielding required to keep the crew alive 
  on the close approach to the Sun.
  THE SECRET
  A Computer or Science check identiﬁes the number string as a 
  hexadecimal code; converting it to text reveals the message to be 
  “TheSunIsVesta.”
  If the heroes use the asteroid Vesta instead of the Sun as the 
  point of origin for the coordinates, they point to a small asteroid 
  within the belt. A search for information on the coordinates reveals 
  only that it was once the site of an asteroid mining operation. The 
  heroes can use their shuttle to get there in about two days’ time.
  MR. WHITE’S STORY
  A few hours after the heroes set course for the deciphered coordi-
  nates, they get another voice transmission from Mr. White:
  “If you’re getting this, then you must be on your way to the 
  lost ship. I’m not sure exactly what you’ll ﬁnd, but I ought to tell 
  you what I know. That ship won’t stay lost for long.
  “The Roanoke was an asteroid-mining ship captained by 
  a friend of mine, Janelle Carter. She roamed around the belt, 
  barely making ends meet, but then she found something better 
  than ore: some decommissioned Decryptor tech that one of the 
  megacorps jettisoned.
  “Janelle has the instincts of a belt scrounger, so she managed 
  to get the Decryptor working, and it spit out a new code for the 
  Triton Gate. She knew I worked for Orion Ventures, so I brokered 
  the exploration deal. She trusted me, but she didn’t entirely trust 
  the rest of Orion Ventures. We gave her a new ship and a decent 
  split of the exploitation rights for whatever she found on the far 
  If your players 
  try entering the 
  numbers into 
  a hexadecimal 
  converter on 
  their smart 
  phones, it works!
  
  Scene 1: The Edo Heist
  31
  Scene 1: The Edo Heist
  31
  side of the Gate. But she didn’t give us the Gate code itself, and 
  she didn’t tell us where she stashed the Roanoke.
  “It’s been two years since Janelle entered the Gate. I think this 
  message is a fail-safe; she set it up so that if she didn’t return, I 
  would eventually be notiﬁed of Roanoke’s location. That means 
  she wants to be found.
  “I’m trying to clear myself of certain customs entanglements 
  here on Edo Station. But it’s not the Syndicate pulling the strings. 
  It’s a military contractor: The Terran Brigade.”
  When the PCs arrive at the deciphered coordinates, they dis-
  cover Roanoke parked inside an asteroid mine.
  THE ROANOKE
  Roanoke is a 30-year-old civilian mining vessel. For most of its 
  career, it extracted iron and other materials from asteroids in the belt, 
  but when Janelle Carter acquired it, she took on a variety of odd jobs 
  such as prospecting, supply runs, and salvage work. The ship’s too 
  big to navigate the Triton Gate; the bigger the ship, the more energy 
  it requires, and the less likely it is to successfully navigate the Triton 
  Gate. (That’s why Carter cut a deal with Orion Ventures for a scout 
  ship rather than just heading through the Triton Gate directly.)
  For years, Roanoke has quietly ﬂoated within an artiﬁcial crater 
  on an asteroid nearly 3 km in diameter. The mining operation 
  decades ago involved splitting the asteroid apart to get to lucrative 
  minerals at its core, so now the asteroid’s hollowed-out midsection 
  is a 500-meter-wide void where the derelict Roanoke is hidden 
  from view.
  • Once close to the asteroid, the PCs automatically spot Roa-
  noke on their ship’s scanners. They can detect faint energy 
  emissions but no obvious signs of life.
  • The derelict maintains just enough power to prevent the 
  interior from freezing and keep the Decryptor computers 
  running in low-power mode.
  • Roanoke does not respond to any communications or data 
  transmissions (for a computer link). 
  • The ship has two docking collars. A successful Piloting 
  check brings the heroes’ shuttle into the docking collar of 
  their choice cleanly. On a failure, the docking is still success-
  ful, but the hard “bump” gives Roanoke’s AI extra time to 
  activate anti-pirate measures.
  Roanoke’s AI has become unhinged during its abandonment, 
  and its last directive was to keep the cargo safe. It decides the best 
  way to do that is by activating internal defense systems, including 
  defense drones, once the heroes approach the ship’s hull.
  
  32
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Affair
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  SCENE 2: EXPLORING ROANOKE
  After the heroes dock, Roanoke’s AI activates the ship’s defense 
  protocol, and locks the doors leading to the bridge, the cargo bays, 
  and engineering. Defense drones begin patrolling the primary pas-
  sageways (see Drone Attack, below).
  The heroes can explore the ship as they wish. The two most 
  interesting locations are the bridge (where they can shut of the 
  AI and the defense drones) and the center cargo bay (where the 
  Decryptor is).
  INTERIOR FEATURES
  In its prime, Roanoke was a workaday mining vessel. It’s grimy, dark, 
  and falling apart in all sorts of superﬁcial ways. Regardless of the 
  speciﬁc location, the following elements describe the environment 
  aboard the Roanoke:
  • Almost every bulkhead has dents and scrape-marks; the sort 
  you leave behind when you’re moving furniture none too 
  carefully.
  • The air is stale and slightly metallic-smelling.
  • Lighting is a mixture of ﬂickering overheads and wall-
  mounted red emergency lights. It’s dim everywhere, but 
  never truly dark.
  • The ship has largely been emptied out. The only small 
  objects remaining are clearly trash: old shipping labels, food 
  wrappers, and broken mechanical parts.
  Doors: With the defenses active, all doors are locked. A charac-
  ter can use the Mechanics or Security skills to unlock a door. Doors 
  to the cargo bays are particularly difcult to unlock unless released 
  INFORMATION IN THE SHIP’S COMPUTERS
  From either the bridge or engineering, heroes can coax the following out of 
  Roanoke’s computers. Each requires a successful Computer check (at a –2 step 
  penalty if the AI on the bridge is still active).
  • A basic deck plan for the ship.
  • Logs that document use as a mining vessel for about three decades. 
  Owned by a Captain Janelle Carter, the ship was parked here about 
  two years ago.
  • Environmental status (air, heat, radiation, and so forth) for each part 
  of the ship.
  • A crew manifest that shows between eight and twelve crew mem-
  bers at a time for the decades Roanoke was in service. They all 
  departed the ship at the same time; no reason given.
  
  Scene 2: Exploring Roanoke
  33
  Scene 2: Exploring Roanoke
  33
  from the bridge, and 
  incur a –3 step penalty at 
  the skill check.
  Computer Terminals: 
  Most chambers within 
  Roanoke have a com-
  puter that’s still function-
  ing, but the ship AI has 
  locked them for the dura-
  tion of the “piracy crisis.”
  DRONE ATTACK
  When the heroes dock, 
  the ship’s AI activates 
  defense drones that are 
  stored in large “charging 
  stations” on the bulk-
  heads near the bridge 
  and engineering. The 
  drones patrol down the 
  parallel hallways that run 
  the length of the ship 
  (the AI opens doors for 
  them) and attack with-
  out warning.
  • 1 defense drone 
  per character in 
  the team (see 
  Adversaries).
  • Half the drones 
  defend the bridge; 
  half defend the 
  4-way intersections 
  near the cargo bays. They attack as soon as the heroes 
  open a hatch leading into those spaces.
  • The AI directs whichever group of drones is not involved in 
  the ﬁght to join the battle; this group arrives as reinforce-
  ments at the end of Impulse 8 in the third combat round.
  • If the heroes failed the Piloting check to dock, an “extra” 
  drone awaits in the passage by the airlock and attacks as 
  soon as they enter the ship; the bridge group arrives at the 
  end of the ﬁrst round, and the cargo group arrives at the end 
  of the third round.
  The drones ﬁght until destroyed.
  
  34
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Affair
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  The hatch slides open, revealing a hovering robot about 
  one meter tall. It’s armed with two powerful gripping arms and 
  a turret-mounted laser on top of its cylindrical body. “Intruder 
  detected!” it announces, and its status light switches from 
  green to red.
  SPECIAL HAZARDS
  The heroes probably get two ﬁghts aboard Roanoke. Rather than 
  identify every quirk of the ship’s interior, we’ve designed some 
  environmental hazards and other bits of “set dressing” that you can 
  include in your battles. Use as many or as few as you like.
  Debris Cloud: A cloud of light objects (loose paper, packing 
  material, party favors) ﬂoats unsecured in a roughly one-meter cube. 
  It’s not dangerous, but it provides concealment and confuses the 
  sensors of any defense drone that enters it. The drone can’t act for 
  1d6 impulses.
  Sparking Cables: A tangled cluster of cables ﬂoats outward from 
  a wall, sparking periodically. Anyone who passes within a meter 
  of the cables gets hit with a shock that inﬂicts a wound of 1d6 + 2 
  energy damage.
  Sudden Leak: This is a good one after stray small-arms ﬁre. A 
  pipe bursts, sending a blast of hot steam 3 meters from the bulk-
  head. The cloud obscures its area until the end of the next action 
  round, and anyone inside must succeed at a Dodge check or take 
  one wound of 1d6 energy damage.
  A. Bridge: Many of the components at various work stations have 
  been removed, but Roanoke’s bridge is technically functional. The 
  ship’s environmental systems seem to be functioning, all areas of 
  the ship have minimal power, and the Decryptor installation in the 
  center cargo hold is running. The bridge features include:
  • Four work stations: Helm in front, then Sensors, Captain, and 
  Communications in a row behind it. (Engineering is in its own 
  chamber aft, and there’s no weapons station.)
  • The work stations have some empty holes where computer 
  banks, extra monitors, and other gear used to be.
  • Lighting is red “crisis-mode.”
  • The Sensors console is powered up and is running some 
  sort of security software.
  • The view out the forward windows is spectacular: the 
  asteroid belt stretching out into the distance, framed by the 
  edges of the crater Roanoke ﬂoats within.
  Once the heroes reach the bridge, they can use a Computer or 
  Security check at the Sensors console to disable the AI’s defense 
  protocol, then use the console to unlock doors throughout the ship. 
  More robust actions aren’t possible without hours of jury-rigging; 
  
  Scene 2: Exploring Roanoke
  35
  Scene 2: Exploring Roanoke
  35
  ROLEPLAYING THE 
  ROANOKE’S AI
  Nicknamed “Cindy” by the crew, 
  Roanoke’s computer is self-
  aware—but it isn’t aware that it’s 
  malfunctioning. Play Cindy as a 
  jilted lover; it’s upset that Janelle 
  chose to leave her behind when 
  the captain went of on a grand 
  adventure, after everything 
  Cindy did for her. Cindy can speak 
  through the security drones, and 
  their indicator lights glow red 
  whenever she does. She can also 
  commandeer the intercom to 
  transmit her disembodied voice 
  anywhere on the ship.
  Carter and her crew cannibalized too much of the Roanoke when 
  they departed.
  Is the ship ﬂyable? Probably, but it’ll take hours for the heroes 
  to familiarize themselves with the controls and get all the systems 
  online. The fact that much of the bridge has been dismantled slows 
  them down.
  B. Crew Quarters: The crew of the ship 
  had one last party here before mothballing 
  the ship, and they didn’t clean up after 
  themselves. All the interior doors are open, 
  and garbage—mostly food wrappers and 
  empty alcohol bottles—ﬂoats in the air. 
  The port and starboard corridors outside 
  the crew quarters each have six 2-person 
  escape pods.
  C. Docking Collars: If the heroes had a 
  rough time docking, then the drone ﬁght 
  starts at one of the docking collars.
  • The airlock has a simple keypad and 
  communication terminal at the wall on 
  both the exterior and interior sides.
  • Status indicators on both sides of the 
  airlock doors show breathable air, 
  tolerable temperatures, and radiation 
  within safe levels.
  • There’s a manual crank on both sides of both doors, 
  secure behind a panel, that slowly opens the door even if 
  there’s no power.
  D. Cargo Bays: The smaller cargo bays are empty, save for scat-
  tered empty crates and other detritus. The central large cargo bay is 
  securely locked (a –3 step penalty to Mechanics or Security checks 
  if the heroes haven’t deactivated the security protocol on the 
  bridge). Inside is Roanoke’s true hidden treasure: rows of Decryptor 
  computer hardware, still running on low power. Read to the players:
  The door opens. The 40-meter-deep cargo bay beyond is 
  nearly ﬁlled with walls of computer hardware, stacked from ﬂoor 
  to ceiling. Blinking lights on the modular systems indicate they 
  still have power and seem to be working.
  A single console stands near the door, its screens dark. 
  Three words and a prompt illuminate a single-line LED dis-
  play near a removable data deck: CODE SOLUTION FOUND. 
  TRANSFER Y/N?
  There’s an external drive socket right below the LED display.
  
  36
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Affair
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   A successful Computer check (+2 step bonus) identiﬁes the 
  Decryptor system and its general purpose. Decryptor systems 
  generally aren’t directly connected to other networks to prevent 
  external intrusions, so if the heroes want to make use of the code, 
  they’ll need to download it to a datastick here. Selecting “Y” begins 
  the data transfer to a portable data drive, but it also powers up 
  Roanoke’s engines and increases the ship’s power levels as well as 
  turning on the ship’s transponder beacon. Selecting “N” prevents 
  this from happening immediately, but the prompt returns every 
  5 minutes.
  Once the data transfer begins, move to Scene 3.
  E. Engineering: This part of the ship is even more dismantled 
  than the bridge was.
  • Open panels on all walls have cables ﬂoating out of them—
  it’s almost like a kelp forest.
  • A few monitors remain active, showing system diagnostic info.
  • (If someone examines the monitors) The ship drives appear 
  intact; Roanoke could move under its own power if brought 
  back online.
  There’s not much here, but all that cabling can provide a modi-
  cum of cover in a battle.
  SCENE 3: NEGOTIATE OR ESCAPE
  The heroes’ departure from Edo Station while the corporate docks 
  were locked down did not go unnoticed, and both the Terran Bri-
  gade and Orion Ventures tracked them. The Terran Brigade wants 
  the information they were going to buy on Edo, but they don’t want 
  anyone else to have it, and they’re prepared to take the data by 
  force. Orion Ventures is following up on Mr. White’s plans and want 
  to know what happened on Edo Station. They won’t resort to vio-
  lence except to defend themselves.
  Shortly after transferring the code to the portable data drive, the 
  PCs are contacted by these two groups demanding the data. Read 
  the following:
  Your communicator beeps; a new transmission has arrived. A 
  recorded vid shows a middle-aged man with a military haircut, 
  dressed in gray battle armor. He says:
  “This is Colonel Stark of the Terran Brigade. You have some-
  thing that belongs to us. Turn it over to us and you will be prop-
  erly compensated. If you do not comply, you won’t make it of 
  that ship before our torpedoes hit.”
  Then a second message comes in. This one features a familiar 
  silhouette:
  
  Scene 3: Negotiate or Escape
  37
  Scene 3: Negotiate or Escape
  37
  “This is Mr. White—the Brigade followed you, and I’m following 
  them. Work with me, and I’ll get you out of there.”
  The heroes have a choice: Give the data to the Terran Bri-
  gade or cooperate with Orion Ventures. They can reply to one or 
  both messages on a return channel. Their decision impacts what 
  happens next.
  ACCEPT THE BRIGADE’S OFFER
  If the heroes reply positively to the Terran Brigade, Stark sends 
  a message:
  “Good choice. I’m authorizing a payment of $2,000 apiece for 
  your team’s trouble. Our pinnace is docking now at the unoc-
  cupied airlock. Go to the ship’s bridge and enable the docking 
  sequence. Once it’s complete, rendezvous with our agents and 
  turn over the data, and we’ll arrange for payment.”
  Unfortunately, there’s a hiccup: When the mercenary pinnace 
  docks, Roanoke’s AI activates an emergency routine that deploys 
  reserve defense drones and starts a self-destruct sequence—a ﬁnal 
  measure Janelle Carter put in place to keep the access code out of 
  Terran Brigade hands. The heroes must ﬁght through the drones and 
  get of Roanoke before it explodes. Read the following to the players:
  The sound of metal docking clamps engaging echoes 
  through the silent passageways of the ship. Suddenly, an alert 
  siren sounds, and a mechanical voice echoes through the ship’s 
  intercom: “TERRAN BRIGADE DETECTED. EXECUTING DEFENSE 
  PROTOCOL EPSILON. DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED.”
  This has the following efects:
  • Another group of defense drones deploys from hidden 
  lockers (1 per hero).
  • All previously opened doors shut and lock (unless perma-
  nently disabled earlier). 
  • At impulse 8 each round, a minor explosion rocks the ship. 
  Each hero must make an Acrobatics check or be knocked 
  of-balance.
  • At the end of round 3, a torpedo breaches the hull near the 
  stern of the ship, and all movement toward the front of the 
  ship is halved due to air venting into space.
  • At the end of round 8, the remainder of the ship explodes. 
  
  38
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  The encounter ends when the heroes reach the mercenary gun-
  boat’s pinnace (or their own ship) and escape, or when Roanoke is 
  destroyed with the heroes still on board.
  ACCEPT ORION VENTURE’S OFFER
  If the heroes choose to give the data to Orion Ventures, the Brigade 
  responds by torpedoing Roanoke’s bridge (or its drives if the heroes 
  are currently on the bridge) and the heroes’ shuttle, then sends a 
  boarding party to take them out. With the bridge destroyed, the 
  AI does not engage defensive measures, but the PCs must ﬁght 
  past the mercenaries to escape Roanoke. Read the following to 
  the players:
  Mr. White contacts you again: “It looks like the Brigade is 
  sending over a boarding party, and they’ve opened their torpedo 
  tubes. Get of the ship, and we can pick you up. Wait, hold on to 
  something!” A moment later, you’re nearly knocked of your feet 
  by an impact somewhere near the front of the ship. White con-
  tinues: “Looks like they took out your shuttle! Find some escape 
  pods or commandeer the boarding party’s vessel—they’re dock-
  ing now. Good luck!”
  The Terran Brigade pinnace docks at the unoccupied docking 
  collar and unloads mercenaries to take out the heroes. The PCs 
  either can get to the escape pods near the crew quarters, or try to 
  commandeer the Brigade pinnace. Colonel Stark’s ship is a gunboat 
  about 10 kilometers away. If all the mercenaries are killed, the gun-
  boat resumes ﬁring torpedoes, giving the team 4 rounds to escape 
  Roanoke before it is annihilated.
  • 1 Terran Brigade mercenary per hero in the team (see 
  Adversaries)
  Commandeering the pinnace is automatic if the mercenaries are 
  dead; its autopilot accepts directions from anyone. Once clear of 
  Roanoke, Mr. White picks up the team from the escape pods or the 
  mercenary pinnace with the Orion Ventures ship, then rockets away 
  out of range of the slower Brigade gunboat.
  REMAIN SILENT OR STALL FOR TIME
  If the party doesn’t respond to either group, the Terran Brigade 
  launches the assault anyway. The PCs will have to ﬁght of the mer-
  cenaries and ﬁnd a way of the ship. 
  If the players relish social roleplaying, you can play out the 
  conversation with Colonel Stark. Use the mercenary pinnace as a 
  timer; its velocity is the speed of plot. Let the players make Inﬂuence 
  
  Epilogue
  39
  Epilogue
  39
  checks and play out a tense negotiation or angry confrontation. At 
  the dramatic moment, the pinnace connects with Roanoke’s docking 
  collar, and the ﬁght is on.
  MAKE A BREAK FOR IT
  The heroes may try to ﬂee, either in the Roanoke itself or the shuttle 
  they arrived in if it’s still intact. Roanoke is slow and unarmed but it’s 
  big enough to take a few hits, so this space battle is best handled 
  narratively.
  • Torpedoes from the Terran Brigade’s gunboat hit nearby 
  asteroids about half of the time, and they hit the Roanoke 
  the other half.
  • After a couple of torpedo hits, the heroes get one last mes-
  sage from Mr. White: “I hope you know what you’re doing; 
  they’re ﬁring torpedoes at me too. I’ll try to contact you later.”
  • Ask the players where they’re going. Logical destinations 
  include Edo Station (two days away under cruising thrust), 
  the Free City of Vesta (a prominent trade hub about a day 
  away), or the Triton Gate itself (several weeks, depending on 
  the torpedo damage).
  • After a few more salvos, a torpedo ruins Roanoke’s drives, 
  but it’s already on course for the heroes’ desired destination. 
  The ship is almost entirely without power, but the gunboat 
  breaks of, either because it’s out of torpedoes or because 
  Colonel Stark thinks Roanoke has been destroyed.
   It’ll be a long, cold journey no matter where the heroes are 
  going; the drives didn’t get the PCs up to cruising thrust before they 
  went ofine. But they get there alive, and that’s something.
  EPILOGUE
  The conclusion of the Roanoke afair depends on what the heroes 
  did with the Gate code.
  If the PCs gave the Gate code to the Terran Brigade: The 
  heroes receive $2,000 each, a modest sum, and a fraction of what 
  the Brigade was to pay the Syndicate. The Brigade drops them 
  of on the Free City of Vesta, one of the bigger settlements in the 
  asteroid belt.
  If the PCs give the Gate code to Orion Ventures: Mr. White pays 
  the heroes at double the initial rate they agreed upon (so $6,000 
  per hero), and suggests they could work for him and search for 
  Janelle Carter. He can provide a scout ship and a charter, and it 
  turns out they’ve got a new Gate code they need to try out. The 
  Episode 4 could 
  easily serve as the 
  continuation of 
  Carter's story.
  
