On a planet called K'Thul

jedion357's picture
jedion357
April 19, 2019 - 5:25am
I wanted to pick up a few more of the Monsterpocalypse spitters from their Cthul faction on ebay and dropped a nominal bid for a allotment of figures from that faction, didn't expect to win but did. Spitters make a nice stand in for the sathar cyboslug and/or other more or less crawling nastiness. Bonus was the figures that looked like eggs from the Alien franchise.

The figures arrived and I plan to rebase them as I think that game is out of print.

At any rate I got a nice selection of figures and it occured to me that taken together they could represent a consistent biology in one ecosystem or rather that they all come from the same evolutionary tree.

Spitters:

Meat Slaves:

Squix:

task master:

and Cthulgrosh (note- this ultra form does not match; these are miss matched boss figures but I'm not goint to make a big deal about it with the seller since I rebasing most of it.):


Taken together I have a swarming crawler, a flock of fliers, lone predator, an alien egg, and the boss creature. There may be other creatures in this faction from the game that I can certainly troll ebay for, I already have the pink translucent ultra form of Yasheth which could be painted or used as a giant boss creature with the equivalent of a holo screen.
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!
Comments:

jedion357's picture
jedion357
April 19, 2019 - 5:47am
K'Thul is a planet named after the vrusk explorer that discovered it. I lies in the Providence system. I wanted a name that connected to H P Lovecraft but Howard and Phillips didn't seem like interesting names for a star system and Lovecraft seemed to obvious but Providence is where Lovecraft was born and died.

Environments: Jungles, grassy plains, rivers & lakes.

locations of interest:

1.derelict star ship landed on surface- its been here a long time
dare I include an encounter with an alien egg?

2. ruined and over grown stone temple/ pyramid in the jungle, the setting fairly screams for that.

3. oasis in the sea of grass- toying with the meter high grass having sharg edges- evolutionary adaption to keep the tentacle nastiness out of that area, the flying creatures can fly over but genterally most stay out of the grass. its not super deadly but causes painful cuts: 1d5 point of damage/ hour blazing trail through it. individuals can follow a blazed trail. use of a machete modifies damage roll by -2. Any hour an individual takes damage from the grass they must pass a STA check or become infected with an infection.

The oasis is where an lone, mad survivor of the derelict ship lives. He will be angry with the PCs for blazing a trail to his home that can be followed- in fact the lone predator type can show up as it followed the trail.

Any adventure here needs to borrow from creepy madness and Call of Cthulu story elements.


I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

jedion357's picture
jedion357
April 19, 2019 - 6:06am
kicking around ideas

egg figure could be a spore pod, since alien egg is a bit cliche. spore explodes and infects those nearby

Task master is vaguely humanoid after one of these follows the PCs to the oasis in the sea of grass and is killed the mad hermit identifies it as the pilot from his ship, pointing to the faint royal marine tatoo on the arm. Some agency on the planet can corrupt/recreate a member of the core four into a monster.

must ask what the corruption/mutation results would be with a dralasite, vrusk and yaz. Maybe the meat slave could be a corrupted dralasite and it just rolls around now in its corrupt form.

The agency doing this gruesome work will have to be the cthulgrosh or yasheth figures. giant old ones, inheritors of ancient tech in the ruins in which they live or one of them lives. He wants the bodies of the PC party. To that end he sent some of his corrupted slaves (the other ship's corrupted/mutated engineer) to remove a crucial piece from the star ship and bring it to him in the jungle ruins. forcing the PCs to recover it just to leave.

This is a seriously hostile planet and the sort that space fleet would rule off limits.


I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

JCab747's picture
JCab747
April 19, 2019 - 7:49am
Interesting.
Joe Cabadas

jedion357's picture
jedion357
April 19, 2019 - 9:08am
JCab747 wrote:
Interesting.

All i wanted was some cyboslugs and now I have to create a whole star system and an adventure to go there.

It will need an overland map showing jungle, grass plain, river, oasis, landing site of derelict ship and ruins in the jungle.

Map of oasis with the river running through it.

deck plan of derelict ship

map of the temple ruins.

Stat blocks of the creatures 400 or 500 STA for the big boss. Giant sized carnivore can have 400 STA by the book.

write up of the environment. I'm thinking this should be gloomy. Dimmly lit. star dim? or reflected light from gas giant to the moon. Moon is most likely tidally locked so as it orbits the planet it has the system primary eclipsed by the planet: very dark. it will phase through some direct sunlight then mostly reflected sunlight then some direct sunlight then back side of planet to very dark again.

I'll likely rebase all the figures and write a frontier in miniature article from that with photos and then do some miniature photography and draw each creature.
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

jedion357's picture
jedion357
April 19, 2019 - 3:45pm
New thoughts on the plot: a derelict ship landed here several years ago. Its dirty, over grown, some hull panels have been removed and are missing. 

Month ago Space Fleet dispatched an assault scout to investigate a possible distress signal (garbled or not exact format like SIS instead of SOS). The assault scout radioed back once after landing but hasn't been heard from again. 

Because of patrol patterns  Space Fleet is temporarily stretched thin and requests a militia unit to go investigate. Boom: Warriors of White light 2.0

Except for the mad hermit the cthul boss got all of the crews from the two other ships.

Complication for militia crew: because the assault scout is an advanced design they must recover the other scout ship or prevent anyone else from recovering it by destroying it. Its armory and stores will be depleted by natural usage by its crew but PC. Will find some supplies. 
They will need to remove atomic fuel, if possible, before blowing it up remote detonation of the assault rockets is best although self destruct via engine overload is possible just against policy or regs when on a planet.

Video of a space fleet crew member talking about "IT" having taken Jonesy into the ruins in the jungle will be found. Since PCs are suppose to find out what happened to the Space Fleet crew that is the hook to send them into the jungle. 
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!