Game Idea 8-11-2001

[jayphailey]

Game Idea 8-11-2001

Adventure Seed

The PCs ship is on a routine patrol in a sector far away from any known enemies. This patrol has been fairly boring and routine so far, a few scientific I's to dot and T's to cross, a few kittens stuck in trees metaphorically speaking.

A distress call comes from the planet Zamalla. The Zamallans are bucolic, peaceful and unremarkable. Under other circumstances they'd be under prime directive non- interference but they had routine if infrequent contact with Orion and Ferengi traders and so were well appraised of life in the galaxy at large before the UFP discovered them.

The Zamallans have vague contact with the UFP but nothing too energetic. The Zamallans don't have anything to trade that you couldn't get easier at a closer and more civilized world.

The Zamallans are pleading for aid claiming that they are under attack. If the starship moves to aid them, then long range sensors will detect weapons fire from advanced weapons before the PCs arrive.

Arriving in the system the PCs will detect a serious war in progress on Zamalla. A very small but technology advanced force is on it's way to massacreing the Zamallan military, and lots of civilians along with it.

However, for reasons which will be made clear there is no hint what so ever of a ship to carry the raiders to Zamalla. Not only is there none now but as far as sensors can determine, there hasn't been one in weeks.

The PUnchline -

The Raiders call them selves the Kagala. They are semi- reptilian and obviously evolved from some hunter stock. They are carnivorous people. They are bent on wiping the Zamallans out. They claim that the planet is now and always has been theirs.

The reason. 50 million years ago, the Kagala were the dominant race on the planet. They were experimenting with subspace theories, when a nearby star went nova. The Kagala had only a few years to dig in and ride out the resulting blast of radiation sure to cause a mass extinction on their world.

Their defense was a unique interpretation of Subspace technology which allowed for a primitive version of a Larry Niven Stasis field. Inside the effect of their subspace fields, time would be slowed almost to standstill. However, the Kagala could control the effects very well.

Although the Ecology of Zamalla was damaged very severely, enough survived to being a recovery. The Modern Zamallans evolved there. They were begining to understand the odd fossils they were finding especially within the context of their own technology, but the Idea that Zamalla had previous residents was at best an debatable fringe theory.

Until the last surviving strong hold fell out of stasis. The Kagala Came to the surface unaware of just how much time had passed and were horrified to see creatures that reminded them of a common vermin in their own time, except large, and sentient and occupying their whole world.

The Kagala came out with a vengeance to rid their world of the vermin and reclaim it. Although not quite to FTL starships, their weapons are horrible to a race that rates somewhere between WWI and WWII on the technology scale.

The Kagala have a religion that personifies their home planet. Zamalla is their mother, their goddess and they are her special children.

Likewise the Modern Zamallans feel approximately the same about their world and are convinced that they alone are her special children. Modern Zamallans are descended from arborial omnivious scavangers. Tiny monkeys, in effect, that used to routinely raid Kagalan picnics and homes and were considered a nice light snack if caught.

The Starship's mission - Do determine what the Good guy code demands and then do that. It could reasonably be declared a Prime Directive issue but that, IMHO, is taking a cop out.

The PCs ship easily out guns the small two being attack ships the Kagala are using to exterminate the Zamallans. All of the attack ships together could not harm the PC's ship (unless the GM/Author needs them to be more dangerous.)

Note, the Modern Zamallans do have some more mordern technology like a subspace radio or two. Scattered artifacts have been traded for Zamallan raw materials, Artworks and occasionally a shipment of Prisoners into slavery who would otherwise be serving life sentences or suffering the death penatly. (Again this is at the whim of the GM. The Zamallans should be relatively sympathetic, or else the PC's would just sneer "Payback's a bitch!" and keep stepping.)

However the Zamallans hve nothing like the kinds or amounts of high tech to beat the Kagala in a straight fight.

The Kagala are on the verge of comitting outright genocide because they can do math. No matter how superior their technology, the numbers work out against them. They feel that to win their planet back they may have to resort to genocide *before the Zamallans do this math as well* or else all may be lost.

The PC's ship could make a show of force and demand a peace, but that will last as long as the ship is orbit and not an hour later.

The PCs will have to find away to make a peace between the Kagala and the Zamallans that will work. This shouldn't be *easy* but it should be doable...

[jayphailey]

I am proud of this one