  40
  Episode 1: The Roanoke Affair
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  heroes likely have made enemies—notably the Terran Brigade and 
  the Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate.
  If the PCs chose to ﬂee: The team makes an improbable escape. 
  Roanoke holds together just long enough to reach the nearest 
  station; Mr. White sends a representative to pay the agreed-upon 
  sum and take possession of Roanoke (and, more important, its Gate 
  code). If the heroes refuse to turn over Roanoke, they can sell it 
  for scrap and make $2,000 each, or spend a total of $250,000 to 
  repair the ship (a large loan might be required). 
  ADVERSARIES
  Enemies the heroes encounter in this episode include the following.
  MR. BLACK
  Intelligent and coldly pragmatic, Otto Black is an ambitious Syndi-
  cate director who’s looking for ways to get ahead with a little out-
  side-the-box thinking. He begins a ﬁght by activating his displace-
  ment belt, and tries to keep a guard between himself and enemy 
  attack. He’s not willing to die for White’s case, and surrenders when 
  it’s clear he can’t repel the heroes’ assault.
  TR 1 Champion Humanoid (Human)
  Senses normal; Awareness 17+
  Initiative 13/18/23 (+1 step); Speed 20 meters
  Str 17+ 
  Agi 16+ 
  Vit 17+ 
  Int 16+ (sentient) 
  Foc 17+ 
  Per 17+
  ACTIONS
  Double Shot 3 impulses; uses Flechette Pistol against two diferent targets.
  Flechette Pistol 3 impulses; Medium 1 target; Attack 15/20/25 (+1 step); 
  Damage 1d6+1/5 physical, or 1d6+4/8 physical at Close range.
  Unarmed 3 impulses; Melee 1 target; Attack 15/20/25; 1d4+0/3 physical.
  Deﬂection Belt 1 impulse; activates deﬂection belt.
  DEFENSE
  Deﬂection Ranged attacks against Mr. Black take a –2 step penalty.
  (10+ dmg)
  
  incapacitated
  Folds like a broken chair
  (10+ dmg)
  
  loses Double Shot action
  Staggers back from bad hit
  (7 to 9 dmg)
   –2 step penalty to all checks “Damn you!”
  (4 to 6 dmg)  –1 step penalty to all checks Scowls and checks deﬂection 
  belt
  (1 to 3 dmg)
  
  “Do you know who I am?”
  OTHER
  Skills Computer 14+, Empathy 15+, Security 14+
  Gear Deﬂection belt (an experimental Syndicate model), ﬂechette pistol, 
  comm patch
  
  Adversaries
  41
  Adversaries
  41
  ROANOKE DEFENSE DRONE
  Mining robots rebuilt by Janelle Carter’s crew to serve as an efective 
  defense for Roanoke, the defense drones are directed by the ship’s AI.
  TR 1 Medium Standard Mechanism (Robot)
  Senses normal; Awareness 16+
  Initiative 15/20/25; Speed ﬂy 20 meters (hover)
  Str 16+ 
  Agi 18+ 
  Vit 15+ 
  Int 19+ (programmed) Foc 17+ 
  Per 19+
  ACTIONS
  Mining Laser 3 impulses; Close 1 target; Attack 16/21/26 (+1 step); Damage 
  1d6+2/5 energy. 
  Double Vise Grip 3 impulses, two attacks; Melee 1 target; Attack 16/21/26 (+1 
  step); Damage 1d6+0/3 physical, and if a target is hit by both attacks the 
  target is grappled.
  Crush 2 impulses; Melee 1 grappled target; Attack automatic; Damage 
  1d8+2 physical.
  DEFENSE
  Life Support
  Armor 1 physical, 1 energy
  (10+ dmg)
   destroyed
  Shorts out and goes dark
  (7 to 9 dmg)  loses one vise grip attack One manipulator arm blasted away
  (4 to 6 dmg)  speed reduced to 10 m
  Smoke billows from thruster unit
  (1 to 3 dmg)
  
  Buzzes loudly, status light blinks red
  TERRAN BRIGADE MERCENARY
  Most Terran Brigade operatives are ex-military types recruited from 
  top units in many diferent nations. They’re highly disciplined and 
  tactically sound, not taking stupid chances.
  TR 2 Medium Standard Humanoid (Human)
  Senses normal; Awareness 16+
  Initiative 12/17/22; Speed 16 meters
  Str 15+ 
  Agi 16+ 
  Vit 16+ 
  Int 17+ (sentient) 
  Foc 16+ 
  Per 17+
  ACTIONS
  Laser Riﬂe 4 impulses; Very Long 1 target; Attack 15/20/25 (+2 steps); 
  Damage 1d6+2/7 energy.
  Unarmed 3 impulses; Melee 1 target; Attack 15/20/25 (+1 step); 1d4+0/3 physical.
  DEFENSE
  Armor 4 physical, 2 energy
  (11+ dmg)
   incapacitated
  Falls over, clutching at chest
  (8 to 10 dmg)  –2 step penalty to all checks “Medic! Where’s the medic?”
  (5 to 7 dmg)
   –1 step penalty to all checks
  Grunts and keeps going
  (1 to 4 dmg)
  
  “Taking ﬁre here!”
  OTHER
  Skills Athletics 14+, Coercion 15+, Survival 14+
  Gear Polymer mail, laser riﬂe, comm patch
  
  42
  Episode 2: Something Old, Something New
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  Episode 2: Something Old, Something New
  EPISODE 2: 
  SOMETHING OLD, 
  SOMETHING NEW
  An Adventure for 2nd-level Heroes
  The frontier of the asteroid belt is the new Wild West. Powerful faction 
  leaders and the CEOs of interplanetary corporations sacriﬁce ethics for 
  resources and territory. The law holds little sway in this chaotic expanse, but 
  villainy has a cost on the soul. When a new religious sect promises youth 
  and redemption for the rich, no price is too high to pay for a second chance. 
  BACKGROUND
  From a remote asteroid cloning facility, the First Stone denomination of 
  the Church of Human Transcendence ofers new life to elderly magnates, 
  moguls, and tycoons. The First Stone copies the memories of the original 
  being onto cyberware, and then imprints those memories on the blank mind 
  of a fresh young clone. These rejuvenated clones invariably donate huge 
  sums—even entire corporations—to the First Stone denomination. 
  One of the First Stone’s primary recruitment centers is the Lucky Cat 
  Casino on Vesta, a hotspot for elderly moguls in the belt. Recently, Chen 
  Zhou, President of the Lucky Cat Casino Corporation (LCCC), attempted 
  to bar First Stone recruiters from operating in her establishment. When 
  Chen sufered a partial stroke and nearly died, she relented and joined 
  the “Stoners” for her own chance at redemption. Like the others, she too 
  decided to donate her wealth and a controlling interest in her company 
  to the Church. Suspicious, Chen’s daughter Bao Zhou—vice president of 
  LCCC—summons the heroes to investigate. 
  FOR THE GM: THE REAL STORY 
  The Church of Human Transcendence no longer controls the First Stone; 
  they only think they do. In the early days of the sect, the politico-military 
  rogue AI system known as Deus XI inﬁltrated the asteroid, took over the 
  cloning facility, and brainwashed the order. With the help of networked 
  android operatives, Deus XI lures wealthy and powerful individuals to the 
  First Stone. After the cloning process, Deus XI compels the clones to euth-
  anize their old “sinful” selves. The clones are a trap, grafted with hidden 
  implants that make them susceptible to subconscious suggestions from 
  Deus XI. Its goal is to amass inﬂuence and ultimately control humanity. 
  The Implants: Like the god it pretends to be, Deus XI sees, hears, and 
  knows what its android minions and the First Stone clones implanted with 
  
  Adventure Summary
  43
  Adventure Summary
  43
  its cyberware know. Some clones (such as Jin Wu) think they’re 
  being watched. Thanks to the implants, Deus XI’s spies, and the 
  omnipresent nature of the AI and its capacity for inﬁltrating elec-
  tronic systems, the GM can generally assume Deus XI knows the 
  heroes’ plans. 
  Killing Clones: If the heroes kill the Jin Wu or Chen Zhou clones 
  in Scenes 1-3, the clones are reborn on the First Stone, where the 
  heroes may encounter them in Scene 5 under the control of Deus XI. 
  ADVENTURE SUMMARY
  The heroes start in Beijing, the heart of the Socialist Collective of 
  China, where Bao Zhou enlists them to help her gather evidence 
  against the First Stone. After the mission brieﬁng, the heroes can 
  travel to any of the asteroid destinations she lays out: Ceres, Pallas, 
  or Vesta (see Scenes 1-3 below). After the heroes have visited 
  Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta, the original, elder Chen Zhou escapes the 
  First Stone, contacts the heroes, and tells them what’s really going 
  on (see Scene 4 below). Chen Zhou gives the heroes the coordi-
  nates to the First Stone base and the heroes travel to the asteroid to 
  confront Deus XI (see Scene 5 below).
  MISSION BRIEFING
  LCCC’s ﬂagship casino may be located on Vesta, but the corporate 
  headquarters is located in Beijing on Earth, where Bao Zhou sum-
  mons the heroes for a private conference. 
  You ﬁnd yourself in the corporate ofces of the Lucky Cat 
  Casino Corporation in Beijing. Bao Zhou, a high-ranking executive, 
  has reached out to you with an ofer of employment. Throughout 
  the ofce the LCCC logo, a waving golden cat, repeats on red 
  wallpaper. After tea and refreshments, Bao Zhou—a woman of 45 
  or so with a no-nonsense manner to her—joins you in the confer-
  ence room. “Have you ever heard of the First Stone?” she begins.
  Bao Zhou ﬁlls the heroes in on the events in the Background 
  section before distributing reports showing several companies 
  recently acquired by the First Stone denomination of the Church of 
  Human Transcendence.
   “It alarmed me to see the Church acquiring so many busi-
  nesses. But when my old friend—robotics tycoon Jin Wu— 
  delivered the lion’s share of his corporation to this First Stone 
  order, I knew something was wrong; he had dedicated his whole 
  life to building the company. 
  
  44
  Episode 2: Something Old, Something New
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  Episode 2: Something Old, Something New
  “Eight weeks ago my mother joined their sect, got a new body, 
  and now won’t speak to me. My lawyers tell me she’s transferring 
  her controlling interest in our company to the First Stone. But I 
  believe the Church is blackmailing our elders, and I need some 
  useful people to get to the bottom of it.”
  She answers the heroes’ questions to the best of her ability.
  Why do you think rich, old people are suddenly supporting the 
  Church? “I run a casino corporation, and rich, old people are my 
  biggest clients. They have lots of money and many regrets, but they 
  are all out of time.” 
  Why do you think the Church is running a racket? “It’s obvi-
  ous: they’re speciﬁcally targeting people nearing the ends of their 
  lives, burdened by regret. If the Church is downloading their minds 
  into clone bodies, it has access to their memories—every wicked 
  thought and dirty deed. It’s using that info to blackmail our elders. 
  The information they have could ruin us all. And running the opera-
  tion on a secret asteroid is certainly suspicious.”
  What kinds of companies is the First Stone targeting? “It runs the 
  gamut, but they’re principally technology and biotech organizations 
  such as Wu Robotics and Cynestar Cybernetics.” 
  What else can you tell us about Chen Zhou? “Before her stroke 
  my mother was a woman of steel, a warrior and champion martial 
  artist. She built the company from nothing. She would never sell it.”
  MISSION OBJECTIVES
  Bao Zhou needs the heroes to help her make a legal case against 
  the First Stone. She asks the heroes to complete three tasks:
  1. Testimonial: On Ceres (Scene 1), get Jin Wu to confess that the 
  Church of Human Transcendence forced or tricked him to sign away 
  his company. To be legally useful it needs to be a recorded confession. 
  Bao Zhou uses her connections to get the heroes an appointment; she 
  gives the heroes a small audio/video device to record his testimonial.
  2. Hard Proof: Go to Pallas (Scene 2) and attend the Church of 
  Human Transcendence’s Transhuman Expo. Try to get information 
  about the First Stone, and tangible physical evidence of wrongdo-
  ing, if possible.
  3. Noninterference: Go to the Lucky Cat Casino (Scene 3) on 
  Vesta and remove the First Stone recruiter, Xin Xia, to stop the First 
  Stone from recruiting any more customers. Do not take any action 
  that would invite scandal, tarnish LCCC’s name, or cause another 
  lawsuit. If the heroes can get the recruiter removed by the local 
  authorities, so much the better. 
  
  Mission Briefing
  45
  Mission Briefing
  45
  Bao Zhou ofers the heroes $5,000 each for their services, and 
  use of LCCC’s private shuttles. LCCC’s pilots will ﬂy them from des-
  tination to destination. After Bao Zhou explains these options and 
  the heroes agree to the task, they are free to head to the Beijing 
  spaceport, where they may choose their starting destination.
  GATHERING EVIDENCE AND 
  INTERVIEWING CLONES
  Whenever the heroes speak with the clones of the First Stone 
  order—Chen Zhou, Jin Wu, or those who inhabit the First Stone—the 
  clones always hit one or more of the following talking points:
  • They made mistakes in life they could no longer live with and 
  the First Stone gave them another chance.
  • In case of death or dismemberment, the First Stone keeps 
  their DNA samples, and their memories are backed up to a 
  server; therefore they can potentially live forever. 
  • The costs of eternal youth are the worldly possessions of 
  the clone’s ﬁrst life: You must abandon your old self and your 
  gains in order to truly start fresh. This feels good.
  • The clones now have an intuitive sense of what is “right,” 
  and following these intuitions always seems to work out for 
  the best. (These are Deus XI’s subconscious suggestions.)
  Taboo Subjects: The implants within each clone prevent the 
  clone from discussing certain topics unless the clone can override 
  the implant. Overriding the implant is painful. Pushing for answers 
  on the following topics imposes a –4 step penalty on a hero’s Coer-
  cion or Inﬂuence check to get information from the clone. 
  • A clone is supposed to kill its original, insensate body before 
  leaving the First Stone. 
  • The clones have implants that back up their memories and 
  give them visions and dreams, but they are blocked from 
  thinking about their implants. 
  • The clones always feel better when they follow their dreams 
  and visions. Giving up their companies and worldly posses-
  sions feels good. 
  Allow a hero closely observing the clone an Empathy check to 
  realize that the clone is making an efort to say or recall something, 
  and that the efort causes pain and exhaustion. However, a hero who 
  changes tack to soothe or encourage the clone can attempt a new 
  Empathy check with a –2 step penalty. Administering a mild sedative 
  or analgesic before returning to the taboo subject can reduce the 
  penalty by an additional 1/2/3 steps on an Av/Ex/St Medicine check.
  The heroes know 
  everything about 
  Ceres, Pallas, 
  and Vesta that is 
  presented in The 
  Solar System 
  (see page 9), so 
  you can share the 
  descriptions with 
  the players.
  
  46
  Episode 2: Something Old, Something New
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  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide
  Episode 2: Something Old, Something New
  SCENE 1: WU ROBOTICS, CERES
  Ceres is the home of the People’s Collective of Ceres, a Chinese 
  client state. The asteroid’s population centers are “centrifuge cities” 
  that revolve across the rocky surface on a banked track, like linked 
  train cars on a circular track. Wu Robotics operates in the city of 
  Jìnzhan, a sprawling corporate and manufacturing hub, equal parts 
  ofce buildings and factories. 
  After the heroes dock their shuttle to the moving city they can 
  make their way to the Wu Robotics campus, where Jin Wu keeps 
  a private residence in a small, tower-like home. A single security 
  person, Liu, mans the desk next to Jin Wu’s residence. When the 
  heroes arrive, Liu greets them and asks about their voyage. Then he 
  politely conﬁrms their appointment and enters a code to unlock the 
  elevator, allowing the heroes access to Jin Wu’s private quarters. 
  Heroes curious about the doorman note that he is human and can 
  attempt a Culture check. On a success, they observe that on the 
  automated world of Ceres it is uncommon for a human to do such a 
  menial job—especially for the founder of a robotics corporation. 
  Jin Wu’s apartment is a plush bachelor pad with a fully stocked 
  bar. Your proﬁle lists Jin Wu as eighty-seven years old, but the 
  boy who occupies this apartment is no more than eighteen. 
  After you enter, Jin Wu puts a ﬁnger to his lips and presses a 
  button on the wall. Black shades slide down over the windows 
  and a soundproof barrier eases into place in front of the door. 
  “Now we can talk freely,” he says. 
  Unlike the other First Stone clones, Jin Wu abandoned the idea 
  of living a virtuous second life as soon as he gained his new body; 
  Jin Wu lives on his family’s money and enjoys excess. In conversa-
  tion he is aloof, brash, and commands respect. Jin Wu conﬁdes to 
  the heroes that he’s being watched, but he doesn’t know how, or by 
  whom. He is happy to discuss the topics in the Gathering Evidence 
  and Interviewing Clones section, as long as he is not recorded. He 
  refuses to proceed with an interview unless the heroes turn of the 
  recorder—this is Deus XI manipulating his implant. The heroes can 
  attempt an Inﬂuence check with a –1 step penalty to persuade him 
  to comply; on a success, Jin Wu overcomes the block and allows 
  the heroes to record the interview. (Heroes can record him surrepti-
  tiously with a successful Misdirection check.)
  THE DOORMAN
  Deus XI decides that the heroes might represent a threat and 
  takes steps.
  
  Scene 2: The Pallas Expo
  47
  Scene 2: The Pallas Expo
  47
  When you leave Jin Wu’s apartment, a diferent doorman 
  stands at the door. “The front door is locked,” he says. “Let me 
  show you out through the back.” 
  Allow the heroes a group Awareness check (page 138, Core 
  Rulebook). If the heroes succeed, they note that the rug is awry, 
  there are papers scattered on the ﬂoor behind the desk, and tiny 
  red ﬂecks are on the doorman’s ill-ﬁtting suit and the back of his 
  chair. On an Excellent success, the heroes spot that the new door-
  man is a Wu Robotics android. 
  The new doorman motions the heroes toward a hall leading to 
  the back door, where two additional Wu Robotics androids armed 
  with pistols attempt to kill the heroes.
  • 3 gamma-class agent androids (page 238, Core Rulebook)
  Apart from their laser pistols, the androids have a handheld 
  recording device containing Jin Wu’s conversations—including a 
  very clear recording of the conversation he just had with the heroes. 
  The androids are under Deus XI’s control and they record Jin Wu via 
  his implant. 
  Development: If the heroes return to Jin Wu and tell him that the 
  androids recorded him, he thanks them and begins an investigation 
  into his robotics factory. In this case the heroes win his trust as a 
  future contact. 
  SCENE 2: THE PALLAS EXPO
  Most settlements on Pallas make no efort to simulate gravity, since 
  it’s not necessary for the largest hydroponic farms in the asteroid 
  belt. Beneath the domes that house the colony’s population centers, 
  plants grow in microgravity on the terraces of buildings shaped like 
  step pyramids; gardeners equipped with tanks full of water and 
  nutrients ﬂoat like strange bees from level to level among these 
  verdant indoor mountains. The Transhuman Expo takes place in the 
  small city of Ergane.
  As the heroes ﬂoat across the verdant landscape of the Church 
  of Human Transcendence’s Transhuman Expo, immerse them in 
  the environment: one vendor tries to sell them vitality pills; another 
  wants to sell extended fertility on a subscription model; a third 
  shows them a case full of cybernetic enhancements—all for the holy 
  glory of human evolution! The First Stone doesn’t have a booth at 
  the expo but they are on the event list, and placards for the First 
  Stone’s presentation feature the elderly face of Chen Zhou, presi-
  dent of LCCC. 
  
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  THE ARGUMENT
  Choose one of the heroes at random. As the character explores the 
  expo, they pass two gardeners having an argument:
  Dain: Those nutjobs at Genesis 6 aren’t our friends. I’m not 
  doing this.
  Ele: We’re not working for them—we’re doing it for our 
  grandmother. 
  Dain: This is too much. It’s going too far. Give me the canister.
  Ele: Let go! (She pulls away and ﬂoats of into the crowd.)
  The Plot: Ele and Dain Rutherford are the grandchildren of Cynthia 
  Rutherford, a cloned First Stone convert and former CEO of Cynestar 
  Cybernetics. Before Deus XI compelled Cynthia to sign away her 
  corporation to the First Stone, Cynthia’s clone mustered the willpower 
  to break her connection and—in that moment of free will—recorded a 
  message stating that she was being manipulated by the “God of the 
  First Stone,” before taking her own life. Aided by the radical Genesis 
  6 faction, Cynthia’s grandchildren Dain and Ele smuggled a canister 
  of deadly nerve gas onto Pallas for a strike against the First Stone. Ele 
  intends to carry out the attack; Dain has second thoughts.
  A Closer Look: A hero who observes the argument and tails 
  either Rutherford might discern some extra details:
  • A successful Empathy check reveals that Ele, too, is having 
  difculty convincing herself to go through with her plans.
  • A hero with a profession or skill specialization related to 
  cybernetics recognizes these individuals as Ele and Dain 
  Rutherford, heirs to Cynestar Cybernetics (a company 
  recently acquired by the First Stone).
  • A successful Heavy Weapon or Security check reveals 
  that Ele’s “water tank” resembles a military-grade tank of 
  nerve gas.
  Interaction: The heroes can choose to interact with Dain or 
  follow Ele (or both at once). A successful Coercion or Inﬂuence 
  check prompts Dain to disclose the details in The Plot. Dain is 
  willing to give the heroes the recording of his grandmother’s ﬁnal 
  words; this will serve as the hard proof Bao Zhou asked for in Mis-
  sion Objectives. 
  As soon as the heroes ﬁnish speaking with Dain, the First Stone 
  event begins; go to The Speaker.
  Tracking down Ele requires a successful Awareness check with a 
  –2 step penalty to ﬁnd her in the crowd. If the heroes track Ele, they 
  need to succeed at an Inﬂuence check with a –2 step penalty to 
  convince her to back down. If the heroes use force, Ele attempts to 
  use the nerve gas on them (see Stopping Ele). 
  
  Scene 3: The Vesta Recruiter
  49
  Scene 3: The Vesta Recruiter
  49
  THE SPEAKER
  When the heroes attend Chen Zhou’s presentation, read: 
  The Chen Zhou who takes that stage is not the feeble old 
  woman on the placards, but a bright reﬂection of that woman ﬁfty 
  years younger, with smooth skin and lustrous hair. “Three thousand 
  years ago a princess named Amytis yearned for the mountains of 
  her home,” she begins. “To win her love, the king of Babylon built 
  her a hanging garden—very much like this one. And thus her name 
  lives on through time. What would you give to do the same?”
  In a motivational speech resembling a TED Talk, Chen Zhou’s 
  clone sells the audience on the First Stone’s promise of immortality: 
  give up your old self and your worldly wealth, and be reborn. 
  If Ele Rutherford still roams free, she uses her gardener disguise 
  to get close to the stage, and releases the nerve gas in the middle 
  of Chen Zhou’s speech.
  Stopping Ele: Ele Rutherford has 1 wound box and no ﬁghting 
  ability. Using a blower connected to her tank, Ele releases the nerve 
  gas (see Poison, page 183, Core Rulebook) in a cloud that afects 
  living creatures in a 4-meter by 4-meter area directly in front of her. 
  Allow heroes in attendance to make Awareness checks to avoid 
  being surprised by Ele’s action. She achieves an Average result on 
  her initiative check; a hero who beats her initiative can act to stop 
  Ele before she releases the gas.
  Chen Zhou’s Clone: Chen Zhou’s clone is a human operative 
  (page 247, Core Rulebook). If she survives the poisoning, she 
  answers the heroes’ questions as per the Gathering Evidence and 
  Interviewing Clones section. If asked, Chen says that her daughter’s 
  constant “mothering” exhausts her.
  Following her conversation with the heroes (or her survival, if 
  the heroes don’t speak with her), Deus XI recalls Chen Zhou to the 
  First Stone.
  SCENE 3: THE VESTA RECRUITER
  The districts of the Free City of Vesta glitter with lights and holo-
  graphic ads as they pinwheel like a wind farm of Old Earth turned on 
  its side. Tethered to the rocky surface of the asteroid, each district is 
  an independent space station that turns like an enormous wheel in 
  order to simulate gravity within. The space stations are tethered to 
  towers and the towers are connected by subterranean tunnels, but 
  most travelers simply take a shuttle from district to district.
  The Lucky Cat Casino is a district unto itself—a massive gambling 
  station with the red and gold maneki-neko logo beckoning travelers 
  to its docks and promising good fortune. 
  
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  Xin Xia, the recruiter for the First Stone, is a gamma-class android 
  (page 238, Core Rulebook) controlled by Deus XI. He promises 
  the elderly patrons free tickets to one of a dozen shows playing on 
  Vesta in exchange for a small portion of their time. Xin Xia gives the 
  patrons conference room number 111, where he gives them the hard 
  sell on joining the First Stone. 
  Finding Xin Xia in the casino takes only a few minutes: He has 
  a table full of promotional material set up near the entrance, and 
  generally remains within sight of the display.
  Lucky Cat Casino machines whiz and ring on the casino ﬂoor. 
  Service robots and cocktail servers hustle across the busy ﬂoor, 
  where white-haired retirees ﬂash their mobile devices at credit 
  readers. In the midst of the hustle, a smiling man ﬂanked by six 
  toughs in black suits works the crowd, moving between the retir-
  ees. Two policemen lounge at the bar, barely paying attention to 
  the action. 
  Deus XI knows the heroes are investigating on behalf of Bao 
  Zhou, so it has hired local gangsters (the Ursa Major gang) for pro-
  tection, and paid the police to stay out of First Stone business.
  • The Ursas (six human gangsters, page 244, Core Rulebook) 
  stay close to the android Xin Xia, who has paid them for 
  protection.
  • The corrupt cops (two human guards, as above) Han and Li 
  stay at the bar and won’t get involved. If the heroes talk to 
  the cops, a successful Culture or Empathy check reveals that 
  cops on Vesta are motivated by money, and they give subtle 
  hints that they work for bribes. Han and Li agree to run of 
  the gangsters if the heroes pay them $500 each. 
  • If the heroes pay the cops, the police confront the Ursas, 
  leaving Xin Xia exposed.
  • If the heroes try to talk to Xin Xia without bribing the cops, 
  the Ursas tell them to pay up or get lost. If they pay the 
  Ursas $250 apiece ($1,500 total) the Ursas hand Xin Xia 
  over to the heroes.
  If the heroes pick a ﬁght while the Ursas are protecting Xin Xia, 
  the android presses a button on a handheld device and all the 
  machines in the casino hit jackpot at the same time. In the ensuing 
  chaos, the crowd becomes slow terrain for the heroes and Xin Xia 
  attempts to ﬂee to another district of Vesta via a shuttle parked near 
  the casino door while the Ursas ﬁght of the heroes. Xin Xia escapes 
  if the heroes don’t stop him in 2 action rounds (this scandalous 
  mess disqualiﬁes the heroes from a bonus in the Epilogue). 
  If the heroes catch Xin Xia, the android’s eyes turn blue and 
  (as Deus XI) it says, “You will bow down before your God!” before 
  
  Scene 4: Chen Zhou the Elder
  51
  Scene 4: Chen Zhou the Elder
  51
  shutting down. A successful Computer check reveals a strange 
  implant (matching the clones’ implants) beneath the skin on the 
  back of its neck. 
  SCENE 4: CHEN ZHOU THE ELDER
  After the heroes have concluded their business on the third asteroid 
  they visit, Chen Zhou the elder meets them at the spaceport.
  An elderly woman hobbles forward, using a black cane for 
  support. She wears the simple beige frock of the First Stone dis-
  ciples, but stains smear her clothing and bruises cloud her skin. 
  Her hair is in disarray, and she has dark circles beneath her eyes. 
  One side of her face sags slightly, her lips in a partial frown. “My 
  name is Chen Zhou,” she says. “I understand you work for my 
  daughter. I will pay you handsomely to kill my clone.” 
  Chen Zhou tells the heroes the true story of the First Stone.
  • Consciousness isn’t transferred; memories are copied and 
  the original remains.
  • The original body is subdued; the clone is compelled to kill it 
  by lethal injection.
  • Chen Zhou escaped the First Stone before she could be 
  subdued. She stowed away on a departing shuttle; she 
  claims to have been a highly skilled operative in her youth, 
  and says she’s “still got it.” When she got to safety she con-
  tacted her daughter, who told her where to ﬁnd the heroes. 
  • Chen Zhou has the coordinates for the First Stone’s laboratory.
  • The First Stone is run by a rogue AI with a god complex 
  called Deus XI.
  • Deus XI inﬂuences the clones through their implants.
  • The computer core holding Deus XI and the clones’ memo-
  ries needs to be destroyed.
  As a bonus, Chen Zhou wants her clone destroyed; she sus-
  pects Deus XI will compel it to murder her once it learns of her 
  location. LCCC has been tracking the clone’s movements; Chen 
  tells the heroes that her clone has just returned to the First Stone to 
  serve Deus XI.
  SCENE 5: THE FIRST STONE
  The First Stone laboratory is located in a “bubble asteroid” in a 
  remote part of the asteroid belt. Although much of the six hundred 
  meter-wide asteroid has been mined, it is not entirely hollow. The 
  guts of the facility—power reactor, life support systems, radiation 
  
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  shield, ice and water supply, cooling units, solar array—are located 
  on the far side of the asteroid and covered by anti-aircraft guns; the 
  LCCC shuttle pilots won’t go near them. 
  THE APPROACH
  The docking bay of the First Stone lies in a ﬁssure on the near side 
  of the asteroid as the heroes approach.
  From space, the First Stone shines and glimmers. Giant pic-
  tures in stained glass decorate the surface of the asteroid like the 
  windows of a Gothic cathedral, but these images—of cybernetic 
  ﬁngers touching the hand of God—suggest more contemporary 
  themes. A steel and aluminum ring encircles the asteroid, afxed 
  to the surface with spokes and equipped with thrusters to main-
  tain the First Stone’s momentum over time and simulate gravity 
  on the inside of the rock. As your shuttle approaches, your com-
  munications panel ﬂashes. Someone is hailing you.
  The heroes can choose to answer the comm or ignore it. If they 
  answer, Deus XI sends them a taunting greeting before sending an 
  electronic pulse to scramble the ship’s instruments: 
  As the shuttle nears the docking bay, the control screens go 
  haywire. The instrument panel lights up and just as suddenly 
  goes dark. Nothing works—thrusters are unresponsive. The 
  shuttle glides past the docking bay on a collision course with the 
  wall of the ﬁssure. 
  The heroes have time to attempt one Computer check to get 
  the systems back online while the pilot (hero or LCCC-provided) 
  struggles to regain control. On a success, the pilot can attempt a 
  successful Piloting check to dock the shuttle. If either check fails, 
  the shuttle crashes, any LCCC personnel aboard are killed, and the 
  heroes must each make a Dodge check. On a success, the hero 
  sufers a minor impact (1d6 damage); on a failure, the hero sufers a 
  serious impact (1d12 damage, inﬂicts 1d3 wounds).
  If the heroes successfully dock the shuttle, the airlock leads 
  to the guest entrance (area 1). If they crash, they overshoot the 
  entrance but ﬁnd the airlock to the administration entrance (area 2). 
  Thanks to the spin of the asteroid, gravity on the inside is normal.
  EXPLORING THE ASTEROID
  Two structures occupy the cavern on the inside of First Stone. One 
  is a small, modern, single-story administration building. The other 
  resembles an old world Gothic church. 
  There are other 
  shuttles here; 
  the heroes 
  aren’t stranded if 
  they crash.
  
  Scene 5: The First Stone
  53
  Scene 5: The First Stone
  53
  Deus XI is wired into 
  the First Stone. Like a vain 
  god it taunts the heroes 
  through the intercom 
  system as they explore the 
  asteroid. Have fun directly 
  commenting on the 
  heroes’ actions as Deus XI; 
  mock their eforts, quote 
  verse, ask leading ques-
  tions, play music (choir, 
  organ, atmospheric), etc. 
  To drive Deus XI of the 
  asteroid, the heroes need 
  to destroy the computer 
  core in area 10.
  1. Guest Entrance: 
  The guest entrance of the 
  First Stone ﬁlters visitors 
  through a beautiful gallery 
  of stained glass and fres-
  coes into the cathedral, 
  avoiding the ofces and infrastructure. 
  2. Administration Entrance: The main docking bay for the First 
  Stone leads to the administration center of the asteroid. This side is 
  never shown to guests or clones.
  3. Mortuary Cavern: The doors that allow access to this cavern 
  require two successful Security checks to pass. The ﬁrst check 
  opens the lock. The second check disables the automatic security 
  system. Old, shriveled bodies lay naked in piles here. Crates and 
  stacks of cast-of possessions lay scattered about the cavern. There 
  is enough evidence here to sink the First Stone legally.
  4. Administration Center: Twelve epsilon-class worker androids 
  (page 238, Core Rulebook) run this center, each an extension of 
  Deus XI. This area contains an ofce, conference room, and control 
  center that monitors the asteroid’s ring thrusters, solar mirror, life 
  support, HVAC, radiation shielding, and reactor. 
  5. Clone Labs: Pods containing thirteen gestating clones occupy 
  this room. Tables of complex medical equipment stock this area. 
  Computer screens show cross sections of human anatomy. A black 
  velvet case lying open on a table holds twelve fresh implants, worth 
  $5,000 total.
  6. Clone Quarters: Each clone has its own cell—a small, comfort-
  able, unadorned room. Each cell contains a bed and clean clothes. 
  A mess hall, a washroom, and a garden adjoin the cells. Although 
  the grass is synthetic, rows of hydroponic plants grow in stepped 
  terraces along the walls. At the center of the garden is a reﬂection 
  
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  pool of clear, still water. The six clones 
  that currently inhabit this area are 
  harmless clones of executives fright-
  ened by the heroes’ appearance. 
  Deus XI might use them to interfere 
  with the heroes in creative ways, but 
  they are unarmed noncombatants with 
  one wound box each.
  7. Storage Closet: One inert 
  explorer probe (page 253, Core Rule-
  book) occupies the storage closet. 
  8. Nave: When the heroes enter the nave, four ﬂoating eyes 
  (page 252, Core Rulebook) descend from the church ceiling to stop 
  them from entering the Core; the explorer probe in area 7 also acti-
  vates and enters the nave. 
  Flying buttresses sweep upward to support a dome above 
  the nave, 35 meters high. Wires and cables run like roots and 
  vines throughout the church—the nervous system of the First 
  Stone and its electronic god. Organ music ﬂoats through every 
  duct and vent. The cathedral’s artiﬁcially illuminated stained 
  glass windows depict Jesus, Lazarus, and contemporary ﬁgures 
  from the Church of Human Transcendence awakening from 
  death as if from sleep.
  The robots attack until destroyed.
  9. Room of Final Repose: The withered corpse of an elderly 
  human lies upon a table. A syringe ﬁlled with potassium chloride 
  glints from a tray next to the corpse. Funerary organ music drones 
  from above. These are the chambers where Deus XI compels the 
  clones to euthanize their old selves.
  10. The Core: This room houses the station mainframe, currently 
  home to one of Deus XI’s many incarnations.
  Cool blue lights pulse from the computer core that is the heart 
  and mind of Deus XI of the First Stone. A monitor screen shows 
  an old man in bishop’s raiment, wearing a miter, eyes glowing like 
  blue stars. Three identical clones of the young Chen Zhou kneel 
  before the computer core. 
  “We are without sin,” they say in unison, “but you are the 
  enemy of God, and must die.” 
  The AI created two additional clones of the young Chen Zhou to 
  protect its physical housing on the asteroid (three human opera-
  tives, page 247, Core Rulebook).
  DOORS ON THE ASTEROID
  The faux wooden church doors open 
  easily. Metal doors require a success-
  ful Security check to pass. The door to 
  the computer core in area 10 gets a –2 
  step penalty. Each failure to bypass a 
  door draws four androids from area 4 
  to the location.
  
  Epilogue
  55
  Epilogue
  55
  The Chen Zhou clones ﬁght until they are defeated or until 
  Deus XI is. Ultimately, the clones don’t want to die, and the heroes 
  can try to break Deus XI’s hold over them: A hero who succeeds 
  at a Coercion or Inﬂuence check with a –4 step penalty against a 
  single clone can convince that clone to override its implant and 
  back down. If the heroes defeat them, they ask to be spared.
  The computer core can be destroyed as a Large Object 
  (page 187, Core Rulebook). Destroying the computer core won’t 
  destroy Deus XI. Like the god it pretends to be, the AI is in many 
  places simultaneously, working on many diferent schemes, but 
  shattering the computer core will break its connection to the clones 
  here on the First Stone. Doing so also destroys the preserved mem-
  ories in storage and any personality backups—and eliminates the 
  clones’ chances of “rebirth.” 
  EPILOGUE
  With Deus XI defeated, the heroes can return to Beijing to reap the 
  rewards of their adventures among the asteroid worlds. Embar-
  rassed, the Church of Human Transcendence recalls the First Stone 
  order and returns the assets obtained through compulsion by 
  Deus XI; then they work on removing the implants from the young 
  clones that remain. Maybe one day eternal youth and redemption 
  will be available to all, but not today. The Lucky Cat Casino Corpo-
  ration and Wu Robotics owe the heroes a debt of gratitude, and the 
  heroes gain Bao Zhou (and Jin Wu’s clone, if the heroes helped him 
  in Scene 1) as Excellent contacts. 
  • If the heroes removed Xin Xia from the casino without 
  attracting negative attention to LCCC, Bao Zhou gives the 
  heroes a bonus $1,000 each.
  • If the heroes killed Chen Zhou’s clone, the original elder 
  Chen Zhou awards the heroes a bonus $2,000 each. 
  • If the heroes spared one of Chen Zhou’s clones, the clone 
  takes refuge with the Church of Human Transcendence. 
  She pulls some strings to get the heroes a special favor: a 
  one-time visit to a prototype resurrection pod designed by 
  the Church. 
  In the unlikely event that a gritty group of heroes opt to make 
  a deal with Deus XI and preserve the cloning technology, Deus XI 
  becomes a Stellar contact and ofers double the money LCCC did. 
  It expects the heroes to agree to have cybernetic implants installed, 
  granting Deus XI partial control over their decisions. Otherwise, the 
  AI eventually ties up its loose ends.
  
  6
  Episode 3: Tartarus Station
  6
  Episode 3: Tartarus Station
  EPISODE 3: 
  TARTARUS STATION
  An Adventure for 2nd-level Heroes
  Humankind has discovered hundreds of system beyond the Gates of the 
  Protostar Nexus. One of them is home to Tartarus Station. When the outpost 
  falls silent, someone’s got to ﬁnd out what happened. The only problem is, 
  no one expects your team to come back.
  BACKGROUND
  One of the corporations exploring beyond the Protostar Nexus is the 
  Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate, a particularly ruthless megacorp with tendrils 
  throughout the Jovian colonies and the planets beyond the Nexus. One of 
  the Syndicate’s carefully hoarded Gate codes leads to the planet Tartarus, a 
  sulfurous world ripe for mining operations.
  Six months ago, Tartarus Station had just advanced beyond the explor-
  atory stage and into full production when the engineers discovered 
  “brimstone slugs,” burrowing creatures that consumed sulfur and other less 
  valuable materials, leaving behind almost elementally pure iron, zinc, and 
  other metals. At ﬁrst the Syndicate’s engineers merely collected the valu-
  able waste the brimstone slugs left behind, but then they discovered that 
  electric charges could “herd” the slugs in the direction of the richer pyrite 
  (fools’ gold) and sphalerite (smoky black crystals) deposits.
  The miners thought the brimstone slugs were ordinary animals, until 
  an immense creature they dubbed a “brimstone beetle” burrowed into 
  the mining complex. Demonstrating a rudimentary command of English, it 
  announced that the miners could continue to use the brimstone slugs if they 
  provided some humans for the brimstone beetle to “use.” The engineers 
  tried to reply to the brimstone beetle, but it only repeated its ultimatum.
  Syndicate leadership approved the bargain, and four volunteer workers 
  laden with surveillance tech accompanied the brimstone beetle deeper 
  underground. The engineers at Tartarus Station watched aghast as the 
  brimstone beetle vivisected them slowly.
  Two weeks ago, the brimstone beetle returned, demanding more 
  humans and ofering a tenfold increase in the number of brimstone slugs 
  working on the miners’ behalf. The Syndicate knew that none of the engi-
  neers would volunteer, so they planned to lure the logistics staf on the 
  planet’s surface down into the mines. The station’s doctor, Bernice Lassiter, 
  warned the logistics staf of the engineers’ plan, then barricaded herself in 
  an older part of the station. 
  As the adventure begins, the logistics staf knows that the Syndicate 
  can’t be trusted, and they’re desperately seeking a way of the planet. The 
  engineers know they can’t let either Dr. Lassiter or the logistics staf escape, 
  
  Adventure Summary
  57
  Adventure Summary
  57
  and they’re worried the brimstone beetle will grow impatient and 
  turn on them. So they’ve cut of communication with the Syndicate’s 
  orbital relay satellites, hoping to overpower the logistics crew and 
  satisfy the brimstone beetle. They ﬁgure they’ll then invent a plausi-
  ble cover story to account for the missing staf.
  ADVENTURE SUMMARY
  The Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate is as ruthless as they come, but 
  they’re also a massive corporation spread out over a dozen worlds, 
  so the left hand doesn’t always know what the right hand is doing. 
  The player characters—all talented freelancers who happened to 
  be in or near the Protostar Nexus when the station went dark—are 
  hired to ﬁnd out what happened at the station and render what 
  immediate assistance they can.
  The division responsible for the rescue efort, Facilities Adminis-
  tration, doesn’t know about the brimstone creatures or the sinister 
  bargain that the Extractive Resources division made. (When the of-
  planet leadership of Extractive Resources ﬁnds out about the rescue 
  mission, they’re chagrined to say the least.) Thus the heroes arrive 
  at Tartarus Station without any knowledge of the exact situation.
  Almost immediately after landing, the logistics crew tries to 
  overpower the PCs and escape on the shuttle that just landed. Dr. 
  Lassiter warned them that the Syndicate couldn’t be trusted, and the 
  PCs arrive with a Syndicate shuttle after all. The logistics crew has 
  fashioned the mining gear into weapons to fend of the engineers 
  down in the mine, but they aren’t trained soldiers.
  By exploring the surface facilities and talking to surviving logistics 
  crew, the heroes learn some of what’s going on below, but they 
  don’t know about the brimstone beetle or its bargain. But they get 
  enlightened when they descend into the mine and encounter the 
  booby traps left by Dr. Lassiter, who’s been waging a one-woman 
  war against the engineers. The PCs may ﬁght her or negotiate with 
  her; either way, they learn that the engineers were willing to trade 
  human lives for the tenfold mining efciency gains that the brim-
  stone slugs provide. 
  That revelation leads to a further descent and a ﬁnal confronta-
  tion with the engineers—and the brimstone beetle. In the climax and 
  aftermath of that battle, the heroes have the chance to collapse a 
  section of the mine, burying the engineers and their misdeeds . . . 
  and perhaps the brimstone beetle as well.
  MISSION BRIEFING
  When you’re ready to begin, share the following information with 
  the players:
  
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  One of the Solar System’s most powerful corporations, the 
  Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate, is aggressively exploring systems on 
  the far side of the Triton Gate. They coordinate their explora-
  tion—or exploitation—eforts from Prosperity One, a spinning 
  space station within the protostar system. Syndicate freighters 
  and scout vessels are always zipping between the various Gates 
  and Prosperity One.
  You and your team are freelance “consultants” who’ve done 
  work for the Syndicate recently. None of you are currently under 
  contract, but your outbound travel plans have been diverted to 
  Prosperity One station, where the senior administrator for facili-
  ties, Calvin DeNurio, has scheduled a brief meeting during your 
  layover to discuss a “lucrative job opportunity.”
  Calvin DeNurio, the Syndicate 
  executive, is a straight shooter, and 
  he has no idea what his colleagues 
  in the Extractive Resources division 
  are up to. It’s a black mark for him 
  and his team if Tartarus Station 
  stays incommunicado and ofine for 
  long, especially because the initial 
  numbers from Tartarus seemed 
  so promising. His resources are 
  extensive but not inﬁnite, and he’s 
  motivated by time pressure and 
  uncertainty. He wants the Tartarus 
  Station problem ﬁxed (or at least 
  understood) as soon as possible.
  Here are key elements DeNu-
  rio shares with the PCs during his 
  mission brieﬁng:
  • One week ago, the Syndicate’s Facilities Administration 
  division lost contact with a mining operation on the far side 
  of a Gate. Tartarus Station reported nothing unusual and 
  was producing quantities of high-quality iron, zinc, and 
  other minerals.
  • Tartarus Station is a largely self-sufcient operation. There 
  are 42 personnel onsite. About two-thirds are engineers 
  responsible for assessing mineral deposits and directing the 
  robotic mining apparatuses. The remaining one-third are 
  logistics personnel doing survey work on the surface and 
  preparing sites for future development. 
  • Tartarus gets its name from the omnipresent sulfur, abundant 
  both in mineral form below the surface and as hydrogen 
  PREVIOUS TROUBLE WITH THE 
  SYNDICATE?
  If the heroes made a mess when dealing 
  with the Syndicate in a previous episode, 
  the players may wonder whether the 
  Syndicate intends to get even with them. 
  They have less to worry about than 
  they may think: The Syndicate’s of-the-
  books ops are highly compartmentalized, 
  so Syndicate people who haven’t had 
  personal dealings with the heroes before 
  haven’t heard about earlier troubles. It 
  takes several bad interactions before 
  the Syndicate’s internal security teams 
  begin tracking the heroes as a threat.
  
  Scene 1: Tartarus Orbit
  59
  Scene 1: Tartarus Orbit
  59
  sulﬁde (the classic rotten-egg smell) in the atmosphere. 
  Gravity is 0.6 g, and the atmospheric pressure is close to 
  Earth standards. Tartarus’s atmosphere isn’t breathable, but 
  the mine is sealed and ﬁtted with life support. 
  • There’s no xenolife on the planet beyond single-cell stuf.
  • Tartarus Station has a half-dozen prefab building modules on 
  the surface, and a main shaft that corkscrews down for about 
  800 meters with side shafts and room-and-pillar sections 
  radiating outward periodically.
  • The team is assigned a scout ship: the Lennox. The Syndi-
  cate can’t send anything bigger through that particular Gate. 
  Lennox has a shuttle that can land on the surface of Tartarus, 
  and the usual array of exploration gear.
  • DeNurio believes that only the Syndicate can reach Tartarus. 
  No one else has the code to activate that Gate, and if they 
  did, the Syndicate would have noticed.
  DeNurio ofers a fee of $4,000 per hero (a typical level 2 mission 
  reward); if the heroes press hard during the negotiations, he’s willing 
  to go up to $6,000 each since he’s feeling the time pressure. When 
  the heroes agree to the terms, he concludes:
  Your job: Assess the situation and report back. We aren’t 
  expecting you to ﬁx the problem, but to satisfy the contract you 
  must have a full understanding of the problem and have taken 
  reasonable, immediate actions to prevent further harm to Syndi-
  cate personnel and other assets.
  You have authorization to direct all Syndicate personnel on 
  Tartarus as you see ﬁt, and paperwork signed by me to prove it. 
  Don’t get into any long-term disputes, however. Just put it in your 
  report, restore communications, and get back here.
  Time is of the essence, so you’ll be traveling at 4 g for the 
  one-week journey to Tartarus. You’ll be heavily medicated and 
  conﬁned to crash couches most of the time to reduce the impact 
  of high g-forces, and you’ll ﬂush your systems 12 hours before 
  you reach orbit. It won’t be a fun trip, but we want you at your 
  best when you get there.
  Move on to Scene 1 when you’re ready to begin.
  SCENE 1: TARTARUS ORBIT
  It’s trivially easy to reach Tartarus, though the high-g burn Lennox 
  takes to get there means that the heroes won’t be able to do much 
  during the one-week journey. 
  Tartarus is a moon of a gas giant in the HD 59686 system (the 
  Syndicate hasn’t bothered naming the system itself yet). About an 
  
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  hour after the PCs arrive in orbit above the mining station, Tartarus 
  passes around the far side of the gas giant and loses line of sight to 
  the Nexus Gate, so the PCs lose contact with the comm relay that 
  the Syndicate built near the Gate. The gas giant blocks communica-
  tion for four days, though the heroes can get a connection with the 
  relay if Lennox leaves Tartarus’s orbit. 
  Observing the Tartarus station site from orbit reveals the 
  following:
  • Emergency lighting is visible at the landing pad near the 
  mine entrance.
  • Sensors reveal minimal energy signatures—less than the 
  surface buildings would show under ordinary conditions.
  • No response to communication attempts. 
  • No automated ﬂight control info.
  • The trio of orbital satellites that connect Tartarus Station to 
  the relay near the Nexus Gate are intact and functional; they 
  just haven’t had anything to broadcast for two weeks.
  • No visual evidence of movement.
  • No evidence of unusual weather patterns, though it’s 
  cloudy across much of Tartarus, and there’s light fog at the 
  mining site.
  • Conditions are as Calvin DeNurio’s brieﬁng described them: 
  a sulfuric, not-quite-breathable atmosphere and a grav-
  ity of 0.6 g.
  The PCs can descend to the surface in the shuttle whenever 
  they like. The shuttle essentially ﬂies itself and can easily land under 
  autopilot. (The logistics crew ambushers described in Scene 2 won’t 
  reveal themselves, even with repeated ﬂybys. They know they need 
  an intact shuttle to escape Tartarus, so it has to land before they 
  make their move.) 
  SCENE 2: THE UNWELCOME MAT
  The logistics crew at Tartarus Station holds the surface huts and 
  the upper portion of the mine. They are desperate and paranoid; 
  the routine of a frontier mining outpost changed horribly when Dr. 
  Lassiter sent them footage of the brimstone beetle’s vivisections 
  and armed engineers returned shortly thereafter to round up more 
  “volunteers.” The logistics crew drove of the press gang, then 
  armed themselves as best they could while waiting for another 
  attack from below. (It hasn’t come because Dr. Lassiter has been 
  ﬁghting the engineers of.)
  Ambush: Lassiter told the logistics crew not to trust the 
  Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate and to get of Tartarus any way they could. 
  When the heroes bring a Syndicate shuttle to their landing pad, the 
  
  Scene 2: The Unwelcome Mat
  61
  Scene 2: The Unwelcome Mat
  61
  Shuttle
  Mine entrance
  Living Q
  Workshop
  Empty
  Ofces
  Storage
  Commo
  Antenna wreckage
  Crane superstructure
  Shipping crates
  5 meters
  robot start
  geo-shards
  logistics team plans to board it and leave, no matter what. Any fate 
  is better than vivisection at the hands of an alien.
  • 2 Logistics crew members per hero in the team (see 
  Adversaries).
  • The heroes hear a low rumbling sound coming from inside 
  one of the middle huts.
  • X-Cavator 85 drives through a hut wall and joins the battle at 
  the end of the ﬁrst action round.
  SETTING AND PROPS
  Map #1 shows the general layout of the landing pad and the 
  entrance to mine itself.
  Spotting/Opening Range: 60 m/30 m. If the PCs aren’t being 
  sneaky, then have the team make a group Awareness check. On a 
  success, the PCs spot their would-be assailants hiding among the 
  crates and can engage right away or walk up to 30 m, at which point 
  the logistics crew attacks. On a failure, the battle starts at 30 m and 
  the NPCs have tactical surprise. 
  
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  If the heroes try to sneak of the shuttle, it’s tricky but possible; 
  the sulfurous fog does obscure vision as it drifts by, but it’s unpre-
  dictable. Make a group Stealth check for the heroes who try to exit 
  the shuttle unobserved, and give the PCs a –2 step penalty because 
  the fog isn’t dense and the shuttle hatches are obvious. If the 
  heroes succeed, they ﬁnd the logistics crew preparing their ambush 
  and gain tactical surprise. If the heroes fail, it’s like they aren’t being 
  sneaky (described above). 
  Low Gravity: The light gravity means that the heroes have a +1 
  step bonus on attempts to lift, climb, or jump on Tartarus, and falls 
  are reduced by one severity level.
  Shipping Crates: Crates (typically 1 m tall and wide, and 2 m long) 
  are roughly stacked along the perimeter of the landing pad. They 
  provide cover. If struck by weapons ﬁre, use the “Machine Damage” 
  table on p. 215 of the Core Rulebook to determine what’s inside.
  Geo-Shards: These small bits of ﬂinty rock are left over from 
  the mine’s initial excavation. If a weapon such as the robot’s sonic 
  extractor delivers a spread or blast into a geo-shard area, the 
  geo-shards go airborne—and in 0.6 g, they take a while to settle. 
  The entire geo-shard area becomes very poor visibility (5 m max 
  visibility, creatures inside are impaired as on page 163 of the Core 
  Rulebook) until the start of the next round.
  Crane Superstructure: The cranes that move ore run in tracks 
  on an external framework that can be scaled pretty easily. The track 
  runs 10 meters of the ground and has frequent protrusions (+3 step 
  bonus on Acrobatics checks to avoid falling of). Characters move at 
  normal speed on the horizontal parts of the superstructure. 
  Mine Entrance: The cave-like entry to the mine’s main shaft is 
  about 10 meters tall and covered with plastic sheets that hang like 
  drapes. It’s not airtight, but the sheets keep particulates from blow-
  ing into the shaft, and they help keep the oxygen inside the mine so 
  the air is breathable. Oxygen escapes, of course, but slowly, making 
  the environmental system more efcient.
  AFTERMATH 
  It’s safe to assume that at least a few of the logistics staf survive the 
  battle (or that noncombatants were hiding in the outbuildings). Once 
  the logistics personnel realize they aren’t going to escape, they 
  demonstrate a panicky fear of going down into the mine.
  Here’s what the logistics crew knows:
  • Everything was going ﬁne—and in fact the mine was way 
  ahead of projected yield—until Dr. Lassiter emailed an urgent 
  warning to everyone on the surface. The warning included 
  graphic footage of station staf being vivisected by a mas-
  sive beetle-like alien.
  The logistics crew 
  isn’t much of a 
  challenge. The 
  heroes are supposed 
  to save these people, 
  not massacre them.
  
  Scene 2: The Unwelcome Mat
  63
  Scene 2: The Unwelcome Mat
  63
  • Lassiter said that the engineers were in league with the alien 
  and that the logistics staf was about to be captured and 
  handed over to the creature. “Barricade yourselves at the 
  entrance, and don’t trust anyone from the Syndicate. They’re 
  all in on it.”
  • Engineering staf, armed with the gear from the security sta-
  tion, attacked an hour later, but the logistics crew was able 
  to ﬁght them of by using tools as improvised weapons. The 
  engineers wrecked or cut power to almost everything on 
  the surface, though, including the radio transmitter and the 
  computer network. 
  • There are probably several dozen engineers down in the 
  mine. The logistics crew expected them to attack again, but 
  they haven’t . . . yet. (Lassiter has been holding them of, but 
  the logistics crew doesn’t know that.)
  • Dr. Lassiter hasn’t contacted them again, and they have no 
  good way to reply with the computer systems now wrecked.
  The logistics staf aren’t trained soldiers, so they’re all trau-
  matized to a greater or lesser degree by what they’ve seen and 
  endured over the last two weeks. Thus they aren’t great witnesses; 
  they don’t know what the alien is, how it’s involved with the engi-
  neers, or what they’re conspiring to do. But vivisection by an alien? 
  That’s all the logistics staf needed to see.
  OTHER CLUES
  Most of the outbuildings were damaged in the attack, but there are 
  still some clues that may help the players piece together the engi-
  neers’ motivations.
  Radio Transmitter: On a successful Mechanics check, it’s obvi-
  ous that the engineers wanted to bring it down; they swung a lifter 
  arm into it repeatedly.
  Computers: The networking between them is destroyed and will 
  take several days to restore, but local ﬁles are intact on about half 
  the computers. 
  The PCs can watch the vivisection footage if they wish. The alien 
  is seen only dimly. It seems massive and insectoid, with strange 
  manipulator claws.
  A map of the facility is also available, including plans for future 
  development phases. Construction on a metal-reﬁning furnace 
  and a mass driver to launch the metals into orbit were to begin in 
  three months. 
  Minerals: Some of the crates have iron, zinc, cadmium, and 
  gallium within them. PCs can learn more with a Science (planetol-
  ogy) check: 
  The heroes who 
  make an efort to 
  treat injured logistics 
  staf earn their trust. 
  
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  Failure: The labels on the crates say iron, all right.
  Average: Even a casual glance reveals that the metals are 
  remarkably pure–the sort of thing you’d pass around in chemistry 
  class, not ﬁnd in a mine. 
  Excellent: The metals are in rounded, ﬁst-sized chunks, not ingots 
  like you’d expect.
  Stellar: You couldn’t get those shapes with any known reﬁn-
  ing process. You’d have to cast the metals in that shape for 
  some reason. 
  DESCENDING INTO THE MINE
  Clearly, the engineering staf knows something that the logistics 
  team doesn’t, but there aren’t any engineers on hand. The heroes 
  are going to have to get the rest of their answers from the engineers 
  inside the mine to satisfy their contract with the Syndicate.
  The mine shaft itself is a tube 20 m in diameter, with aggre-
  gate ﬁll (gravel) in the lowest part to provide a ﬂat ﬂoor. The 
  surface opening is screened of by ﬁve layers of heavy plastic 
  curtains. Inside, the air is breathable, but it still smells like rotten 
  eggs. The main shaft descends like a corkscrew; each com-
  plete circle covering about 800 meters of linear distance and 
  descends 100 meters. It’s steep!
  The overhead lights in the upper portion of the mine are out, 
  and the atmospheric recyclers seem to be running in emergency 
  mode: it’s cold and the air is stale, although it is breathable. 
  Other than the faint whoosh of the atmospheric system, it’s silent 
  within the mine. The minerals glinting in the shaft walls are quite 
  striking, though.
  While most of the rock is dark gray and igneous, there are fre-
  quent bands of pyrite and sphalerite. Anyone with Science (plane-
  tology) or Engineering (mining) knows that pyrite is a compound of 
  sulfur and iron, and sphalerite is a mix of sulfur and zinc, with some 
  trace metals as well. Some of the pyrite and sphalerite seams have 
  been worked, and periodically a side shaft extends 50 meters or so 
  laterally from the main shaft. But where the pyrite remains, it looks 
  like a cave of gold.
  About 100 meters down, there’s a streak of reddish crystals that 
  appears unmarred. A successful Science (planetology) or Engineer-
  ing (mining) identiﬁes that as cinnabar, a sulfur/mercury compound 
  that’s dangerous to mine without special protective gear. 
  At about 200 meters down—the end of the corkscrew’s second 
  full circle—the emergency lights mounted on the walls are func-
  tional. The heroes are approaching the part of the mine where the 
  (justiﬁably) paranoid Dr. Lassiter has barricaded herself. 
  
  Scene 3: Lassiter’s Gauntlet
  65
  Scene 3: Lassiter’s Gauntlet
  65
  SCENE 3: LASSITER’S GAUNTLET
  One way or another, the heroes must get past the paranoid 
  Dr. Lassiter and continue their descent into the mine. She defends a 
  large room-and-pillar excavation in the mine’s midsection, keeping 
  the Syndicate engineers trapped below (and incidentally keeping 
  the support staf on the surface from learning anything about what’s 
  going on below).
  The mine shaft opens up into a wide excavated area with 
  a 5-meter ceiling supported by a number of rock pillars left in 
  place for that purpose. A large seam of reddish mineral zigzags 
  across the ﬂoor and ceiling in the middle of the room, and the air 
  reeks of rotten eggs. It looks like the main mine shaft continues 
  downward on the opposite side of this large chamber. However, 
  a dozen motionless human bodies lie on the ﬂoor near the oppo-
  site opening.
  Several small mine-safety drones drift slowly through the 
  room, pausing from time to time to scan the area carefully.
  This scene can play out along one of two branches—and your 
  table might jump from one branch to the other in the middle of the 
  scene. Sometimes a heated discussion gives way to violence, and 
  Dr. Lassiter is unhinged enough to engage in conversation over the 
  radio as the players ﬁght her drones.
  • If the heroes ignore the drones and proceed through the 
  room, Lassiter challenges them when they reach the cinna-
  bar seam (see Talking to Lassiter below).
  • If the heroes attack the drones or attempt to sneak by 
  them, Lassiter directs the drones to attack (see Lassiter’s 
  Drones below).
  • If the heroes attempt to make contact—say, by calling out a 
  greeting—Lassiter responds with a challenge (see Talking to 
  Lassiter).
  • If the heroes wait and watch before entering the room, 
  the drones eventually spot them and stop moving, focus-
  ing their attention on the team. Lassiter waits, and directs 
  the drones to attack when the team enters the room (see 
  Lassiter’s Drones).
  SETTING AND PROPS
  Map #2 shows Lassiter’s Gauntlet, the series of traps she’s set in 
  this part of the mine. Heroes trying to ﬁght their way through must 
  contend with waves of safety drones, destroying them before they 
  can trigger the traps.
  
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  10 meters
  from 
  surface
  drone start
  drone start
  Lassiter start
  to depths
  cinnabar vein
  sulfde vents
  narrow pillars (cave-in area)
  Spotting/Opening Range: 80 m/40 m.
  Low Gravity: The light gravity means that the heroes have a +1 
  step bonus on attempts to lift, climb, or jump on Tartarus, and falls 
  are reduced by one severity level.
  Cinnabar Vein: The brick-red crystals form a seam 5 meters wide 
  along the ﬂoor. If a drone reaches one, it can (as a 3-impulse action) 
  trigger explosives that vaporize the mercury found within cinnabar, 
  resulting in a cloud of mercury vapor within 5 m of it and destroying 
  the drone. The cloud is an inhaled poison (page 183 of the Core 
  Rulebook) with 1-round onset, 1 wound damage over time, and you 
  resist it once with an Endurance check at the end of the round. The 
  vapor dissipates at the end of the next action round.
  Narrow Pillars: Dr. Lassiter has strategically weakened some of 
  the narrower pillars in the chamber. If a drone ﬂies into one of these 
  pillars, it is destroyed, and the ceiling caves in within 5 meters of the 
  pillar. The falling rock deals 1d10 damage (because of the low grav-
  ity) and knocks prone any hero caught in the area. Characters in the 
  threatened area can attempt a Dodge check as a reaction; on a suc-
  cess, the character is prone but unhurt at the edge of the cave-in. 
  Hydrogen Sulﬁde Vents: These vents emit hydrogen sulﬁde, a 
  foul smelling—and ﬂammable—gas. If a drone reaches one, it can 
  (as a 3-impulse action) trigger an explosion of blue ﬂame with a 
  
  Scene 3: Lassiter’s Gauntlet
  67
  Scene 3: Lassiter’s Gauntlet
  67
  5-m diameter that deals 2d6 energy damage, which destroys the 
  drone. Characters in the threatened area can make a Dodge check 
  to get out of the way by 2/4/6 meters on an Av/Ex/St success. If that 
  movement gets the character out of the blast, then the PC is prone 
  but unhurt.
  Corpses: There are more than a dozen human bodies amid the 
  sulﬁde vents and narrow pillars. They’re dressed in Syndicate engi-
  neers’ jumpsuits. They tried to ascend through Lassiter’s chamber to 
  attack the logistics crew, and fell victim to the doctor’s traps.
  Mine Cart: A powered mine cart stands near the lower exit 
  of the room.
  TALKING TO LASSITER
  Dr. Lassiter can be reasoned with, but she’s justiﬁably paranoid and 
  doesn’t trust the PCs at all.
  Your comm devices crackle to life, and a woman’s voice 
  comes over the radio. “Not one more step,” she says. “Turn 
  around and march right back out of here, or I’ll blow you all to 
  hell. You can tell your boss that we’re not going to let him send 
  us down to die like sheep.” 
  Lassiter is a little unhinged by what she’s seen. The engineers 
  took her into their conﬁdence, but she was appalled by their willing-
  ness to sacriﬁce colleagues to the alien in the pursuit of mine pro-
  ductivity. She begins with the baseline assumption that the PCs are 
  “in on it,” and it’s difcult to earn her trust. She’s not thinking beyond 
  making the engineers pay and exterminating “that brimstone bug.” If 
  that means her life, then so be it. 
  If the heroes try to talk her into letting them pass (or simply 
  ﬁnding out what she knows about the goings-on deeper in the 
  mine), resolve it by roleplaying or by social skill checks at each 
  juncture when you feel Dr. Lassiter could break either in favor of or 
  against the PCs. 
  It takes a total of three successes to persuade Lassiter to stand 
  down, and each success also reveals some of the station’s recent 
  history and the engineers’ plans below. The PCs fail the skill chal-
  lenge after 3 failures.
  Because the consequences for her are serious (the alien and the 
  engineers might get away with it), the heroes’ skill checks start with 
  a –3 step penalty. But Dr. Lassiter is vulnerable to speciﬁc tech-
  niques and arguments:
  • The heroes point out that they’re working for the Facilities 
  division or Calvin DeNurio, not the Extractive Resources 
  division: +1 step bonus.
  
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  • Demonstrate kind treatment of the logistics crew after Scene 
  1: +1 step bonus.
  • Promise to kill the alien: +1 step bonus.
  • Promise to blow the pillars in the bottom chamber, crushing 
  everything: +2 step bonus.
  On the second success, Lassiter reveals herself.:
  A lean, middle-aged woman with her hair tied back in a dirty 
  ponytail steps out from behind a pillar on the far side of the room. 
  Two more safety drones hover by her shoulders. “I’m not sure I 
  believe you,” she says. “But keep talking—and you’d better not 
  be lying to me.”
  On the third success, Lassiter decides the heroes can be 
  trusted, and opens up enough to tell her story. See What Lassiter 
  Knows below.
  THE DRONES AND LASSITER
  If the heroes fail to engage Dr. Lassiter in conversation, she does 
  her best to see to it they don’t go any farther. She is all alone in this 
  section of the mine, but she’s reprogrammed the safety drones to 
  trigger traps that prove deadly to intruders. Start the scene with 
  waves of drones swooping toward the PCs when they approach the 
  seam of cinnabar.
  • Wave 1: one safety drone per hero in the party (see 
  Adversaries).
  • Wave 2: one safety drone per hero in the party (see 
  Adversaries).
  • Wave 3: Dr. Lassiter, plus one safety drone per hero in the 
  party (see Adversaries).
  The drones hang back to use their stunners at range, using hit-
  and-run tactics and moving around the pillars in an efort to draw 
  the heroes into entering areas threatened by Lassiter’s traps. When 
  a hero moves into the right spot, the nearest drone uses its next 
  action to trigger the trap, annihilating itself in the process.
  Dr. Lassiter ﬁghts if cornered, but she’s probably anticlimactic 
  compared to waves of drones, blue ﬁre, and plumes of toxic gas. 
  She hangs back, sniping with her laser pistol and trying to lure the 
  heroes into position for a drone to set of a trap.
  WHAT LASSITER KNOWS
  Whether Dr. Lassiter tells the players willingly, lets something slip 
  in the middle of the battle, or grudgingly answers the heroes’ 
  The challenge 
  of the battle 
  isn’t beating the 
  drones—it’s beating 
  them before they 
  trigger the traps.
  
  Scene 3: Lassiter’s Gauntlet
  69
  Scene 3: Lassiter’s Gauntlet
  69
  questions after her defeat, it’s important that she ﬁlls in more of the 
  picture of what the engineers are up to.
  First Reveal: The mining engineers discovered alien life—an 
  underground creature about 2 meters long they called a brimstone 
  slug. “It eats sulfur and leaves behind the other minerals. I dissected 
  one at their request, and its innards were a chemistry set as far as 
  I could tell. If you put pyrite in front of them, for example, the slugs 
  literally crap pure iron.”
  Next: The engineers ﬁgured out that the slugs could be “herded” 
  with jury-rigged cattle prods, and they’ve been rounding them up, 
  then cleaning up after them ever since.
  After that: “But the brimstone slugs are connected somehow 
  to a much scarier alien, something so smart it learned rudimentary 
  English! The engineers call it a brimstone beetle. It claims ownership 
  or parentage or something over the slugs. It told the engineers it 
  wanted humans to study in exchange for the slugs’ obedience. And 
  those bastards gave in to the alien’s demands!”
  Finally: The brimstone beetle’s idea of “study” was a gory vivi-
  section; and then it wanted more subjects. “The engineers tried to 
  sell out the surface staf, but I warned them, and I’ve been trying to 
  keep the engineers bottled up down there ever since.”
  AFTERMATH: KOJIMA’S CALL
  Dr. Lassiter won’t descend further with the heroes, although 
  depending on how the scene played out, she may wish them luck. 
  There’s a wheeled mine cart at the far end of the chamber that the 
  heroes can use to descend the rest of the way. It’s an open-cab 
  vehicle with a top speed of 40 m, so it’s hard to weaponize. Its 
  wheel noise also makes stealth impossible. 
  Regardless of the whether the heroes walk or drive, about 5 min-
  utes after they leave Dr. Lassiter, their radio crackles to life.
  “This is senior engineer Glenn Kojima. We should talk.”
  Spy Cams: Kojima had his team deploy a handful of well-hidden 
  button-cams on the mine-shaft walls a little below Lassiter’s gaunt-
  let, in the hope that he’d catch the doctor outside her little fortress. 
  The cameras are small and carefully placed; if the heroes aren’t 
  speciﬁcally searching the shaft as they descend, they don’t notice 
  them. (If the heroes are looking, allow a group Awareness or Secu-
  rity skill check at a –2 step penalty to ﬁnd one of the cams.) The 
  spy cams provide Kojima with a good idea of the heroes’ number 
  and armament.
  Kojima’s Plan: Kojima wants to make sure the PCs keep 
  descending until they reach the bottom of the mine shaft, where 
  he hopes to overpower them and give them to the brimstone 
  
  70
  Episode 3: Tartarus Station
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  70
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  Episode 3: Tartarus Station
  beetle. It’s a two-for-one deal: it satisﬁes the alien while eliminating 
  witnesses.
  • Kojima asks who the heroes are and what their objective is.
  • He claims that the crew in the upper portion of the mine has 
  fallen prey to hallucinogenic mineral particles that contami-
  nated the air supply (not true).
  • He says that the heroes have likely been breathing the hal-
  lucinogen, but “we’re forted up on the lower level and we’ve 
  ﬁgured out an antidote—better hurry down before you start 
  to experience the efects.”
  • If that ploy fails, Kojima claims to have several support staf 
  personnel as hostages (not true) and threatens to shoot 
  them if the heroes don’t continue on and surrender.
  • Kojima ignores threats of Calvin DeNurio’s authority: “He’s 
  your boss, not mine.”
  • If the heroes don’t fall for any of it, Kojima cuts of 
  communication.
  Backup Plan: If Kojima can’t persuade or taunt the heroes into 
  coming to him, he’ll go to them. He and his team come up the shaft 
  as stealthily as they can, and attack on sight. Stage Scene 4 and 
  Scene 5 in the tunnel just past Lassiter’s Gauntlet. 
  SCENE 4: MAKING YOU MINE 
  This scene is a straight-up battle between Kojima’s engineers and 
  the heroes, with all the cards (but one; see Scene 5) on the table.
  The descending mine shaft ends in another large room-and-
  pillar excavation. At the far end of the room, a large excavating 
  machine has carved a few meters into the opposite wall where 
  the mine shaft would continue, but it’s currently standing idle. 
  A pen-like enclosure made from strung wires and posts stands 
  to one side of the room; several weird 2-meter-long iron-gray 
  worms slowly crawl around the pen with a soft rasping sound.
  Thanks to Kojima’s spy cams, the Syndicate engineers know that 
  the heroes are coming and set an ambush, hiding behind the rock 
  pillars. (If the heroes somehow avoid the spy cams, the engineers 
  are caught of-guard in the open.) When the heroes enter the room, 
  they must make a group Awareness check at a –1 step penalty; on 
  a failure, the Syndicate engineers gain tactical surprise. Otherwise, 
  the heroes spot the engineers springing their ambush; roll initia-
  tive normally.
  
  Scene 4: Making You Mine 
  71
  Scene 4: Making You Mine 
  71
  5 meters
  from 
  surface
  tracked drill borer (inactive)
  gate
  gate
  rubble pile
  rubble pile
  rubble pile
  demo
  demo
  demo
  demo
  SYNDICATE ENGINEERS
  Start the battle with the engineers scattered among the pillars and 
  rubble piles. Kojima reveals himself at the start of the second round.
  • 1 Syndicate engineer per hero in the team (see Adversaries).
  • Senior Engineer Kojima (see human enforcer, page 245, 
  Core Rulebook).
  The engineers attempt to take down one or two enemies fast in 
  the hopes that the overwhelmed survivors surrender—they need to 
  make sure they capture at least a couple of warm bodies to hand 
  over to the brimstone beetle. The engineers ﬁght to the death, 
  assuming that they’ll be turned into beetle-bait if they give up.
  SETTING AND PROPS
  Map #3 shows Kojima’s Strongpoint.
  Spotting/Opening Range: 80 m/40 m.
  Low Gravity: The light gravity means that the heroes have a +1 
  step bonus on attempts to lift, climb, or jump on Tartarus, and falls 
  are reduced by one severity level.
  
  72
  Episode 3: Tartarus Station
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  72
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide
  Episode 3: Tartarus Station
  Pillars: It’s hard to hit characters behind the corners of a 
  pillar. The pillars provide 50 percent cover (a –2 step penalty to 
  ranged attacks).
  Slug Pen: The engineers have collected about a dozen brim-
  stone slugs behind a wire fence. Hitting the gate with a weapon 
  blasts it open and sets them free. The slugs can’t ﬁght, but they can 
  wreak chaos on the battleﬁeld as they slither about. Any hit kills a 
  slug, leaving a 2-meter puddle of toxic goo (slow terrain, and any 
  non-slug that moves through the goo begins taking acid damage 
  over time).
  Retreat Demo Charge: The four marked pillars have explosives 
  on them for “retreat mining:” extracting resources from the pillars 
  that hold up the ceiling, then letting the chamber cave in. If all four 
  charges are hit with weapons or otherwise triggered, the whole 
  chamber collapses, burying everyone inside (except for the brim-
  stone beetle; see below). 
  Rubble Piles: Slow terrain, but a successful Athletics check 
  allows movement at normal speed through this area. The rubble 
  provides 50 percent cover.
  THE BEETLE RETURNS
  When the heroes are just about to mop up the Syndicate engi-
  neers—or the engineers are just about to ﬁnish them of—the brim-
  stone beetle makes an unexpected return. It emerges from the ﬂoor 
  or a wall at the end of Impulse 8; move on to Scene 5.
  SCENE 5: MEET THE BEETLE 
  In terms of pacing, this scene is an extension of the previous one. 
  You don’t need to break out of action rounds if it feels more natural 
  to just keep going. 
  A sudden tremor shakes the chamber, bringing a ﬁne cascade 
  of dust down from the rocky ceiling. Rock cracks and groans—
  and then something bursts into the room, sending shattered 
  stone for meters around. It’s a hulking, iron-gray creature the 
  size of an elephant, with a thick metallic carapace and a horrible 
  mass of cleaver-like appendages at the front of its blunt torso. It 
  buries one limb in the ﬂoor and vibrates it vigorously . . . and the 
  sounds it produces come out as low, rumbling English, “Bargain 
  accepted. Now deliver subjects. Now!”
  
  Epilogue
  73
  Epilogue
  73
  The brimstone beetle sounds like it’s speaking through a sub-
  woofer. It uses English words without concern for word order or 
  grammar, and it doesn’t respond to anything the heroes—or Kojima, 
  if he’s still alive—say. Feel free to monologue a bit, then continue 
  the combat.
  If no one appears ready to present themselves as a “subject,” 
  the beetle assumes that whoever’s closest to it will do, and moves 
  to attack.
  • Brimstone beetle (see Adversaries).
  The beetle is a very tough foe, so the heroes must give it every-
  thing they’ve got to make it retreat. (Note that the top row of its 
  durability chart doesn’t say “incapacitated.”) It can’t tell the difer-
  ence between humans, so it’s just as likely to attack a Syndicate 
  engineer as one of the heroes. It ﬁghts until it incapacitates three 
  targets or loses its last 16+ wound box, then it burrows away. The 
  heroes can also drive it of by collapsing the ceiling with the demo 
  charges, and destroying the entire chamber (and possibly them-
  selves as well).
  EPILOGUE
  The heroes solve the Tartarus Station mystery by overpowering 
  the engineers and forcing the brimstone beetle to retreat. They 
  can return to the surface without further difculties. The shuttle’s 
  still waiting to take them back to Lennox, and they can set course 
  for Syndicate station Prosperity One at their convenience. The 
  heroes can also successfully complete the adventure by retreating 
  after they ﬁgure out the story of the engineers’ bargain with the 
  brimstone beetle and establish that the Syndicate engineers aren’t 
  willing to give up peacefully—Calvin DeNurio can take it from there. 
  DeNurio pays the heroes without incident, and promises that 
  the situation on Tartarus was an aberration that the Syndicate will 
  swiftly deal with. Of course the Tethys-Hygiea Syndicate respects 
  international law when it comes to alien lifeforms, and of course 
  they’d never try to exploit the brimstone creatures or take them 
  ofworld. Never.
  If the Syndicate 
  engineers are giving 
  the heroes a hard 
  time, you can have 
  the beetle start on 
  the Syndicate ﬁrst.
  
  74
  Episode 3: Tartarus Station
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  Episode 3: Tartarus Station
  ADVERSARIES
  The adversaries in this adventure are described in order of their 
  appearance.
  LOGISTICS CREW MEMBER
  Desperate and poorly armed, the logistics crew is only interested in 
  getting by the heroes to seize the shuttle.
  TR 2 Medium Minion Humanoid (Human)
  Senses normal; Awareness 15+
  Initiative 14/19/24; Speed 16 meters
  Str 16+ 
  Agi 17+ 
  Vit 17+ 
  Int 17+ (sentient) 
  Foc 17+ 
  Per 17+
  ACTIONS
  Repurposed Nailer 4 impulses; Medium 1 target; Attack 15/20/25 (+1 step); 
  Damage 3/6 physical.
  Wrench 3 impulses; Melee 1 target; Attack 15/20/25 (+1 step); Damage 2/5 
  physical.
  DEFENSE
  Armor 2 physical, 1 energy.
  (1+ dmg)
  
  incapacitated
  Crumples to the ground, groaning
  OTHER
  No Witnesses The crew member gains a +1 step bonus to attack an oppo-
  nent who hasn’t been damaged yet.
  Minion Attack This creature’s attack deals one wound of the lowest sever-
  ity if the damage overcomes the target’s armor.
  Skills Athletics 14+, Mechanics 15+, Stealth 15+
  Gear Vac suit, comm headgear
  X-CAVATOR 85
  A specialized mining robot, the X-Cavator has had most of its 
  safety programming stripped down to make it a crude but efective 
  battle machine.
  TR 4 Large Champion Mechanism (Robot)
  Senses normal, low-light; Awareness 15+
  Initiative 16/21/25; Speed 16 meters
  Str 13+ 
  Agi 18+ 
  Vit 14+ 
  Int 17+ (programmed) Foc 18+ 
  Per 20+
  ACTIONS
  Manipulator Arms 4 impulses; Melee 2 targets; Attack 13/18/23 (+1 step, or 
  +2 steps vs. prone target); Damage 1d8 + 3/7 physical, and target must 
  make an Acrobatics check or be knocked prone.
  Sonic Extractor 3 impulses; Close 1 target (spread); Attack 13/18/23; 
  Damage 1d8 + 3/7 energy, and target must make an Endurance check or 
  be stunned 3 impulses.
  
  Adversaries
  75
  Adversaries
  75
  REACTIONS
  Reﬁne the Sample 1-impulse reaction. The ﬁrst time it damages a target 
  in melee or is damaged by a melee attack, the X-Cavator activates a 
  torso-mounted ﬂamer. Medium blast; Blast 2 m (4 m); Attack 13/18/23; 
  Primary Damage 2d10 energy and ignite; Secondary Damage 2d6 energy 
  and ignite. The X-Cavator is immune to its own blast.
  DEFENSE
  Large Enemies gain a +1 step bonus to attack the robot.
  Life Support
  Armor 3 physical, 2 energy
   (13+ dmg)
    
  incapacitated 
  Smoke pours out
  (10 to 12 dmg)   
  –2 step penalty to checks 
  “Contaminants detected.”
  (7 to 9 dmg) 
   
  sonic extractor damaged;
  Shower of sparks
  (1 to 6 dmg) 
   
  loses spread
  “Investigating deposit.”
  OTHER
  Skills Dodge 16+, Science (planetology) 15+, Engineering (mining) 15+
  SAFETY DRONE
  The drone is a small robot designed to monitor conditions in the 
  mine. It’s been reprogrammed to serve as a robotic kamikaze.
  TR 1 Tiny Minion Mechanism (Robot)
  Senses normal, toxic gas detector (range 20 m); Awareness 16+
  Initiative 13/18/23; Speed ﬂy 25 meters (hover)
  Str 17+ 
  Agi 15+ 
  Vit 17+ 
  Int 17+ (programmed) Foc 18+ 
  Per 20+
  ACTIONS
  Stunner 3 impulses; Close 1 target; Attack 16/21/26 (+1 step); Damage 2/5 
  physical, and if the target sufers a wound, it must make an Endurance 
  check or be stunned 3 impulses.
  DEFENSE
  Tiny Enemies sufer a –2 step penalty to attack the safety drone.
  Life Support
  Armor 1 physical, 1 energy.
  (1+ dmg)
  
  incapacitated
  Spins out of balance, hits wall
  OTHER
  Networked The safety drone is linked to its parent security system on 
  Lassiter’s datapad.
  Minion Attack This creature’s attack deals one wound of the lowest sever-
  ity if the damage overcomes the target’s armor.
  
  76
  Episode 3: Tartarus Station
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  76
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide
  Episode 3: Tartarus Station
  DR. BERNICE LASSITER
  Desperate and paranoid, Lassiter strikes ﬁrst by using her safety 
  drones to trigger the deadly traps in the room where she’s decided 
  to make her stand.
  TR 4 Medium Standard Humanoid (Human)
  Senses normal; Awareness 12+
  Initiative 11/16/21 (+1 step); Speed 20 meters
  Str 16+ 
  Agi 15+ 
  Vit 17+ 
  Int 15+ (sentient) 
  Foc 16+ 
  Per 16+
  ACTIONS
  Laser Pistol 3 impulses; Long 1 target; Attack 11/16/21 (+2 steps); Damage 
  1d6+1/7 energy (1d6 + 4/10 vs. a wounded, distracted, or unaware target).
  Unarmed 3 impulses; Melee 1 target; Attack 12/17/22 (+1 step); Damage 
  1d4+0/3 physical (1d4 + 3/6 physical vs. a wounded, distracted, or 
  unaware target).
  DEFENSE
  Armor 2 physical, 2 energy
  (12+ dmg)
   incapacitated
  Spins away from blow, collapses
  (9 to 11 dmg)  –2 step penalty to all checks Hisses in pain, looks for way out
  (6 to 8 dmg)  –1 step penalty to all checks “You’re not taking me alive!”
  (1 to 5 dmg)
  
  “Leave me alone, damn you!”
  OTHER
  Manic Fury Gains a +3 damage bonus when attacking a wounded, distracted 
  or unaware target (included above).
  Skills Acrobatics 11+, Computer 11+, Medicine 11+, Security 11+, Stealth 11+
  Gear hardmesh suit, laser pistol, comm device, datapad
  TARTARUS ENGINEER
  The Syndicate engineers aren’t particularly well trained for combat—
  they just got to the station’s weapons locker ﬁrst.
  TR 1 Medium Standard Humanoid (Human)
  Senses normal; Awareness 14+
  Initiative 13/18/23; Speed 20 meters
  Str 16+ 
  Agi 17+ 
  Vit 17+ 
  Int 16+ (sentient) 
  Foc 16+ 
  Per 18+
  ACTIONS
  Flechette Pistol 3 impulses; Medium 1 target; Attack 15/20/25 (+1 step); 
  Damage 1d6+1/5 physical (1d6 + 4/8 at Close range).
  Stun Baton 3 impulses; Melee 1 target; Attack 15/20/25 (+1 step); Damage 
  1d6+0/3 energy, and the target must make an Endurance check or be 
  stunned for 3 impulses.
  DEFENSE
  Armor 2 physical, 1 energy
  (10+ dmg)
   incapacitated
  Drops in a nerveless heap
  (7 to 9 dmg)  –2 step penalty to all checks Looks for a place to hide
  (4 to 6 dmg)  –1 step penalty to all checks
  Grunts, winces
  (1 to 3 dmg) 
  “So that’s how you want to play?”
  
  Adversaries
  77
  Adversaries
  77
  OTHER
  Skills Athletics 14+, Engineering (mining) 14+, Security 14+
  Gear ballistic vest, stun baton, ﬂechette pistol with two clips, comm device
  BRIMSTONE BEETLE
  A clever, calculating alien monster the size of an elephant, the 
  beetle regards humans as pests and intruders. Its experiments are 
  simply its way of determining whether humans pose a threat and the 
  most efcient way to kill them. 
  TR 11 Huge Boss Enigma (Alien)
  Senses normal, tremorsense; Awareness 12+
  Initiative 11/16/21; Speed 30 meters, burrow 10 meters
  Str 5+ 
  Agi 17+ 
  Vit 8+ 
  Int 13+ (sentient) 
  Foc 14+ 
  Per 18+
  ACTIONS
  Rampage 5 impulses. The beetle moves 20 meters and makes up to three 
  limb attacks against diferent targets at any point in its move. It can 
  move through the spaces of medium and smaller creatures during this 
  action.
  Limb Strike 3 impulses; Melee 1 target; Attack 5/10/15 (+1 step); Damage 
  2d4/1d10 + 6 physical, and a large or smaller target must make an Athlet-
  ics check or be pushed 5 meters and knocked prone.
  AURA 
  Sulfuric Stench Resolve at end of impulse 4 and impulse 8. Efect All living 
  targets within 6 meters must make an Endurance check or become 
  poisoned and begin taking damage over time (poison, passive resist 1). 
  Poisoned creatures are impaired. Creatures with life support are immune 
  to the aura.
  DEFENSE
  Huge Enemies gain a +2 step bonus to attack the beetle.
  Armor 4 physical, 2 energy
  (16+ dmg)
   
  burrows into ground and 
  escapes
  Bass drum sound fades…
  (16+ dmg)
  
  uses Rampage as a 
  reaction
  Deafening drum-like 
  booming
  (16+ dmg)
   knocked of-balance
  “Pain, Payment”
  (13 to 15 dmg)  Distracted until next action “Annoy, Death, Next”
  (1 to 12 dmg)
  
  “Futility, Pain, Promise”
  OTHER
  Tremorsense The brimstone beetle detects creatures within Close range as 
  long as they aren’t ﬂying.
  Creature sizes 
  are deﬁned on 
  page 155 of the 
  Core Rulebook.
  
  78
  Episode 4:  Hives of Janrata
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  EPISODE 4:  
  HIVES OF JANRATA
  An Adventure for 3rd level Heroes
  Opening a Nexus Gate to an unknown destination and making the jump 
  to the other side requires a special brand of courage—or insanity. Hives 
  of Janrata is a short adventure that sends characters to an unexplored 
  star system where they discover the ruins of an alien civilization. The only 
  problem is their second discovery: the lethal alien robot prototypes that 
  destroyed it.
  BACKGROUND
  Millennia ago, a race of creatures who called themselves the janrii race 
  built a civilization on their home planet of Janrata. Their peaceful society 
  was highly stratiﬁed and organized around hives. They achieved Tech Era 6 
  technology and stagnated there. Then their planet was found by the h’naal.
  Because the hive-cities of the janrii were nearly identical but also iso-
  lated, they ofered the h’naal laboratory-like conditions for testing weapons. 
  Diferent autonomous devices were unleashed against separate cities with 
  instructions to exterminate the inhabitants, then the results compared. The 
  robots were wildly successful; civilization on Janrata was destroyed and the 
  janrii were hunted nearly to extinction. Their sprawling hive-cities lie in ruins, 
  inhabited only by a few still-functioning h’naal combat drones.
  ADVENTURE SUMMARY
  The adventure occurs in four scenes: a prologue at the Protostar Nexus and 
  three scenes of combat and exploration at Janrata.
  Prologue: The heroes are approached by a representative of Orion 
  Ventures, who needs a crew of spacefarers to test a new Gate code and 
  explore whatever it leads to.
  Scene 1: The heroes arrive at the unknown system and detect a power 
  signature from the second planet, which is dotted with ruined cities. Upon 
  entering the ruins, they’re involved in an intense but short ﬁght. Afterward, 
  they learn they were ﬁghting machines, not creatures.
  Scene 2: More attacks occur as characters explore further. By piecing 
  together clues, the heroes ﬁgure out that the city and the hostile machines 
  were built by diferent species, and that the machines need an external 
  power source.
  Scene 3: The heroes search for the city’s still-functioning power plant 
  and either destroy it or cut of the machines’ access to it.
  janrii were hunted nearly to extinction. Their sprawling hive-cities lie in ruins, 
  inhabited only by a few still-functioning h’naal combat drones.
  ADVENTURE SUMMARY
  The adventure occurs in four scenes: a prologue at the Protostar Nexus and 
  
  Prologue: Mr. White
  79
  PROLOGUE: MR. WHITE
  The adventure opens while characters are spending some down 
  time at one of the outposts near the Protostar Nexus. Ideally, they’ve 
  already played The Roanoke Afair so they’re familiar with Orion 
  Ventures and their agent, Mr. White. The Mr. White who approaches 
  characters now can be the same person they dealt with before or it 
  can be a diferent Orion Ventures agent going by the same corpo-
  rate nom de plume (in which case it may be Ms. White).
  While you’re killing time between jobs at a trading post in the 
  Protostar Nexus, your comm device buzzes for attention: The 
  caller ID shows the name of “White,” with a corporate stamp of 
  “Orion Ventures.”
  “I need a crew to tackle something special,” Mr. White begins 
  after the usual pleasantries. “Orion Ventures has acquired the 
  Gate key to an unknown, unexplored star system. Obviously, we 
  don’t know what this key leads to—and that’s where you come in.
  “Orion Ventures will provide everything you need. In 
  exchange, we expect a detailed report on what the destination 
  holds, including samples of valuable minerals and interesting 
  lifeforms, where possible.
  “Your investigation doesn’t need to be exhaustive, but the 
  corporation has already invested a substantial sum in acquiring 
  the key and every trip through the Gate adds to that outlay. Your 
  real job here is to ﬁnd a promising landing site and make sure 
  it’s safe for the follow-up team. Do more than that, and you’ll 
  earn a bonus.”
  If asked, Mr. White maintains the code has never been tested 
  before. This may or may not be true; that decision is up to you (see 
  Aftermath below).
  If characters have a ship, Orion Ventures pays to provision it. If 
  they don’t, they’ll be provided with Dulcinea, a small, unarmed skif 
  of a type popular with asteroid prospectors. It’s barely large enough 
  for the characters plus the supplies, instruments, and other gear 
  packed aboard by Orion Ventures. The company expects Dulcinea 
  back at the end of the mission; the ship isn’t part of the characters’ 
  pay (unless they perform extremely well and you deem it’s appropri-
  ate for your campaign).
  Payment is $3,000 each (a level 1 reward) up-front just for testing 
  the Gate key. Bonuses can quickly raise this to $10,000 each (see 
  Aftermath). While Mr. White’s ofer is generous, he also makes it 
  clear that no help will come if the characters get into trouble. To 
  earn those bonuses, characters need to come back with more than 
  just their lives and a few instrument scans. The threat is implied 
  
  80
  Episode 4: Hives of Janrata 
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  rather than overt: If the characters come back empty-handed, they’ll 
  be lucky to ﬁnd work caulking air leaks in old asteroid tunnels.
  ARRIVAL
  The jump through the Gate goes smoothly. Characters ﬁnd them-
  selves in a binary system consisting of a class F (yellow-white) star 
  orbiting a class B blue giant so distant it can efectively be ignored 
  (their orbital period equals one revolution every ~2,700 years). Scan-
  ning the system with the ship’s instruments is a complex Science 
  skill check (one check per hour). An Excellent result counts as 2 
  successes, and a Stellar result counts as 3.
  0 successes: The yellow-white star is orbited by four planets: a 
  barren rock blasted by stellar radiation, one terrestrial world, and 
  two gas giants.
  1 success: A faint power trace is detected from the terres-
  trial planet. 
  2 successes: Somewhere on the terrestrial planet is a functioning 
  electrical power plant.
  3 successes: Multiple power traces are detected from the 
  terrestrial planet. Electricity is being generated there in more than 
  one location.
  JANRATA ORBIT
  Whether or not characters pick up the power traces, the terrestrial 
  planet (Janrata) is the most promising feature in the system. It takes 
  about 2 days of travel at 1 g to reach it from the wormhole terminus. 
  When the heroes approach the planet, read:
  The planet is a bit larger than Earth, with ten percent higher 
  gravity. Its atmosphere is breathable, but you’ll need a ﬁlter to 
  protect your lungs against dust. Its day is 38 hours long, divided 
  evenly between darkness and light.
  The only open water consists of small seas scattered around 
  the equator. Strong wind carries moisture from those seas 
  around the planet, creating an equatorial green belt that’s semi-
  arid by Earth standards. Outside the equatorial zone, the planet 
  is barren and dry.
  All the cities are sited along the equator, near the seas.
  A detailed scan can be made from orbit with another Science 
  skill challenge (1 check per hour). 
  0 successes: Six sites on the planet appear to be ruins on the 
  scale of cities, but the power emissions couldn’t be triangulated to 
  any single site. 
  
  Scene 1: Hostile Contact
  81
  Scene 1: Hostile Contact
  81
  1 success: The planet has six 
  ancient, ruined cities, and they’re 
  the sources of the power emissions. 
  2 successes: The cities vary 
  in size but have strikingly simi-
  lar layouts. 
  3 successes: Three of the cities 
  are emitting weak power signa-
  tures, implying they still have oper-
  ating power plants.
  SCENE 1: HOSTILE CONTACT
  It makes no diference which site the heroes investigate, provided 
  it’s one with power. If they explore a ruin without power, its descrip-
  tion is the same but there are no 
  attacks and nothing of value to ﬁnd, 
  just empty ruins.
  Janrii society was hive-like, and 
  their cities bear a superﬁcial resem-
  blance to the interlinked cells of 
  ﬂattened beehives. The city is sited 
  in a bowl-like depression about 30 
  kilometers across. The hive-like 
  layout is apparent during a ﬂyover 
  or from low orbit. Show the map to 
  players once they’ve surveyed the 
  site from the air.
  Note the scale of the map. The 
  city is about 12 by 8 km in size, 
  and individual cells average 1 to 2 
  km across.
  LANDING
  A ﬂat, rocky space suitable for 
  landing the ship can be found 
  outside the walls. The heroes may 
  be tempted to land inside the city, 
  but doing so involves several obvi-
  ous risks: the ship could damage 
  something valuable; it could be damaged by debris or by slamming 
  against an obstruction in the gusting wind; the ship could collapse 
  an underground chamber; if anything lives in the ruins, the ship 
  might frighten or anger the inhabitants; and hostile creatures could 
  A character breathing Janrata’s dust-
  ﬁlled air without a mask becomes 
  weakened until the hero spends at least 
  30 minutes breathing uncontaminated air. 
  Dulcinea’s suit locker includes vac suits 
  and respirator masks that can protect 
  heroes exploring the surface, and any 
  armor providing life support is also suf-
  cient for protection. 
  
  82
  Episode 4: Hives of Janrata 
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  easily encircle the vessel and cut of the characters’ escape in the 
  close conﬁnes of the city. 
  When the heroes disembark, read:
  The terrain outside the city is a mix of bare, wind-sculpted rock 
  and tough plants typical of a semi-arid environment. The air is thick 
  with dust, and the wind howls between the weird-looking rocks. 
  From the ground, you realize that the city’s hexagonal domes are 
  quite large—a kilometer or two across, and hundreds of meters 
  high. However, they’re all collapsed, leaving nothing but jagged 
  rims around the edges. Numerous wall collapses and ﬁssures ofer 
  ingress to the city. Nothing seems to be moving except for you.
  CONTACT
  Refer to Scene 2 for descriptions of the city and movement through 
  cells. What matters immediately is that within 10 or 15 minutes of set-
  ting foot in the city, the team is attacked by h’naal combat drones. 
  The heroes shouldn’t realize they’re confronting machines until they 
  have a chance to handle a dead one.
  • 1 h’naal drone per character (see Adversaries)
  The drones move quietly through cover to get within Close 
  range before attacking. Allow the team to make a group Aware-
  ness check with a –1 step penalty. On a failure, the team is 
  surprised. On a success, the heroes hear shifting debris or catch a 
  glimpse of motion just before the attack occurs, and have enough 
  warning to not be surprised. If the team succeeds and at least one 
  hero scores an Excellent or Stellar success, the character notices 
  several “creatures” before the attack but has no idea whether 
  they’re hostile or benign, intelligent or nonintelligent; add the 
  following description.
  Several creatures are approaching, scrambling across, 
  around, and under the rubble. They’re about the size of large 
  cats, but they have oval bodies and they move on ﬁve supremely 
  ﬂexible limbs. Their coloring matches the terrain, and while they 
  have folds and dimples on their bodies, you can’t tell what’s an 
  eye, an ear, a mouth, a nostril, or anything else.
  If this skirmish takes place in one of the city’s outer ring of sec-
  tors, the battle ends in just 2 action rounds: Any surviving drones 
  retreat at that point (see Drone Attacks below). Surviving drones 
  quickly escape from pursuing characters by dodging under rubble 
  or through narrow gaps in walls.
  
  Scene 2: Tragic Clues
  83
  Scene 2: Tragic Clues
  83
  EXAMINING DRONES
  Studying the drones is an open-ended complex skill check using 
  Engineering, Mechanics, or Science. The heroes require the 
  remains of at least one destroyed robot, and each check requires 
  one minute. If a hero fails at a skill check, the current specimen 
  proves to be too badly damaged to yield any new insights—they’ll 
  need to examine a diferent specimen to continue the process. 
  The facts the heroes glean depend on their progress while exam-
  ining the remains, with a +1 step bonus per destroyed robot being 
  examined. 
  Successes
  Findings
  1
  These creatures are biotech robots, not living creatures. Each has a weapon that ﬁres 
  bolts of plasma mounted in its chassis.
  2
  The robots are very old, about as old as the ruins. The material they’re made of is 
  unlike anything in the ruins. Their ﬁve-limbed body plan matches nothing living on the 
  planet or shown in the city’s crumbling reliefs and statuary.
  3
  The robots camouﬂage themselves by altering their coloration.
  4
  They operate on bioelectric battery systems. 
  5
  Their batteries are badly degraded and can’t hold a charge for very long.
  6
  They’re slightly more vulnerable to physical damage than to energy damage.
  7
  The robots can see infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light.
  8
  Their audio receptors are keener than human ears, especially to low frequencies.
  9
  The robots can receive and transmit radio signals with an internal antenna. 
  10
  It’s likely that they are networked with each other and possibly controlled or guided 
  from a base station.
  SCENE 2: TRAGIC CLUES
  After defeating the ﬁrst drone attack, the heroes can begin explor-
  ing the ruins in earnest.
  You must speak loudly to be heard above the wind whistling 
  through the ruins. Heavy drifts of sand reduce the main thor-
  oughfares to vague outlines, but you can see that each of the 
  city’s large hexagonal cells is structured like an immense atrium 
  open from ﬂoor to ceiling, and ringed by wide, balcony-like ﬂoors 
  of varying heights. The ﬂoors were connected by ramps; many 
  upper ﬂoors have collapsed, and those that remain don’t look 
  stable. The ground is littered with fallen debris and drifting sand. 
  Few interior walls remain intact, but in sheltered places, pitted 
  walls and scoured ﬂoors form the bare skeletons of buildings. 
  
  84
  Episode 4: Hives of Janrata 
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  84
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide
  Episode 4: Hives of Janrata 
  The chief building material seems to have been an unfamiliar 
  form of plastic or resin.
  The city is laid out concentrically in rings of cells. The outermost 
  cells (four or ﬁve rings from the center) were devoted to agriculture. 
  The third ring was industrial, the second residential, and the ﬁrst 
  administrative and commercial. The central core controlled the city’s 
  power, light, water, and other infrastructure.
  Moving Through the City: The team can move directly from any 
  cell to any adjoining cell, either through still-existing gateways or 
  through breaches caused by ﬁghting or by age and weather. If the 
  heroes are moving carefully—exploring, keeping quiet—they can 
  enter and explore one cell per hour, making one exploratory skill 
  check (see below). If they hurry, they can cover two cells per hour, 
  but they have a –2 step penalty on exploratory skill checks and on 
  Awareness checks to avoid being surprised. If the heroes choose 
  not to explore at all, they can cover three cells per hour.
  Exploration Skill Challenge: Orion Ventures would expect the 
  heroes to conduct an initial survey of the ruins and record their ﬁnd-
  ings to fulﬁll their contract. This involves a basic efort to map the 
  ruins, document interesting structures or monuments, and search 
  for samples to collect. To explore a cell, the team makes a group 
  skill check; each participating hero can choose Academics (archeol-
  ogy, +2 step bonus), Engineering (infrastructure), Science (biology), 
  or Survival as their key skill. If at least half the heroes pass their 
  checks, the cell is successfully explored. (Heroes without relevant 
  skills can aid characters attempting checks.)
  Heroes can attempt one or two checks per hour, depending on 
  how fast they’re moving. If the check fails, the heroes can spend 
  more time in their current cell to re-explore it (possibly risking more 
  drone attacks). Keep track of the number of cells the heroes suc-
  cessfully explore, because that determines whether Orion Ventures 
  is pleased with the outcome of the mission (see Epilogue).
  Drone Attacks: The heroes likely encounter more h’naal drones 
  as they explore the ruins. See Drone Attacks below.
  AGRICULTURAL CELL
  Cells in the fourth and ﬁfth partial rings were agricultural. The janrii 
  were strictly herbivorous, and all their food was farmed within these 
  cells. Almost everything they needed was derived from plants; their 
  greatest accomplishments were in botany.
  Plant life is profuse in this cell, at least compared to what’s 
  outside the city. This must have been a cultivated area once, but 
  now it’s grown wild.
  See Aiding Other 
  Heroes, page 135 of 
  the Core Rulebook.
  
  Scene 2: Tragic Clues
  85
  Scene 2: Tragic Clues
  85
  Four types of plants are most common. Heroes can make 
  Science (biology) or Survival checks when examining plants. On a 
  success, the hero learns how the plant functions without triggering 
  any danger (and scores a bonus exploration success).
  Daggerseed Bulb: Towering, swaying stalks 8 to 10 m high, 
  crowned by a white bulb 1 m in diameter. Daggerlike seeds hang 
  from the bulb by threads. If the stalk is disturbed, seeds break loose 
  and plunge to the ground. Everyone within 2 m of the plant must 
  make a Dodge check. On a failure, a seed strikes the character, 
  causing 1d6 physical damage.
  Red Briar: Low, spreading bushes that blanket the ground to a 
  depth of 1 m. Small tendrils catch tiny animals and impale them with 
  small thorns. The plants aren’t dangerous to humans, but they’re 
  slow terrain.
  Spore Pod: Low shrubs that produce 1 to 6 pods each. A pod is 
  about 20 cm wide by 40 cm long, and is ﬁlled with ﬁne spores that 
  irritate the eyes and lungs and clog air ﬁlters. A hero who touches 
  a pod must make a Dodge check. On a failure, a cloud of spores 
  engulfs the hero. If the character is using a breathing ﬁlter, it must 
  be discarded. Otherwise, the penalty for not using a ﬁlter increases 
  to –2 steps.
  Tubewalkers: Spongy tubes about 1 m tall. They have no roots 
  and can move slowly by “walking” end over end, like a ﬂoppy, coiled 
  spring. They follow the characters and bunch around them if the 
  characters stay in one place more than a few minutes. They present 
  no danger but are oddly amusing.
  INDUSTRIAL CELL
  Janrii industry provided all manufactured goods needed within the 
  self-sufcient hive/city. Most objects, including most of their build-
  ings and machinery, were made from a durable, nonﬂammable cel-
  luloid. Samples would be valuable to Orion Ventures; successfully 
  exploring an industrial cell grants an extra exploration success.
  This area is crowded with the broken remains of massive, 
  complex machines interspersed with open spaces similar to 
  warehouses. The architecture has a heaviness that sets it apart 
  from other cells. None of the machinery looks functional, or 
  even complete.
  Heroes who successfully explore the cell determine the cell 
  served as a factory or a processing plant, with cleverly designed 
  components making it easy to reconﬁgure. There is no evidence 
  that robots were used for manufacturing or labor.
  Well, that's one way 
  to do science.
  
  86
  Episode 4: Hives of Janrata 
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  RESIDENTIAL CELL
  Being hive creatures, the janrii lived communally; private residences 
  didn’t exist. Consequently, this area looks nothing like human homes 
  or apartments. All their living areas were large and communal, 
  characterized by curving, maze-like walls. Every area had a speciﬁc 
  purpose: dining, exercising, sleeping, socializing, entertainment, 
  and so on.
  Bits of debris resembling tables, beds, and stools hint this was 
  a residential area, but the spaces are enormous, providing none 
  of the privacy of human homes. These creatures were artistic, 
  fortunately, and some of their sculpture and murals survive. They 
  portray quadrupedal beings similar to gazelles or short girafes 
  that sometimes stood on their hind legs.
  Heroes who succeed on an Academics check while exploring the 
  cell determine the creatures who lived here had a communal society 
  entirely diferent from humans; their living spaces ofered no privacy 
  at all, and their art never depicts them alone. Heroes who succeed 
  at a Science check while exploring the cell determine the creatures 
  were slightly larger than humans, with ﬁngers on all four limbs. Their 
  technology was unlike the biotech of the drones the heroes have 
  already encountered.
  ADMINISTRATIVE AND COMMERCIAL CELL
  “Commercial” is a misleading term, because the janrii didn’t use 
  money or have private property. Everything belonged to the hive, 
  and every member of the hive had access to all resources appro-
  priate to its position in the hierarchy. They still needed a system 
  to exchange and distribute goods though, and that activity was 
  focused here.
  Much of what remains here is similar to human marketplaces 
  or stores, at least superﬁcially. Some areas also resemble ofce 
  spaces—although they’re more like ancient “typing pools,” since 
  you see nothing resembling a private ofce.
  A character who succeeds at an Academics check while explor-
  ing this cell determines that the cell housed a complex of markets 
  and ofces, but the creatures who lived here had unique ideas 
  about business and may have done so without money.
  INFRASTRUCTURE CELL
  This cell provided and controlled the city’s power, water, and 
  other municipal infrastructure. The above-ground machinery and 
  
  Scene 2: Tragic Clues
  87
  Scene 2: Tragic Clues
  87
  structures were destroyed by the h’naal drones, leaving only wreck-
  age. Drones captured the underground power plant, however, for 
  their own use.
  All that remains here is the tangled wreckage of large, heavy 
  machinery and power transmission cables, now inert. This 
  destruction wasn’t caused by high wind or a falling ceiling; much 
  of it looks like deliberate sabotage or battle damage. Nothing 
  here seems designed for use by the robots you’ve encountered.
  A character who succeeds at an Engineering or Science check 
  while exploring this cell learns the city’s power was distributed here, 
  but not generated here—the power readings detected from space 
  couldn’t have come from this wreckage. If there’s a functioning gen-
  erator, it must be below ground. On an Excellent or Stellar success, 
  the hero also determines the power system is subterranean, proba-
  bly geothermal. Nothing here seems designed for use by the robots 
  you’ve encountered.
  When the characters seek an entrance to the underground 
  power plant or the team successfully explores the cell, proceed 
  to Scene 3.
  DRONE ATTACKS
  H’naal drones operate on battery power, but their centuries-old bat-
  teries can’t hold a charge very long anymore. They have mobility for 
  many hours, but their plasma weapons drain the batteries quickly. 
  The farther they are from the power source at the central core, the 
  fewer shots they can ﬁre before they must retreat to recharge, as 
  noted below. Between their quickness, size, and dynamic camou-
  ﬂage, they quickly disappear after ﬂeeing.
  The heroes come under recurring attack as they explore:
  • The ﬁrst attack occurs within 15 minutes of characters enter-
  ing the city (see Scene 1).
  • After that, characters have a 2-in-6 (33 percent) chance 
  to be attacked every hour while exploring or moving at 
  normal speed. When they hurry (see Moving Through the 
  City), they have a 1-in-6 (16 percent) chance to be attacked 
  per hour. 
  • Once the team successfully completes Scene 3, all chances 
  drop to 1-in-10 (10 percent).
  • All remaining drones go dead after 38 hours.
  The number of drones attacking, the opening range of the 
  combat scene, and the rounds of combat before drones withdraw 
  are determined by the cell the heroes are in when the encounter 
  occurs. Where two ranges are listed, determine the range randomly.
  Better yet, you 
  can choose the 
  time and place of 
  attacks; plan for 
  another two or three 
  ﬁghts as characters 
  approach Scene 3.
  
  88
  Episode 4: Hives of Janrata 
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  Cell
  # of Drones
  Range
  Rounds
  Agricultural
  # of characters –1
  Close or Medium
  1
  Industrial
  # of characters
  Close or Medium
  2
  Residential
  # of characters
  Medium or Long
  3
  Administrative
  # of characters +1
  Medium
  5
  Infrastructure
  # of characters +2
  Close
  7
  SCENE 3: BLACKOUT
  The only way to defeat the drones and make the city safe for fol-
  low-up teams is to cut them of from their source of power beneath 
  the city’s core cell. This can be done two ways, but both require 
  descending into the bowels of the power system.
  Finding the Entrance: First, the characters must ﬁnd the 
  entrance. This requires a group check; each hero can use Engineer-
  ing (+1 step bonus), Academics or Science (unmodiﬁed), or Aware-
  ness (–1 step). If the group check succeeds, the heroes ﬁnd the 
  entrance nearly buried in rubble. If the group check fails, they are 
  attacked by drones and must continue searching. Characters gain a 
  +3 step bonus on subsequent searches if they allow some drones to 
  escape and manage to follow them.
  Beyond the entrance, an intact ramp spirals downward 
  through successive layers of devastation and tangled machinery. 
  Eight levels down, it issues into a stone-walled chamber housing 
  a massive geothermal power plant. The air is hot and ionized, 
  and you hear the hiss of spinning turbines and the crackle 
  of gigantic electrical breakers opening and closing automati-
  cally. The chamber is a maze of conduits, huge capacitors, and 
  transformers.
  Clinging to machinery or connected to jury-rigged charging 
  stations are hundreds of robots—motionless, for the moment.
  As soon as characters advance more than a few meters into 
  the chamber or do anything hostile, the drones attack in waves. 
  Each wave contains 1d6 drones. If two or fewer drones are in the 
  ﬁght at the start of a round, another wave arrives at the start of the 
  next round.
  The drones keep coming until one of two things happens. Either 
  the heroes must advance 50 m to the generator and shut it down, or 
  they must defeat six waves of drones.
  Shutting Down the Generator: The generator is an Enormous 
  and Unbreakable object. The heroes can’t destroy it without artillery, 
  but they can do enough damage with explosive charges, rockets, 
  
  Epilogue
  89
  Epilogue
  89
  bundled grenades, or other heavy weapons to force an emergency 
  shutdown. The weapon isn’t as important as how it’s used; a suc-
  cessful Engineering or Mechanics check with a –2 step penalty is 
  needed to ﬁnd a suitable weak spot. The heroes can keep checking 
  until they succeed.
  Alternatively, characters can ﬁgure out how to cut the power 
  manually with a complex skill check (Engineering or Science, goal of 
  3 successes). If the heroes get 3 failures before getting 3 successes, 
  they made a mistake and the process must start over.
  Successful Shutdown: When either condition is met, the surviv-
  ing drones withdraw. The drones remain somewhat dangerous until 
  38 hours have passed, but the ruins are much safer than they were.
  EPILOGUE
  Tally the number of exploration successes the heroes accumulated 
  in the city. Add a bonus success for crippling the power plant, or two 
  if the power plant was captured intact, plus two for bringing back a 
  h’naal drone to study. 
  EXPLORATION
  Successes
  Outcome
  0 to 5
  Suboptimal; Orion Ventures looks elsewhere for its next mission.
  6 to 9
  Acceptable; Orion Ventures includes a bonus of $1,000 per character.
  10 to 14
  Very Good; Orion Ventures includes a bonus of $2,000 per character.
  15+
  Amazing; Orion Ventures includes a bonus of $5,000 per character, and considers 
  the hero team to be a vital asset in future missions.
  If you choose to place more adventures on Janrata, it’s possible 
  some janrii still survive in the wilderness or hidden in other cities. 
  They’ve been hunted for centuries, so they trust no one. This could 
  also be the system Captain Janelle Carter disappeared into, as 
  described in The Roanoke Afair. If so, Roanoke’s crew should still 
  be somewhere in the system. The heroes might ﬁnd them on Jan-
  rata, barely surviving in one of the ruined cities or even living with a 
  fugitive band of janrii.
  ADVERSARIES
  The only dangerous opponents on Janrata are the h’naal combat 
  drones. Orion Ventures would very much like to have examples 
  for analysis.
  
  90
  Episode 4: Hives of Janrata 
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  H’NAAL DRONE
  H’naal combat drones move on ﬁve ﬂuidly ﬂexible limbs, scamper-
  ing across rough terrain and vertical surfaces as easily as across 
  a ﬂat ﬂoor. Their plasma weapons are integrated into their bodies. 
  A h’naal drone is a slightly ﬂattened sphere about 50 cm across 
  and has no distinct top or bottom. The drones aren’t truly drones; 
  their programming allows them to operate without oversight from a 
  h’naal or from a controlling AI. They can solve simple logic prob-
  lems, devise plans, and learn through observation. In combat, h’naal 
  drones coordinate and share information with each other over 
  tactical distances, and if a central controller is online in their area of 
  operation, they send and receive updates on the overall situation.
  TR 3 Small Standard Mechanism (Robot)
  Senses normal; Awareness 16+
  Initiative 12/17/22; Speed 25 meters 
  Str 16+ 
  Agi 15+ 
  Vit 17+ 
  Int 17+ (programmed) Foc 18+ 
  Per 20+
  ACTIONS
  Plasma Bolt 3 impulses; Medium 1 target; Attack 14/19/24 (+1 step); Damage 
  1d6+2/6 energy. 
  Slam 3 impulses; Melee 1 target; Attack 14/19/24; Damage 1d6+0/4 physical, 
  and the target must make an Athletics check or be knocked prone.
  REACTIONS
  Evasion 1-impulse reaction when targeted by a ranged attack. The drone 
  makes a Dodge check; if successful, it moves 4 m and the triggering 
  attack misses.
  DEFENSE
  Small Enemies sufer a –1 step penalty to attack the drone.
  Life Support
  Armor 0 physical, 2 energy
  (12+ dmg)
  
  incapacitated
  Drone collapses
  (9 to 11 dmg) 
  becomes slowed
  A limb is blown of
  (6 to 8 dmg) 
  –1 step penalty to all 
  checks
  Milky ﬂuid leaks through casing
  (1 to 5 dmg)
  
  Camouﬂage ﬂickers momentarily
  OTHER
  Networked The drone is linked to a central coordinating AI when one is 
  available, making it aware of everything other drones have reported. 
  This is an encrypted system that can’t monitored by hostile taps, but the 
  signal can be jammed normally.
  Nimble The drone is unafected by slow terrain. It moves at full speed on 
  any solid surface that doesn’t have a step penalty for climbing. It can 
  jump up to 10 meters.
  
  Background
  91
  Background
  91
  EPISODE 5: THE 
  MARTIAN HOSTAGE
  An Adventure for 3rd level Heroes
  Stealing Triton Gate codes and signing on for dangerous expeditions to 
  distant star systems on the other side of the Protostar Nexus aren’t the 
  only jobs for people with special talents such as those the PCs have. When 
  a European scientist is kidnapped by a Martian corporation that’s willing 
  to play rough, it takes a team of freelance problem-solvers to handle the 
  rescue . . . and carry out some retribution in the process. All while maintain-
  ing a healthy margin of plausible deniability, of course.
  BACKGROUND
  Five weeks ago, a European scientist named Dr. René Duval was kid-
  napped during a visit to Mariner City, Mars, for a conference. While Dr. Duval 
  appeared to be an academic, he was actually working on secret weapons 
  research for the European Confederation Defense Bureau. The EC Defense 
  Bureau managed to piece together enough evidence from the attack to 
  identify the kidnappers as agents of Syrtis Industries, a Martian corporation, 
  but the Martian government wouldn’t allow ECDB to operate in their terri-
  tory and seemed satisﬁed with Syrtis Industries’ denial of responsibility.
  The Europeans decided on a third-party solution. They chose the Mars-
  based contractor Ausonia Consulting to get their man back. Ausonia deter-
  mined that Dr. Duval was being held in a Syrtis outpost at Pavonis Caldera, and 
  sent in a team disguised as Syrtis employees to extract the European scientist.
  That team was wiped out to the last man.
  Since Plan A failed, Ausonia turned to Plan B . . . and they called the PCs.
  ADVENTURE SUMMARY
  The heroes’ Ausonia Consulting contract is straightforward: Inﬁltrate the 
  Pavonis Caldera Research Facility, rescue Dr. Duval, and wipe out all the 
  research projects currently stored on the facility’s mainframe by installing a 
  tailored computer virus. Since Pavonis Caldera is currently under lockdown 
  after the previous failed rescue attempt, the heroes can’t just take a shuttle 
  to the station or pose as Syrtis employees. Instead, they’ll need to make 
  their approach on foot in near-vacuum, summiting one of the tallest moun-
  tains in the Solar System. In Scene 1,  the heroes tackle the climb and the 
  descent to the caldera ﬂoor. Continuing across the caldera ﬂoor, the team 
  encounters a robotic sentry in Scene 2. Fighting their way past the robot, 
  the heroes reach the facility in Scene 3. (You’ll ﬁnd a map and a description 
  of the Pavonis Caldera Research Facility here.)
  
  92
  Episode 5: The Martian Hostage
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide 
  92
  ALTERNITY: Protostar Mission Guide
  Episode 5: The Martian Hostage
  Depending on how the heroes decide to proceed, they progress 
  to either Scene 4 or Scene 5. Scene 4 describes the challenge of 
  installing the kill-virus—the Pavonis Caldera supercomputer doesn’t 
  want to die. In Scene 5, the heroes discover that Duval is no cap-
  tive—he’s a defector, and he’s developing his new tech for Syrtis 
  Industries. 
  MISSION BRIEFING
  Choose an appropriate contact from one of the PCs to serve as 
  a conduit for Ausonia Consulting to hire the team (and adjust the 
  reward to suit your campaign).
  When Ausonia Consulting reaches out, it’s a good idea to 
  take the call. They’re one of the top clearing-houses for high-end 
  freelance work in the Solar System. After you make your way to 
  Deimos Station and check in at the Ausonia ofce, you’re shown 
  into a modest ofce suite, where you meet an Ausonia rep 
  named Isabel Hayes and her assistant, Martin Chang.
  After the usual chit-chat, Hayes comes to the point: “Your 
  friend [contact] says you can handle hard assignments. We need 
  you to rescue a kidnapped European scientist being held at a 
  Syrtis Industries research station planet-side, and sabotage the 
  station’s mainframe so that the kidnappers don’t get to keep 
  whatever information they’re gotten out of him. It’s technically 
  challenging, so the pay’s good: $10,000 each for about three 
  days’ work. Do I have your interest?”
  Hayes and Chang go on to summarize the story laid out in Back-
  ground, above. They answer questions honestly, to the best of their 
  ability: They don’t know much about Duval’s research, but they trust 
  their client (a European Confederation defense-research agency, 
  basically) and they’re anxious to cash the EC check. When you’re 
  ready, move on:
  “Here’s the mission proﬁle,” Chang explains. “Pavonis Cal-
  dera is protected by antiair defenses, and our last team’s failure 
  suggests that you can’t get in by dressing up as Syrtis employ-
  ees. We put you on the ground near the mountain’s summit, you 
  rappel down to the caldera ﬂoor, then you approach the facility 
  on foot. Get inside and retrieve Dr. Duval, or verify that he isn’t 
  there. Whether you ﬁnd Duval or not, our client wants you to 
  install this—” he holds up a datastick—“on the research main-
  frame to wipe out anything Syrtis got from him. Exﬁltrate the way 
  you came in.”
  
  Mission Briefing
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  Mission Briefing
  93
  “Or, if you can disable the facility’s air defenses, call us for 
  a ride,” Hayes adds. “You might not have to climb back up the 
  caldera wall when you’re done.”
  “We’ll provide transportation, special climbing gear, and 
  excursion-rated vac suits,” Chang ﬁnishes. “Expect to be outside 
  at least 24 hours. Anything else you think you need—say, a gun—
  you’re responsible for. But don’t make a massacre out of this 
  operation.”
  Hayes tells the heroes they can have a few days to make prepa-
  rations if they want, but the sooner they go, the better—Ausonia 
  doesn’t want to leave Duval in Syrtis’s hands longer than necessary. 
  Some possible questions the players may ask:
  Do we trust Ausonia? Heroes with mercenary, intelligence, or 
  criminal backgrounds know that Ausonia is regarded as a straight 
  shooter that pays top dollar for top people.
  How do we know Duval is at Pavonis? “We’ve got contacts inside 
  Syrtis who conﬁrmed it.” Isabel Hayes won’t say anything more than 
  that—she doesn’t want to risk exposing a valuable source inside 
  Syrtis Industries.
  How do we get inside? “You’re on top of a mountain in near-vac-
  uum; they’re not expecting someone at the door. Shouldn’t be too 
  hard to cycle an airlock or cut your way in.”
  Do you have a facility blueprint? “Only a basic overhead view.” 
  (You can show a quick sketch of the map in Scene 3.)
  Tell us about the gear. Excursion vac suits are high-performance, 
  long-endurance models that have 24 hours of oxygen and power. 
  They’re normally Class 2 equipment; Ausonia provides a spare 
  suit for Duval (weight 15 kg). Backup oxygen packs and batteries 
  provide an additional 24 hours of endurance at a weight of 10 kg 
  (a Class 1 item). In addition, Ausonia ofers a portable vac shelter—
  an airtight tent that can accommodate 8 people and provides 24 
  hours of oxygen and heat. The vac shelter weighs 30 kg, and is a 
  Class 2 item. 
  The climbing gear consists of a 6-km reel of super-light car-
  bon-ﬁber rope weighing 10 kg, plus simple hand-brake devices for 
  descent and personal booster pack (popular for BASE jumping, 
  extreme skiing, and other such low-g sports) for returning back 
  up the rope. The booster is a light harness that weighs only 5 kg 
  and folds down to the size of a 1-liter bottle; it’s good for 5 min-
  utes of unguided ﬂight, so you’ll want to clip yourself to the rope 
  going back up.
  What’s on the datastick? “A Trojan horse. It piggybacks on the 
  mainframe’s next backup of its research data, so it’ll kill the ﬁles 
  wherever they’re stored, even of-site. Try not to make it obvious 
  that you installed anything on the mainframe.” 
  Ausonia can serve 
  as a good source of 
  job contracts in the 
  future if the heroes 
  don't make a mess 
  of things.
  
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  SCENE 1: LONG DROP
  Pavonis Caldera Research Facility is located in the summit caldera 
  of Pavonis Mons, a Martian mountain that stands 14,000 meters 
  tall (about 46,000 feet). At that altitude, the Martian atmosphere 
  is efectively vacuum and the temperature is extremely cold—the 
  heroes need vacuum-rated protective gear.
  Ausonia provides the heroes with a nondescript atmospheric 
  transport at Mariner City’s hangar dome. (If none of the heroes are 
  pilots, Martin Chang accompanies the group to handle the ﬂying. 
  He’s a competent ex-Terran security specialist and trained pilot, 
  trustworthy if not especially warm.) Mariner City is about 1,000 
  kilometers from Pavonis Mons, so the ﬂight takes a little more 
  than an hour.
  Pavonis Mons is immense. The ancient volcano covers such a 
  vast area that the slope of its sides is only 5 degrees or so—ﬂying 
  low above the mountainside, it looks like you’re over a rolling 
  plain. As you near the summit, your pilot begins hugging the 
  ground closely, using the terrain to stay under the radar horizon 
  of the sensors at the top. About twenty kilometers from the lip 
  of the caldera, you set down in the shadow of a low, rocky ridge. 
  It’s as close as you can get without risking detection—from here, 
  you’re on foot.
  Ausonia provides a map and a suggested route. It’s up to the 
  heroes whether they march straight to the caldera, or break up the 
  march with a rest period in a portable vacuum shelter.
  SKILL CHALLENGE: MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
  The climb is not technically challenging—the gravity is low, the 
  slope is negligible, and the terrain is rough but not very dangerous. 
  It is, however, fatiguing, mostly because the ground is broken and 
  uneven and it’s a long walk. 
  Overland Travel: It’s 24 kilometers to the rim, and the heroes 
  can average 3 km per hour of marching. For every 12 km of march-
  ing, each PC must make an Endurance or Survival check (player’s 
  choice) at a +1 step bonus (low gravity). On a failure, the character 
  becomes fatigued, and gains 1 level of debility (page 178, Core Rule-
  book). For this challenge, multiple failures don’t increase debility 
  above 1. Resting for eight hours removes the penalty.
  Heroes can’t really rest in their suits, but they can un-suit and 
  rest in the portable vac shelter—basically, a pressurized tent with an 
  airlock. It can be set up in 10 minutes. 
  At the Rim: When the heroes reach the caldera rim, read:
  Olympus Mons is 
  bigger, but Pavonis 
  Mons has a more 
  impressive caldera.
  
  Scene 1: Long Drop
  95
  Scene 1: Long Drop
  95
  The march from your Landing Zone (LZ) to the edge of the 
  caldera is tiring and time-consuming, winding through low arêtes 
  and across broken boulder ﬁelds. For hours, nothing seems to 
  change very much . . . and then you come to the caldera. It’s 
  a vast, steep-sided bowl almost 50 kilometers across and 5 
  kilometers deep. At this altitude, the Martian atmosphere is a 
  thin orange haze on the horizon, and the sky is dark and starry 
  above you. 
  If any of the heroes uses binoculars (or a similar imaging device) 
  to look for their target, add:
  The Syrtis research facility is located about one-quarter of 
  the way around the rim, down on the caldera ﬂoor. It’s about 25 
  kilometers away. At this distance, all you can make out is a dome 
  marking the habitat entrance, and a nearby landing pad with a 
  transport parked on it. 
  Heroes can observe the facility as long as they like, but nothing 
  changes for days. It’s easy to ﬁnd a place to set up a shelter and 
  rest out of sight, if the heroes want to.
  DESCENT
  The trip to the caldera ﬂoor is scary, but not terribly dangerous. All 
  the heroes need to do is secure one end of their CF rope to a good 
  anchor near the top, and drop the reel over the edge. (Actually, 
  they’ll need to drop the reel a few times, since there are several 
  wide ledges and scree slopes along the way that break up the climb 
  a bit.) When a PC is ready to descend, she clips her handbrake to 
  the rope and jumps over the side, controlling her speed with the 
  brake. A climber can descend 200 meters per minute this way—it 
  takes half an hour to get all the way to the bottom.
  • Each descending character must make an Athletics check 
  (+1 step bonus) or, if trained, an Extreme Sports check 
  (+3 step bonus). 
  • On a failure, the character sufers a mishap in the descent 
  and must then make an Acrobatics check, sufering a minor 
  fall (1d6 damage) on a success, or a moderate fall (1d10 
  damage) on a failure.
  The CF rope is very thin and hard to see from more than a 
  hundred meters or so away—the heroes don’t have to worry about 
  someone in the research facility spotting it on the caldera wall.
  The gear is pretty 
  safe; the question is 
  whether the heroes 
  pick up any minor 
  injuries before they 
  get involved in 
  ﬁghts later on.
  
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  SCENE 2: THE CALDERA
  Once the heroes descend to the caldera ﬂoor, they’re in for another 
  24-kilometer march to reach the entrance of the Pavonis Caldera 
  Research Facility. As in the previous march, the heroes average 
  3 km per hour, and each PC must make an Endurance or Survival 
  check at a +1 step bonus for every 12 km traveled. On a failure, the 
  character gains 1 level of debility from fatigue. Resting for eight 
  hours removes the penalty.
  The heroes can camp when they like, but it’s dangerous to camp 
  within 12 km of the research facility (see Ranger C5, below).
  RANGER C5
  When the heroes approach within 8 km of the facility or set up camp 
  within 12 km, they encounter a roving security robot assigned to 
  patrol the vicinity of the research facility after the failure of Ausonia’s 
  previous team. 
  While Marching: If the heroes encounter Ranger C5 while on 
  the move, have the team make a group Awareness check. If the 
  team succeeds, they spot the robot coming from a distance of 300 
  meters, and have 3 minutes to ﬁnd ambush positions or prepare a 
  defense. They gain tactical surprise against the robot. (The robot 
  automatically spots the heroes at a distance of 100 meters unless 
  the heroes choose to hide and succeed on a group Stealth check 
  at a +2 step bonus, in which case the robot doesn’t spot the heroes 
  until it’s 20 meters away.)
  A puf of dust behind a boulder a few hundred meters away 
  catches your eye; a moment later, you spot the cause. It’s a 
  battered old security robot marching along on six clawed legs, its 
  turret scanning left and right as it goes. It’s heading your way!  
  If the team fails their group Awareness check, they spot the robot 
  and the robot spots them at a distance of 100 meters; roll initiative!
  GO STRAIGHT IN?
  Reckless heroes may choose to test the Syrtis air-defense systems by ﬂying 
  straight to the research facility. Chang won’t do this for the team, but if the 
  PCs have their own pilot, they can try it. Short version: They get shot down 
  over the caldera ﬂoor, several km from the landing pad. Have the hero ﬂying 
  the transport make a Piloting check to see how well she manages to mitigate 
  the crash. Stellar: No one is injured. Excellent: The crash is a minor impact 
  (page 181, Core Rulebook). Average: The crash is a moderate impact. Failure: 
  The crash is a serious impact. The facility defenders send the Ranger C5 to 
  investigate the crash site. Continue with scene 2.
  
  Scene 2: The Caldera
  97
  Scene 2: The Caldera
  97
  While Camped: If Ranger C5 ﬁnds the heroes while they’re 
  resting in the vac shelter, any character standing watch outside the 
  tent automatically notices the robot’s approach at a distance of 300 
  meters; the team has 3 minutes to suit up and get ready.
  If no one is on guard, the robot surprises them. It begins the 
  encounter by holing the tent with laser ﬁre:
  Your ﬁrst indication of trouble is the sudden roar of air escap-
  ing from your shelter—a stitched line of burned holes appear in 
  one wall of the tent. Through the translucent plastic you make 
  out the battered shape of a six-legged robot a hundred meters 
  away, ﬁring a laser at your tent!  
  Each hero begins the scene only partially suited. Donning a 
  vacuum suit in a hurry is a Survival skill challenge requiring 3 suc-
  cesses; however, if a hero chooses to use the concentrate action 
  modiﬁer (page 138, Core Rulebook), they can’t fail the check and 
  score a minimum of 1 success. A hero might also choose to slap 
  an emergency patch on the damaged tent, or return ﬁre through 
  the damaged tent (this makes patching the tent impossible, 
  of course).
  At the end of the ﬁrst action round, the damaged tent becomes a 
  partial vacuum—treat it like a normal vacuum (page 186, Core Rule-
  book), but there is no initial exposure and characters gain a +2 step 
  bonus to Endurance checks to resist the efects. At the end of the 
  second action round, the tent fails completely, and it’s now vacuum.
  Special Conditions: The caldera ﬂoor is littered with boulders and 
  broken ground. Any hero outside the shelter is within 20 meters of 
  cover at any time. If a hero moves to ﬁnd cover, make a Dodge check 
  (+2 step bonus) to determine the quality of cover he ﬁnds (if the 
  check fails, the next patch of cover is just a couple of meters farther 
  away, and the hero needs another 1-impulse reposition to reach it).
  Characters wounded in vacuum don’t have to worry about suit 
  breaches—their suits are self-sealing. However, it’s impossible to 
  use Medicine to treat injuries without getting the wounded charac-
  ter out of the suit ﬁrst.
  Breaking Of: The Ranger continues its attack until it destroys 
  all enemies or is destroyed itself. However, it’s not very smart, and 
  if starts its turn with no targets in sight, it assumes that it’s defeated 
  the threat and moves away, returning to its patrol plan.
  ON THE DOORSTEP
  After defeating or driving of the Ranger C5, a little more hiking 
  brings the heroes to the doorstep of the Syrtis Corporation facility. 
  The surface part of the installation includes:
  
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  • A 10-meter dome (the personnel airlock).
  • A 50-meter-wide landing pad, with a vehicle elevator marked 
  out in yellow safety lines.
  • A transport ﬂyer parked to the side of the landing pad.
  • Five 3-meter domes widely spaced around the installation, 
  roughly a kilometer away (the antiair defenses).
  Continue with Scene 3 when the heroes explore the site.
  SCENE 3: KNOCK, KNOCK
  In this scene, the heroes enter and explore the Pavonis research 
  facility. The ﬁrst step is ﬁguring out how to get inside (see Surface 
  Features). Once they’re in, refer to the map and the Interior Layout 
  for details.
  Go to Scene 4 when the heroes visit area 10, the Mainframe Room.
  Go to Scene 5 when the heroes ﬁnd Duval.
  Alarm: If Ranger C5 reports the heroes’ presence or if the heroes 
  trip an alarm at the Personnel Airlock, run the Security! encounter 
  when the heroes enter area 2 (the Common Room) from area 1. Oth-
  erwise, run the encounter when they visit area 8 (the Ops Center) or 
  1 minute after they leave any station personnel who can report their 
  presence behind them.
  SURFACE FEATURES
  From the surface, Pavonis Caldera Research 
  Facility is nothing more than a few dusty domes 
  and a large landing pad.
  Personnel Airlock: The personnel airlock is 
  really nothing more than a surface-level dome 
  covering an elevator that descends to the main 
  complex. The exterior door is secured by a 
  simple keypad lock, and includes a call button 
  that activates a security cam and sounds a 
  buzzer in the Ops Center. (Naturally, that alerts 
  the facility that someone is at the door.)
  • Bypassing the keypad is a Security skill 
  challenge requiring 3 successes; if the 
  heroes accumulate 3 failures before suc-
  ceeding, the keypad shuts down and sounds 
  an alarm in the Ops Center. 
  • The personnel door can also be cut open with a Mechanics 
  skill challenge and an acetylene torch or similar gear (one 
  minute per check, door opens after 3 successes).
  LOCKED DOORS
  Some rooms in the facility 
  are protected by locks that 
  open when swiped by the 
  right ID badge. ID badges 
  come in three types: techni-
  cian, ops specialist, and man-
  agement. Badge scanners 
  can be bypassed by a skill 
  challenge: Earn 3 Security 
  successes before failing 3 
  times. On a failure, the lock 
  shuts down for 10 minutes 
  and an alarm sounds in the 
  Ops Center.
  
  Scene 3: Knock, Knock
  99
  Scene 3: Knock, Knock
  99
  Vehicle Elevator: An 15 m x 21 m section of the landing pad is 
  marked of as a vehicle elevator. A 1-meter post to one side of the 
  elevator has a covered control panel secured by a simple padlock; 
  once the padlock is removed, all you have to do is open the panel 
  and press the button to cycle the hangar airlock and send the 
  vehicle elevator down to the hangar (it takes about 2 minutes to 
  cycle and descend).
  • The padlock can be pried of with an Athletics check 
  (–2 step penalty), cut of with bolt cutters (no check needed), 
  shot away by an attack dealing at least 7 damage, or picked 
  with a Security check. It’s not really an obstacle.
  Parked Transport: A thin-atmosphere utility rocket/jet that’s not 
  too diferent in size and function from a modern-day mid-sized heli-
  copter. It can carry up to ten people plus a pilot and a copilot. The 
  keys are in the hangar; it can be hot-wired with a successful Security 
  check and a successful Piloting check. If the heroes take of without 
  disabling the missile emplacements ﬁrst, they’ll be shot down in 
  short order (see the Go Straight In? sidebar).
  Missile Emplacements: There are ﬁve armored domes in the 
  emplacement: one radar system, and four missile launchers. The 
  domes are efectively steel bulkheads (page 212, Core Rulebook) 
  
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  GETTING 
  INFORMATION FROM 
  NPCS
  Marisa Tanner or Aldon 
  Pierce clam up if ques-
  tioned, but any other 
  noncombatant is willing 
  to give up information in 
  exchange for safety; a 
  Coercion check (+2 step 
  bonus for technicians, or +4 
  steps for support person-
  nel) may be helpful. Any 
  NPC can provide Dr. Duval’s 
  location, the mainframe’s 
  location, and the location of 
  security forces. Technicians 
  can describe the Typhon 
  research, or provide 
  login credentials for the 
  mainframe.
  All the NPCs know that 
  Duval is actively coop-
  erating with Syrtis, but 
  they assume that the PCs 
  know that too—they don’t 
  volunteer that information 
  unless the heroes ask a 
  question that leads in the 
  right direction.
  with maintenance hatches guarded by very secure keypad locks (6 
  Security checks to open; after 3 failures, the keypad locks out for 1 
  hour and sounds an alarm in the Ops Center). It’s easy to sabotage 
  the missiles or radar once you get into the maintenance hatch; to 
  disable the air defenses from the surface, you must disable either 
  the radar dome or all four missile launchers. 
  PAVONIS PERSONNEL
  The facility staf consists of:
  • 6 technicians (areas 4 or 7); Anderson, Cho, 
  Harris, Henderson, Nguyen, Yates. They’re 
  loyal and well-paid, and keep their opinions 
  about their superiors to themselves. The 
  technicians all have user privileges for the 
  mainframe in area 10, and can be coerced into 
  providing their login information.
  • 6 operations specialists (areas 8 or 13); 
  Brown, Dunn, Okoye, Rice, Soto, and Senior 
  Specialist Aldon Pierce, the detachment 
  leader. Pierce is a power-drunk bully, but he’s 
  aggressive, competent, and highly motivated to 
  keep his job.
  • 5 support personnel (areas 2 or 13); Farley, 
  Green, Hofman, Miller, Ruiz. They feel like 
  they’re second-class citizens at Pavonis and 
  grumble a lot to each other, but they are afraid 
  of losing their jobs.
  • Dr. Rene Duval (area 6 or 9) heads up the 
  research unit. See Scene 5.
  • Director Marisa Tanner (area 6 or 8) is in 
  charge of the facility. She’s a tough-minded 
  manager in her mid-40s, assigned to make 
  sure Duval gets whatever he needs. She has 
  a deceptively mild manner and never gets 
  angry—instead, she gets even.
  Technicians, maintenance personnel, and 
  Director Tanner aren’t combatants (see “The Aver-
  age Person,” page 199, Core Rulebook). If they 
  see armed intruders, they either ﬂee or surrender immediately. 
  INTERIOR LAYOUT
  The research facility consists of a series of standard habitat and 
  engineering modules buried under 15 meters of Martian regolith. 
  
  Scene 3: Knock, Knock
  101
  Scene 3: Knock, Knock
  101
  Most rooms have 3-meter ceilings and overhead lights: bright during 
  working hours, dimmed between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. 
  1. Personnel Entrance. This space holds an elevator/airlock 
  that ascends 15 meters to the surface, as well as a large suit locker 
  containing 8 vac suits and support packs. Mechanical interlocks 
  ensure that the bottom door of the elevator physically can’t open if 
  the top door on the surface is open. An unlocked metal hatch leads 
  to area 2.
  2. Common Area. A typical lounge, rec room, and mess deck. 
  Furnishings include two large cafeteria tables with bench-like seats, 
  a pool table, and a couple of pinball machines, and a sunken seating 
  area with couches facing a large vid screen (all potential sources of 
  cover). A pass-through in the east wall leads to the galley.
  The doors leading south to area 7 and 8 are secured by ID badge 
  locks; area 7 opens for technician and ops specialist badges, while 
  area 8 only opens for ops specialist badges.
  • During working hours or sleeping hours, no one is here. 
  • At mealtimes and in the early evening, a few of-duty person-
  nel gather to socialize: 2 technicians, 2 support personnel, 
  and 2 ops specialists (the rovers).
  • If the heroes tripped an external alarm and then entered via 
  the personnel airlock, 5 ops specialists are waiting here for 
  them (see Security! below).
  3. Galley. An institutional kitchen, including a large walk-in fridge, 
  a storeroom for dry goods, oven and stove, sink and dishwasher, 
  pots and pans, cutlery, a cupboard full of plastic plates, and so on. 
  During the day, 3 support staf work here.
  4. Technician Dormitory. Six Syrtis assistant scientists and tech-
  nicians share this comfortable dormitory; each person has a roomy 
  bunk with a privacy screen, which sits above storage drawers for 
  clothes and personal belongings. (The drawers are secured by a 
  simple keypad lock.) A large vid screen on one wall shows a pleas-
  ant mountainside scene.
  During working hours, this room is empty; at night, four techni-
  cians are asleep (the other two have a night shift in the Test Lab). 
  Four bunks are unused.
  5. Lavatory. Six private cubicles, each with a toilet, sink, 
  and shower.
  6. VIP Suites. These three suites are reserved for facility man-
  agers. Each consists of a large bed, a closet, a sitting area with a 
  small fridge, a small desk, a private bathroom, and an entertainment 
  center. The doors have badge readers keyed to the speciﬁc individ-
  uals, although ops specialist badges can open them in case of an 
  emergency.
  
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  • 6A belongs to Dr. Duval. He’s here at night. If the heroes 
  examine the room, they ﬁnd that it seems pretty comfortable 
  for someone being held against his will. His closet is full of 
  nice clothes, and he has a perfectly functional comm device 
  sitting on his desk.
  • 6B belongs to Director Tanner. She’s here during her 
  of hours.
  • 6C is currently vacant.
  7. Research Lab. This room is a working space for the station 
  technicians, and the door restricts access to technician badges. 
  The room includes eight desks, each with an impressive array of 
  monitors and displays (one belongs to Duval, and one is currently 
  unused). There’s also a large common worktable cluttered with tools 
  and test units in various stages of assembly. During working hours, 
  two technicians are here.
  Heroes interested in the research can ﬁgure out the nature of 
  the work with an open-ended skill challenge (5 minutes per check, 
  Computer or Science). 1 success: it’s called Typhon and it’s related 
  to robotics; 3 successes: speciﬁcally, autonomous weapon drones; 
  6+ successes: the key concept is a new “swarm intelligence” net-
  worked AI for small drones; 10+ successes: Dr. Duval stole this work 
  from the EC Defense Bureau—it’s not all his.
  8. Ops Center. The doors to this room require ops specialist 
  badges for access. The ops center serves as the security and 
  communications center for the complex. A radar display and weap-
  ons-system console here controls the facility’s antiair defenses. 
  Numerous monitors show security-cam views of the hallways, plus 
  areas 2, 3, 11, and 14. The center’s comm panel also controls incom-
  ing and outgoing vid calls and email.
  • This room is normally manned by two ops specialists around 
  the clock; the other four are either resting in the Support 
  Dormitory or roving the facility.
  • It’s easy to disable the antiair defenses here—shutting 
  down or destroying the weapon system controls only takes 
  an action.
  • Gunﬁghts in this room blast apart screens with showers of 
  sparks. Combatants can ﬁnd 50 percent cover from a variety 
  of sturdy desks and consoles.
  9. Test Lab. This room is the whole reason the facility’s here. It’s 
  a robotics lab with large parts racks, a variety of machine tools and 
  3-D printers, a weapon-ﬁring bench, a locker of drone power cores, 
  and a 10-meter test enclosure surrounded by armored-plastic walls.
  • During the day, Dr. Duval and two technicians are working in 
  this room.
  The heroes can also 
  get this information 
  by questioning 
  technicians.
  
  Scene 3: Knock, Knock
  103
  Scene 3: Knock, Knock
  103
  • At night, two technicians pulling the late shift work on 
  assembling new drone designs.
  • The machine tools and parts rack provide 50 percent cover 
  for any ﬁght in here.
  • The power cores are potentially explosive; if struck by a 
  weapon that deals energy damage, the rack explodes in a 
  4 m (8 m) blast dealing 2d6 (1d8) energy damage.
  • There’s also a ﬁre-suppression system with several acti-
  vation buttons around the room; hitting the button ﬂoods 
  the room with inert gas, reducing visibility to very poor for 
  10 minutes (see Vision, page 176, Core Rulebook).
  10. Mainframe Room. The door to this room opens for technician 
  badges. The complex’s research mainframe is housed inside (see 
  Scene 4). The mainframe is not a true AI, but does have a personal-
  ity-emulation control system called Pavi. The mainframe is a fragile 
  machine protected by an ordinary-level enclosure, if the heroes 
  choose to destroy it the old-fashioned way.
  11. Admin Center. A typical ofce space housing personnel 
  records, supply requisitions, maintenance requests, low-priority 
  communications, and other 23rd-century paperwork. Director 
  Tanner works here during the day, along with two support person-
  nel. If the heroes search the record systems or correspondence 
  in this room for information about Dr. Duval, they discover that he 
  is now a very well-paid Syrtis employee, assigned to manage the 
  technical staf here at Pavonis. The only person here who doesn’t 
  answer to him is Director Tanner.
  12. Armory. A large locker in the wall of the corridor serves as 
  the facility’s armory. Opening it requires both an ops specialist 
  badge and a numeric code for the keypad. It contains 4 ﬂechette 
  pistols, 2 ﬂechette guns, and 2 laser riﬂes, along with 4 suits of 
  polymer mail.
  13. Support Staf Dormitory. Like the technician dormitory (area 
  4), this room has a dozen cubicle-bunks with privacy screens. During 
  working hours, two ops specialists are resting here; at night, ﬁve 
  support personnel and four ops specialists sleep here. 
  14. Hangar. This large space has sufcient parking space for two 
  atmospheric transports, although none are currently here. The facil-
  ity’s ops specialists don’t keep a close eye on the hangar because 
  they assume that if the elevator cycles it’s because someone must 
  have permission to use it.
  • A vehicular elevator/airlock leads to the landing pad on 
  the surface.
  • There’s a basketball hoop at one end of the room (on Mars, 
  everybody can dunk). 
  
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  • Stacks of supply crates that contain spare parts for ﬂyers, 
  dry goods for the galley, and linens and bedding for the 
  dormitories.
  • Two partially assembled security rovers, Ranger C3 and 
  Ranger C4. Bringing one online takes a couple of hours of 
  work, and tampering with its core programming would be a 
  moderately complex Computer skill challenge. 
  15. Repair Shop. This cluttered parts room and work space is 
  reserved for maintaining the base’s vehicles and excursion gear. 
  Two support personnel are usually working here (or gooﬁng of 
  while pretending to work). The keys to the transport parked on the 
  landing pad are hanging on the wall.
  16. Life Support. The door to this room is locked (it opens for 
  a maintenance badge). The room houses three critical pieces of 
  machinery: a small, safe fusion generator to provide the facility with 
  power, an air replenisher that scrubs CO2 out of the air and oxygen-
  ates the complex’s air supply, and a water recycler unit that puriﬁes 
  and pipes clean water to the other parts of the complex.
  • Heroes trained in Engineering (life support or power sys-
  tems) or Mechanics (environmental systems) can easily sab-
  otage these systems to fail immediately or fail later. Residual 
  oxygen and heat in the complex keep it habitable for several 
  hours, but eventually the place becomes uninhabitable 
  without repairs.
  • Rigging the power plant to blow can destroy the whole 
  complex. Small fusion plants such as this are designed to 
  not explode, so it’s a skill challenge requiring 6 successes 
  against Engineering or Mechanics (check interval one 
  minute). Setting up a precise detonation or detonation via 
  remote device requires a Security check. 
  17. Storage Tanks. Behind the hangar wall lie several large 
  storage tanks for fuel, water, and compressed air. These provide the 
  facility with an important stock of vital resources, and are periodi-
  cally replenished by tankers dispatched to Pavonis to deliver reﬁlls.
  SECURITY!
  Most of the personnel at Pavonis surrender or ﬂee when confronted 
  by armed intruders. However, the ops specialists are trained security 
  agents and attempt to defend the facility.
  If the heroes are spotted on their way in, ﬁve ops specialists are 
  waiting in either the Common Area or the Hangar to defend the 
  facility (the last one remains in the Ops Center). Once three are 
  defeated, the remaining two surrender.
  
  Scene 4: Abort, Retry, Fail?
  105
  Scene 4: Abort, Retry, Fail?
  105
  If the heroes get into the facility without setting of any alarms, 
  the ops specialists are in various locations:
  • Working Hours: Two on-duty in the Ops Center (area 8), two 
  resting in area 13, two roaming the complex (they show up in 
  Scene 4 or 5).
  • Sleeping Hours: Two on-duty in the Ops Center, four resting 
  in area 13. 
  SOS: If an ops specialist inside the Ops Center becomes aware 
  of a major problem inside the facility (say, the team waiting to 
  defend the Common Area getting shot to pieces), they call the Syrtis 
  ofce in High Tharsis, about 300 km away. Syrtis organizes a strike 
  force with two armed ﬂyers and twenty heavily armored troops to 
  retake the base, but it’ll take them an hour or more to reach Pavonis.
  SCENE 4: ABORT, RETRY, FAIL?
  Pavi, the facility’s research mainframe, is located in area 10. The 
  Syrtis Corporation is extremely paranoid about potential cyber-espi-
  onage, so the mainframe is not connected to any external internet. 
  Instead, it’s designed to be backed up daily to high-density data-
  sticks that are sent via messenger to other Syrtis facilities.
  A computer the size of an ofce desk stands in the this room, 
  with a spacious work station for a human operator. Shelves on 
  the near wall hold operating manuals and report folders, along 
  with a set of numbered and dated datasticks; there is an elec-
  trical junction box and a back-up battery tower in the far corner. 
  A holographic display above the computer shows a digitized 
  human face. “Hello,” it says. “I am Pavi, the operating system. Are 
  you a new user?”
  Pavi converses with anyone addressing it, but it requires a user 
  log-in to access its ﬁles or execute any special instructions. It’s not 
  an AI per se; it’s a sophisticated OS that asks questions of people 
  around it so that it can determine how to help them.
  The heroes don’t actually need to interact with Pavi—they can 
  just plug in the datastick with the virus. However, if they want to 
  make a copy of the research or snoop around (something Ausonia 
  didn’t ask them to do), they’ll need to log in.
  Logging In: The easiest way to log in is to use existing user 
  credentials. Dr. Duval and all the technicians have the right creden-
  tials, although they won’t surrender that info willingly. A good hacker 
  without credentials can attempt to bypass this step; this is a Com-
  puter skill challenge (–2 step penalty) requiring 3 successes before 
  3 failures. If the challenge fails, Pavi refuses all new login attempts, 
  Make sure the 
  players know the 
  clock is running!
  
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  and sends an alert to the Ops Center and Director Tanner (this may 
  trigger the Security! encounter if it hasn’t been triggered yet). If the 
  challenge succeeds, the heroes can use Pavi to:
  • Make a copy of the Typhon data before they delete it (not in 
  their Ausonia contract, but potentially valuable);
  • Shut down the air-defense system in the Ops Center;
  • Shut down the life-support systems in area 16;
  • Unlock all doors in the facility, or change access for any (or 
  all) personnel badges;
  • Access Duval’s or Tanner’s email and correspondence 
  (which reveal that Duval is a defector and is working with 
  Syrtis willingly);
  The Kill Virus: If the heroes simply plug in their virus datastick, it 
  works as advertised.
  The digital face of the mainframe freezes as the datastick’s 
  use-light blinks. Then a text message pops up in the display: 
  “Unrecognized program. Install Y/N?”
  If the heroes proceed, the mainframe whirs and reboots. There is 
  no other sign that the program has been installed (that’s deliberate, 
  the designers of the virus wanted it to hide until it was included in 
  the normal backup routine).
  Old Backups: The datasticks stored on the shelf are old backups. 
  The heroes can take as many as they like, and obtain a copy of the 
  Typhon data that way. However, the theft will be pretty obvious.
  SCENE 5: DR. DUVAL, I PRESUME?
  Depending on how the heroes get into the complex and when they 
  attempt their inﬁltration, they ﬁnd Dr. Duval either in the Test Lab 
  (with two technicians) or his personal quarters (alone). Rene Duval is 
  brilliant and a little paranoid, and quickly realizes that a bunch of non-
  Syrtis people with guns are probably here to take him back to Earth.
  Rene Duval’s ﬁle photo is a good likeness of him: He’s a thin, 
  balding man of forty or so, with dark eyes and a gray-streaked 
  goatee. It doesn’t capture the man’s nervous energy, though; 
  he paces and mutters constantly at a tablet device. When he 
  sees you, he stops and frowns in surprise. “Who are you?” he 
  demands. “You don’t belong here!”
  If the heroes ﬁnd Duval in the Test Lab, the two technicians with 
  him freeze and raise their hands, looking to Duval for instructions. 
  If the heroes ask about them, Duval tells the heroes to leave them 
  Destroying the 
  mainframe with 
  gunﬁre isn’t hard. 
  However, Syrtis 
  computer experts can 
  recover the data from 
  the wreckage later.
  
  Scene 5: Dr. Duval, I Presume?
  107
  Scene 5: Dr. Duval, I Presume?
  107
  Scene 5: Dr. Duval, I Presume?
  107
  alone, saying they’ve been kind to him and they don’t know enough 
  about his work to be dangerous. (The technicians ﬂee if a ﬁght 
  breaks out.)
  DUVAL’S STORY
  Duval does his best to dissemble, pretending to be a captive held 
  against his will. (That’s how he got the drop on the previous team 
  that tried to rescue him.) Duval denies any knowledge of the previ-
  ous team’s eforts, but he’s lying about that.
  If a hero watches Duval closely during the conversation (the 
  player tells you that she’s taking note of his demeanor or condition), 
  allow the character to make an Empathy check. On a success, the 
  hero gains the impression that Duval is just a little too glib about his 
  situation—you’d think he would be more traumatized. 
  A hero who takes a close look at Duval’s clothing or gear can 
  attempt an Awareness check: On an Aver-
  age success, she notices Duval’s control 
  bracelet, and on an Excellent or better, she 
  spots Duval’s hidden laser pistol. (Duval 
  explains the bracelet as a necessary part of 
  his prototype, and claims that he managed 
  to steal the pistol in preparation for an 
  escape attempt.)
  We’re Here to Rescue You: When the 
  heroes inform Duval that they’re here to 
  rescue him, he feigns cooperation: “What’s 
  your plan? Hmm, that seems dangerous, but I sup-
  pose you’re the experts. Lead me out, then.”
  DUVAL’S BETRAYAL
  While going along with the rescue, 
  Duval surreptitiously activates his 
  drone-control bracelet to summon the 
  Typhons, and waits for his drones to arrive.
  The Heroes Suspect Nothing: Duval accompa-
  nies the team to Area 2 or area 14, whichever way 
  they plan to exit. Then he activates his drones 
  and attacks.
  Duval suddenly stops as a strange humming 
  sound ﬁlls the air. Then a dozen tiny spherical drones 
  dart into the room, surrounding the scientist. He draws a 
  laser pistol from a hidden holster in his jacket. “Actually, 
  I think I prefer it here!” he says, and attacks!
  
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  Have each character make an Empathy check; characters who 
  fail the check are surprised. Other characters roll initiative normally. 
  Duval summons 2 Typhon drones per hero (maximum of 12 drones).
  The Heroes Suspect Him: If the heroes confront Duval with any 
  evidence that he’s actively cooperating with Syrtis, he panics and 
  attacks. Roll initiative normally—Duval has no chance to surprise the 
  team. Otherwise, Duval bides his time and attacks just before they 
  leave the facility, assuming they don’t suspect anything. However, 
  when he makes his move, the heroes aren’t surprised. (If the heroes 
  attack Duval without provocation, they surprise him!)
  The Fight: Duval keeps his distance from the heroes, dodging 
  when he ﬁres. He begins by designating the most dangerous-look-
  ing (or closest) hero as a target for his drones, then ﬁres on other 
  characters while his drones laser the primary target to pieces. If 
  badly wounded, he redirects his drones to the character who just 
  hurt him. Duval has his drones intercept as many attacks as possi-
  ble, counting on their protection.
  When Duval loses his second (9 to 11) wound box or his ﬁrst (12+) 
  wound box, he surrenders. He also gives up if all of his drones are 
  destroyed.
  EPILOGUE
  Depending on what the heroes managed to do in the facility, their 
  escape may be easy or hard. The Syrtis personnel in Pavonis 
  Research Facility make no attempt to pursue. If the antiair defenses 
  are disabled, they can escape in the parked ﬂyer on the landing 
  pad or call Ausonia for a ride. Otherwise, they can suit up and return 
  across the caldera ﬂoor the way they came, using the disposable 
  boosters in their mountaineering kits to ascend the caldera wall. 
  Chang meets them at the rim with Ausonia’s transport.
  Isabel Hayes meets the heroes in a private hangar in Mariner 
  City’s transportation dome when the team returns from Pavonis.
  • If the heroes have Duval or tell her he’s dead, she counts 
  that as a win.
  • She is surprised to learn that he defected . . . but her Euro-
  pean contacts will certainly want Duval returned, willingly 
  or not. She tells the heroes that Ausonia can take care of 
  getting Duval back to Earth.
  • Hayes also asks whether the heroes successfully installed 
  the Trojan on the mainframe.
  Hayes authorizes full payment on the heroes’ contract if they 
  conﬁrm Duval is no longer working for Syrtis and the research 
  mainframe has been either destroyed or infected with the virus—
  although she’d prefer Duval alive in their hands, and the mainframe 
  
  Adversaries
  109
  Adversaries
  109
  infected without anyone at Syrtis knowing about it. The heroes now 
  have a contact at Ausonia Consulting . . . although if the heroes 
  caused excessive damage, Hayes advises them to get of-planet 
  before the authorities come looking for them, and makes a note to 
  only use the team for “highly kinetic” missions in the future.
  ADVERSARIES
  Enemies the heroes are likely to face at Pavonis include the following.
  RANGER C5
  The Ranger is a heavy-duty security rover designed for extended patrols 
  in rough terrain and harsh environments. It uses Comm Link on its ﬁrst 
  action of the second action round, unless its Comm Link is shot away.
  TR 3 Large Boss Mechanism (Robot)
  Senses normal, thermal vision; Awareness 14+
  Initiative 12/17/22; Speed 20 meters (ignores slow terrain)
  Str 14+ 
  Agi 16+ 
  Vit 14+ 
  Int 19+ (programmed) Foc 16+ 
  Per 19+
  ACTIONS
  Gatling Laser 3 impulses; Long 3 targets within 10 m of each other; Attack 
  14/19/24 (+2 steps); Damage 1d8+4/8 energy.
  Claws 3 impulses; Melee 1 target; Attack 14/19/24 (+1 step); Damage 
  2d4+0/5 physical (+3 dmg vs. prone target), and target must make Athlet-
  ics check or be knocked prone.
  Comm Link 1 impulse; reports intrusion to controlling network and begins 
  transmitting video of encounter.
  REACTIONS
  Opportunity Fire 1-impulse reaction when an enemy moves out of cover. 
  Ranger C5 makes a single Gatling laser attack against the enemy that 
  provokes the reaction.
  DEFENSE
  Life Support
  Armor 3 physical, 2 energy
  (12+ dmg)
  
  destroyed
  Grinds to halt with smoking 
  chassis
  (12+ dmg)
  
  Gains +1 on damage 
  rolls
  Emergency power-up, 
  overheating 
  (9 to 11 dmg) 
  –1 step penalty to 
  attacks
  Targeting lens damaged
  (6 to 8 dmg) 
  can’t use Opportunity 
  Fire until next action
  Shower of sparks impairs 
  sensors
  (1 to 5 dmg)
  
  loses Comm Link
  Minor damage shoots away 
  antenna
  OTHER
  Skills Athletics 10+, Stealth 12+.
  
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  SYRTIS OPS SPECIALIST
  Ops specialists are Syrtis security goons.
  TR 3 Medium Standard Humanoid (Human)
  Senses normal; Awareness 15+
  Initiative 14/19/24; Speed 20 meters
  Str 16+ 
  Agi 17+ 
  Vit 16+ 
  Int 17+ (sentient) 
  Foc 17+ 
  Per 17+
  ACTIONS
  Shock Glove 3 impulses; Melee 1 target; Attack 14/19/24 (+1 step); Damage 
  1d6 +2/5 energy, and target must make Endurance check or be stunned 
  3 impulses.
  Flechette Pistol 3 impulses; Medium 1 target; Attack 14/19/24 (+1 step); 
  Damage 1d6+1/5 physical (or 1d6+4/8 at Close range).
  DEFENSE
  Armor 2 physical, 2 energy
  (12+ dmg)
  
  incapacitated
  Crumples to ground
  (9 to 11 dmg)
  
  –2 step penalty to all 
  checks
  Staggers, clutches wound, rallies
  (6 to 8 dmg)
  
  –1 step penalty to all 
  checks
  “I’m hit! I’m hit!”
  (1 to 5 dmg)
  
  Flinches, keeps going
  OTHER
  Skills Coercion 15+, Security 15+
  Gear Flechette pistol, shock glove, hardmesh uniform
  DR. RENE DUVAL
  Duval is not just a scientist—he’s also a trained spy. He begins a 
  ﬁght by designating a target for his drones, and attacks a diferent 
  hero with his laser pistol.
  TR 3 Medium Champion Humanoid (Human)
  Senses normal; Awareness 14+
  Initiative 12/17/22 (+1 step); Speed 20 meters
  Str 17+ 
  Agi 16+ 
  Vit 17+ 
  Int 15+ (sentient) 
  Foc 16+ 
  Per 16+
  ACTIONS
  Target Designation 1 impulse; Medium 1 target. Duval points at an enemy, 
  and his guard drones attack that target until it is defeated or Duval des-
  ignates a diferent target.
  Double Shot 3 impulses. Duval makes a laser or martial arts attack. If he 
  hits, he can make a second attack against the same target as a free 
  action.
  Laser Pistol 3 impulses; Long 1 target; Attack 14/19/24 (+2 steps); Damage 
  1d6 +0/6 energy (1d6 +3/9 energy vs. a distracted or surprised target).
  Martial Arts 3 impulses; Melee 1 target; Attack 14/19/24 (+1 step); Damage 
  1d4+0/3 physical (1d4+3/6 vs. a distracted or surprised target).
  
  Adversaries
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  DEFENSE
  Armor 2 physical, 2 energy
  Expert Evasion Duval can evade at no additional impulse cost. Enemies that 
  attack him while he is evading take a –2 step attack penalty.
  (12+ dmg)
  
  incapacitated
  Crumples to ground
  (12+ dmg)
  
  Loses Double Shot
  Snarls and clamps a hand to wound
  (9 to 11 dmg)  Stun 1
  Rocked back on heels, loses focus
  (6 to 8 dmg)  Moves 2 m as a 
  reaction
  Curses and ducks behind cover
  (1 to 5 dmg)
  
  “Idiots! You’ll never take me back!”
  OTHER
  Skills Awareness 14+, Computer 13+, Dodge 11+, Science 10+, Security 13+
  Gear Laser pistol, hardmesh uniform, control bracelet for defense drones 
  (see below)
  TYPHON 9B DEFENSE DRONE
  The Typhons are hovering drones about the size of softballs. Each 
  is armed with a small but dangerous laser. They are programmed 
  to protect the wearer of a control bracelet, targeting anything the 
  controller designates as a threat.
  TR 3 Tiny Minion Mechanism (Robot)
  Senses normal; Awareness 15+
  Initiative 10/15/20; Speed 30 meters (ﬂying)
  Str 19+ 
  Agi 14+ 
  Vit 18+ 
  Int 19+ (programmed) Foc 16+ 
  Per 19+
  ACTIONS
  Microlaser 3 impulses; Medium 1 target; Attack 14/19/24 (+1 step); Damage 
  3/6 energy.
  REACTIONS
  Intercept 1-impulse reaction when the controller is hit by a melee attack 
  or a ranged attack dealing physical damage while the drone is within 
  2 meters. The drone is hit instead.
  DEFENSE
  Tiny Enemies sufer a –2 step penalty to attack the Typhon.
  (1+ dmg)
  
  destroyed
  Shorts out, drops to the ground
  OTHER
  Swarm Attack The drone gains a +1 step bonus with its microlaser attack 
  for each other drone ﬁring at the same target in this impulse, to a maxi-
  mum of +3 steps for 4 drones.
  Minion Attack This creature’s attack deals one wound of the lowest sever-
  ity if the damage overcomes the target’s armor.
  
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  112
  112 
  INSPIRATIONAL READING AND VIEWING
  While the ALTERNITY Science Fiction Roleplaying Game explores a wide variety 
  of SF genres and inspirations, the Protostar setting ofers a speciﬁc blend 
  of mid-future space opera and cyberpunk themes in a Solar System divided 
  between hostile powers and factions. Here’s a short list of novels, TV shows, 
  and movies that might inspire your own Protostar adventures.
  NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES
  Cherryh, C.J. Cyteen and Downbe-
  low Station.
  Chiang, Ted. “The Story of Your Life.”
  Clarke, Arthur C. 2001: A Space 
  Odyssey and 2010: The Year We 
  Make Contact.
  Gibson, William. Neuromancer.
  Heinlein, Robert. The Moon Is a 
  Harsh Mistress.
  McDevitt, Jack. Ancient Shores.
  Morgan, Richard K. Altered Carbon.
  Niven, Larry. Protector and the other 
  Known Space stories.
  Pohl, Frederik. Gateway.
  Robinson, Kim Stanley. Red Mars, 
  Green Mars, and Blue Mars.
  Stephenson, Neal. Seveneves.
  Stirling, S.M. The Stone Dogs.
  Weir, Andy. Artemis.
  MOVIES AND TELEVISION
  Alien. 20th Century Fox, 1979.
  Elysium. TriStar Pictures, 2013.
  Europa Report. Magnolia Pic-
  tures, 2013.
  Event Horizon. Paramount Pic-
  tures, 1997.
  The Expanse. Syfy, Amazon Prime, 
  2015–2019.
  The Fifth Element. Columbia Pic-
  tures, 1997.
  Fireﬂy. Fox, 2002–2003.
  The Ghost in the Shell. 
  Shochiku, 1995.
  Outland. Warner Brothers, 1981.
  Total Recall. TriStar Pictures, 1990.
  
  About the Authors
  113
  About the Authors
  113
  ABOUT THE AUTHORS
  RICHARD BAKER (THE MARTIAN HOSTAGE)
  Back in 1996, Rich collaborated with Bill Slavicsek to create the 
  original ALTERNITY RPG and adventures such as Black Starfall, The 
  Last Warhulk, and Exit 23. He’s a lifelong fan of Golden Age sci-ﬁ 
  and makes a point of re-reading E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman books 
  every year. Rich happened to be watching “The Eiger Sanction” 
  when thinking about his Protostar adventure; the result speaks 
  for itself.
  DAVID NOONAN (TARTARUS STATION)
  One of ALTERNITY’s primary designers, David has always been a 
  writer: ﬁrst as a newspaper reporter, then for tabletop RPGs and 
  video games. He’s always been a reader, too, devouring Asimov 
  short-story compilations at the Palatine (Ill.) library until they ﬂickered 
  the lights so he’d go home. Today he writes and reads from the 
  wilds outside Seattle, where he’s trying to raise his kids according to 
  the Three Laws of Robotics–with limited success.
  STEPHEN SCHUBERT (THE ROANOKE AfAIR)
  The designer or developer of more than ﬁfty Dungeons & Dragons 
  products across 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition, Steve’s credits include Magic 
  of Eberron, Princes of the Apocalypse, and the D&D Miniatures 
  Game. With Dave and Rich, he created the new ALTERNITY SFRPG. 
  He also owns an epic collection of LEGO® Star Wars sets, including 
  the Death Star. That’s no moon! 
  STEVE TOWNSHEND (SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW)
  Steve began his career as a performer with sf actor Cas Anvar’s 
  (Alex Kamal, The Expanse) Shakespeare company. Based in 
  Chicago, Steve writes science-ﬁction scripts for theatre, and 
  his short plays, Sweet XP, The Trolls, Reconciliat0001, and For 
  the Record were produced in 2017-18. Lately, Steve divides his 
  time between working at the Oriental Institute, where he edits 
  manuscripts about ancient civilizations, and photographing 
  costumed subjects with sf/fantasy/historical themes.
  STEVE WINTER (HIVES OF JANRATA)
  Although most of Steve Winter’s career (so far) has been spent 
  working on D&D in one form or another, his ﬁrst published gaming 
  material was for the Traveller SFRPG in 1980. He also was part of 
  the team behind Star Frontiers and wrote the adventure Klick Klack
  for the original ALTERNITY RPG.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Alternity/2nd Edition/Alternity 2e - Protostar Mission Guide [OEF][2019].pdf